the ultimate misleader...

In recent months my encounters with atheists has been on the rise.  I haven’t had any face to face interaction (that I am aware of) but in social networking I have heard and seen more.   A few of the Christian pages that I like on Facebook have a few dedicated atheist followers.  It amazes me and sometimes enrages me that they find so much time to post an anti-God statement on so many posts or give false claims of the Bible and Jesus.  I have never responded because my wise pastor once told me that it does no good to argue.  Two nights ago I was reminded of this once again, while Lance and I were reading through Titus together.  Paul tells Titus, “Warn a divisive person once, and then warn them a second time. After that, have nothing to do with them. You may be sure that such people are warped and sinful; they are self-condemned.”  To be divisive means to cause a disagreement or dissension ( a disagreement that brings about a lack of harmony between persons). 

Last night I was able to hold on to this even more.  As a side note and a telling of how God works throughout our lives here is a little insight—Sunday morning at church, we were given a lesson over Psalms 1:2-3. 

(blessed is the one)…. whose delight is in the law of the LORD,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
³ That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.

The message was that we were to read God’s word and meditate on that daily.  When we do this we are made stronger in our spiritual relationship with God.  I was reminded that it is impossible to build a relationship with my own husband if I do not get to know him, if I do not spend time with him and the Bible is God’s way of teaching us His character and in this we build a true relationship.  Dwayne had pointed out that many times after his reading he would later in the day be faced with an application scenario of something that he had earlier read.  That’s the amazing thing about God’s word—it still applies today.  So this is where I was.  Lance was encountering his own revelation and meditation but it dealt with another part of Titus and that is his story to tell. 

So, back to last night—I had stumbled across a blog of a guy through a post of a friend.  I had seen that he had written a book and I was intrigued because I love a good read and even more so a good read from a “real” person that knows someone I know!  I got to looking around and realized that this guy was an atheist.  It did take me sometime and even when he spelled it out in his description I was still not a 100% convinced.  Surely, he was kidding.  He had been a Christian, a theology major.  Now he was an atheist?  As I read through his “about me” blurp over and over, I tried to wrap my head about it.  We talk about it all of the time at home group.  How can intelligent people who know the Bible, study the Bible and who have experienced the Holy Spirit deny God?  He spoke of his month long journey trying to live as a child with his daughter as the example so that he could know what God wanted of him.  This journey led him to the conclusion that his spiritual journey was grounded in fear and in exchange for that fear he finds faith IN HIMSELF, realizing HE is the answer to all his wanting.  (That “he” is not capitalized because it is referring to the big He of God but for emphasis that he finds faith and answer in his own being—the common thread of atheists whom believe that Christianity is merely a crutch to help bring peace, order and sense to our lives.)  My heart instantly broke.  I don’t know this guy but my heart aches for him.  He, during a time of trying to draw near to God, was attacked by Satan and was able to be deceived.  The Bible says that Satan falsifies truth and delights in deception.  His goal is to get us to stop following God.  It would appear that in the life of this young man, Satan has won. 

Satan is constantly working, trying to attack us and get us to leave Jesus.  Though many people who claim to be atheist would not claim to be Satan followers, they have still been deceived by Satan.  All throughout the Bible, we see that we are given two paths; the one that leads us to Heaven or the one that leads us to Hell.  We are either for or against God.  We either choose the wide and easy path that the world offers or we take the narrow and hard path that leads to Jesus.   That is, if you don’t take the road to Jesus then you take the road to Satan by default.  The world is of Satan.  The wide path is the worldly path. 

Christians are under attack more than the non-believer.  Why does Satan care to attack someone who already follows him?  He has already won them over?  We talked about this just weeks ago in home group when discussing a statistic that more Christians get divorced than non-believers.  Why would Satan want to break up a team that is already on his side but the Christian home—now that is powerful.  Two married Christians who raise children to be followers of Jesus, to love Jesus and to know Jesus-now that is intimidating.  We are seeing divorce and separation around us and it is heartbreaking.  We pray for our marriage and for the marriages of our friends.  We know that divorce leads to destruction so we pray against it.  I feel like we should pray more as a group as the incidence continues to increase.

I know that this was a ramble of a blog but it’s what I felt led to post today.  Today, God wanted me to write warning of the deception of Satan.  Today, God wanted to remind us that we must always keep our eyes on Jesus because Satan is waiting around every corner to try and keep us from the Kingdom of Heaven…