Praying Our Temptations

REFLECTION QUOTES

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

~Sun Tzu, 6th Century B.C. Chinese military strategist

“Know your enemy!”

~Rage Against the Machine, seminal rap-core band

“Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.”

~C.S. Lewis, 20th Century Christian philosopher and writer

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn’t exist.”

~Verbal Kint, main character in the 1995 film, The Usual Suspects

“Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of man. And so it does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian knows this…in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner. The Christian brother knows when I come to him: here is a sinner like myself, a godless man who wants to confess and yearns for God’s forgiveness.”

~Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 20th Century German theologian executed for participating in an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler

“To this condition is a sin-entangled so oft-times reduced in looking for relief; it can discover nothing but this, that God is able, and can, if he graciously please, relieve and acquit him. All other support or springs of relief are shut up or hid from him… And this sometimes proves an anchor to a tossed soul; which, if it do not give rest and peace, yet saves it from the rock of despair. Here it abides until light more and more breaks forth upon it.”

~John Owen, 17th Century English Puritan pastor, theologian and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford

SERMON PASSAGE

Psalm 143 (NIV)

A psalm of David.

1 Lord, hear my prayer,
listen to my cry for mercy;
in your faithfulness and righteousness
come to my relief.
2 Do not bring your servant into judgment,
for no one living is righteous before you.
3 The enemy pursues me,
he crushes me to the ground;
he makes me dwell in the darkness
like those long dead.
4 So my spirit grows faint within me;
my heart within me is dismayed.
5 I remember the days of long ago;
I meditate on all your works
and consider what your hands have done.
6 I spread out my hands to you;
I thirst for you like a parched land.

7 Answer me quickly, Lord;
my spirit fails.
Do not hide your face from me
or I will be like those who go down to the pit.
8 Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love,
for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go,
for to you I entrust my life.
9 Rescue me from my enemies, Lord,
for I hide myself in you.
10 Teach me to do your will,
for you are my God;
may your good Spirit
lead me on level ground.

11 For your name’s sake, Lord, preserve my life;
in your righteousness, bring me out of trouble.
12 In your unfailing love, silence my enemies;
destroy all my foes,
for I am your servant.