BIBLE PASSAGE:
Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would
love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come
on my own; God sent me.
(John 8:42)
MEDITATION:
“Do I belong to God?”
It is a question that many have struggled with throughout each generation.
Jesus gives us a simple measurement
for answering this question for ourselves.
He tells us plainly that when God is our Father,
we will love Jesus, because He was sent by the Father.
The next obvious question is,
“How do I know that I love Jesus?”
Again, Jesus gives us a plain and simple answer.
“If you love me, keep my commands.” (John 14:15)
In summary, when we ‘belong to God’,
we will love Jesus and obey His commands.
Why would we fail to obey His commands
(which is an indication that we do not love Him)?
We could probably create a long list of answers to this
question, but Jesus tells us that we fail to hear what He says.
Why is my language not clear to you? Because
you are unable to hear what I say. (John 8:43)
When we disobey His commands,
it means we are not listening to what He tells us.
We may ‘hear’ Him, but we are not
applying His words (commands) to our lives.
Even though His words are true,
we fail to believe Him enough to obey Him.
Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! (John 8:45)
As a result of our sinful nature, we may ‘love the Lord’ and
still fail to obey Him at times, but when we ‘belong to God’,
the desire of our heart is to ‘keep His commands’.
Why would someone choose to ‘not believe Him’?
Again, Jesus provides the answer – He says it is because
our ‘father’ is the ‘devil’ and not ‘God’, so we are listening to Satan.
And, as a result, the desires of our heart are the same as Satan’s.
You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out
your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning,
not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies,
he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
(John 8:44)
Jesus also exposes the devil for who he really is.
In a nutshell, ‘he is a liar!’
Satan is a clever liar because his lies sound a lot like the truth.
He wants to change our thought processes
so that he can deceive and destroy us.
He is the ‘father of lies’ who can cleverly teach us
how to justify our disobedience, and desensitize
our feelings of what is wrong in God’s eyes.
He wants to convince us that good is bad, bad is good,
right is wrong, and wrong is right.
But of course his greatest lies are about God Himself.
If Satan can get us to think wrongly about God;
if he can deceive us into thinking God is something He isn’t;
then he has gained control of us in everything.
Satan becomes the master of our life when we
allow his deceptions to infiltrate our thoughts.
We see his efforts playing out in our world today.
Things that were once considered a violation of God’s
commands, first became tolerated and then became accepted.
Some of them have even been legislated for legitimacy.
As we see the increase of his efforts to deceive,
the world can become a dismal place for those who ‘love the Lord’.
However, God’s Word gives us valuable information for
handling the personal attacks from Satan on each of us.
ACTION:
We engage in battle with him at his point of attack – our mind.
“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world
does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.
On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.
We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up
against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought
to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)
We know this battle is real, and we know it starts
in our mind, where our desires originate.
When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God
cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each
person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil
desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth
to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.
(James 1:13-15)
Our defense is not to be passive, but requires a conscious
effort on our part if we expect to have victory over his lies.
In our weakness, we cannot expect to be victorious, but
praise God, we can have success when we ask the Holy Spirit
to defend us and turn away the attacks of the evil one.
Pray,
“Heavenly Father, You know the vicious attacks from the
evil one more than I do, and You know how to defeat his
efforts in my own life. I pray that You would expose his
lies to me, so that I will know when I am being attacked
and in need of Your presence in my life. Teach me to call
on the Holy Spirit to repel his attacks and help me in my
efforts to guard my mind from being contaminated by his
lies. Father, I belong to You, so my desire is to show my
love for Your Son and to obey Your commands. Forgive
me whenever I fail, and encourage me to keep fighting
against the forces of evil.”
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