Thursday 31 May 2018

May 31: John 10:19-21

Key Verse: John 10:21
But others said, “These are not the sayings of a man possessed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”

Devotion:
One thing we can count on in our lives (besides God and taxes) is Satan being there. Wherever God is trying to get people to follow Him, the evil one is around the corner trying to trip people up. He is going to use whomever he wants to try and trip those who are seeking Christ. He is going to be the one who allows things into your life so you will forget about God. He is going to be the one acting like God. How then are we supposed to spot the difference between what God is doing in our lives to what Satan is doing in our lives? How do we know who we can trust? How do we know who we can believe?

Well, let’s take it from an earthly view… Would you allow someone to talk you out of your food when you are hungry? Would you allow someone to sit down opposite you in a restaurant and tell you about how they should have your food which you have paid for? That may well sound like an over-simplification of the issue but on closer analysis that is what is going on. We need our food to survive and because of that, we will not allow other people to take it away from us. But when it comes down to spiritual matters we do not tend to think of them as necessities in our lives. We would rather think about our spiritual food as something that we can take or leave…

That is where Satan is the winner because he is the one putting random ideas into our heads and allowing us to become lazy. He tries everything up his sleeve to make us think we do not need God’s instruction in our lives. His very first attempt of that we read about in our bibles is with Adam and Eve when he convinced them to try and ignore God’s instruction and follow his own instructions. He makes things sound good. He makes things sound attractive and makes us think we need his ideas in our lives.

So how do we spot the difference? If he puts an idea in our heads which does not agree with God’s instructions in our bibles, then we know it is him and not from God. We have our bibles, we have the truth. Trust it. Obey it. Turn you back on Satan.

Points to Ponder:
Are you easily convinced?

How often do you compare things with God’s Word?