re
always less. But then they mean everything to us! We will be tempted. So
surely as one sets himself to follow the blessed Master, there's one thing
he can always count upon--temptation. Sooner or later it will come,
usually sooner and later. So the Evil One serves notice to contest our
allegiance to the new Master.

The tempter sees to it that you are tempted. That belongs to his side of
the conflict. And quickly and skilfully, and with good heart he goes at
his task. Through the weak or evil impulses and desires within us, and
through every avenue without, those dearest to us, and every other, he
will begin and continue his cunning approaches. It is well to understand
this clearly, and so be ready. The closer you follow this Man ahead, the
more, and the more surely, will you be tempted. It is one of the things
you can count on--temptation.

But, steady there, steady! the tempter can't go a step beyond attacking,
without your help. He can't make a single break in your lines from
without. The only knob to the door of your life is on the _inside_.
Temptation never gets in without help from within. I have said that the
Wilderness spelled two words for our Lord Jesus, temptation _and_ victory.
We may use His spelling if we will. A temptation is a chance for a
victory. Begin singing when temptation comes; out of it, resisted, comes a
new steadiness in step, and a new confidence in the victorious Man of the
Wilderness.[65]

But let me tell you _how_ the victory comes. It comes through our Lord
Jesus. And it comes by His working _through your decision_ to resist to
the last ditch.

"Lead Us Not."

The Lord Jesus gave us two special temptation prayers to make. The one is:
"Lead us not into temptation."[66] That petition has been a practical
puzzle to many of us, and the explanations not always quite clear. Would
God lead us into temptation? we instinctively ask. And the answer seems to
be both "yes" and "no."

The "yes" means that character can come only through right choice. We must
decide what our attitude toward wrong shall be. It is only temptation
resisted that makes the beginnings of strength. Before temptation comes
there may be innocence but never virtue. Innocence resisting temptation
becomes virtue. The temptation is the intense fire in which the raw iron
of innocence changes into the toughened, tempered steel of virtue. It is
essential to character that it resist the wrong. It is choice that makes
ch