Being Succored

I wanted to share today one of my favorite quotes from C. S. Lewis: 

“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. . . . You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means — the only complete realist.”

On days when I’m feeling overwhelmed, I remember this quote and it reminds me not only that I am not alone, but that my Savior, who walks with me through life, knows exactly what I am feeling not because He has studied it or learned about it but because He has experienced it. AND that means He knows how to help me. He has conquered whatever I am battling against and He knows how to withstand it! 

As Paul says, “For in that [Jesus Christ] himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted” (Hebrews 2:18). Succor mean to “run under” which gives me the mental image of my Savior holding me aloft in order to help me through my trials, temptations, and battles.

Oh, how grateful I am for a Savior!