Do you realize Satan tempts you to take matters into your own hands, rebelling against God?

1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.  2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.  3 The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread."4 Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"

INSIGHT:  Have you noticed that right after God blessed Israel, His firstborn son (Ex 4:22), with their freedom from Pharaoh, He led them into the wilderness to test them and find out what was in their hearts and whether they would keep His commands (Deu 8:2).  And here, the Father is doing the same thing with His only Begotten Son, which becomes His pattern for all His “sons” (us).  After God proves Himself to us and acknowledges that we are indeed His children by faith, there comes a wilderness journey and time of severe testing and proving of our hearts.

With God’s permission, and by His will, Satan had just tempted Jesus to disobey God, during His time of testing.    Satan tempts Him, at His weakest moment to provide for Himself by turning a stone into bread.  Jesus doesn’t just ignore Satan or pretend he isn’t there, but instead quotes God’s word (Deu 8:3), where the context is obedience to God’s word, not just hearing it or reading it.  Jesus is telling Satan that it’s more important for Him to trust and obey God, than it is to satisfy His deep hunger, or to even live.  (See also John 4:31-34.)

So too, in our times of testing, Satan tempts us to place our personal comfort and desires ahead of God’s will.  He pushes us to be impatient, to take the matter in our own hands, solving the problem, or making it happen now, so that we will stop trusting God, stop waiting on Him, and rebel against Him, robbing Him of His glory through our lives of obedient faith. 

God knows our every hurt and need, and even though it is hard, we can trust Him while we do what He has told us to do.  Don’t let Satan succeed in tempting you to make your will for your life more important than God’s will for your life.  Satan attacks your thoughts, but his goal is to get you to act, to get you into rebellion against God’s will.  And remember Satan will not likely appear to you directly to tempt you as He did Christ, but rather he comes at you through the spirits of the disobedient all around you, whom he has taken captive to do his will (Eph 2:2, 2 Tim 2:26).  He hides his filthy works behind flesh and blood.

Not too long after my first spouse filed divorce, I was tempted to save myself in a big way.  I had tremendous financial need and was eager to get back to a decent income, to pay my child support, and to start putting my life back together.  Through a chance meeting at the 2011 Fort Lauderdale Boat Show, I met a man who offered me a $150k a year job just a few weeks later.  Before I could even make the first phone call to a friend, God confirmed He wanted me to say no to the job.  Someone might say, “What’s wrong with taking a job—we are supposed to work or, what’s so wrong with eating some bread when you’re hungry?”  It’s wrong because it’s rebellion against God, if He has said to do otherwise.  We might imagine the devastatingly bad consequences if Jesus had failed that test of His faith (not that He could even do that).  However, I could have failed, and I have failed tests of my faith before.  Unknown to me at the time, God would one day use my “staying put” to shape me and train me for a ministry that would encourage many suffering hearts.  Even now, as I look at what God has already done, I already see a huge cost that would have resulted, had I not resisted the idea of saving myself with that job.

Since that great test in 2011, I have suffered many more tests of denying myself, and waiting on God’s promises, while others around me pressured me to save myself.  But each time, the pain and death of denying myself and carrying my cross have later been transformed into more abundant life by Christ’s resurrection power! Today, I have a very long track record of denying my own will, to do His, and while it was painful at the time, it has produced such joy, life, and peace, in my heart!  I have no regrets at all from suffering to do God’s will in my life.  What about you?