| The Golden Gate of Prayer |
Chapter 14 |
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It will help us to understand the spirit of the prayer to remember that the word “temptation” does not mean primarily to allure to sin. To tempt is to try, to test, to prove. New ships are proved before they are intrusted with lives or treasure upon the sea. Anchors are tested before they are allowed to become the only hope of a vessel in the peril of a storm. God proved Abraham, putting his faith and obedience to the test. After the trial the angel said to him, “Now I know that thou fearest God.” Abraham had stood the test. Jesus was tempted before he began his public ministry, that he might be a proved deliverer.
The temptations to which we are exposed continually are primarily provings, testings, to see whether we will be true to God or not. Indeed there is no experience that we meet in life which is not in a sense a testing. Every moment we are required to make a choice, and our choices prove us. Here is a duty; shall we do it or not? Here is a call to service; shall we accept it, or decline it? Here is an impulse to something worthy; shall we yield to it, or repress it? We have money; shall we use it for God, or shall we clutch it for ourself? Sickness tries us; shall we bear it patiently, and take from it the gifts of God it brings us, or shall we chafe and repine, and leave our sick-room harmed by the experience?
Even sweet and pure human love tests us; many are held back by it from self-sacrificing duty. Thus Peter, in love for his Lord, sought to keep him from going to his cross. “Get thee behind me, Satan” was our Lord’s answer. Many others in the warmth and tenderness of their affection, have become the tempters of their friends, and ofttimes have kept them back from costly duties or perilous service to which God had called them.
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