STRAGEGIES OF DECEIT: “Your Heart and Your Feet” #3
Recap
Pastor Mac taught his third installment of his teaching series entitled, “Strategies of Deceit.” As Pastor Mac has often said, “The enemy can’t defeat you if he can’t deceive you.” Why? Because Satan is already a defeated foe. The only way Satan can defeat you is if he can get you to believe something other than the truth. The enemy will make it his goal to deceive you into believing God’s will for you is anything other than life and blessing. In the end, you decide your life’s destiny based on your own decisions. Are you making decisions for life and blessing? Or death and cursing?
Dive Deeper
In this third installment of his series “Strategies of Deceit,” Pastor Mac reiterated that fact that the enemy can’t defeat you if he can’t deceive you. Why? Because Satan is already a defeated foe. The only way Satan can defeat you is if he can get you to believe something other than the truth.
The definition of deception is believing something other than the truth. People who are deceived will make decisions that are detrimental to their lives. And decisions are what your life is all about.
There are some people who believe that whatever happens in your life is God’s will. If it’s a bad thing, then maybe God is teaching you a lesson or it might be the way He’s punishing you. These kinds of religious perceptions about who God is have led many people down the wrong path.
Your life is a product of the decisions you’ve made. You can’t blame your life on your spouse, or that your parents abused you, or the color of your skin. You can’t point the finger at anyone other than yourself.
That’s not to say that people do not have areas in their lives where they are challenged to know and experience the blessing and purpose of God. All people have areas in their lives in which they have to get past. It could be cultural. It could be financial. People who grew up in poverty often struggle with it all their lives. Many conclude that poverty is their lot in life. Not so! God hasn’t called anybody to anything except life and blessing.
The enemy will make it his goal to deceive you into believing God’s will for you is anything other than life and blessing. Essentially, freedom begins by acknowledging that your primary problem is YOU! It is the decisions you’ve made.
God created you with the capacity to perceive challenges you face and to consider how to get beyond them. However, if your premise in entering into that logical process is anything other than the Word of God, your conclusion will be faulty.
Deuteronomy 30:19 says, “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”
God created you to be a free, moral agent. That means you have the choice to choose life and blessing or death and cursing. God wants you to choose life and blessing.
God does not impose upon you any facet of life. That would go counter to His creative purpose for you. God wants you to choose your own destiny. He wants you to be blessed, but He gives you freedom to choose it.
He’s told us in His Word the kind of decisions that will produce life and blessing. And He’s told us what kind of decisions will produce death and cursing. So to the extent that you make good choices, you will have a good life. You’ll experience the blessing of life.
Life and blessing or death and cursing. Every decision you make will fall into one of these two categories.
So why do we make the decisions we make? People make decisions based on what they believe is in their best interest. So it comes down to the matter of what they are believing.
If they believe the Word of God is “yea and amen” and appropriate for every consideration of human life, then they are on the right track.
However, if you believe doctors know more than the Bible, then you better get your affairs in order and get ready to live out your last days.
This is not to belittle medicine. God gave us doctors and medical procedures to help us as we grow in our faith and are able to help ourselves through faith in God’s Word. All of our growth in faith is different. But to the degree you use the Word of God in your life will be the degree of life and blessing.
And the Word of God comes to us two ways. The written Word of God is God’s will for all believers of all ages. And God’s word comes to you by revelation of the Holy Ghost.
First Corinthians 2:9 says, “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” That’s you! It’s vital that we learn how to listen to the Holy Spirit, to enable His ministry of revelation.
The specific will of God for your life will be different than anybody else’s. The written Word doesn’t tell you specifics for your life, like where to live, what vocation to pursue, who to marry… You are unique. And the Holy Ghost will relay God’s will to you about the specifics in your life in addition to the general will of God in the Bible.
Western civilization is based upon the Judeo/Christian ethic. America is the cornerstone of that Western civilization in which our moral and ethical value system is based on the Bible which provides direction and meaning to our lives.
We are a Christian nation. America is founded on the Judeo/Christian ethic. No matter what any President in the past has proclaimed! And believers would do well to do their part in praying about it, involving themselves in it to protect what America always has been and will be!
We must acknowledge we are responsible for our own quality of life.
Pastor Mac read something he had written down: “Satan’s strategies of deception are carefully tailored. His strategies of deception are carefully tailored to undermine what he perceives to be the call or the will of God for your life and your demonstrated areas of weakness.”
The enemy watches and observes you and then draws conclusions about you. He sees your weaknesses and targets them.
Read About It
Deuteronomy 30:19, “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live…”
1st Cor. 2:9, “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”