For those who don't know, this was an event around after the baptisim of Jesus. It's described in Matthew 4:1-11, where it says;
1Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. 2After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread."
4Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"
5Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6"If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down. For it is written: " 'He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.'"
7Jesus answered him, "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'"
8Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9"All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me."
10Jesus said to him, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.'"
11Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.
Now, many people have made comments on the moves Jesus made. They'd ask questions like, "Why didn't Jesus turn the stones into bread?" or, "Why didn't He just fall and let His angels catch Him?" Well, I'll try with the help of the Lord to answer those questions.
Read the passage again. Notice in the first and second temptations how the devil begins his statements.
"IF you are the Son of God,..."
'If' was satan's way of trying to give doubt to Jesus on His status as Son of God. "IF you're really the Son of God, you should be able to turn these stones to bread, or fall off the building and let the angels catch you!" You see, if Jesus did the miracles the devil advised Him to do, it'll be showing that Jesus had doubts that He was the Son of God (Don't forget, He was still human).
Imagine a laboratory that's owned by the government. Now would the professors that work there experiment on whether paper burns? No! And why? Because they already know that paper can burn, and furthermore that it turns into carbon ash. Now, would they test on what frequencies of sound waves can actually start a fire? Probably. And why? Because no one probably knows, so the only way to find out is to do experiments.
In the same way, if Jesus performed the experiment of turning stones into bread, or jumping off the temple, He'd be saying that He wasn't sure if He really was the Son of God and so needed to do these things to prove to Himself. He already knew He could bun up the rocks and command angels to catch Him, so He needn't need to perform the miracles to prove to anyone if He was the Son of God.
And also in the same way, we should trust in the Lord on our lives without needing to doubt that He'll bless you greatly. Some Christians say a prayer like, "Dear Lord, please bless me with a wealthy income, and I promise you I'll praise you for the rest of my life." without realising that this wouldn't work at all. The person's saying the prayer because he needs the wealthy income to prove to him that God does exist. In order for God to be able to work in your life, He first needs you to fully believe in Him.
Think about a credit card deal. Now, in order to be able to see how the credit card can help you financially, you hav to trust the bank behind the card and sign the contract. You can't just have a 1-month trial period to see how things are before deciding if you'd like to sign up for the card - "It's either you're in, or you're out." You've got no choice but to sign it up on the spot in order to use it. (Maybe think about it for a few weeks or so, but you can't use the card until you've signed the contract.) You just have to place the risks at stake on the line, along with a signature, but trust the bank with all your heart that they'd do a good job.
In the same way, you'd just have to trust that the Lord will do it all, and discard all the doubts in your mind. The moment you allow doubt to control your allowance for God to control your life, it's just as good as tearing the contract apart since you're not sure if the bank's gonna forfill their part of the deal. But there's a diference between this Bank and the many others: You CAN trust this bank, satisfaction garunteed! So just rely on God already! And stop telling yourself, "It's impossible!", because that statements the thing that's making it impossible in the first place.
For archiving, I went out with Mom and Choppy to Lot 1 and Bukit Panjang Plaza, and I must admit that my shopping skills aren't at par to theirs. :( Then in the evening after dinner, we went back to BPP for desserts at BristoDelefrance. (Chocolate made tempting...).
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