The Fruit of Deception – Proverbs 6:12–15

“A worthless man, an evil man,
goes around with deceitful speech.
Winking in his eye, shuffling in his foot,
pointing in his fingers,
perversion in his heart, he devises evil;
at all times he will send out discord.
Upon such a man, suddenly shall his calamity come;
in a moment he will be damaged and there is no healing”

I recently had an employee who appeared to be a great “marketer”. He had a big personality; a fill-the-room type of presence.  In the world of consulting engineering, it is hard to find people who like to do the cold-call marketing.  This guy seemed made for it.

He had a great resume. He had great experience.  He had a philosophy for a great cultural fit.

Yet, with all that greatness potential, I fired him.

I fired him because greatness doesn’t trump deceitfulness.

It took me over a year of trying to work with him; trying to get his greatness to flourish without the discord that continued to fester.  It took me over a year to realize that there actually was no greatness.  His shtick was a deceptive illusion.

I had been deceived by a carefully crafted resume that masterfully gave false impressions.  I had been deceived into believing that a person who taught the principles of how I try to manage, would actually practice it.

So, I endured a year of discord.  A year of smoothing down ruffled feathers.  A year of confronting and encouraging the proper behaviour.  A year of scratching my head in hopes that I would not have to give up on someone.

But then came that last straw of deception and I had no choice but to fire him without warning.  

Upon such a man, suddenly shall his calamity come;
in a moment he will be damaged and there is no healing

I always hope when I fire a person that it will be a wake up call and they will change their behavior.  However, I don’t have much hope.  I recently saw his updated LinkedIn profile.  His description of his work while under my employment is…more deception.

Therefore, I conclude that Proverbs is as relevant today as it was in Solomon’s time.  This man has…

perversion in his heart, he devises evil;

This man needs Jesus.  Without Jesus, none of us can ever experience the greatness for which we were individually created.  Jesus is the only one who can cure a deceitful heart because a deceitful heart comes from a perverse heart, which is a evil heart.  

We all need Jesus, every day!  Therefore, this man will stay in my prayers for God to do a miracle and change his heart.  The same miracle He did for me.

https://ref.ly/Pr6.12-15 via the Logos Bible Android app.

“LIARS LIE” – Nov 29

“And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world – he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.”  Revelation 12:9

I have known a woman who was a liar.

She did not stretch the truth.
She did not exaggerate.
She did not take liberties.
She did get confused in the grey areas.

She lied.

Her years of elaborate deceptions finally fell apart when the pieces of her puzzle failed to come together.  Once a few of her tales came into question, the remainder of her web quickly crumbled under closer examination.

We found that most of what she portrayed was an elaborate ruse of half-truths and misrepresentation.  She was a magician at distortion.  She understood human behavior like few that I have met at her age.  Her skill allowed her to merge truth and untruth in an amalgam of distortion, misdirection, and outright fabrication.  She created these fantastic fairy tales that were designed to manipulate those who cared about her.

When we picked through the ashes of her falsehoods, we found that she lied even when the truth would have sufficed.  It seemed that the purity of the truth was never sufficient.  She could not allow an unadulterated word pass her lips.

She was a liar.

It is difficult to deal with a liar.  I want to trust people.  I am inclined to believe what I am told.  I easily grant the benefit of the doubt to the spirit behind the words.  However, those tendencies are foolish to convey to someone who struggles with lying.  They thrive on the temptation of the trusting.  A true liar deceives and manipulates the naïve often without them even realizing it.

Only the simple or foolish will blindly trust the words of a liar.  I am on my guard when I am dealing with a message that comes from a liar.  I am cautious of being mislead.  I am inquisitive of underlying assumptions and redefinition of words.  I am hesitant to blindly follow the promises of one tempting my confidence.

I am reminded of the words of the French poet, Charles Baudelaire:
The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he did not exist.

I am continually amazed by the lack of discernment that is shown to the messages of the world.  What do you think is the source behind the common message espoused through various media outlets?

