I was driving a vehicle for a friend of mine the other day and the radio was playing a song by a country artist called, "I Hate Everything." I recalled some of the lyrics while reflecting on this weeks devotional, and thought I would write down the chorus to set the stage for this periodical.
"I hate my job and I hate my life
And if it weren't my two kids I'd hate my ex-wife
I know I should move on and try to start again
But I just can't get over her leaving me for him
Then he shook his head and looked down at his ring
And said I hate everything."
Well, I guess it is true after all, if you played a country song backwards you would get the wife, the house, the kids and the dog back. Wow! Such a dismal outlook on life. Yeah, but that's just a song someone might suggest. Well, I have been pastoring for a great many years now and have discovered that there are a lot of people who see life in this manner. As a matter of fact, there are many, many folks who identify with songs like this one that I am mentioning, which is why they are so popular and sale so many CD's. Now, I didn't devote this devotional to ripping any particular flavor of music. We just need to pay more attention to the lyrics of the songs we are listening to. They preach their message and are just as influential in our lives as the words that a preacher would use to add to your life in a positive way. I happen to believe that people bring much of their own troubles by their own doing and then spend much of the time blaming the devil for their own irresponsibility. On the same note: I also believe that there is a very real demonic adversary who seeks whom he may devour, and we must not ignore that fact. Yet, his power over us is always given to him by our own failure to resist him. Even when Satan deceived Adam and Eve he was not able to force them through some great power he possessed over them. They simply listened to his lying approach on how you can know the very same things as God, and they acted on their own. Our devotional this week begins with pointing this very fact out before we go any further in this teaching. Let's begin our study in 1 Peter the fifth chapter.
1 Peter 5:8 (KJV)
8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:
As you can see based on this Scripture we do in fact have an adversary who is looking for access into our life. He finds that entrance into a person's life when they fail to know their rights as a child of God. This is much like a person who does not know their rights as a citizen of a nation and becomes disenfranchised by the crooked attorney's of that judicial system. What you don't know can and will hurt you. Look at another passage of Scripture with me as we study God's Word together.
Genesis 3:14 (KJV)
14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:
Now most of you probably know your Bible stories, so I will try to avoid lengthy explanations in order to get to the meat of this topic today. We know that Satan was cursed by God for his deed in the Garden of Eden where he deceived Adam and Eve out of their dominion by getting them to disobey God. Therefore, the curse as recorded in Scripture reveals that the devil was sentenced to rule over a kingdom of waste which he would eat all his days. He was essentially sentenced by God to be cursed as a king over the dust; or rather the things that die and have an ending. I don't believe that this is what Lucifer had in mind when he wanted to be god. On another note: because Adam and Eve disobeyed the command of God, their punishment was the loss of dominion which would make living a very hard thing to do here on the earth, and all inhabitants would eventually have to die because of their sin. Read what it says regarding mankind.
Genesis 3:19 (KJV)
19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
It's no wonder why so many people live in such hardship and why so many perish prematurely in this world. The devil who wanted to be like God turned a third of the angels against God by deceiving them [God referred to the devil as being the most cunning of all creatures] and all those who followed him were evicted from heaven. God has such divine wisdom to know all things from the ending to the beginning. No one ever fools God! To think that He would be so wise to allow one of His created beings to have what they wanted so badly knowing full well that they would use whatever evil means to obtain it. And to their surprise, let it be theirs for a fleeting moment without satisfying them. In addition, because of this diabolical lust, the desire wouldn't produce what they had hoped it would be, which essentially turned to a curse, and a miserable place for them as a punishment for their actions. Just think on it like this: it was Lucifer that wanted to be God and sit in God's place. So what does God do about this treason? He allows him to have that temporary place of dominion which he stole from Adam and Eve, and let's him become his own self-appointed king over all the corruptible things that he turned it into.
Therefore, Satan became a legend in his own mind as they say. The only thing is, he became a king over everything that dies and represents damnation and banished from God. The devil's achievement to deceive Adam and Eve was presumed by himself to be a golden opportunity that actually turned out to be fools gold in the end. The prize of becoming the god of this world was thought to have been a great gain which looked to shine like a diamond at first, but only shattered like glass once he took ownership. The Bible teaches that prosperity gained through evil methods will diminish (Proverbs 13:11). Another part of the equation that is so terribly sad: is that his deceived human captives are convinced that there is no way out of their predicaments of life, and therefore, they accept the circumstances that life gives them. Remaining clueless that they are under the devil's dictatorship over them. There are many people who believe the power and influence of the devil is much more powerful than God's Word could ever be due to his craftiness. Therefore, with that said, the devil was given the name of being the father of lies, because he uses deception to convince others of his false authority and through the tyranny of fear that he places on them. He uses these evil and lying tactics that he might impose himself to be the god of this world through domination. Now let's look at something else within our study.
Luke 13:11-13 (KJV)
11 And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself.
12 And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity.
13 And he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.
Here in this passage of Scripture is a woman who for eighteen years learned how to live within her condition, even though she would have desired to be made whole had you asked her personally. There is something here that sticks out plainly to me: and that is people tend to learn how to live or survive under their circumstances as the years come and go when nothing changes for them. It's here that people will often exercise great effort to improvise within their limiting and seemingly hopeless situations. They learn how to adapt their handicap into their daily routine to where they eventually establish within their belief system that this is how it's going to be; deal with it! Therefore, they develop techniques on how to survive under the particular challenge that they are faced with. Now I'm not opposing the person who attempts to get on with life irregardless of their condition, on the contrary, I applaud them. But I am saying that God's Word has the solutions, and coupled along with your faith it can change your dilemma beyond your wildest dreams. God still is a miracle worker, and His Word is that miracle working force that transforms things to a perfect order when believed on.
