Post by Cindy on Dec 1, 2015 12:28:29 GMT -5
Usually when we're going through hard times, when things seem to be constantly going wrong, we want to know why. To discover that reason, the Lord tells us that the first thing we should do is ask Him. Look at what we're told in James: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.”(James 1:2–8) We often take the part that I underlined out of context, but James is still talking about trials here. He's saying that we need to have faith and ask the Lord what's going on. Then by searching His Word with His leading, He will show us His answer.
I know many of us, including myself, are going through trials right now and the Lord's been showing me a lot about the "whys" of it. We already know from James that trials test our faith with produces perseverance so we can be mature in our faith and not lacking anything, but there's much more we can learn too.
Let's look at some other hints the Lord gives us. We're told that we're to know Satan's schemes,(2 Corinthians 2:11) but how can we? We can know them because the Bible shows us how he operates. Once we know that, we can then look at what's going on in our own life and see if any of it might be being caused by Satan. Even if it is though, we have to remember that God is the one in control, and Satan cannot touch us without His permission. Therefore, if it is Satan, there's a very good reason for it. But we'll get to that later. First lets look at how he operates.
First, John 10:10 tells us that Satan is a thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy. He can not only steal our physical belongings, but also more important things like our peace of mind, our love for others, and our determination to serve the Lord, among other things. When it says "kill" we again have to remind ourselves what we're not just talking about physical death here, but also the death of spiritual things, including those I've already mentioned. So basically it's saying that Satan will try to wrench these things away from us any way he can, and that he will go so far to destroy and kill those things within us, if we allow it. He wants to destroy God's purpose in our lives, or at least cause us to think that he has. He wants desperately to wipe out our joy in the Lord because that's our strength. He wants to keep us away from God's Word because that's what changes and renews us and also gives us strength as it strengthens our faith and trust in God.
We're told in numerous scriptures that Satan is our accuser, so we know that another tactic of his is to accuse us of all we've done wrong, of all our sins, and he does it well. What we have to remember when we have a litany of sins that we have already asked forgiveness for going on in our minds, is that it is not God, but Satan behind it. God promises to "forget" our sins, not bring them up to us again or charge us for them, but Satan on the other hand loves to tell us how horrible we are and that we don't deserve God's love or salvation. He's right. We are horrible, and we don't deserve it, but he's wrong because our great and loving God has forgiven ALL our sins and made us His children and told us not to listen to Satan's lies any more.
Speaking of lies, we know too that Satan is a liar (John 8:44) and there's no truth in him. Look closely at that. There is NO truth in him. Everything he speaks or insinuates is a lie. Oh, he makes it sound good and lovely at times, and makes it sound logical and true to us, but it's still a lie and always will be. So we know that lying is another one of his tactics. What are some of the things that go along with lying? How about slander, or being a false witness against someone or something? How about exaggerating the truth, that's till a lie, or how we sometimes even lie about something we've done or not done.
To be a murderer, liar, thief, and destroyer, Satan cannot have any love within him for anyone other then possibly himself. Therefore there's another characteristic we can see in him and that's hate. We know that Satan hates all humans. He always has and always will. He wants every single one of us to suffer in hell forever. That's his agenda, because he hates God and he knows that God loves us. We know from Matthew 13:19 and many other scriptures that Satan snatches God's Word away from unbelievers so they won't believe in Jesus and that he puts blinders on them to prevent them from understanding God's Word or believing it. So obviously, he wants to prevent people from being saved, he wants to keep people from having a personal relationship with the Lord, and for those that are already saved, he wants to ruin their relationship with the Lord so they're ineffective and not receiving all the Lord has for them now. He can do that in a number of ways: by convincing them that they might not be saved, that they're too sinful etc, or he can do the opposite and convince them that they're relationship with the Lord is just fine, when in fact there is sin they need to repent of and they know it. This works just as well because the person's relationship with the Lord is not good and they are not being obedient to Him so they're not receiving all He has for them and instead are causing Him to be ashamed of them. But with Satan's initial help, they convince themselves that everything is just fine and continue in their sin bringing God's discipline on themselves.
To help us understand this a little better, we need to know that God gave every human being a conscience as our first defense against sin. It knows the difference between right and wrong and warns us when we're doing something we shouldn't. But, we can make our conscience ineffective by making up "reasons" also called "excuses" for what we're doing and telling ourselves that it's ok to do it because of these reasons. If we do that long enough, it will confuse our conscience so that our conscience will no longer nag us about that sin, since we've told it often enough that it's ok for us to do it. If we do this often enough in different circumstances, eventually our conscience will no longer view that as a sin at all. It will be totally confused and not warn us away from that sin or trouble us about it any longer. We quite literally harden hearts.
