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The “Trail Guide” devotional is used by our adult leaders of grade school groups in Quest as a way to prepare their hearts and minds for the topics we will be covering with the children on the weekend.  We have made them available here to help our parents of grade-schoolers engage with their children around the topics we are discussing and also for anyone else that might be blessed by following along.

FREE CLIMBING, LESSON 4: Victory Over Sin

“It’s an open-book test.”  Those words can indeed be beautiful to hear in the face of a difficult exam.  I remember clearly the first time I heard them in a high school chemistry class.  At once, my heart jumped because I had not studied well for the test.  In fact, I hadn’t studied well for the whole year in that class.  I thought, “This is a gift!”  Sadly, my joy turned to nervous sweat as I frantically thumbed pages and scoured the index of a book I had barely cracked all semester.  I quickly learned that, without a good working knowledge of the book, an open-book test isn’t much easier at all.  I needed the answers now and there just wasn’t time to find them because I didn’t know where to look.

The temptations or tests that we face in our spiritual lives are “open-book” tests too.  “Your Word is like a lamp that shows me the way. It is like a light that guides me.”  “How can a young person keep his life pure? By living in keeping with your Word.”    The psalmist says that the one who meditates on the Word day and night is “blessed.”  When Jesus was tempted in the desert after forty days without food, his weapon of choice against the Devil was the Word.  “It is written…” Jesus answered three times and Satan retreated.  When Satan distorted the words of God, Jesus knew how to answer him.  What if Jesus had, like Adam and Eve, simply listened to Satan’s lies and had no response?  Rather than being hyper-vigilant and sheltering our children, we must exhort them to be prepared for what WILL come.  And when they are tempted they will be able to say, “I have hidden your Word in my heart so that I won’t sin against you.”  It’s an open book test.  Know the book.

“How can a young person keep his life pure? By living in keeping with your word.”
“I have hidden your word in my heart so that I won’t sin against you.” (Psalm 119:9,11)

“So obey God. Stand up to the devil. He will run away from you.”  -James 4:7

MEDITATING ON THE WORD:
Psalm 119:9,11
1 John 5:4-5
Matthew 6:9,13
James 4:7

The “Trail Guide” devotional is used by our adult leaders of grade school groups in Quest as a way to prepare their hearts and minds for the topics we will be covering with the children on the weekend.  We have made them available here to help our parents of grade-schoolers engage with their children around the topics we are discussing and also for anyone else that might be blessed by following along.

FREE CLIMBING, LESSON 3: Victory Over Sin

If he could do it, it would be a personal best.  305 pounds.  He had trained at slightly lighter weights and thought he could chest press that much one time, but now, looking up from the bench at all that weight, his confidence was slipping.  He was about to get up from the bench and leave it for another day when a human mountain, an offensive lineman, who he had seen press this weight multiple times, stepped up to the bar and said, “Do you need a spot?  Come on – you got this.”

Our faith may fail. But God’s faithfulness never will.  What does it mean to say God is faithful?  Is it merely the textbook definition of faithfulness in human terms?  Let us hope not.  Faithfulness for a finite, limited creature is still, in the end, only wishful thinking or a good intention.  The fulfillment of man’s promises, even a very good man, is limited by his humanity.  Faithfulness for Almighty God is not only a good intention but a FACT, a reality which can be depended upon without reservation or doubt.  When God makes a promise, there is no possible situation in which He would not be able to fulfill that promise.  There are no extenuating circumstances capable of keeping God from fulfilling his faithfulness.  It is His character.

The reality of God’s faithfulness becomes ever so important when we are tried, tested, or tempted.  God allows testing and trials in our lives, just as He allowed Job to be tested, just as He allowed Peter to be tested. This testing is often a means to our spiritual growth.  Just as a muscle will atrophy if it is not used and grow when it is pushed up to the edge of what it can bear, so it is with our faith.  Faith that is never tested will never grow.  God knows how much you can bear and has promised to never allow you to be tested beyond that.  He will be your strength to stand up under it.  He is standing with you saying, “I’m here.  Come on – you got this.”

