Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

Leslie Coe wrote today's reading and he titled it Tempted and Tested.

Stanley loves the freedom and flexibility that his job as a private hire driver gives him.

Among other things, he can start and stop work any time,

and he doesn't have to account for his time and movements to anyone. Yet, he said that's ironically

the hardest part. In this job, it's so easy to start an extramarital affair, he admitted frankly.

I pick up all sorts of passengers, yet no one,

including my wife, knows where I am each day. It's not an easy temptation to resist, and many of his

fellow drivers have given into it, he explained. What stops me is considering what God would think,

and how my wife would feel, he said.

Our God, who created each one of us, knows our weaknesses, desires, and how easily we're tempted.

But as 1 Corinthians 10, verses 11 through 13 reminds us, we can ask him for help.

God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond

which you can bear, Paul says. When you are tempted, God will also provide a way out so that you

can endure it. That way out could be a healthy fear of consequences, a guilty conscience,

remembering scripture, a timely conscience, remembering scripture,

a timely distraction, or something else. As we ask God for strength, the spirit will turn our eyes from what's tempting us and help us look toward the way out that he's given us.

The scripture reading for today's devotional is from 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verses 11 through 13.

These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us,

on whom the culmination of the ages has come.

So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you do not fall. No temptation has overtaken

you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted

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