By Pastor Steve Nickodemus

Are You in a Tight Place?

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“But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”
1 Corinthians 10:13b New International Version

Are you in a tight place right now?  Do you feel pressured and pushed and squeezed by the culture around you, harassed at every turn?  Do you feel inundated with godless, materialistic, egocentric influences that threaten your integrity as a child of God?  As never before, believers in the Lord Jesus are hammered with the wickedness of this world, amped up by the technological communication advances that barrage us day and night if we allow them.

If you find yourself in economic or emotional or relational tight places in addition to all these temptations, you may feel there is nowhere to turn, no way of escape.  But God is good.  The apostle Paul  says it simply, “But when you are tempted, he will provide a way out so you can endure it.”  When there seems to be no way out, cry to the Way maker.  When His children call out to Him, the Lord God, our heavenly Father will provide a way out.

Jesus came and died upon a cross and rose again to provide a way out for you.  He suffered bitter pains and temptations and scoffing and ridicule and death so that you might have a way out of the punishment of sin and the trap of temptation.  Cry out to Jesus!  Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life…” (John 14:6a) He is the way of salvation, the One who has provided a way before us so that we need never lose hope.

Or as Martin Luther once put it:

Though devils all the world should fill,
All eager to devour us,
We tremble not, we fear no ill;
They shall not overpow’r us.
This world’s prince may still
Scowl fierce as he will,
He can harm us none.
He’s judged; the deed is done;
One little word can fell him.

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church Colorado Springs, Colorado