Limits

No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he'll never let you be pushed past your limit; he'll always be there to help you come through it.
~ 1 Corinthians 10:13

These last couple of days I've felt very much like a rubber band, stretched out to my absolute end and wondering just when everything is going to pop apart and end up hurting somebody. Gotta love it when your primary object of comparison is a rubber band!

The thing is that I've allowed myself to become too concerned with my thoughts. I've chased after God in so many ways and found Him to be so very real and true and good but just recently I have found myself relying too much on my own understanding and not enough on His. It's a funny thing to be pulled up short and reminded of how insignificant your brain really is. I fight against admitting that I can't figure things out and yet, when I'm honest, I recognize that this battle is an open invitation to temptation in my life. This is where I'm tempted: to insist on my own understanding. It's not always the big 'sins' that create areas of temptation with me - there are many things that have no pull on me. Yet it's things such as this, things that are so much a part of my humanity and my personality, that create temptation.

This is where it gets good though. See that verse up there? First, I'm not alone in facing this temptation, it's been faced before by others on the journey. Second, God is bigger than the temptation and He's able and willing to help me walk past it in victory. Funny thing though, this verse doesn't say what we would like to think that it says. It doesn't tell us that we'll never be tempted or that we won't have to walk through it because God will immediately rescue us from the trial. It tells us that God will be there to get us through it and He won't let us be pushed beyond what we can bear but we have to recognize that we have a responsibility here too. Our responsibility is to recognize that this is temptation and to seek God and ask Him to come alongside us in victory.

It would be so easy for me to not admit that this is an area in my life where temptation can lead to sin. It'd be a much more pleasurable time for me if I could just let my focus be on only doing that which I can understand. There is an easy road but it's not the refining road. So, instead of fighting for understanding from a God who has no requirement to provide it (see Job if you don't believe that) I can humble myself and approach Him asking for mercy and victory. See, I'm not perfect (just to set the record straight :) ), but my God is always desiring to refine me towards that goal. I just need to stop and call temptation what it really is in my life even when I'd prefer to just keep walking my own way.

So, today, I'm going to take my rubber band self and tell God that I'm stretched too far because I'm out there on my own trying to work things out in my head. The great thing is that He can release the tension in my life and walk with me through my temptations and, in the end, make me just a little bit more like His Son instead of the rubber band that I would be on my own.