The Lord has also given us the Holy Spirit and He too warns us from sin and calls us to repent. He constantly urges us to get into God's Word where we belong, so we can be convicted if necessary and repent, and so we can grow in our faith, and in our relationship with the Lord. But we can harden ourselves against the Holy Spirit as well. This is why we're told not to grieve the Holy Spirit in Ephesians 4:30. What happens is similar to what happens with our conscience. The more we ignore the Spirit's leading, the harder it will become to hear Him. If we continue to disobey, eventually we won't hear Him at all for we will have grieved Him. The only way out of that mess is to start obeying the Lord, get in His Word, pray for forgiveness and then listen for all we're worth, obeying Him instantly to show that we truly have repented. Generally before that happens, we've had to go through quite the trial to get our attention though.
Satan knows all about our conscience and about the Holy Spirit leading and guiding us, so he desperately wants to interfere with both and aims at that a lot. So that's something we all need to be aware of and keep a close eye on ourselves for. This is yet another reason the Lord tells us throughout His Word to examine ourselves.
Knowing all this there's another thing we can look at to see what might be behind our trials. There are a number of lists in the Bible telling us what the "acts of the sinful nature are". We need to be aware of these because not only are they natural to our old sin nature, which makes them easy to fall back into, but they're often things Satan will use against us. So let's take a look at those lists. If we look at them carefully, we'll see that many of the things mentioned are listed numerous times.
“The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” (Galatians 5:19–21) "and the like" lets us know this list isn't complete, but that other similar things should be included.
“At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.” (Titus 3:3)
“Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” (Romans 1:28–32)
“Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices” (Colossians 3:5–9)
“For I am afraid that when I come I may not find you as I want you to be, and you may not find me as you want me to be. I fear that there may be quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, slander, gossip, arrogance and disorder.” (2 Corinthians 12:20)
“We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine” (1 Timothy 1:9–10) Again showing the list goes on.....
“For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry.” (1 Peter 4:3)
“Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9–10)
“Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.” (Ephesians 4:31)
Look at all that I underlined and notice how many of them are also used by Satan in his tactics against us or are characteristics of Satan's. That does not mean that every time we see any of these things that Satan is involved, but it is possible. However, all of these things are also part of our own sin nature as well. So we need not go blaming Satan all the time. Often however, what Satan will do is this: When one of us has been hurt by another person, and we dwell on it, then, Satan will jump on that and urge us to become angry, or angrier, and get us to continue to dwell on it. Next thing we know we're telling someone all about what that person did to us and showing them how awful that person is and how they can't be trusted etc. Oh we might do so and make it look "good" by saying we're only telling them so they'll pray for the person or something like that, but that can just be an excuse. What we're really doing is engaging in gossip and slander at that point. Both of those are things we're not to do. See what James 4:11 says about it among other scriptures. What blew me away about slander is that in the NT the word for slander is the same as the word for the devil or Satan! That's what Satan does to us and then we turn around and do it to others! We're being a devil when we do that! Other words for slander are tale bearing, and gossip. That showed me just how very wrong they are for any reason. Yet we here and see it being done all the time, every day by someone, especially during elections.
Keep in mind too that "murder" is not just killing someone, it can be killing their dreams (if they're godly ones) or hopes etc. Also remember what Jesus said about anger in Matthew 5:22 “But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” and what He said about adultery in Matthew 5:28.
