Up to the Task Today's Three-minute Bible Study Print, Study and Apply Title: Up to the Task -------------------------------- Date: 12/4/2002 Keyword: “adequacy” Welcome to eXXit, the web site designed to help you stand strong in the face of sexual temptation. Passage: 2 Corinthians 3:5-6* 5. Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, 6. who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Questions 1. The apostle Paul says that, in and of himself, he is not adequate for the assignment he has received from God. Do you ever feel that you are just not able to do what God expects you to do?   2. Paul also says that he is adequate? How can he be both inadequate and adequate?   Practical help I am adequate for quite a few things, all by myself. I like to garden and can plant a mean tomato seedling. I work on cars and am able to change out a water pump. Set me loose with a backpack in the Rockies and I'll have a great time camping out. I am able to navigate with a map and a compass. I am adequate for these things. You, too, are adequate for a number of things. We all are. Yet, Paul expressed a sense of inadequacy in 2 Corinthians 2 and 3. Was he not able to fix his chariot or work a garden? No, that's not the point. The point is that Paul couldn't deal with eternity's issues. Sin, judgment, God, Heaven and Hell — all of these things were beyond him to deal with. He wasn't up to the challenge of handling the big stuff. But, while he was not adequate in and of himself for these things, God made him adequate to deal with them through what he calls "The New Covenant"! The New Covenant (Jesus ushered in the first fruits of the New Covenant by His death and resurrection) says, "God is always with me; the Christian life is lived by virtue of what Christ did for me, not what I do for Him; what God requires, He provides; it's all about faith, not works; grace, not law." Are you able to avoid Internet porn? Well, yes, in a way. You can resist temptation from time to time. Can you become pure. Nope! You are inadequate, in and of yourself, to change. But, through the New Covenant into which you enter when you place your trust in Jesus for salvation, God will make you adequate. He will make you holy. (What does it mean to put one's trust in Jesus for salvation? Click here.) Trust Him to unleash New Covenant power in you, aimed at the monster of porn. Through Christ, you are up to it! eXXit homepage Index of three-minute studies Copyright 2002 by eXXit *"Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, © Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission." --