lies

The Lust of the Eyes

“And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” – Ephesians 1:22-23 Yesterday, we looked at the lust of the flesh and talked about how obsessing over physical desires can make our lives vulnerable to the enemy’s destruction. Today, I want to share with you another way the devil seeks to wreak havoc in our lives — the lust of the eyes.  We live in a world that is obsessed with appearance. In fact, many of us learn to obsess about our image, or what we look like to those around us, even before we are old enough to understand why. Our materialistic society teaches that in order to be somebody, we must have certain things. In other words, I am what I have and I

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The Darkness of Deception

“For, ‘Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech.’” – 1 Peter 3:10 Did you know that the kingdom of darkness is based on deception? The devil’s domain isn’t built on hate (though it is hateful), and it isn’t built on violence either (even though it is violent). Lies are propagated and promoted by the enemy of our soul, especially in the lives of believers. Satan’s power in the world is exercised through luring Christians into some type of deception that prevents them from experiencing Jesus’ total love and reign. By accepting any form of dishonesty, no matter how seemingly harmless, a door is opened for the devil to enter. Let our yeses be yeses and our noes be noes, Jesus says. That is, He expects us to understand what we want to do and don’t want to

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Walking in Truth’s Freedom

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” – 2 Corinthians 3:17 Have you ever been caught in the act of telling a lie? I believe that most of us have been caught in the trap of dishonesty at some point in our lives, if not as adults, then certainly as children. Perhaps we lied about something minor (what has been dubbed “the little white lie”), or perhaps it was something more serious and had a bad influence on someone we care about. Whatever the case may be, I don’t believe there’s anything worse than being caught in the web of deception. I just heard a story about a social media video that went viral. On a plane, a 28-year-old man got into an argument with other passengers and the flight crew. He began boasting that he owned six residences, made

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The Two Great Temptations

“‘You will not certainly die,’ the serpent said to the woman. ‘For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” – Genesis 3:4,5 We can learn a lot about how the devil works in our lives by examining the story of Creation. In fact, when the serpent approached Eve in the Garden of Eden, he used two specific tactics that he still employs today, and I think it behooves us to look at them in greater detail. First of all, he attacked the woman by planting doubts in her mind about the Word of the Lord. He slithered up to her and said, “Did God really say…?,” and unfortunately, he’s been doing this ever since. He knows that human flesh is weak, and he’s aware that it doesn’t take a lot to get us to

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You Are Not Your Mistakes

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” – Hebrews 12:1 Often, when we struggle with things like addiction or long-standing sin, we grow discouraged because we feel like we will never beat it. We make progress, but then we backslide, and the devil whispers in our ear that we’re just too broken and messed up to change. In fact, this is how he gains a foothold in our lives. When we listen to his constant fatalistic commentary, he convinces us to give up on ourselves, and that’s when we get in trouble. Once we’re running with the ball of self-defeat, we’re tempted to believe that our Heavenly Father feels as negatively about us as we do, and our view

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The War is In Your Mind

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” – 2 Corinthians 10:5 Earlier this year, my dad contacted me and wondered if I had a copy of C.S. Lewis’ book The Screwtape Letters. He happened to be working on a sermon in which he wanted to quote it, so it pained me to tell him that I don’t have it in my possession anymore. Though I once had a really cool first-edition print that I got from my grandpa’s cabin, I think a friend of mine “borrowed” it in college and never gave it back. Though that’s irrelevant, I bring it up to let you you that reading this book early in my life helped to greatly increase my understanding of spiritual warfare. Though it’s not one of C.S. Lewis’ more

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