Sunday Reflections 10

I bet you didn’t expect a Sunday reflections post this week because we had one last Sunday.

And I said that they were going to be every 2 WEEKS.

Look at me lying to you. AND ON A SUNDAY. I am the worst. EVER.

BUT, next week is Easter and I am in South Carolina the following week SOOOOO. Here we are.

Onto the reflections.

Sermon: Temptation Part 1: Stones into bread (Matthew 4:1-4 By Pastor Mark Clark of The Village Church 

Synopsis: You can probably guess from the title that this sermon was about Jesus being tempted by Satan in the wilderness, after fasting for 40 days. Pastor Mark talked about the difference between TEMPTATION and TESTING. People sometimes fall into a mindset of “OH GOD, WHY ARE YOU TEMPTING ME?” But, in reality, God does NOT tempt us, Satan does that. God TESTS us, and we need to view these temptations as just that: Testing, to grow out faith. He also mentioned how Satan did not come to Jesus in the middle of his fast, he came to him at the VERY END, when he was the most tired, hungry and at his weakest. This is when the devil works: when we are weak. We need to identify the times in our life when we know we are at our weakest (when we’re tired, hungry etc?) and be on guard for attacks at those times. Finally, Pastor Mark talked about the only real way to fight off Satan in these times, is scripture. Not listening to a podcast, not pretending he is not there, we need to learn the Word.

My thoughts: I seriously LOVED this sermon, as it’s 100% changed the way I have seen my “temptations” throughout the week. I have been consciously trying to train my brain in my “Scary food moments” to change my thought process from “OH I AM BEING SO TEMPTED TO COUNT CALORIES RIGHT NOW, WHY IS THIS SO HARD?” To “I am being TESTED and TRAINED by God so that I can have a better relationship and more full life with Him.” I am finding that, as I have done this throughout the best week, it is slowly making those scary moments easier to get through. I think that viewing a struggle as a “temptation to overcome” makes it seem a whole lot bigger and scarier to do, you know? Having to overcome ANYTHING always seems hard. If you view it as “training” that makes it something that you WANT to do, and to train for something makes you feel strong and powerful. If that makes sense.

I also loved the he talked about scripture being the only way to truly fight off Satan. Just last week Mr. FFF and I decided to pick a few Bible verses for each other, that pertains to each of our own struggles, to memorize. This way, we have scripture to go to in these moments, and those verses also remind us that we need to overcome our struggles to get closer to both God AND each other. Cute right? 🙂

What I want to know is: Have you ever viewed your struggles like this? Like being TRAINED up? Or am I just late to the party?

Happy Sunday! xoxo