I want to point out one other very big danger that Satan will take advantage of. When we get hurt and angry, our sin nature will want us to dwell on it and become bitter. Yet we see that bitterness is in those lists. Not only that but that God takes the time to especially warn us against becoming bitter. This is part of another list that I haven't yet posted as it's a bit different. Let me show you first what it says about bitterness: “See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.” (Hebrews 12:15) The ESV translates it: See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled; If you think back to what I said earlier about how we tend to harden our hearts against our conscience, bitterness is a part of that. Once we get far enough to even start to muddle our conscience, we can generally be sure there's a root of bitterness growing within our hearts about something. And God tells us that when that happens, it will cause trouble and defile many others besides ourselves! That's a very real danger that we need to be aware of! Realizing that, now let's take a look at this last "list" of things to be aware of:
“Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son. Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. He could bring about no change of mind, though he sought the blessing with tears.” (Hebrews 12:14–17) Notice that we're told what will happen if we don't obey. The last line is probably the scariest one of all and is speaking of what I initially talked about when we spoke of hardening our hearts and grieving the Holy Spirit. If we are truly saved, we cannot lose our salvation, but we can cause the Lord to be ashamed of us, we can lose the eternal rewards the Lord has for us in Heaven, and we can lose our effectiveness as a born again child of God, and lose the blessings the Lord has for us here and now. That a lot of loss, don't you agree? On top of that, since we know that God disciplines those He loves, we will also bring His discipline down on ourselves here and now. Notice too that this scripture doesn't just speak to us about ourselves, but also includes our brothers and sisters in the Lord, and our loved one, saved or not. It includes them because the root of bitterness will defile many, and the people it defiles will be those close to us. We're told to see that no one misses the grace of God so that's telling us that if we don't warn others about this, about their sin, then we will be held responsible for the misery they wind up in, and will be held accountable to God for them as well. This can go along with the following scripture which is every bit as scary: “But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” (Matthew 18:6) Jesus is not talking about a little child or young person here. He's speaking about Christians, His children, and using a loving term for us. He's speaking of the same children He was speaking of in Matthew 18:3-4. While this warning applies to the world, it also applies to other Christians as well. If we knowingly cause another Christian to stumble or sin, Jesus says it would be better for us to be drowned! That to me is pretty scary! Note He doesn't say we will be drowned, but that we'd probably think we'd be better off if we were. That's just how serious Jesus considers it which shows us that we need to be very careful about how we lead our lives, and we'd better be warning others the way the Lord tells us to when we see that they're about to or are living in sin, for if we don't..... I don't even want to think about it!
OK, now we have all kinds of ways to determine if the trials we're going through are being caused by our sin nature, Satan, or a combination of both perhaps. If we look at what's going on in our lives and we see any of these things in ourselves or in others that are involved in our trial, then we need to determine if it's our (or their) sin nature or Satan or both that's behind the problems. One thing I've seen a lot of lately is division and strife in families. The institution of the family was ordained by God, so anything attacking the family unit can and often does have Satan involved in it. He may have simply pushed someone's buttons when they were angry and helped the situation along some, so we most certainly can't put all the blame on him. If we, or another loved one didn't cooperate with him, he couldn't cause the problems.
So why does it matter what's behind it? Because once we know, we know what we need to repent of, and we also then know how to pray. Prayer if far more powerful then most people believe. Yes, it may take years at times, but then again, we don't know what could have happened that was much worse if we weren't praying do we? So pray smart, repent and keep abiding in Jesus and in His Word. Examine yourself regularly to see if you're in the faith as we're told to in 2 Corinthians 13:5. It' for our own good and the good of our loved ones. “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.” (1 Timothy 4:16)
I know many of us, including myself, are going through trials right now and the Lord's been showing me a lot about the "whys" of it. We already know from James that trials test our faith with produces perseverance so we can be mature in our faith and not lacking anything, but there's much more we can learn too.
Let's look at some other hints the Lord gives us. We're told that we're to know Satan's schemes,(2 Corinthians 2:11) but how can we? We can know them because the Bible shows us how he operates. Once we know that, we can then look at what's going on in our own life and see if any of it might be being caused by Satan. Even if it is though, we have to remember that God is the one in control, and Satan cannot touch us without His permission. Therefore, if it is Satan, there's a very good reason for it. But we'll get to that later. First lets look at how he operates.
First, John 10:10 tells us that Satan is a thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy. He can not only steal our physical belongings, but also more important things like our peace of mind, our love for others, and our determination to serve the Lord, among other things. When it says "kill" we again have to remind ourselves what we're not just talking about physical death here, but also the death of spiritual things, including those I've already mentioned. So basically it's saying that Satan will try to wrench these things away from us any way he can, and that he will go so far to destroy and kill those things within us, if we allow it. He wants to destroy God's purpose in our lives, or at least cause us to think that he has. He wants desperately to wipe out our joy in the Lord because that's our strength. He wants to keep us away from God's Word because that's what changes and renews us and also gives us strength as it strengthens our faith and trust in God.
We're told in numerous scriptures that Satan is our accuser, so we know that another tactic of his is to accuse us of all we've done wrong, of all our sins, and he does it well. What we have to remember when we have a litany of sins that we have already asked forgiveness for going on in our minds, is that it is not God, but Satan behind it. God promises to "forget" our sins, not bring them up to us again or charge us for them, but Satan on the other hand loves to tell us how horrible we are and that we don't deserve God's love or salvation. He's right. We are horrible, and we don't deserve it, but he's wrong because our great and loving God has forgiven ALL our sins and made us His children and told us not to listen to Satan's lies any more.