What spirit do you think is behind Richard Dawkins message that there is no God?
What spirit do you think is behind Jon Stewart’s message that Christ is not the only way?
What spirit do you think is behind Rob Bell’s denial of hell?
What spirit do you think is behind Oprah Winfrey’s spirituality?
What spirit do you think substituted Santa for the manager?
What spirit do you think substituted the easter bunny for the Cross?

I am not making aspersion about any person nor am I presuming their motivations.  However, I believe there are spiritual forces in this world that have a strategy of deception.  We are told that Satan is the master of the false message.  The spirit of the great liar is infused into the messages from the world he controls.  His purpose is to lead people astray.  He can manipulate the unsuspecting into advocating an underlying message without ever revealing himself.

Do you believe that? 

I believe that.  It is why I believe that it is critical to judge the spirit behind all the messages that we are persuaded to believe.

Does the message teach that all spirituality must be consistent with the Bible?
Does the message teach that salvation comes by Christ alone?
Does the message teach that all glory is due to God?
Does the message affirm the teachings of prophets, Christ and the Apostles?

We live in a world filled with messages from conflicting winds.  These winds originate from opposing poles.  What you believe will determine where you are blown.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, SO THAT we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.  (Ephesians 4:11-14, emphasis added)

Those who are not in Christ will be blown about by the deceptive spiritual wind of Satan.  They do not have the Spirit of Christ within them to guide them.  They have not been equipped by the teachings of the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers.  They do not have the knowledge of the Son of God.

Therefore, we must be wise when handling their messages.  We must be discerning.  We must be on our guard.  We must be cautious of being mislead.  We must be inquisitive of underlying assumptions and redefinition of words. We face a liar behind all these messages who is bent on deceiving us.

If you believe that, then you should live in that reality.

We need to learn to trust the reality of the world revealed through scripture and not the one obscured by a liar.  We need to trust the words of the faithful servants of God who are a gift to our souls, given to keep us from being blown astray.

PRAYER: O Lord, thank you for giving us the tools to recognize the message of our enemy.  Thank you for teaching us how to stay close to You.  Thank you for you Spirit who you have sent to guide us.  Lord, open my ears to hear.  Strengthen my heart against all the enticing messages from this world that will blow me astray.  Write your word upon my heart.  Give me wisdom to discern your Spirit.  Grant me understanding to know You.  I pray this in the precious name of your Son,  Jesus Christ.   Amen.

Sources:

Charles Baudelaire Quotes
Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science
Jon Stewart on Religion – Morality
Love Wins a Review
The Church of Oprah Winfrey

“TRAPPED LIKE A MISERABLE GOPHER” – April 2

“Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.  For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 6:11-12

I am a ruler; a sovereign noble over more than nine acres of flora, fauna and terra firma.  My kingdom produces a variety of produce including cheatgrass, kosher weed, thistle, white-top, knapweed, ragweed, stinkweed, milkweed, morning glory, hemlock, crabgrass, Russian olive, among other varieties of the unwanted.  My kingdom is not a land of agricultural produce.

However, there is trouble in my kingdom.  There is open rebellion to my rule.  Not all the inhabitants of my lands are willing to subjugate their existence to my rule.  The gophers have declared their independence.  They have declared their freedom and pockmarked my fields with mounds of defiance.  They are usurpers and destroyers.

I hate gophers.

Their existence is a stench.  Their menacing message has reached even within my yard.  The audacity of proclaiming their message of defiance by blanketing mounds of soil over my grasses of fescue, cultivated by my own hand, has to be stopped.  My domain must be defended.

I have declared war on all gophers and have bounded myself to their destruction.  Their destruction has been primarily wrought through the use of the trap.  This season my wrath has been particularly felt by these usurpers.  I have already trapped 44 of their rebellious kind.

Deception and lies are the principles of effective trapping.  The gopher must be deceived into complacency in order for the trap to deliver them to their destruction.  The gopher must be lured from the safety of their natural environment into the artificial environment of my trap.  This dance of enticement requires the practice of the art of deception.  Every gopher that I have trapped has followed the promise of one of my lies.  I have never pursued any gopher down their filthy tunnel.  I am a master of deception and lies.  My lies are crafted upon their natural tendencies to orchestrate a sonata that is so seductive that they willingly shuffle from the hand of safety into my hand of destruction and death.

