For Lord’s Day, January 15, 2012

Dear Saints,

I’d like to share with you some excerpts from a book by John Owen entitled, Temptation Resisted and Repulsed. Elder Huffmaster noticed it in our library recently and was curious about it. By his report, it is a short book and easy to read and he highly recommends it. I asked him to share something with me that he particularly liked that I could share with you. We all face temptations daily until we get to heaven. Knowing why and how to deal with it is helpful for us in our Christian walk. Here is how John Owen guides us (as highlighted by Elder Huffmaster):

“ … God allows man to be tested to show himself to man. Until we are tested, we think that we are living on our own strength. It is however, God alone who keeps us from falling by his preventing grace.

… We do not realize the power and strength that God puts forth on our behalf, and the sufficiency of his grace, until we compare our trials with our weakness.

… Many men do not know what is in them, or rather what is available to them, until they are asked to do something utterly beyond their strength. The duties that God has for us along our ordinary path of life are not in proportion to the help and relief that is laid up for us in Christ. By God’s strength we are able to perform the most difficult tasks even though we only have the ability for the small ones.”

With those thoughts, let me remind you: There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. (1 Corinthians 10:13)

Semper Reformanda,

Pastor Grant