Good morning beloved!
As Christians, it’s so important that what we believe in is based on the Word of God. It must be our final authority when push comes to shove. If we don’t diligently study God’s Word, we’re at risk of hearing someone else’s ideas and inadvertently making them our own. Psalm 1:1a, 2 says this,
- Blessed (happy, fortunate, prosperous, and enviable) is the man who walks and lives not in the counsel of the ungodly [following their advice, their plans and purposes]…But his delight and desire are in the law of the Lord, and on His law (the precepts, the instructions, the teachings of God) he habitually meditates (ponders and studies) by day and by night.
When the devil lied to Eve in the Garden of Eden, he succeeded because she had gotten her information secondhand from Adam, instead of directly from the Word of God. This is still true today ~ the devil always approaches those who got their information secondhand instead of from the Bible. The challenge facing us today is realizing if the message we’re hearing is being filtered through the lens of the Word.
I encourage you to resist the temptation to succumb to the world’s ideas and philosophies, no matter how appealing they may sound. Colossians 2:8 (AMP) admonishes us in this way,
- See to it that no one carries you off as spoil or makes you yourselves captive by his so-called philosophy and intellectualism and vain deceit (idle fancies and plain nonsense), following human tradition (men’s ideas of the material rather than the spiritual world), just crude notions following the rudimentary and elemental teachings of the universe and disregarding [the teachings of] Christ (the Messiah).
The devil’s strategy is to use the world’s philosophy to rob us of our identity and all that Jesus bled and died to give us. Mark 7:13 tells us that the world’s traditions go against God’s Word and make it of no effect. When we add anything to the Bible that is not already there, we nullify its effect for us.
When the devil tempted Jesus in the wilderness, his strategy was to attack Jesus’ identity, but that strategy didn’t work. Jesus correctly quoted the Scriptures in their proper context, because He was thoroughly familiar with the Word (see Matthew 4:1-11).
Satan can’t deceive someone who knows their true identity in Christ. The devil uses philosophy to blind people’s minds to the truth of the gospel (see 2 Corinthians 4:4). When we truly know our divine identity, miracles begin to happen. We change our mind about who we are, and reject the world’s ideas.
When we behold God’s glory through His Word, we are transformed into His image (see 2 Corinthians 3:18). We are blessed and prosperous when we stay away from the the world’s philosophies and instead meditate on the Scriptures.
I encourage you today to refuse lies and fables and choose godliness over the world’s profane teachings. Godliness is profitable in all areas ~ in our present as well as our future life (see 1 Timothy 4:7-8).
Living according to God’s counsel,
Lisa Gordon
Assistant Pastor
Jesus City Church