Good Morning:
What has God done for you lately? Your new man will readily answer that God has given you another day of grace here on earth, blessed you with a fellowship of kindred souls at your church and most importantly forgiven the sins that you fell into yesterday. However if the Devil asks your sinful flesh what God has done for you lately, its response will be quite different. Your sinful flesh will look upon the blessings of God as burdens and try to convince your new man that God isn’t doing enough for you. The Devil knows how much we are focused on this life and so seeks to disrupt our faith in God by convincing us that God’s love for us is directly correlated to our temporal ease and earthly happiness. This could not be farther from the truth.
The Devil used this deception on Job thousands of years ago. The Bible tells us that Job was a blameless and upright man, who feared God. The LORD had also blessed Job with tremendous wealth, success, and family. The Devil’s response to this is found in Job 1:9 “So Satan answered the LORD and said, “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan was incorrectly convinced that Job only feared the LORD because the LORD blessed Job with temporal blessings. Satan sought and received permission to take away those blessings in an attempt to deceive Job into believing that God no longer loved him. The Devil sees faith as the perfect thing to test. A faith based on temporal blessing will fail when tried by the Devil. However a faith founded on Christ and based on His eternal promises to you will resist the lies of the Devil and stand firm on the rock of Christ’s forgiveness for you.
A false faith based on temporal happiness and ease is the weak link in the chain keeping people close to God. The Devil is always looking for any way to pull believers away from Jesus so Satan will eagerly saw away at the weak link of a false faith based on temporal ease instead of the strong link of faith based on God’s redeeming work on the cross. The link of faith in Christ is a strong link to the Lord and a much firmer and more solid foundation than any faith in earthly ease. Thank God for a faith based on His forgiveness instead of on our feelings.
In Christ, Pastor Naumann
