satan – I AM for You!

Nobody’s perfect (part II)

I am part of a team of people starting “HOPE” for Mental Health at Kentwood Community Church. We are part of Celebrate Recovery founded by Rick Warren of Saddleback Church. This group of courageous people, who admit their imperfections and trust Jesus to deliver them, have been a catalyst to me being able to confess my sins to another trusted person (or small group). I read my Nobody’s Perfect post from August of 2013 tonight and realized I had promised to get back to you when I had put this into practice.

Much better late than never.

I had told Jesus my sins but telling another person with skin on freed me from most of the grip of satan in my life. No amount of prayer has freed me as much as telling my sin to another person. Sin loses power when exposed.

I have known for years that I was “supposed to” confess my sins to another. But I made excuses and told myself it really didn’t matter. I lost years of my life to satan’s influence simply because “I know more than God.”

God is not mocked. I reaped what I sowed.

But I have learned.

Hopefully.

What do you want?

What a man wants is unfailing love, better to be poor than a liar. (Proverbs 19:22 NIV84)

God created us to want unconditional love, to want Him. It is better to be poor in spirit (know you need God) than to lie (and say in your heart you don’t need God). Satan appeals to our desire to meet our own needs, be our own “god”, to be our own source. Satan hates God, hates that He is love, and hates those who accept Him and His love… and return His love. He hates God because God’s goodness exposes satan’s evil selfish corruption. People worship (value) God because God demonstrates His humility and self-sacrificing care for them every day. God puts our needs ahead of His own. He is not only the Great King He is the Lowest (Head) Servant.

But Jesus called them to Himself and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:42-45, NKJV).

Satan tells people to blame God for all the evil in the world. Satan tells people that God is uninterested in them, in their struggles, hurts, cares or dreams. Satan tells people that God is a nitpicking tyrant just waiting to pounce on them for doing the littlest thing wrong.

These are actually the qualities of satan and the opposite of the qualities of God.

God demonstrated who He really is when He walked on earth with us, in the person of Jesus Christ. Read the truth about God in the Bible. Read the Gospels, literally the “Good News”: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John at the beginning of the New Testament of the Bible. Jesus healed the sick, raised the dead, and proclaimed the coming of His kingdom where His kind of loving service would rule; instead of this world’s current selfishness.

Do you want a God who is a loving leader; who values you and even your smallest dreams; who has served your greatest need already by paying the cost of your sin so you could spend forever with Him, so He could love you, and you could freely love Him back? If so, ask Jesus to come into your heart, to be your Servant and your Leader. Spend time talking to Him and listening to Him through prayer and reading the Bible. Ask Him to fill you with His Holy Spirit. Find a church that believes and preaches the Bible. And tell others what a great thing God has done for you.

Satan’s lie about God

Under traffic sources in the statistics part of this blog’s background functions are what I believe are sources of entry for those who read this blog. I clicked on one of them and it went to a porn site. (I quickly closed it and told my wife who was sitting in the living room with me). Before I became a Christian I viewed pornography. I eventually recognized its destructive influence on me and got rid of it (even before I knew Jesus). But like an alcoholic who becomes sober and then stays away from alcohol I stay away from pornography. And that’s why I quickly closed it and told my wife. She knows the password on my computer and I don’t hide anything from her, in order to protect myself from falling back into slavery to pornography.

If you view pornography I do not condemn you and God does not condemn you. God and I do, however, condemn what is destroying you and that is the pornography. God loves people but He hates sin – because sin hurts the people he loves.

Sin is an attempt to get our God-given needs met outside of God’s will. Sin provides pleasure for a season but it will never satisfy the human heart’s longing to be satisfied by God. God is waiting for you to give up satan’s worthless pleasure and seek Him to truly meet your needs. God said, you will seek me and you will find me when you seek me with all of your heart. Satan comes only to kill, steal and destroy. Jesus comes so that me and you can have real life! Jesus called Himself the Bread of Life, the wholesome nutrition for our souls that we might have true pleasure, true satisfaction, true life.

Satan will tell you that God is no fun. God invented fun. Satan will tell you that God is trying to steal the little pleasure you have left in life. God is trying to introduce you to real pleasure that builds you up, not satan’s counterfeit that tears you down. Satan is trying to destroy us with pleasure-coated poison. God is trying to give us food for our souls, what we truly need to be happy.

In the end, it’s your choice. But remember, if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.

If you want help please consider going to XXXchurch.com. I have never gone to the site myself (for fear I would get targeted with spam from the porn industry) but I have heard good things about it from others.

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