But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one. -2 Thessalonians 3:3

MEDITATING ON THE WORD:
2 Thessalonians 3:3
Hebrews 4:14-16
Isaiah 41:10
Luke 22:31-32

The “Trail Guide” devotional is used by our adult leaders of grade school groups in Quest as a way to prepare their hearts and minds for the topics we will be covering with the children on the weekend.  We have made them available here to help our parents of grade-schoolers engage with their children around the topics we are discussing and also for anyone else that might be blessed by following along.

FREE CLIMBING, LESSON 2: Victory Over Sin

Helping our children understand the nature of temptation is an important step toward demystifying it and overcoming it using Biblical principles empowered by God’s Spirit.  When preparing to face an opponent, whether in athletic endeavors, war, or any other arena, we should study their tactics.  From which direction will they come?  A close study of scripture reveals to us the sources of temptation.

Temptation begins with a carnal thought pattern. “When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.” (James 1:13-14)

Then, it is stoked by a world-system that is in opposition to the will of God. “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.” (1 John 2:15)

Finally, it is grasped by Satan, the great tempter, to bring it to fruition by questioning God’s truthfulness, making the sin appear attractive and filling the heart with desire. “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1) “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.” (Genesis 3:6)

“All the great temptations appear first in the region of the mind and can be fought and conquered there. We have been given the power to close the door of the mind. We can lose this power through disuse or increase it by use, by the daily discipline of the inner man in things which seem small and by reliance upon the word of the Spirit of truth.” – Amy Carmichael

When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” -James 1:13

MEDITATING ON THE WORD:
James 1:13-14
1 John 2:15
Genesis 3
1 Peter 5

The “Trail Guide” devotional is used by our adult leaders of grade school groups in Quest as a way to prepare their hearts and minds for the topics we will be covering with the children on the weekend.  We have made them available here to help our parents of grade-schoolers engage with their children around the topics we are discussing and also for anyone else that might be blessed by following along.

FREE CLIMBING, LESSON 1: Victory Over Sin

“The temptations in our high-tech culture are so much worse than our parents had to deal with.”  This is in a sense true, but in another very important sense, it is not.  While the Internet, a permissive culture, and a lot of other factors certainly facilitate sinful behavior, they have not created “new” temptations.  “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).  The temptations or enticements themselves are the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.  The selfish desire for riches, power, physical pleasure, and fame are still the “sticky” places in our flesh that Satan uses to hook us into sin just as he has for millennia.  The good news is that, just as the temptations are the same, the Bible’s answer to them continues to be effective.

Before we were saved and found “in” Christ, we were “dead in our sins.”  We were essentially slaves to our sinful or fallen nature.  We operated within a closed system where sin had dominion.  The Bible teaches us that something changed the day the light of Christ shined on us.  We were freed from the rule of sin over our lives. “For we know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin” (Romans 6:6).  If we are freed from sin are we sin free or temptation free?  Clearly not, but it does mean that we are no longer trapped in the closed circuit.  We are free to choose the right path.  Free to resist temptation. Free to pursue holiness in Christ.  For the believer this makes life more complicated.  Before Christ we sinned because that was our nature through and through.  Once we were “rescued from the kingdom of darkness and brought into the kingdom of the Son” we became a “new creation” called to be holy as God is holy.  That can be a scary thought given that we are still living in mortal flesh, but God has given us his word that we will not be tempted beyond what we can bear, according to the grace given to us, and that when we are tempted He will always provide an escape route for us to take.

In the coming weeks we will be walking our young people through God’s promise to give us victory over sin in our lives because Christ defeated its power over us.  There is great hope to be found in this truth.  Christ, our great High Priest, does not command us to do that which He hasn’t already done and equipped us to do.  Unencumbered by the sin that entangles us we are free to climb the peaks God has called us to in Christ.

Jesus was “tempted in every way, just as we are – yet, He did not sin.” -Hebrews 4:15b

MEDITATING ON THE WORD:
Ecclesiastes 1
Romans 6
Colossians 1
1 Corinthians 10:13
Hebrews 4:13-15
Matthew 4:1-11