Daily Butter 8/11: En Garde!

My little addition to Our Daily Bread (8/11/11):

    Then the Devil took Him to the holy city, had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, "If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. For it is written:

    He will give His angels orders concerning you and,

    they will support you with their hands

    so that you will not strike

    your foot against a stone. "

(Matthew 4:5-6 HCSB)

While the Devil is not all powerful like God is and he isn’t the Author who inspired all Scripture, he has been around the block a few times and knows “the book” is powerful also. The Devil could not have forced Christ to go from the wilderness to the temple, so why did He go? I believe it was as an example for our benefit. As exemplified here, just because someone quotes Scripture at “church” doesn’t always mean they are doing it with the right motives or with a right understanding of what they are quoting. As we saw earlier this week, the Word is an important piece of our armament for our unseen battles, but as with any tool, the “Sword” can be wielded by different people with different purposes. Being ever vigilant students of the Word along with sensitivity to the guidance of His Spirit within us is our best defense when Satan decides to call us out for a fencing match.

In a side note (and since I didn’t post any thoughts yesterday), Wednesday I went with my wife to a new study at our church entitled Parenting Beyond Your Capacity. My first thought when Sharon suggested it was, “Okay, some author’s opinion on ‘the right way’ to raise my son, but if Sharon wants to go….” Wednesday’s introduction was so very refreshing as the author was honest, saying if you look for examples of parenting in Scripture you will find a lot of brokenness, but no single “right way.”  The study promises to be a challenge to reexamine how we think about parenting. If God has for millennia intentionally been known as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (none of whom had a “model family”), there’s still hope for my fumbling and bumbling at this fatherhood thing. Feel free to join us Wednesdays at 6pm or check it out yourself.

Andy Jentes