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In
Romans 1:16-20 we see one of the most powerful and important Holy
Spirit
dissertation on the nature of reality that can be
found anywhere in God’s
Word. The reason we need to give our
undivided attention to these verses is because all of us, saved
or unsaved, are
enmeshed in a system of lies and deceit that almost defies our
consideration. For a more detailed
expose on
this satanic deception, refer to my companion paper entitled “The Big
If”.
garden of God. And like any scheme of
things, good or bad,
the more time that passes, the more refined and perfected it gets.
So the degradation and corruption that we
read about in Romans 1:16-20, written 2,000 years ago, is unbelieveably
more
intense
and germane today.
encapsulated in the Good News of
The Kingdom, and its King Jesus Christ.
We find in this Gospel the embodiment of truth, or
reality, which verse
17 calls “righteousness”. In other
words, the nature of reality or rightness is integrally connected to
the facts
about Jesus Christ and what He was, and is, all about.
This is the truth that Christ spoke about
when He said He was “The Truth”,
and “The Truth shall set you free”…free from
slavery to sin and Satan, the father of lies.
Just as Moses set God’s chosen people
free from slavery to Pharaoh (a
shadow or type of Satan), so also Jesus (our anti-typical Moses) sets
us free
from our slavery to
Satan’s worldwide deceptive kingdom of the lie. Few
today have even an inkling as to just how
fallacious and delusory this satanic
kingdom is, with its rule over their
lives. Remember, anything that is not the Gospel, is a lie. Truth is that simple. And
if something
is a lie, it has Satan as
its father, for, again, he is the father of lies. This
is why Jesus said of the religious
leaders of His day, “You
are of your father, the devil”. They were
Satan’s children in that they were
living a lie. And the same goes today
with all those
whose lives are consumed with the things of this fallen satanic
world.
are aligning ourselves with
Satan. Again, simple – and straight
forward.
living out of the truth
revealed to us in God’s Word. Whenever
we operate out from our fallen corrupt flesh, we’re living our life out
from
that which came about due to Satan’s lie to Eve, and therefore our
reality is
all caught up in the devil’s lie. As
verse 25 states,
by focusing our attention (an accurate way to define worship),
inordinatley, on the fallen creation, rather then on the Creator, we
are
pulled
into the lie with all its multi-faceted attractions.
Because most are not familiar enough with
God’s Word (The Truth and Mind
of God in print), they unwitteningly focus on
lies, believe lies, and then confess those lies with their words and
actions,
and pass onto
others what is not grounded in God’s revealed Biblical
truth. As a general rule, usually what
is true on a carnal, fleshy plane is untrue
on a Scriptural level.
a possible ten.
They become a Christian, and through a lack of study and
attentiveness
to God’s Word, they pass through space with
a lot of old programming that
immediately surfaces when someone rejects them, implying how worthless
they
are. Instead of worship-
ping (focusing
on) God’s Word, that assures each born-again believer that he is chosen
by God
to be part of the Body of Christ, this
wounded pilgrim chooses to believe the
lie of his worthlessness, instead of the revealed truth of The Bible. Then, as if that sad situation
isn’t bad
enough, our hypothetical Christian gives further credence to the lie by
telling
a friend how inept and useless he is. He
first buys
into the lie, then verbally repeats it. If
this happens enough, it becomes set in
stone as an emphatic “truth”, poised ready to be lived out
at the drop of a
hat. We are what we think we are, and
what we say we are. We wind up living out
of a lie. And if you take this principle
out to include the myriad of areas of deceptions and delusions in the
lives of
most Christians, what you wind up with is a walking misrepre-
sentation of a true
child of God. Put a few such folks
together in a building with a steeple and you have, in varying degrees,
a
pretty good
example of today’s nominal Christian church.
ation (being born from above) turns out to be the
on-going way we are to progress from glory to glory once we are part of
God’s
Kingdom.
Repentance means “change your
mind and direction”. Turn around. Face the truth of God’s Word as you turn away
from the lie, in all its
manifest forms.
history of fallen man has there been such an
umbilical cord into satan’s kingdom of the lie (secular printed
material,
radio, T.V., the
internet and movies).
These are all readily available and indulged in by believers and
non-believers alike. Just about everyone
has a
direct link into the mind of the father of lies, as he puts out a
virtual
flood of deception, misinformation, and diversion from the Gospel
truth
contained in God’s Word. Many believers
counter this admonishment by saying, “Oh, I’m selective with what I
allow into
my mind
and I only watch Christian programs”.
Yah, right! Even if that lie were
true, it would be bad enough, for what is touted today as Christian
is nothing
more than a soft shoe act of self- aggrandizement, par excellence. Try to imagine the Apostle Paul, or Peter, in
front of a
huge crowd of people and acting anything like what is passed off
today as Christian television preaching or teaching.
The electronic
church of today, transported
back into the time of the Apostles, would cause those men of God to
recoil in
horror and astonishment.
If they had thought
their sacrifice unto death would later wind up producing such a circus
of
spirituality, I suspect their recoil and renounce-
ment would have knocked the
socks off of those involved with today’s spiritual side shows.
dare you (if that’s how
many televisions you have) to cut just that one particular cord into
Satan’s
mind. (Please make sure to unplug the
tel-
evision first or the whole situation will be doubly shocking to your
system). And don’t just shut the T.V.
off or pull the plug. That makes it too
tempting and easy to fall back into
your addiction to the lie. Cut the
cord! Then cover that window into
deception
with a cloth and put a
picture of Jesus on your new table. And in the future,
every time you’re tempted to “fall off the wagon”, you can look at
Christ and
be reminded
of The Truth. Then you can
choose to stay in The Truth, or get out your splicing equipment and
electrical
tape and enmesh your mind and
emotions back into the lie. And please,
don’t think for one moment that
I’m speaking from a place of having already “arrived”.
The only
reason I can write about these
things with so much passion is because I’m still struggling with my own
addictions. Whether it’s junk food
for
the mind or the body, junk is junk. The
old computer slogan, “garbage in, garbage out” speaks to what I’m
getting
at. Like it or not, aware
of it or not,
we all live in a cause and effect universe and that means there’s a consequence
for every sequence. Which in turn means,
we all
are right where we’ve chosen to be.
So if you’re not happy with the consequences of your life,
change your
choices or sequences. Easy to
say, much
harder to do! In fact, taking control
over the out of countrol self is what New Testament Christianity is all
about. Proverbs 16:32
says it best, “He
that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city”.