The immature gophers are easy.  They are oblivious to a change in environment and the danger that it represents.  I don’t even have to be very careful in crafting the deception of my trap for these wee-ones.  They stumble along and don’t perceive that the walls of their tunnel have changed from dirt to plastic, they don’t comprehend the unfamiliar scent of my hand, they do not consider the danger of the message dangling enticingly before  their nose.  They push against the trip-wire that I have lured them to and there is no time for escape once tripped.  They are in my hand in that instant and their destruction is assured.

I prefer to kill gophers when they are young, before they get the chance to mature and start to reproduce.  That is when they become a real problem.  Therefore, I am diligent in setting my traps during those periods when I know that the young are venturing out into their own tunnels.  I can tell when a little one is finding its own way.  Their tunnels are small and their mounds are little.  Their tunnels are shallow and easy to dig up.  I seek them out.  I will pursue a young one over a mature one.  A mature gopher is hard to deceive.  My time is best spent on the young ones.  Therefore, my eyes roam my lands for small mounds and I am quick to spread my traps of deception when the young ones venture too close.

This does not mean that I do not entice the mature gophers.  I celebrate every mature gopher that I destroy.  They are the ones responsible for the greatest encroachments into my domain.  Therefore, the mature gophers, especially the leaders, which I can ensnare, are particularly satisfying because I understand the difficulty in getting them to fall.  The trick for trapping a mature gopher is to get them distracted from their natural senses.  The deception for a mature gopher must be sufficient to get them to rush into the trap.  They must be enticed to rush forward with passion, otherwise the warning signs of even the most skillful lie will alert them to danger and they will flee, backfilling their tunnel, and the opportunity lost.

I play on the passions of the mature.  I know what they love.  I know what instincts drive them.  Gophers are very territorial.  Each gopher has its own tunnel system and they defend it vigorously.  Their territory is their greatest love; it is their greatest passion.  They will rush to the defense of their territory.  When I set a trap for a mature gopher I spin the lie of their greatest passion.

I take the body of a gopher that I have already killed and lay it behind the trip-wire of my trap.  A mature gopher will be blinded by their passion to protect their territory and rush past all the warning signs that normally would have kept them safe.  I have trapped gophers so large that I don’t know how they pushed themselves into my trap.  Their territorial passion must have been all consuming.  This has been the only way I have been able to kill the big ones.  It is the only way I have been able to effectively deceive them.

I use death to entice them to death.

Every follower of Christ lives in a world, whose ruler hates them.  Those who call on the name of Christ are an abomination to the ruler of this world.  We have an enemy who is seeking our destruction.  We have an enemy who cannot destroy us in safety of our new environment in Christ.  Therefore, he must lure us out of the safety with deceptions and lies.

He has an affinity for feasting on the destruction of the immature.  He spins lies that the words of God are not true and cannot be trusted; he crafts the deception that giving up the pleasures of this world is not worth the gift of eternal life; he amplifies the cares of this world to choke the young with anxiety and worries so that they forget what they have been promised; he send in charismatic wolves to preach a slightly different message that sends the careless in a direction that leads only to the trap trip-wire.  He seeks the young ones who are venturing out on their own because they are easy to deceive.  He wants to get them before they spread the message of the Gospel and become a real problem.

However, that does not mean that he does not come after the mature ones.  He just has to work harder.  He has to craft more elaborate lies.  His traps may take years to be laid.  He knows that he must get the mature followers of Christ to blindly rush after his lies and ignore all that they know to be true.  He must stoke their passions for the flesh.  He must get them to abandon their first love.  All he has available for bait is death.  Therefore, he must make death appear beautiful and desirable.  He must craft an illusion that in death there is the promise of all that they have ever desired.  He must get them to believe that death is preferable to life.

He uses death to entice the wayward to death.

Our enemy roams this world seeking those whom he can devour.  Do you believe that?  There are many who don’t believe that.  There are many who live in so careless a manner that it appears that they are oblivious to the existence of a predator.

