Day 20 - Family Ties
Scripture Passage: 1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Focal Verses: No temptation has come upon you except what is common to humanity. But God is faithful; he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to bear it. ~ 1 Corinthians 10:13 (CSB)
It always amazes me how often I pull up on a death call scene and feel like I’ve been there before. The sensation grows even stronger as I walk from my vehicle and enter a home. I’ll mention it to the detective I’m working with and they’ll nod.
“Sure. You remember John Smith…the drug overdose last year?”
I’ll need more than a name to jog my old memory. Some detail about the case usually helps, but eventually, I’ll catch on and realize I really had been in this house before. For a drug overdose. John Smith. Then, I’ll wander over to the dead guy hanging halfway onto his bed. The spitting image of Mr. Smith, only considerably younger.
“Meet John Smith’s son,” the detective will say. I’ll sigh and start my investigation into yet another perfectly useless overdose death.
Time and again this happens. A father overdoses and sometime later, I’m working the overdose of his son. A daughter hangs herself in the closet of her bedroom and a year later, a mother never being able to deal with the death is found hanging from a rafter in the garage with a t-shirt with her daughter’s picture screen printed on it.
It’s known as a ‘generational curse.’ Issues endured by one generation often are shared with other generations. Drug addiction. Depression. Abuse. Rage. Destructive emotions and issues seem almost as hereditary as eye and hair color.
Sin, of course, is inherent in all humanity. It seems even stronger among family. We as a people struggle with sin on a daily basis. A family struggles with generational sins “Sins of the Fathers” is a phrase seen throughout the Old Testament that speaks to this very thing. It’s also often misunderstood as Jesus makes plainly clear in the New Testament. It’s not that we will be punished for the sins our parents committed. It means our parents’ legacies are often passed down to us.
We are often stuck in the same pattern as our parents. If they’re brilliant, we might be brilliant too. If they’re repeat offenders of various crimes, chances are good, we will be as well. There’s a series of commercials by Progressive Insurance with a Life Coach trying to teach adults how not to be like their parents. I love them. They always crack me up.
But like that Life Coach in those commercials, Paul assures the congregation in Corinth that the sins of our fathers don’t have to be a set-in-stone path for us. Those self-destructive patterns our parents might teach us are strong and powerful. They’ve been etched on our psyches, creating difficult temptations to vanquish. But in our passage today, Paul wants us to know that God will always provide an escape plan for any temptation we face. He will always provide a way out. We just need to look for it. We just need to trust Him in it. We just need to choose it to escape that generational curse that plagues us all.
What about you? Are you taking advantage of God’s escape route from temptation when it arises in your life? Are you pulling the ejection lever when you find yourself in a self-destructive crossroads?
Bonus Nugget: For those who often say, “God never gives us anything we can’t handle,” let me tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, God often gives us circumstances that we are unable to handle on our own. It is in those hard moments that we realize we can’t endure without His help. It’s when we most often are drawn to Him. Today’s focal verse, I believe, is where that false teaching originated. But look at it carefully. It doesn’t say God will remove temptation from your life altogether. It says that He will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we can handle. Paul then goes on to specify that God always provides a way out of temptation. So, He’ll often allow the pressures of life to overwhelm us. He just happens to always have a plan for us to get out of it ready to go the moment we turn to Him.
Father God, help us to break away from the generational curse. For all the wonderful things our parents have taught us, help us to escape from the negative things they instilled in us as well. Help us, Lord, to break away from temptation. Help us to break those negative patterns in our lives. Show us the escape route you’ve provided and ease the suffering such temptations bring.