To Think About
by Norman Grubb

Temptation compels us, by trial and error, to find our helplessness with no hope outside of Christ living in us. We continue to be tempted where we are most vulnerable, that is God’s right way with us, until at last it dawns on us that appetites do not change, human responses do not change, temptations do not change; there will never be a hope of relief or release, not after forty years any more than after one year, except in the Absolute Other within, who is the Positive that negates the negative, the Light that swallows the darkness. That fact only will stabilize us in the only way of deliverance, the daily walk of faith.

Trials are for another purpose. They come from outside and for outside objectives. They are the normal pressures of life upon us. Temptations are for our redemption, trials are for the redemption of others.

Every negative situation–this need, this frustration, this catastrophe, these difficult people, this church, family, business tie-up, is the very place where light will shine out of (not into), darkness. They are the negative which has as its polar opposite the positive, as south has its north. It is a dialectical relationship, where the two are related to each other, belong to each other and fulfill each other by being the opposites of each other. Need linked to supply, weakness to strength, problems to their solution, and the rest. This is what turns life into adventure; but it is the adventure of faith–not of sight.

–From God Unlimited