Happy Friday! It’s September 10th, 2022. We will have “Cowboy Church” this weekend at New Hope West. Y’all come, hear? Today, we will look at what it means to be a true disciple of Christ in these last days. We all can see the current state of our nation. If God’s people are to be the “salt of the earth,” if there is to be a hedge against sin, and if there is to be a change in the hearts of individuals, then this generation will need to commit no like other generation before. Read on …
Today's Reading:
Lamentations 1,2; Obadiah; Revelation 14
Scripture
“The arrogance in your heart has deceived you …” (Obadiah 1:3)
Observation
The prophet Obadiah speaks to Edom of her false sense of invincibility.
Throughout this short book, I am drawn back to this one statement: “The arrogance in your heart has deceived you.” The overconfidence of feeling superior had clouded their reason, and they had become vulnerable to being deceived. And by the way, Edom was not a paganist people; they were descendants of Esau, Isaac’s son and Abraham’s grandson!
Application
When pride lodges in our hearts, it makes us susceptible to being misled and swindled. We are easily duped into accepting what is wrong and rejecting what is right. How can this be? Is there a way to detect arrogance in residence and get it out?
James tells us one way — "For if anyone is a hearer of the Word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at himself (natural face) in a mirror, for once he has looked at himself and had gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was …" (James 2:23).
"Hearing without doing …" This one pattern signals deception - this is us tolerating the fact that we can hear without doing… that we can override and substitute what God says for what we want. When we develop a pattern of superseding God's Word with our own, therein lies the birthplace of deception. When people are scratching their heads in dismay over our society's irrational decisions, it will indicate that we are in the throes of a spirit of deception.
We war not against flesh and blood but against intentional deception in high places (see Eph. 6:12). Behind the curtain is the devil, the father of lies, who is pulling the strings.
So, if Obadiah wrote that this is what took down a whole nation, indeed, it will do the same to ours … unless we repent and return! And that begins with the Household of God.
Prayer
Father, thank You for showing me the need to be a doer of Your Word. This weekend, please remind us all of this crucial truth.
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