“Beware of the enemy using God’s Word in your life.”
Have you ever had someone warn you like this?
Sounds a little odd, doesn’t it?
I’ve found it interesting that the enemy uses certain tactics on certain people. When a soul is already blinded and all that is needed is a stirring of that blinded nature, the enemy’s path seems simple.
However, notice something …when the enemy decided to tempt Jesus, the most Righteous Man on earth …what did he do?
One of his methods was to connect his temptation to the Word of God. (See Matthew 4:6.)
In the perfection of Eden, the enemy cast doubt on the Word. (See Genesis 3:1.)
With Perfection Himself, the enemy *used* the Word.
Should it surprise us, or warn us, then, if the enemy uses the same kind of tactic in the Church? Particularly among those who are whole-heartedly seeking to live moral lives that closely follow the Word of God?
The enemy has no problem using a sanctified resource just as much as a morally degraded one.
If we consider ourselves strong in the Lord, maybe we need to take a second look at Scripture and ask ourselves if we are dividing the Word of Truth correctly and wielding it rightly. (See 2 Timothy 2:15.)
It’s very easy to make Scripture say what we think it should say. We can “back up” principles and rules and guidelines fairly easily with Scripture verses. And if one needs proof of that, consider the differing doctrinal viewpoints in the Church as well as Christian ministries that can stumble into cult-ism.
One of the horrifying things about this? Is that when we do choose to make up our own list of five points and poem of “how one should live the Christian life”, we greatly run the risk of showing ourselves to be immature Christians per Paul’s description in 1 Corinthians 1-2. There’s a reason that Calvinism is called Calvin-ism. There’s a reason that Arminianism is called Arminian-ism. Why are we dividing ourselves into fractured hairs over a pride that we “know the correct doctrine of the Church”, instead of passionately living by faith like the heroes of Hebrews 11? We hear nothing about these multiple faith-builders’ “Church orientation”.
Think about it—it could have said, “there was Noah, a man of the Evangelical church” or “there was Moses, a man faithful to the Pentecostal Church” or “there was Rahab, a convert of the Reformed Church of God”. That didn’t matter.
Why then, do we tumble into this mess of tangled strings believing that “we have it all” when in reality we shine the light on the fact that most likely we are immature and deceived by an enemy who knows all too well how to twist the Word for his own means?
Truly, His Word has been made clear to us: The greatest commandment is to love God, the second, to love others. (See Matthew 22:34-40.) Perhaps if we made this our priority, we’d find a lot more harmony than division in the Church.
And, perhaps, we’d have more time to defeat the enemy at his own game: comparing Scripture with Scripture and taking the entire context of the Bible into relevancy rather than only hearing what the enemy wants us to hear.
