They don’t claim to be prophets, more like marketing agents or advertisement executives. They may not claim to speak for God, but they do an excellent job of turning our attention away from Him. I believe the enemy likes to work smarter, not harder. By this I mean he knows he doesn’t have to plan and manipulate Job-like (AKA: extremely terrible) circumstances for Christians to become ineffective. If he can simply distract us from loving the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, the result is often rendering us impotent.
While I don’t personally know many of you reading this, let me ask you to please get vulnerable. Pretend we are sitting in front of a cozy fire (sans kids!) with a cup of coffee in our hands and allow me to ask you… do you know your “Achilles heel”? Do you know what easily distracts you from living for God’s glory? If you asked me I’d be honest and tell you it’s nutrition and exercise. Those are certainly not bad things. But if I let them consume me, or make them a priority over God, they’ve become an idol. And that’s not good. I know for some of my friends it’s social media or their kids. Loving our kids is a wonderful thing! But if we place them on a pedestal before God, we’ve put them in a position God never intended them to be.
I would encourage you to take a moment and think about some of your weaknesses the Devil can easily tempt you with. Next, I’d encourage you to look up some scriptures to meditate on when you feel an attack from the enemy. Maybe having an accountability partner is what you need. Don’t let the enemy rob you of your effectiveness for God’s kingdom. Put on His armor and stand ready for battle!
God bless!
Noree
Photo Credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/apple-coffee-computer-desk-356056/
The word ‘sincere’ in the verse above has a very interesting history, and was only used twice in the New Testament (the other is in 2 Peter 1:3). The original Greek word used was eilikrines, which could be a combination of the two words heile which means sun ray, and krino which means judged; in other words ‘judged by sunlight.’
As my best friend and I rode her golf cart around the pond admiring the beauty of the late afternoon, she began to point out the cypress trees in the water and on land. There were small clumps of two or three cypresses scattered here and there, tall, and stately. A variety of trees had once stood among them, but had been removed, leaving only the cypress trees. When high winds struck the area a few years ago, the storm had broken out the tops of all the cypresses except two. The lack of protection and support from stronger trees had proved detrimental.