Straining Towards What is Ahead (Pt 2)

As I discussed in my last post, our journey as Christ-followers will never be easy…we will have to strain because we will always be opposed by an enemy that desperately wants to keep us away from that which is life-giving.  The first of the four main tactics of the enemy is deception.  To deceive is to lead someone to believe something that is untrue in order to gain personal advantage.  Paul warns the Corinthian believers about this. “But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.” (2 Cor 11:3-4)

The enemy seeks to deceive us about many things, but Paul highlights three of these areas:

1. The nature of God – The enemy is always trying to distort God’s character, intent and activity.  If we will believe the lies that God is a cosmic killjoy, ready to bully us around at the slightest infraction, (or worse), we won’t want to pursue being closer to Him, or to be more like Him.
2. God’s direction – The enemy is always trying to confuse us with conflicting direction.  It would be one thing if those conflicting directions were always obvious, like robbing a bank or having an affair.  We know God would never direct us to do those things.  But the enemy is more devious than that.  He’ll prompt us to do things that look good, that we would even consider to be godly in nature.  However good they might be, though, if they aren’t the specific things God in which God wanted us to engage, they take us away from God and His intended path for us.
3. The path of salvation – The enemy is always trying to distort our view of salvation.  Like the old roadrunner cartoons, where Wiley Coyote would attempt to change the roadsigns in order to get the roadrunner off course, the enemy wants to change our roadsigns.  If he can convince us that there is a different path to a life that satisfies, a life that works and a life that matters, then he draws us away from the real one.  It doesn’t matter how fast you run, if you’re running on the wrong path.

Of course, the greatest antidote to deception is truth.  One of the things I regularly do, especially when I’m feeling like maybe the enemy is trying to deceive me, is to ask myself the question, “What do I know that I know?”  This simple question takes me back to the basics – about God, His direction for my life, and the path to the life He wants for me.  These foundational truths are often enough to clear my mind.  How wise would we be to follow Paul’s advice?  “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”

Next:  Straining past the enemy’s use of disconnection.