Are you familiar with author and speaker Joni Eareckson Tada? While in her teens she was paralyzed from the neck down from a diving accident and has been confined to a wheelchair ever since.
In her book, "Secret Strength," she wrote about facing temptation:
I was in my late 20's, single, and with every prospect of remaining so. Sometimes lust or a bit of fantasizing would seem so inviting - and easy to justify. After all, hadn't I already given up more than most Christians just by being disabled? Didn't my wheelchair entitle me to a little slack now and then?
When God allows you to suffer, do you have the tendency to use your very trials as an excuse for sinning? Or do you feel that since you've given God a little extra lately by taking such abuse, He owes you a "day off?"
Satan's temptations are designed to divide and conquer your heart and soul. If the devil can get you and me to start justifying our disobedience and finding excuses for straying from God's way and will, he will burden our consciences so much that we'll find it easier to travel a path of sin and rebellion against the Lord.
The Psalmist prayed, "Give me an undivided heart, that I may fear Your name." An "undivided heart" is a disciple's heart, the heart of a person who wants to learn from the Lord and then to walk in the Lord's truth. An undivided heart doesn't look for excuses to stray from following the way of Christ, the way of faith. Instead, it expresses the words of the disciple, Peter: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." May David's prayer also be your prayer this week - Lord, give me an undivided heart!
