In my last blog I said this…
The Devil doesn’t have to work hard to deceive us, we do a great job all by ourselves!
I believe the Lord is challenging all of us who are self deceived to WAKE UP!
But how could anyone be self deceived? How is it possible to deceive ourselves? Surely we know everything about ourselves and it would be impossible to deceive ourselves. Maybe we can deceive others about our Christian faith from time to time but DECEIVING OURSELVES, come on! This would be like playing a game with ourselves, wouldn’t it? Is there Biblical evidence about this? Well, let me start with a few Bible verses; this is a good place to start.
James 1:22 warns:
22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. (NIV)
So YES, it appears we can deceive ourselves. What an important truth this verse is. We can deceive ourselves into thinking that merely hearing the Word of God is enough. In reality merely hearing the Word of God is no where near enough! So those of us who fill ourselves with the Word of God and don’t apply it to our lives and don’t do what it says are living deceived; we are living a lie. We can say the Devil didn’t deceive us; we deceived ourselves! We are playing games with ourselves. We aren’t being honest with ourselves. The Word of God is not being allowed to do what it always does and that is, bringing repentance and change and action. The Word of God always challenges and always demands a response. So those who merely hear the Word of God and don’t do what it says, sit in there own deception. The Devil doesn’t have to worry about us at all because we are asleep in our comfy chair.
1 Cor 3:18 warns:
18 Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a “fool” so that he may become wise. (NIV)
So we can deceive ourselves about the estimate of our wisdom. What is this? This is perhaps the number one killer of the Lord working in our lives. It is pride coming in, it is pride in our own wisdom. In Obadiah’s vision in verse 3 of Obadiah it says, “The pride of your heart has deceived you“. This is very interesting, THE PRIDE IN OUR HEARTS DECEIVES US. We can be blinded and deceived by our pride. ‘If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself’. (Gal 6:3)
Here is another area where we deceive ourselves, James 1:26 warns:
26 If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. NIV
We deceive ourselves about our faith and our right standing with God when we don’t control our tongue, that is, we use our tongues for slandering, gossip, grumbling and discouragement. If we don’t control our tongue our ‘religion’ or faith is useless or worthless. Prov 15:4 says The tongue that brings healing is a tree of life, but a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit. The James quote isn’t complete without looking at Verse 27 as it defines what what true ‘religion’ (true faith) is… 27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. NIV
To be continued…
Enlightened Hope 
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