But our adversary intends for us to avoid knowing what we have received from Jesus Christ; so he works at making sure your mind believes more in your predicament being permanent with no possible solutions. This is how he rules over people. Through their hopelessness he keeps people in ignorance from being knowledgeable of God's Word and His promises. God's Word requires faith and without it, it is impossible to please Him. The Bible teaches that every person has received a measure of faith from God. The problem is that most have their faith attached to everything but God's Word. The devil often appears to have the upper hand because he works in the natural where certain things are perceived as being unalterable because they are processed in our belief system as being concrete or unchangeable events.
This woman who was bowed over for eighteen years had always stared at dust beneath her feet. Everything she looked at was downward and lowly. Her face was near the very dust of the ground, so much so, she probably could smell its dryness in her nostrils. Therefore, she knew nothing but things that made sense from this point of view. This is much how it is with a person who sees life only through the eyes of failure, misery, torment, oppression and the many other negative connotations that we could use to describe a poor perspective on life itself. The woman who was bowed over probably learned how to get around pretty well within her own kitchen under her bent over condition. The devil always keeps his subjects bound through lying visuals and lies within the imagination. His vantage point is always reinforced through threats of something worse happening to us if we tried to break away. Here is where the devil can rule over a person due to their omissions to know what the Word of God has to say about matters of truth. The devil wants you and me to eat and live by the flesh of this decaying world that he claims rulership over. He wants you to love your life so much that the thought of it being taken away scares you enough to succumb to his fear tactics and live based on his worldly directives and avoid spiritual principles altogether. Look at another passage of Scripture, and let's build on this teaching further with some revelatory insight.
John 6:47-51 (KJV)
47 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.
48 I am that bread of life.
49 Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.
50 This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.
51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.
If you know your Bible then you know Jesus was the Word that became flesh. He is the Word of God in flesh perfectly demonstrated in a sinless body that knew no wrong and fulfilled the whole Law of God. When you read the passage that we just covered you will understand clearly that Jesus was not saying that we should physically eat His human flesh or drink His human blood. [Which by the way is why so many of His disciples at that time walked away from following Him as they could not receive such a disgusting saying]. However, Jesus was pointing to His death as a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world when He referred to eating His flesh. We eat His flesh when we live by the principles of His Word every day which He walked and lived by while He was here on this earth. We drink His blood when we partake of His death spiritually and awaken to live as a son or daughter of God based on His life in us. We are told that man does not live by bread alone but by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Our new way of living as a believer in Christ is based on the soundness of God's Word which cannot lie. Jesus came to give life, and life more abundantly. This happens only when His Words abide in us. We have been restored to our priestly dominion over the god of this world. But the devil will fight you over that decree, and argue that God has not healed you, and you certainly are not righteous by any means. Just more lies!
I have thought long and hard on these things in much prayer. The devil always presents a false visual that can seem very real in this life to a person, especially when you believe in the laws of the natural over the spiritual. The devil always gets you to focus on the sense of lack in your life, so that you believe you don't have something. That's why when God's Word says He sent His Word to heal us and you happen to be sick; that most cannot hold that it is a true statement though its written in the Bible. Which is God's book that tells no lies! Why do some do this? Because the devil is very convincing when we live by the principles of the flesh, and most people do by the way, even many Christians. These principles of the flesh are the assessments of earthly wisdom that concludes there are certain limitations for all humans, therefore, it concedes that you must accept them for they are the natural laws that governs us all and nothing can change that.
No matter how this might all sound as being logical to many people; I personally will not accept anything of this worlds natural suggestions as the final say over my family or myself! I refuse to be governed by the laws and physics of this natural world. My citizenship is in the kingdom of God where nothing is impossible; and while temporarily here on this earth, I am an ambassador of the Christ. Our standard of living is not to be echoed in the same manner of those who do not know God as their Father. We are of those who hear our God, and no other will we follow. Remember Jesus was taken to the wilderness when He was tempted by the devil. The wilderness is a place of severe dryness, heat, burning winds, and rocks that feel like coals of fire from lying in the sun. Yet, Jesus did not lean on the wishes to find relief for His flesh. He declared the importance of being who He was as a Son of the most high God. Because of this total surrender to the Father He was able to dominate His would be assailant. The same holds true for us. We have been given the legal dominion over every principality and power of the air. There is no devil on earth that has a greater power over a believer in Christ, unless they are clueless of their delegated authority. The Bible spells out the particulars of what a person can have in life over this adversary who wants to be god over you. I will close with the reading of one more Scripture from God's wonderful book of promises to those who believe it.
Romans 8:1-9 (KJV)
1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:
4 That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
5 For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.
6 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
8 So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.
9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
Romans 8:12-14 (KJV)
12 Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh.
13 For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
I hope you can see that everything that the devil rules in is nothing more than death. The devil was condemned to eat dust all his life. To live by the principles of this logical and reasoning world will end up in death with you on his plate. It is the digesting of the putrefied and prideful flesh that will poison a person and destroy their life. However, if you choose to live by God's Word and allow it to transform your life. You will find life in its fullest measure without a single regret. Don't stay bent over staring at the dust on the ground for anymore years than you have already spent doing so. Be healed and straighten up and be made whole in the name of Jesus! There is a life to live where the fullness of joy and peace always abide. We have been redeemed from the curse of the Law and delivered from the god of this decaying world. If your life is dust free, there will be no sneezing and coughing at the life you have received in Christ, because it will be spiritually alive. Jesus will change you miraculously this very instant if you will only believe!