Speaking of lies, we know too that Satan is a liar (John 8:44) and there's no truth in him. Look closely at that. There is NO truth in him. Everything he speaks or insinuates is a lie. Oh, he makes it sound good and lovely at times, and makes it sound logical and true to us, but it's still a lie and always will be. So we know that lying is another one of his tactics. What are some of the things that go along with lying? How about slander, or being a false witness against someone or something? How about exaggerating the truth, that's till a lie, or how we sometimes even lie about something we've done or not done.
To be a murderer, liar, thief, and destroyer, Satan cannot have any love within him for anyone other then possibly himself. Therefore there's another characteristic we can see in him and that's hate. We know that Satan hates all humans. He always has and always will. He wants every single one of us to suffer in hell forever. That's his agenda, because he hates God and he knows that God loves us. We know from Matthew 13:19 and many other scriptures that Satan snatches God's Word away from unbelievers so they won't believe in Jesus and that he puts blinders on them to prevent them from understanding God's Word or believing it. So obviously, he wants to prevent people from being saved, he wants to keep people from having a personal relationship with the Lord, and for those that are already saved, he wants to ruin their relationship with the Lord so they're ineffective and not receiving all the Lord has for them now. He can do that in a number of ways: by convincing them that they might not be saved, that they're too sinful etc, or he can do the opposite and convince them that they're relationship with the Lord is just fine, when in fact there is sin they need to repent of and they know it. This works just as well because the person's relationship with the Lord is not good and they are not being obedient to Him so they're not receiving all He has for them and instead are causing Him to be ashamed of them. But with Satan's initial help, they convince themselves that everything is just fine and continue in their sin bringing God's discipline on themselves.
To help us understand this a little better, we need to know that God gave every human being a conscience as our first defense against sin. It knows the difference between right and wrong and warns us when we're doing something we shouldn't. But, we can make our conscience ineffective by making up "reasons" also called "excuses" for what we're doing and telling ourselves that it's ok to do it because of these reasons. If we do that long enough, it will confuse our conscience so that our conscience will no longer nag us about that sin, since we've told it often enough that it's ok for us to do it. If we do this often enough in different circumstances, eventually our conscience will no longer view that as a sin at all. It will be totally confused and not warn us away from that sin or trouble us about it any longer. We quite literally harden hearts.
The Lord has also given us the Holy Spirit and He too warns us from sin and calls us to repent. He constantly urges us to get into God's Word where we belong, so we can be convicted if necessary and repent, and so we can grow in our faith, and in our relationship with the Lord. But we can harden ourselves against the Holy Spirit as well. This is why we're told not to grieve the Holy Spirit in Ephesians 4:30. What happens is similar to what happens with our conscience. The more we ignore the Spirit's leading, the harder it will become to hear Him. If we continue to disobey, eventually we won't hear Him at all for we will have grieved Him. The only way out of that mess is to start obeying the Lord, get in His Word, pray for forgiveness and then listen for all we're worth, obeying Him instantly to show that we truly have repented. Generally before that happens, we've had to go through quite the trial to get our attention though.
Satan knows all about our conscience and about the Holy Spirit leading and guiding us, so he desperately wants to interfere with both and aims at that a lot. So that's something we all need to be aware of and keep a close eye on ourselves for. This is yet another reason the Lord tells us throughout His Word to examine ourselves.
Knowing all this there's another thing we can look at to see what might be behind our trials. There are a number of lists in the Bible telling us what the "acts of the sinful nature are". We need to be aware of these because not only are they natural to our old sin nature, which makes them easy to fall back into, but they're often things Satan will use against us. So let's take a look at those lists. If we look at them carefully, we'll see that many of the things mentioned are listed numerous times.
“The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” (Galatians 5:19–21) "and the like" lets us know this list isn't complete, but that other similar things should be included.
“At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.” (Titus 3:3)
“Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” (Romans 1:28–32)
“Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices” (Colossians 3:5–9)
“For I am afraid that when I come I may not find you as I want you to be, and you may not find me as you want me to be. I fear that there may be quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, slander, gossip, arrogance and disorder.” (2 Corinthians 12:20)
“We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine” (1 Timothy 1:9–10) Again showing the list goes on.....
