9月17日 试探何益?

你们所遇见的试探,无非是人所能受的。(林前十13)

“试探”一词地位日益低落,我们很容易把这词错用。试探并非等于罪。凡是人,都会遇到试探。若说不会受试探,实在是自贬身价。不过,许多人所受的试探,本是不该受的。这完全是由于我们不肯让神领我们到一个更高的境地,去面对另一种试探的缘故。

人内在的性向,就是他人的性格,决定他外在所受的试探。所受的试探是配合受试探者的本质,同时也显出他的潜能。每一个人都有他独特受试探的背景,试探也会沿着他主要的性向而来。

试探为人所要实现的最高目标提供了一条捷径--并不是我走向邪恶,乃是朝着我认为善的方向走。试探是一些令我一时感到困惑的东西,因我不知它到底是对还是错。向试探低头,就是奉情欲为神;也证明过去不是没有犯这罪,只是不敢做出来。

试探是无可避免的,对一个人的完整生命是不可或缺的。别以为从没有人像你一样,受到这样的试探;你所经历的,其实是整个人类共有的经历,并非前所未有。神不会救我们离开试探,他乃是在试探当中救拔我们(来二18)。

祈祷◆噢,主啊,我们对你的认知,被即时的现况所堵塞,产生了窒息的感觉;求你拯救和悦纳我们。

September 17 What's The Good Of Temptation?

“There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man.” 1 Corinthians 10:13

The word “temptation” has come down in the world; we are apt to use it wrongly. Temptation is not sin, it is the thing we are bound to meet if we are men. Not to be tempted would be to be beneath contempt. Many of us, however, suffer from temptations from which we have no business to suffer, simply because we have refused to let God lift us to a higher plane where we would face temptations of another order.

A man's disposition on the inside, i.e., what he possesses in his personality, determines what he is tempted by on the outside. The temptation fits the nature of the one tempted, and reveals the possibilities of the nature. Every man has the setting of his own temptation, and the temptation will come along the line of the ruling disposition.

Temptation is a suggested short cut to the realization of the highest at which I aim – not towards what I understand as evil, but towards what I understand as good. Temptation is something that completely baffles me for a while, I do not know whether the thing is right or wrong. Temptation yielded to is lust deified, and is a proof that it was timidity that prevented the sin before.

Temptation is not something we may escape, it is essential to the full-orbed life of a man. Beware lest you think you are tempted as no one else is tempted; what you go through is the common inheritance of the race, not something no one ever went through before. God does not save us from temptations; He succours us in the midst of them (Heb. 2:18).