I've given a great deal of thought lately to the concept of good versus evil, discerning between the two, and rising up from the inevitable fall that occurs when we get them mixed up. I walked hand in hand with the devil for most of 2019, but believed I was walking with God. How could this deception have happened to a woman who has been studying the Bible for as long as I have? One word: ROOTS. But we'll get to that. I know the Scriptures well, but it wasn't until recently that God showed me the depth of confusion and deceit I walked in last year, believing evil to be righteous and righteousness to be open for interpretation. This deception looked good, talked better, and moved slick as a serpent. Quoted the Word with the best of them and possessed a power of persuasion like no one else I've ever known. Charismatic, funny, likeable, and seemingly of God, dressed in everything I thought I wanted. But that's how temptation works isn't it? The apple Eve took didn't look rotten. It wasn't growing mold. It was shiny, red, and, according to Genesis 3:6, "pleasing to the eye." Desire is a powerful precursor to either catastrophe or victory. For me, the ultimate tragedy of denying Jesus was averted as God slowly began to open my eyes, but I didn't walk away unscathed. The battle continues, and the "enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour," (1 Peter 5:8) yet I've now seen the face of evil that the world calls good (Isaiah 5:20). Arising out of the ash of my mistakes and failure to fully test the spirits (1 John 4:1-3) is a painfully acquired wisdom that now empowers me to walk hand in hand with Jesus to "tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy" (Luke 10:19), to "destroy strongholds, arguments, and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God" (2 Corinthians 10:3-5). Things are not always what they seem and people aren't always who they appear. Evil won't always look like evil. Sometimes it comes disguised as everything you've ever wanted and if you're not rooted in Christ Jesus (Colossians 2:7) you can and will be easily swept away. On what foundation are you rooted?
Knowing Eve talked face to face with God in the Garden of Eden and still managed to fall prey to the lies of the enemy makes me feel a little better, but still. Self-condemning thoughts like you should have known better raced through my mind as the light of God's truth recently exposed the spiritual captivity I'd willingly lived in for almost a year. Shackled by chains of lust and misguided goodwill for the downtrodden, I allowed perversions of the gospel of Jesus Christ to touch and even rattle my faith. I did pray at the time too. I asked God to show me if what I was being taught was of Him, but it wasn't until much later that He revealed it was not. His timing, not mine. 1 John 4:1-5 in the Amplified Bible states this:
Knowing Eve talked face to face with God in the Garden of Eden and still managed to fall prey to the lies of the enemy makes me feel a little better, but still. Self-condemning thoughts like you should have known better raced through my mind as the light of God's truth recently exposed the spiritual captivity I'd willingly lived in for almost a year. Shackled by chains of lust and misguided goodwill for the downtrodden, I allowed perversions of the gospel of Jesus Christ to touch and even rattle my faith. I did pray at the time too. I asked God to show me if what I was being taught was of Him, but it wasn't until much later that He revealed it was not. His timing, not mine. 1 John 4:1-5 in the Amplified Bible states this:
"Beloved, do not believe every spirit (speaking through a self-proclaimed prophet); instead, test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets and teachers have gone out into the world. By this you know and recognize the Spirit of God; every spirit that acknowledges and confesses the fact that Jesus Christ has actually come in the flesh as a man is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus (acknowledging that He has come in the flesh, but would deny any of the Son's true nature) is not of God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and is already in the world. Little children (believers), you are of God and you belong to Him and have already overcome them because He who is in you is greater than he (satan) who is in the world. They (who teach twisted doctrine) are of the world and belong to it; therefore they speak from the viewpoint of the world with its immoral freedom and baseless theories - demanding compliance with their opinions and ridiculing the values of the upright..."
I've walked with God for many years, so the recent discovery of my own failure at testing the spirits was a hard reality to swallow, but here's what I know - just because the world calls something good and righteous doesn't make it so, and those the world condemns as evil might actually be the righteousness of the Lord. 1 Samuel 16:7 says "The Lord does not look at the things people look at. Men look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." I know people with the most sin-stained past (raising my hand here) who turn out to be the most effective tools in the hand of God. No one is beyond the grace and mercy of Jesus and if He says a man is "a new creation" and that "the old has gone, the new is here," (2 Corinthians 5:17) then who am I to say that what God has made clean and pure and new is still evil? Acts 10:15 says "don't call anything impure that God has made clean," so the task becomes seeing people through God's eyes and not our own. Or do you believe that you already have 20/20 spiritual vision? You don't. Neither do I. I can't see through the eyes of Jesus anymore than the next person who isn't securely rooted in Him, so if you examine your own foundation, what do you see?
In Matthew 13:3-9, Jesus shares the parable of the sower, and in it He says the following: "A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.”The seed of your faith will either be rooted in Jesus or it won't. Pray for eyes to see and ears to hear, but most of all that your faith takes root and is found anchored (Hebrews 6:19) in Christ, the most devoted Lover of your soul. Which seed of this parable are you? Sometimes being in rooted in the right place can only happen once we're uprooted from the wrong place. Pay attention to what you're surrounded by and what you're listening to and then go. Be rooted in Christ.
In Matthew 13:3-9, Jesus shares the parable of the sower, and in it He says the following: "A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.”The seed of your faith will either be rooted in Jesus or it won't. Pray for eyes to see and ears to hear, but most of all that your faith takes root and is found anchored (Hebrews 6:19) in Christ, the most devoted Lover of your soul. Which seed of this parable are you? Sometimes being in rooted in the right place can only happen once we're uprooted from the wrong place. Pay attention to what you're surrounded by and what you're listening to and then go. Be rooted in Christ.
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