FOLLOWING THE DEVIL

FOLLOWING THE DEVIL

Monday, October 28, 2019

  1Corinthians [GW] 2:1-16 Brothers and sisters, when I came to you, I didn't speak about God's mystery as if it were some kind of brilliant message or wisdom. While I was with you, I decided to deal with only one subject-Jesus Christ, who was crucified. When I came to you, I was weak. I was afraid and very nervous. I didn't speak my message with persuasive intellectual arguments. I spoke my message with a show of spiritual power so that your faith would not be based on human wisdom but on God's power. However, we do use wisdom to speak to those who are mature. It is a wisdom that doesn't belong to this world or to the rulers of this world who are in power today and gone tomorrow. We speak about the mystery of God's wisdom. It is a wisdom that has been hidden, which God had planned for our glory before the world began. Not one of the rulers of this world has known it. If they had, they wouldn't have crucified the Lord of glory. But as Scripture says: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined the things that God has prepared for those who love him." [Rom.8:28] God has revealed those things to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches everything, especially the deep things of God. After all, who knows everything about a person except that person's own spirit? In the same way, no one has known everything about God except God's Spirit. Now, we didn't receive the spirit that belongs to the world. Instead, we received the Spirit who comes from God so that we could know the things which God has freely given us. We don't speak about these things using teachings that are based on intellectual arguments like people do. Instead, we use the Spirit's teachings. We explain spiritual things to those who have the Spirit. A person who isn't spiritual doesn't accept the teachings of God's Spirit. He thinks they're nonsense. He can't understand them because a person must be spiritual to evaluate them. Spiritual people evaluate everything but are subject to no one's evaluation. "Who has known the mind of the Lord so that he can teach him?" However, we have the mind of Christ.

  A horrible truth is that man has knowingly or ignorantly been Satan’s follower in his service beginning with Adam’s lack of trusting God and its ensuing disobedience; with those among God’s children too often not far behind the maddening crowd. Sadly so, with us even sometimes acting out our old nature as leader of the pack! (Rom.7:14)

  In, through, and by God’s grace, those trusting Christ as personal Savior stand delivered from eternal damnation (Jn.1:12; 3:15-18; Eph.2:1-22), but what with followship being the individual believer’s option in every life-instance, there is no automatic responsible holy living guaranteed.

  Following the Devil, living outside of godly fellowship (Phil.2:12), there is the certain personally inflicted hindrance of maturation spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. (1Cor.3:1-23; 13:1-13, emphasizing verse 11). Plus there’s the possible undesirable result of our caring Father’s severity (1Cor.3:17; Heb.12:1-29).

  How is it that we Christians follow the Devil? All of us could name particular list of sins mine and yours, but I shall not as it would not get to the core issue; which is our mindset. (Pr.23:7; 1Cor.3:18-20; Rom.12:1-3) And how may we detect a devilish mindset? A few self-examination (2Cor.13:5) questions should suffice:

1.     When I have life-problems, do I first implement my Bible wisdom or seek answers in the Bible; God’s Word, His example and guidance?

2.     Or, do I seek Word denying counselors, committee or conference, magistrate or court, slogan or seer, self-affirmation through club or mall, religion or self-help guru, thinly disguised contemporary voodoo, self-enhancement or distraction through entertainment, booze, et al or anything else other than seeking God’s will first?

  Simply put for we Christians; other than godly thinking is the Devil’s thinking, a following of his philosophies, there being no middle ground. (Rev.3:14-22)

  Though we temporarily sojourn in this culture of easy-going attitude toward sin and God’s Sovereignty, and may consider casually the mind of Christ within us; let us understand that it is rebelling against Him and His Way! (1Sam.15:23; Jn.14:6)

  Let us pray for one another to live accordingly, knowing God is love (1Jn.4:8, 16), but that He also is a consuming fire.  (Heb.12:29) 

EBB4