“For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry.” (1 Peter 4:3)
“Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9–10)
“Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.” (Ephesians 4:31)
Look at all that I underlined and notice how many of them are also used by Satan in his tactics against us or are characteristics of Satan's. That does not mean that every time we see any of these things that Satan is involved, but it is possible. However, all of these things are also part of our own sin nature as well. So we need not go blaming Satan all the time. Often however, what Satan will do is this: When one of us has been hurt by another person, and we dwell on it, then, Satan will jump on that and urge us to become angry, or angrier, and get us to continue to dwell on it. Next thing we know we're telling someone all about what that person did to us and showing them how awful that person is and how they can't be trusted etc. Oh we might do so and make it look "good" by saying we're only telling them so they'll pray for the person or something like that, but that can just be an excuse. What we're really doing is engaging in gossip and slander at that point. Both of those are things we're not to do. See what James 4:11 says about it among other scriptures. What blew me away about slander is that in the NT the word for slander is the same as the word for the devil or Satan! That's what Satan does to us and then we turn around and do it to others! We're being a devil when we do that! Other words for slander are tale bearing, and gossip. That showed me just how very wrong they are for any reason. Yet we here and see it being done all the time, every day by someone, especially during elections.
Keep in mind too that "murder" is not just killing someone, it can be killing their dreams (if they're godly ones) or hopes etc. Also remember what Jesus said about anger in Matthew 5:22 “But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” and what He said about adultery in Matthew 5:28.
I want to point out one other very big danger that Satan will take advantage of. When we get hurt and angry, our sin nature will want us to dwell on it and become bitter. Yet we see that bitterness is in those lists. Not only that but that God takes the time to especially warn us against becoming bitter. This is part of another list that I haven't yet posted as it's a bit different. Let me show you first what it says about bitterness: “See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.” (Hebrews 12:15) The ESV translates it: See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled; If you think back to what I said earlier about how we tend to harden our hearts against our conscience, bitterness is a part of that. Once we get far enough to even start to muddle our conscience, we can generally be sure there's a root of bitterness growing within our hearts about something. And God tells us that when that happens, it will cause trouble and defile many others besides ourselves! That's a very real danger that we need to be aware of! Realizing that, now let's take a look at this last "list" of things to be aware of:
“Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son. Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. He could bring about no change of mind, though he sought the blessing with tears.” (Hebrews 12:14–17) Notice that we're told what will happen if we don't obey. The last line is probably the scariest one of all and is speaking of what I initially talked about when we spoke of hardening our hearts and grieving the Holy Spirit. If we are truly saved, we cannot lose our salvation, but we can cause the Lord to be ashamed of us, we can lose the eternal rewards the Lord has for us in Heaven, and we can lose our effectiveness as a born again child of God, and lose the blessings the Lord has for us here and now. That a lot of loss, don't you agree? On top of that, since we know that God disciplines those He loves, we will also bring His discipline down on ourselves here and now. Notice too that this scripture doesn't just speak to us about ourselves, but also includes our brothers and sisters in the Lord, and our loved one, saved or not. It includes them because the root of bitterness will defile many, and the people it defiles will be those close to us. We're told to see that no one misses the grace of God so that's telling us that if we don't warn others about this, about their sin, then we will be held responsible for the misery they wind up in, and will be held accountable to God for them as well. This can go along with the following scripture which is every bit as scary: “But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” (Matthew 18:6) Jesus is not talking about a little child or young person here. He's speaking about Christians, His children, and using a loving term for us. He's speaking of the same children He was speaking of in Matthew 18:3-4. While this warning applies to the world, it also applies to other Christians as well. If we knowingly cause another Christian to stumble or sin, Jesus says it would be better for us to be drowned! That to me is pretty scary! Note He doesn't say we will be drowned, but that we'd probably think we'd be better off if we were. That's just how serious Jesus considers it which shows us that we need to be very careful about how we lead our lives, and we'd better be warning others the way the Lord tells us to when we see that they're about to or are living in sin, for if we don't..... I don't even want to think about it!
OK, now we have all kinds of ways to determine if the trials we're going through are being caused by our sin nature, Satan, or a combination of both perhaps. If we look at what's going on in our lives and we see any of these things in ourselves or in others that are involved in our trial, then we need to determine if it's our (or their) sin nature or Satan or both that's behind the problems. One thing I've seen a lot of lately is division and strife in families. The institution of the family was ordained by God, so anything attacking the family unit can and often does have Satan involved in it. He may have simply pushed someone's buttons when they were angry and helped the situation along some, so we most certainly can't put all the blame on him. If we, or another loved one didn't cooperate with him, he couldn't cause the problems.
So why does it matter what's behind it? Because once we know, we know what we need to repent of, and we also then know how to pray. Prayer if far more powerful then most people believe. Yes, it may take years at times, but then again, we don't know what could have happened that was much worse if we weren't praying do we? So pray smart, repent and keep abiding in Jesus and in His Word. Examine yourself regularly to see if you're in the faith as we're told to in 2 Corinthians 13:5. It' for our own good and the good of our loved ones. “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.” (1 Timothy 4:16)
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