It is in Christ where we are safe.  We are secure when we are living according to the Spirit and our minds are set on the things of the Spirit.  We have nothing to fear when we hear the word of God, believe it and bear fruit.

The fact that we have nothing to fear does not mean we should be lackadaisical to dangers.  We do not need to fear of this world due to our ability to cling to the promises of God.  The setting of our minds on the wonderful promises of God and the things of His Spirit is what grounds our hearts to our first love.  It keeps our passions for our first love.  When we love God with everything that we are and have then there is no passion that will entice us to rush away from our Lord.  Perseverance is the following of our passion for Christ and Him alone.

Let us not ignore  the world that we live in.  We have an enemy who is cunning.  He will lay many traps for us.  However, he is not to be feared as long as we do not let our love for our Lord to venture from our hearts.

PRAYER: Lord, thank you for freeing us from a spirit of slavery and living in fear.  Thank you for giving us the Spirit of adoption as sons by whom we can cry “Abba! Father!”  Thank you for hearing our cries.  Lord keep us and protect our hearts from all of the passions that can be used to entice us to wander away from you and our minds to drift back to the things of this world.  You are better than all that this world has to offer, combined.  Keep me under the shelter of your wing.  Amen

HEY! HOW DID THAT “BUT” GET IN? – Dec. 2nd

“Hittites, the Amorites, and the Jebusites, heard of this, they gathered together as one to fight against Joshua and Israel. But when the inhabitants of Gideon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and to Ai, they on their part acted with cunning…” Joshua 9:1b-4a

I often work as a consultant to government entities on regulatory issues. The majority of applicants don’t want to do what the code requires. It costs them money. Therefore, they try an assortment of strategies to circumvent the requirements. Their strategies fall into two broad categories – fighters and manipulators.

Fighters will come in with all guns a-blazing. They will assemble their team of experts and attorneys and we’ll have a go at it. I have no problem with fighters. I like and respect them. The system is built for them and they are working it as it was intended.  The manipulators are another story.  They are the soothsayers that will tell you what you want to hear all the while cunningly plotting to do exactly the opposite. They are difficult to spot since they appeal to your sensibilities.  However, their appeal to cronyism can have disastrous long-term consequences.  I would be a fool to think there were only “fighter” adversaries out there.

However, we Christians often make that naïve mistake. We think that we either don’t have any adversaries or that our adversaries are only those who blatantly fight against the Faith. I have been astonished at how some will take at face value the soothing words of a person that they personally know nothing about.

I am reminded of a sister in the Lord whose husband left her and their children through acts of stunning deception. She said that she found out that he was not what he appeared – he was very cunning. She now has to deal with this person for the foreseeable future. I have seen Churches devastated by a Pastor who came in saying all the right words but time revealed that he may not have even been a believer. They are still rebuilding and recovering.

It is so very easy to be deceived when we rely upon our own senses. Some may say, “But I have the gift of discernment.”  Really; Do you have more discernment than Joshua, who was “full of the spirit of wisdom” (Deut. 34:9)?  If Joshua could be deceived, then you and I can be deceived.

There is no decision that will not wait to allow time to seek the Lord in prayer. That was the Israelites error – they did not ask counsel of the Lord (Josh. 9:14).  Any person who will be offended by you seeking the counsel of the Lord is someone that you should reject, summarily.

Our typical response is to accept that which appeals to our senses – “but I love him”, “but he is such a great speaker”, “but it is logical”, “but it just feels right”, “but look at her resume”, “but they come from a great family”, “but they are so consistent in these areas”….but, but, but.

We are foolish to accept the “buts” without prayer. Be careful relying upon your own senses, you may just end up having to live with a “butt”.

PRAYER: Lord, Protect me from my own confidence and pride; Forgive me for acting as if I don’t need you.  Lord, I need your wisdom in all aspects of my life and especially in those areas of discernment. Father, remind me of my need for you; humble me so that I will seek you in all things. Protect me from disception, particularly my own.  Amen