Quiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About the Tempter: 002. Using God's Roads

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Quiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About the Tempter: 002. Using God's Roads



TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About the Tempter (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 002. Using God's Roads

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Using God's Roads

Every one is tempted. If a man is alive he is tempted. If he is living on this particular planet, called the earth, he is a tempted man. If he have a body to live in, he will be tempted through it. If there be a mind to think with, there is temptation through that. If there be a social nature to enjoy others through, if there be a right ambition to take one's place in life, and do his full share of the fighting, and—in a good way—win his share of the victory, there will be temptation because of these.

For temptation always follows the natural grooves of the true life. Satan always travels God's road. He never makes any of his own. He uses God's. There is nothing wrong in itself. But anything and everything may become damnably wrong. The sin is in the wrong motive underneath, or the wrong relationship round about an action. It is in the excess or the exaggeration.

Speech is a gift from God. But the desire to deceive through speech—the using of the power of speech to say what is not true—is from the evil one. The act of reaching a hand into a drawer to take out some money may be either right or wrong. Everything depends on whose hand it is, and why it is reaching in. Either one of the very opposite extremes of right or wrong may be in the act.

If that drawer is mine and the money mine, and I am taking it out prayerfully to send the Gospel of Christ to Madagascar, the act is not merely right, but it is specially to be praised. For they need the Gospel in Madagascar, and the money may be transmuted into a redeemed life under the Holy Spirit's touch.

If the drawer is not mine, nor the money it contains, then the act is against the law of man, as well as the law of God. It is a crime as well as a sin.

If the drawer is mine, and the money too, so far as man's reckoning goes, and yet I am taking the money out to use for something that is in no sense a necessity, but only a luxurious indulgence, it becomes a sin, though not a crime. It is a sin of selfishness. And there is no greater sin, nor commoner. It is a misappropriation to my own use of funds entrusted to me by God to be used for Him in making His Gospel known among men. For that is the one purpose that should govern all our possessions. It is a distinct breach of trust.

So it is regarding every action of life. The motive or relationship makes it good or bad. The same act may be saintly, or, selfishly hellish.

Satan boldly and thievishly appropriates everything for his own uses and purposes. His long fingers reach in everywhere. Nothing is sacred to his touch. The holiest functions, the purest relationships, the most innocent pastimes are subtly and boldly turned by him away from their true uses to serve his own purposes.

Because we are here and sin is here, and things are as they are, we are tempted, and we will be tempted to the last rod of the road. The evil one attends to that. With great craftiness and persistence he sees that the temptations come under some guise or covering.