Ways that the Devil tempts us
On this first Sunday of Lent, we hear the story of the temptation of Jesus Christ in the wilderness and as well as the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis. It is clear form both that the battle ground for souls is in our free will. what we lost through our free will is regained by the human free will of Jesus Christ.
The devil plays the human race like a cheap fiddle. He knows that the key to moving us to sin is to get us to consider doubting God’s love for us, and even getting uus to question whether we even need God. Once he gets our attention, the devil them brings out the next weapon, self- pity. We begin to feel sorry for ourselves because we believe that some legitimate pleasure or action is being denied to us, which makes us begin to feel entitled to do what we want to do. Once this happens, we begin to seek an idol that will satisfy what we want and the devil is more than happy to fill us with suggesions, whatever our weakness may be.
Once we settle on the idol we indulge in that obbject or activity to gain some sort of pleasure or excitement. It lasts very briefly. This brings us to effect sin has on us, namely guilt and possibly despair. We have gone from the Garden of Eden to the garbage dump and have no one to blame but ourselves.
During Lent, you might want to consider things that make you doubt the goodness of God or whehter you even need him. You might also want to examine the feelings of self-pity which come along with goals that we not achieved. If we pray for the gift of faith and a clear vision whenever we experience the tempatation to doubt, we will hopefully realize that we have no right to feel sorry for ourselves, but grateful that God is with us always and will never lead us astray.
