Devotion held on Sabbath afternoon revealed two incredibly interesting revelations.
1. James 1:14, 15 states that each person is tempted when they are drawn away by their own desires and enticed. Then when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when full grown, brings forth death.
It's a typical Christian premise here. We've all heard "yield not to temptation, for yielding is sin" and that the "wages of sin is death". We've known the algebra equation to be:-
Temptation (yielding) = sin = death.
Here's what blew my mind. What comes BEFORE this equation? Something has to give rise to temptation, correct? We (or at least I) cannot be tempted to kill grandmothers and bathe in their blood. I know this sounds extreme but see where I am coming from. We (or at least I) cannot be tempted to steal uranium (bare-handedly). Why? Because there is no desire to do so. There is no benefit seen in those enterprises. The things we are tempted by are things we DESIRE. Hmmm...makes sense right? Can't be tempted for something you don't want and if you look at the Devil, his first temptation spoke directly to Jesus's hunger i.e. a desire for food.
What precedes the desire then? Well...for that perplexing answer, let's look at the wonderful Garden of Eden and it's three protagonist inhabitants. God tells the darling couple to avoid the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but have at everything else in the garden without bounds or restriction. Well, good ol' Eve goes sight-seeing and comes across a talking, golden, flying snake (I don't know about you but that sounds like a DRAGON to me...art imitates life) who says that she will not die, BUT become as wise as the God who created her and happens to be withholding advancement from her.
Why did Eve eat the fruit? Simple. Because she believed the LIE. She believed that she would not die. She believed that she would be improved. She believed that God possibly was holding something from her. Thus, the beginning of the cycle is realized. It is the belief of a lie told and thus the entire equation looks like this:-
LIE (told and believed) ---> DESIRE (birthed in the heart) ---> TEMPTATION (occurring based on the desires we possess) --->SIN (occurs when we yield to temptation, continuing to feed that desire) --> DEATH (the end result of sin i.e. separation from God, from fellow man and from one's self).
Pretty deep, huh?
2. We, the group had a discussion about what song to sing for Sabbath. It was the first time our cohesion was absolutely broken. Everyone had a different suggestion or idea and we were not corporately gracious and accommodating and in that moment, I saw what was wrong with this (and every church). Everyone has a different outlook and different favorite thing (song, verse...whatever) that is a representation of who they are and where they are [from or in life]. Everyone wants their voice heard, their desires met. We all similarly believe that our way of thought and/or action is the best. We've been living it with little reverb and see no reason to acquiesce to someone else. There's a measure of selflessness, humility and co-operation that needs to develop in us all. It takes time and as we grow in Christ, we'll get better at this. I think it was good for this little exercise to show us a starting point to move forward from because if anyone thought they were perfect and didn't need change, that mindset had to have been broken last night. Hopefully we learn from this and affect change in our own churches and communities when we leave the mission field INSTEAD of contributing to the problem. *side-eye*
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