Deception Number #8 God Won't Come Through

  Stepping out in faith is never easy. Taking a risk for God often involves putting yourself out there and not knowing how the other person will react. But, we're called as the people of God to go and be the witnesses of what Jesus has done to the entire ends of the earth! What a large area for us to cover. The task seems daunting, but we're reminded that we as the body of Christ go in God's name and we work and minister in God's power. But, if you're like me we struggle in living out our faith in bold, tangible ways. If that describes you, then you're reading the perfect blog post. Here are a few things that come to mind:)

1) Learn to recognize the evil one's voice.
  The evil one has a knack of reminding us of all the areas where we often fall short, areas where we're tempted, and past failures and missed expectations. The voice can take many different shapes and forms, but one thing is consistent the evil one's voice will always remind you that you're not good enough, not worthy enough, not lovable enough, and you're not as good of a human being as you should be. His tactics are deceitful and meant to destroy you, but they don't have to.The evil one is very sly and very cunning, make sure you know how to recognize his voice and his ways. A few good suggestions in helping you recognizing the evil one's voice and tactics are as follows: 1) Learn to discuss deep moments of your life with someone you trust. Almost all of us have some person in our lives that has wisdom, experience, and has our best interest in mind. Look to discuss big areas of growth and struggle with this person.
2) Fill your life with the voice of Jesus. There's currently a war going on for your heart. If that weren't so evil wouldn't be flashing all over the news, the Internet, radio, and sadly evil has become even more present in our schools. However, if what we believe about God is true, and that if we know God to be above all and over all creation, then we know that God's voice will have the last word. Learn to fill your life with goodness, love, beauty, grace, and forgiveness. It may require that you change your music tastes, block out a channel on the TV, stop going to places that tempt and cause you to stumble, and even more radically you might need to give up a friend or two. Paul reminds us so powerfully in Philippians 4:8, "⁸ Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."
3) Be very careful about basing your understanding of God on emotions. As we dive into our final point let me first say that emotions are a good thing. But, be very careful because our emotions can easily deceive us. I urge you to fall in love with God with your emotions, feel the love and warmth of God's embrace, but be careful if your entire understanding of God is based on emotion, because emotions can change. Emotions are often based on experiences, and as we know as followers of Jesus and people on this earth. Emotions can change. My hope is that we would develop and have a growing, firm relationship with Jesus that can withstand the greatest success and also the greatest defeat, thus knowing that God loves us and God will no matter what come through for us, it often won't be the way we hoped or in our timeframe, but God will come through.