Catching Idle Butterflies

It burns!

Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan River. He was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where he was tempted by the devil for forty days. Jesus ate nothing all that time and became very hungry.

Then the devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become a loaf of bread.”

But Jesus told him, “No! The Scriptures say, ‘People do not live by bread alone.’”

Then the devil took him up and revealed to him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. “I will give you the glory of these kingdoms and authority over them,” the devil said, “because they are mine to give to anyone I please. I will give it all to you if you will worship me.”

Jesus replied, “The Scriptures say,

         ‘You must worship the Lord your God
                   and serve only him.’”

Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, to the highest point of the Temple, and said, “If you are the Son of God, jump off! For the Scriptures say,

         He will order his angels to protect and guard you.
         And they will hold you up with their hands
                   so you won’t even hurt your foot on a stone.’”

Jesus responded, “The Scriptures also say, ‘You must not test the Lord your God.’”

When the devil had finished tempting Jesus, he left him until the next opportunity came.~ Luke 4:1-13

This passage was one required reading for Disciple last week. What I noticed is at every temptation, Jesus used Scripture to counter it. Even when the devil used scripture, Jesus found another one to argue against that.

In reading TexansBeatTheMiamiDolphinsBy3 ’s blog Saturday, "Invalid Entry" , she wrote something that also popped out at me: Every answer to every question that can be imagined is in that Book.

Of the rare times I’ve turned to scripture during a difficult moment, I found the answer I sought – sometimes an answer I didn’t seek, but needed to find.

I have yet to learn to do that first, though. Instead I seek out human, worldly answers to my problems first, going to the Bible later out of sheer desperation – as a last resort instead of a first one. When I do, I always berate myself by not going to the Bible first and saving myself time and extra heartache. Will I ever learn? Someday. I hope. I learned a while ago not to make promises to myself, because I often tend to break them.

I want to share one more short scripture with you.

It happened after Jesus’ resurrection. Two of his followers were walking along and discussing all that happened. Jesus (though unrecognized at first) walked with them and explained through scripture why Jesus was the Messiah. After Jesus left:

They said to each other, “Didn’t our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?” ~ Acts 24:32