A BLESSING OR DECEPTION?
Some time ago now I was desperately unhappy. I had been praying for a long time to my Daddy God to bring about a change in my life in specific areas which created terrible emotional turmoil.
Every day I cried out to the Lord for answers and deliverance. God answered my prayers but not in quite the way I thought that he would. I could not see the character discrepancies within my own sinful life and I was extremely confident that in certain areas I was as “strong as a rock”. My self-confidence was soon to be demolished. God dealt with my unrighteousness and my pride. I was temporarily blinded to the sin in my life.
Since that time I have comforted myself with perhaps one of the grandest books ever written – the Book of Job. I cannot claim to be famous for my piety and natural righteousness as Job was but certainly I was known for my integrity. The only righteousness I knew I could claim was the righteousness of Christ Jesus. God used Satan to discipline me and I fell for his every deceptive and cunning trick. I truly believed that the events in my life were His provision. Every which way I endeavoured to re-write the Bible and twist it to fit those circumstances.
“Look, I go forward, but He is not there, and backward, but I cannot perceive Him; when He works on the left hand, I cannot behold Him; when He turns to the right hand, I cannot see Him, but He knows the way that I take: when He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold”. (Job 23:8-10)
I believed that my Heavenly Father at long last was answering my cries. Well, God was! His way was not my way. God allowed Satan to blind me to the truth for a time so that a big cleaning-up job could be done in my life.
There was not one moment of one day that I did not trust God for healing and freedom from my terrible problems. I just knew with total confidence that the only way out was “renewal of the mind by God’s Word”, prayer and daily confession. I sought the Lord to reveal to me everything that lay hidden within my heart which offended His Holiness.
My answers could have been pursued through man’s psychology and yet I could not bring myself to believe that any man had any answers worth offering at all. Now the spiritual abuse I had been subjected , and teaching which proved to be the work of demons was now a blessing. I could have trusted in that which is offered as truth by eastern religion – the New Age movement which claims there are advantages to hypnosis, meditation rituals, yoga and the power of positive thinking. Throughout my rather complex life plenty f that had always been offered.
When I entered God’s sanctuary in prayer I knew He would provide me with His understanding. All the deep and meaningful matters of my life at this time were too much for me to comprehend alone. The key lay within His Kingdom purposes He had prepared for me.
Deuteronomy 29:29 The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.
There are some things the Lord will not reveal to us until we are strong enough to handle the discipline He has prepared for us. I must rejoice in the knowledge that those He gives much to He expects more from. He provides to us knowledge yet as Soloman says “……God made man upright but they have sought out many schemes” (Eccles.7:29). Praise God that He purposed to reveal Jesus that the works of the devil would be destroyed (1John 3:8). Lusts of the flesh, lusts of the eyes and pride belonging to the world (1John 2:16) was to be dealt with by fire.
It came about at this time one Sunday evening I attended a church whose preacher did not know me. It was a powerful God-incidence in my life. Today, I love that wonderful sermon so much I keep it as a witness to others in the same sin. So it was, that night, he preached the word so powerfully I finally saw my sin in startling clarity. The blindfold came off and no one could ever know the grief and pain and horror of that revelation.
God dealt with his rebellious sinful child that night in a big way. His living and active Word judged the attitude of my heart, penetrating to divide my joints and very marrow. The deepest recesses of a heart God knew better than me, quite suddenly were now revealed to an aching heart.
It was hard at first to praise God for His great and abundant mercy and love abounding towards me at that time. I was very angry with God as I struggled to overcome the dreadful difficulties of my life which had never been dealt with. Yet all through the agony of the events at that time and over the last eleven years he poured out his divine love and grace in such a way I always knew the strength of His presence over me.
The incredible myriad of my life’s experiences, so painfully complex, at long last was being dealt with by God. The discipline he meted out to me over this time was painfully necessary. I needed to be made strong in specific areas in my personality. In the future, no matter how things were presented to me, I would not sin that way again. I had to make a clear choice God’s way or my way.
I know by hard experience what it is to be deceived. I know that our answers can only be found within the Scriptures. For a short few months in my life I practically tried to rewrite God’s Word and yet its truths had been written on my heart and I was unable to escape from its chastening truths.
The effects of the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden brought to us the sin and evil which bring us so much suffering. Jesus came to defeat the devil and all his works by His death and resurrection. (Matthew 12:29 Mark 14:27 Revelation 12:11).
Nothing can be more beautiful in the life of a Christian when we come before His throne in our private sanctuary and share our all with our precious Saviour, Master, Deliverer and Lord. These precious soul-transforming moments refresh us and uplift us and confirm His forgiveness, mercy, long-suffering, incredible compassion and deliverance. It is within the life of the Godhead and He desires for us to need Him intimately, experientially and harmoniously, know Him in all His fullness, that we might be washed and made useful for His kingdom purposes, prepared for every good work. (2Timothy 2:21)
(2 Peter: 14-15) “So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him he writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.”
Peter wrote his letter to the church then and down through the centuries to encourage us to become more like Jesus. He calls upon us to draw closer to Jesus and to grow in grace and knowledge of him. If we attend our ears to these words and incline our hearts, we can see that Peter is saying to us that God provided Paul with wisdom to write all that he did to warn us there would be people who would deliberately distort Scripture to provide a way for sinful living. Nothing’s changed. In Paul’s day there were many false teachers who deliberately misapplied Paul’s writings just so they could do and say what pleased them. People always like to have the easy way out and if there are teachers who would justify sin or other experiences their ears will be tickled by a more attractive testimony.
I thank God for that dear man. At that time he would never buy into any deviation from the truth of God’s word. Within his counselling chamber he brandished the word of God like the very sword it was meant to be and he propounded its living truths with compassion, wisdom and love. I grieve today before the Lord that this Pastor has found it satisfactory to extol the virtues of Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland and Mark Virkler. I pray that one day the Lord will let him see the truth.
However ,what can we learn from the story of my sin and the discipline God meted out to me? In its telling I do pray that you, the reader, will hold it as close to your heart as it is to mine. How numerous are the devious designs of the evil one to try and snatch those who belong to God away from the Father’s design and plan for their lives. I hope you will see that we are all capable of being deceived.
Hold fast to the truth that your joy is found in Christ Jesus and His precious Word.
