James 1:16
Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters.
James 1:13
No one undergoing a trial should say, “I am being tempted by God,” since God is not tempted by evil, and he himself doesn’t tempt anyone.
I know a bit about deception. While serving in the United States Army, I was assigned to a Battlefield Deception unit. While these deceptions specialized in Abrams tanks and encrypted radio traffic, the principles are the same for all of us.
What you see may not be what is real.
And feelings may not be your best resource either. While scrolling through television programs, I paused on a murder show because the narrator was talking about a church-going woman. A man posing as her spiritual guide was luring her into an affair that eventually ended in the murder of her husband.
The show played an actual clip of a phone conversation that had been recorded during police surveillance. The predator said to her, “You believe that God has a plan for you right?” She responded, “Oh, yes, I know He does and it’s you! I’m running straight to you when this is over!”
Woah, woah woah…..
On the surface, the words seem correct, but they are certainly not what they seem underneath. God gave us His Word nicely packaged in the Bible.
When in doubt, bring it out!! Check what it says! God’s plan for you will never ever include what goes against His word!
God didn’t tell David to have an affair with Bathsheba that also led to murder. In fact, 2 Samuel 11:27 tells us, “But the thing David had done displeased the Lord.” If the woman on the phone had truly read the Bible instead of being spoon fed feel-good bits and pieces of it by a wolf in sheep’s clothing, she would have seen through the deception.
Afterall, the devil knows scripture, he was an angel at one time.
That is why it is so incredibly important to spend time in the Bible. If you know the Word for yourself, you cannot be so easily deceived.
In 2004, a woman in Texas killed her children claiming God told her to do it. Sadly, this wasn’t the first time this has happened, neither has it been the last. People pull out the story of Abraham and Isaac to justify filicide. Yet, they fail to put the whole story in context. When God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, God wasn’t tempting him to murder, but using current cultural practices to prophetically speak about the future substitutional sacrifice of Jesus for us. And of course, don’t miss the fact that God told Abraham, “No!”
Beyond murders and affairs, God isn’t ever going to ask or tempt you to defy His Word to fulfill His plan for your life. Just like the devil, people will and do jumble God’s Word to serve their earthly and fleshly desires.
We must be prepared for these attacks!
Imagine trying to find your way to an unknown location. You can follow the directions of someone else hoping they are trustworthy, or you can read and memorize the directions for yourself. When taking a long-distance journey, we refer back to the map (or GPS) time and time again to make sure we are on the right roads. No one can trick us into a dangerous “short cut” if we know the way for ourselves. On this long road trip called life, it’s essential to refer to God’s Word daily to ensure we are truly on the right road to eternal life.
