False Security
Theme of the Week: Meet the Tempter Head-on
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
 1 of 1
Key Bible Verse: If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall (1 Corinthians 10:12). Bonus Reading: 1 Corinthians 10:13
Gordon MacDonald was the senior minister at a large New England church before becoming the president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Along the way he wrote numerous bestselling Christian books. He was asked to give a speech at a college commencement, and before the festivities began spent time in the president's office, getting acquainted with a school board member. Suddenly this man raised a provocative question that would stand out to MacDonald for years to come: "If Satan were to blow you out of the water, how do you think he'd do it?"
"All sorts of ways, I suppose," MacDonald answered. "But the area of my personal relationships is one place where I'm as strong as you can get. He'd never get me there."
It wasn't long after that conversation that MacDonald betrayed his marriage covenant and became, in his own words, a "broken-world person." His hindsight reflection: "A chain of seemingly innocent choices became destructive, and it was my fault. Choice by choice by choice, each easier to make, each becoming gradually darker. And then my world broke—in the very area I'd predicted I was safe."
—James Emery White in Life-Defining Moments
My Response: An area in which overconfidence could make me vulnerable is …
Thought to Apply: If it takes temptation and sin to show God in his true colors and Satan in his, something has been saved from the wreck. —Michael Green (British evangelist)
Adapted from Life-Defining Moments (WaterBrook, 2001) by permission.
Copyright © 2009 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
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I can't take on the devil in my own strength, Lord. Help me soak up your Word so that my will will align with yours.
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