A Step Ahead Of The Devil

The other night at our Encounter service I opened my bible during the Communion time. It opened up to Matthew chapter 4. I just started reading there. There were a couple of things that hit me when I started reading...

And the tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." But he answered, "It is written, "'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" Matthew 4:3-4

When I read Jesus' response the word "every" stuck out to me. "Every word that comes from the mouth of God." Do I do that? Live by every word that comes from the mouth of God. I feel like if we as believers were honest with ourselves we would have to say, we don't live by every word from God's mouth. We live by some words, the comfortable ones. The words of grace and forgiveness. We live by those and cling to those. But what about the rest? What about our call to die to everything and live for Christ? When will we be able to say as Paul did in Philippians 3, "Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ" instead of clinging to this world and just adding Jesus to it?

After thinking about the fact that I need to start clinging to every word and not just the comfortable words of God, I moved on to next few verses.

Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him 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 command his angels concerning you,' and "'On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.'" Matthew 4:5-6

When I read this, It hit me that Jesus was a step ahead of the Devil. Go back to Jesus' first response, which says we are to live by "every" word that comes from God. Satan's temptation here comes with him taking a part of the word of God, not the whole word of God. I thought it was awesome that Jesus' first response addressed what Satan was about to do in the next temptation which is use part of the word of God to distort the truth.

Thank you God for opening my mind to what your Word has to say. May I live by and cling to EVERY word of yours and always use it to be a step ahead of the evil one of this world!