Deception

C.S. Lewis wrote this after listening to a speech by Adolf Hitler over the radio on the Friday evening of July 19th, 1940, this would become the inspiration for Screwtape Letters:

“I don’t know if I’m weaker than other people, but it is a positive revelation to me how while the speech lasts it is impossible not to waiver just a little… Statements which I know to be untrue all but convince me, at any rate for the moment, if only the man says them unflinchingly.”

We are easily deceived. Do not think that you are above the many Germans enraptured by the speeches of Hitler? They were people just like us.We are people just like them.

And it happens, today, perhaps in more subtle mediums, but the lure of deception and evil is real. Like the foolish woman of proverbs it entices and it attracts with a false beauty. But in the end there is death and stench. It is alive and well in our own culture, promoting murder, hate, and a many other evils, bring destruction to lives and families. 

But the voice of evil is familiar, we barely notice . . .

Confession

I was thinking this morning, when I choose to sin, I choose the pleasures of sin over the pleasures of Christ, my Beloved. How devastating! Oh God! Bring me into the depths of your Gospel, so that my heart will hate sin.

God speaks

God speaks. He is not an idol who is mute. We are the ones who have ears, but cannot hear.

If you want to hear God's voice you must love and pursue true, sound, and deep doctrine. Hearing God's voice requires dying to ones self and trusting God's Word, the scriptures. Growing in love and growing in knowing another, requires pursuing who they are. If you say you want to hear God's voice, but do not pursue the scriptures diligently as a treasure and as a delight, you are wanting you own ends, not His voice. May we spur one another, sharing with one another the word of Christ.

His own, He loved. And He loved us first. And in this truth we can love Him. It is the Gospel that allows us to have peace with God. And it is the power of Christ's work that enables and performs righteousness.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

(Romans 12:1-2 ESV)

What will death destroy?

"Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?" -- Leo Tolstoy

For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.” Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.” But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.

(Hebrews 12:18-29 ESV)

We cannot work righteousness

We cannot work righteousness in our lives. We cannot be holy through our own effort. Just as we were saved through grace by the power of the work of Christ, so we are sanctified by grace through the work of Christ. We must die, to live, trusting in the one who is Life. So we strive with a different kind of striving, not to accomplish a work, but in faith that the one who loves us will complete the work, he has begun in us.

     "O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?"
  
(Galatians 3:1-3 ESV)

Humility

Humility - the emptying of oneself, so that you can be filled with God.

To have any part with Christ we must deny ourselves and we must lose our lives. 

        Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?
  
(Matthew 16:24-26 ESV)