Three Questions

Before we hardly knew what prayer was all about, we were learning to pray.  While our first prayers may have been learned from our mother as we got into bed, the church taught us the second prayer.  Actually, it is not the prayer of the church, but the prayer of Jesus.  One of the places we find it is in the sixth chapter of Matthew.  Within that section of Scripture known as the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "Pray then in this way....lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."  (Matthew 6:9, 13)  Temptation is a powerful force in our lives.  It is the forerunner to sin.     

In Paul's letter to the Romans he comes to a moment of calling the Jews to look at their own sin instead of the sin of their neighbors.  As he does this he list three temptations which keep them from such honesty about themselves.  "Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God?  Or do you despise the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience?  Do you not realize that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?"  (Romans 2:3-4)   

We tend to think of temptation as the presence of some external physical act which leads to some overt behavior that refers to an explicit expression of disobedience to God.  These probing questions of the Apostle takes us to a different place.  They take us into the realm of the invisible things of the heart.  They take us to the place where temptation takes root and begins to grow in our lives.  At first it is unseen, but finally, like all things that are planted and allowed to grow, fruit it produced.