Deceived

 "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." Hosea 4:6 "The truth tellers of God need to be able to recognize falsehood.....The heart of the believer needs to be well trained in seeing deception." Chris Tiegreen

Discernment. Wisdom. Understanding. These are spiritual giftings that the church is meant to possess in abundance but instead is suffering from a distinct lack of all three. The proof of this can be seen everywhere. It can be seen in what we choose for entertainment, for leisure, politics, social and cultural issues, and perhaps most important of all, who and what we are listening to in the church itself.

The Father, speaking through one of His prophets in the Old Testament said, "My people are drunk on a spirit of deception." The Israelites, who had been given God's law and truth through Moses, and a succession of prophets who followed him, had wandered far from that law and truth. They had wandered into spiritual deception, so that they now worshiped false gods, listened to false prophets, and chose to believe a myriad of lies. As God said through the prophet Hosea, His people were being destroyed for lack of knowledge. Read that as a lack of His wisdom, His discernment, and His understanding. I believe that the western church in the 21st century is following closely in their footsteps. If we continue, we shall surely suffer destruction.

How can such a thing be true about the people of God? His word and truth are more freely available here than any other place on earth. Christian themed literature is abundantly available, as is His revealed word in the Bible, and in a large array of translations. Yet sitting in our pews and even filling our pulpits are those who have been wooed away by lies whose origin is found in the bowels of hell. We are seeing the authority and truth of Scripture being first questioned, and then denied. We are being led not by His truth, but by our emotional response to it. The result is that our emotions and not His Word are what lead us. We are looking at His church, the culture around us, and even our own hearts, through emotion, human logic and reason, and choosing ways that seem right to them, and us, but which His word promises will lead to ruin.

Charlatans, political, cultural, and spiritual are arising everywhere. We, who should be functioning as watchmen on the walls, warning of the deep danger, are ourselves often blind to their lies and ways. They do sound appealing and attractive. Because we don't run them through the filter of His Word, and because we lack the spiritual "radar" of discernment, wisdom and understanding, we are wooed into deception, and the eventual tragic results that will follow.

John Bunyan, the great reformer said, "The truths I know best I have learned on my knees." I think we have grown very far from being a people who live on their knees. Because of that, the spiritual senses so desperately needed these days is lacking. Deception has come in like a flood. Not just upon the world, but His church as well. All of us, from the pulpit to the pew, need a fresh move of His Spirit, bringing back our dulled spiritual senses, and once again walking in His wisdom and understanding. Everything depends on this. So everything then depends on us.....and finally on you, and on me. Let us not be deceived as to who the enemy is, how he operates, and who he operates through. Where we have been blind and deaf, may we cry out to Him, "Lord, we want to see. We want to hear. Give us the ability for both."

Blessings,

Pastor O