June 2, 2003 Monday
Driven by His Spirit

"Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil." - Matthew 4:1

Have you come to the realization that God desires to see you tempted? Many portray the walk with Christ as everything except what it truly is, an explosive battleground surrounded by "fiery darts of the wicked". (Ephesians 6:16) While God never tempts us with evil He does allow temptation to cross the middle of our path and He has no constraints as to where, when, and how He will allow the battle to rage. Jesus was led by the Spirit to isolation in the wilderness, and "when He had fasted forty days and forty nights.....the tempter came to Him". (Matthew 4:2,3) Satan came only after he saw an opportunity to take advantage of a person who was physically weakened to the maximum; is God able to trust you with such a position in the battlefield? What God will do through our life is limited to what degree we have allowed Him to control us. Once we surrender complete control to the Spirit then He takes us places where we would never fathom surviving spiritually and we go there in the "power of the Spirit of God". (Romans 15:19) A Psalmist once cried out saying, "Out of the depths, have I cried unto thee, O LORD." (Psalm 130:1) The depths, by nature, silence everything they engulf, but a child of God finds deep devotion in the depths; and it's there in the depths of temptation that we learn to submit full control to Christ, and Christ alone, and we are then able to be led by His Spirit. Where will you allow God to take you?