You, my wayfaring traveler, are in a storm. No doubt, the storm of your life. All blessings have disappeared. No reassurance of any angelic host of ministering spirits to assist you. Everything you are is being questioned! Your salvation! Your faith! Your confidence in God! All of these are being challenged.
By James Holland Sr.
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“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil” (Matthew 4:1, NKJV).
The question that must be answered is “Who is the lord of my life?” In James 1:13, we are told that God does not tempt us to lure us to evil, but He does test us to give us an opportunity to show how much we love Him. It’s all about our loyalty to God. If we don’t understand this, Satan will use temptations to lead us to our ruin, to a wasted life, and to bondage to sin. God’s intentions are always to refine, strengthen, and make us better. Satan’s, on the other hand, are always to destroy.
What does Satan want from us? In short, he wants us to sin so that our souls will be separated from God. He is angry with God and is particularly annoyed that at least some of the human race will be redeemed. What he would really like to do is to prove that he can meet our deepest needs more successfully than God. He wants us to believe that if we follow him, we will have more potential, fulfillment, and happiness. Fat chance! Just look at his life and his future.
He wants us to believe that there is no need for confession of sin, no need for submission to God. All we need is to be self-absorbed, self-motivated, and self-driven.
The Approaching Storm
How does Satan start his approach to pull us away? First, he lies about who God is. Satan is especially interested in selling another gospel with a sweeter message and, I might add, a bogus guarantee. Sometimes, Satan uses blatant lies; at other times, he mixes truth and error. If we are blind to a part of the truth, we are open to deception. We must know what God says!
We all know what devastation natural storms can bring to our planet. Yet make no mistake about it, this spiritual storm of betrayal has the potential to destroy more good people in their spiritual walk than we can imagine. Regardless of how much you love God or how committed to His kingdom you are, you must know that the storm of betrayal will blow into your life.
What is this? It’s the time in your spiritual walk when everything you know and believe, when everything you are committed to, will be challenged and the opportunity to betray truth and all that God is and has been to you will be pressing heavily upon you. At this time, even though God is with you, it seems He will be silent, even as Jesus was before His accusers. It is at this time we must have a fixed mind on whom we serve and what we believe.
We need only to look at the temptation of Jesus to see what strategies Satan will use to try to convince us to betray our God. While navigating through the treacherous waters of the storm of betrayal, you will feel just about everything except what you want to feel. The winds of discouragement will beat against your will to go forward. The waves of disappointment will begin to break upon your life one after another until they become one giant tidal wave.
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