Someone Easy To Blame

Looking For The Devil Behind Every Bush You may think you are under spiritual attack…When actually you are suffering from a lack of self-discipline in spiritual things. It is important to understand, I tell you this as a friend, out of love and care for you. This is the words from Gods word that tell us, we need to be aware how we walk in this world. My friends, it is easy to fall into the rut of looking for the devil behind every bush. You see what has been created is a culture where everything is spiritual “warfare,” where everything points to the devil,” and everything is “a demon,” when in reality we are not taking responsibility for our undisciplined choices. We go places where we know good and well we should not be. Plus, we base everything on emotions rather than on commitment and on our faith and trust in God. In so doing we have allowed our habits to take control of us. You see, the devil is not the cause of everything bad that hapens to us. The fact is it is just to easy to blame Him for everything that happens. You see as humans, it is our nature to blame someone, look at the story of Adam and Eve, they both pointed fingers, Adam as Eve, and Eve at the devil.You see the Bible talks about demons, for sure. But it also talks about discipline, the keepping ogf promises, and responsibility As I read the scriptures I see that, Paul did not blame the devil for everything. He said, “I discipline my body and bring it under subjection” (1 Corinthians 9:27) which means to train, restrain, and beat into alignment. That is intentional action on our part.Taking responsibility for who and what we are becoming. But for some reason we like to think we are strong and can rebuke evil and get away with it. It makes us feel important and in control. Yup, we love to rebuke spirits, but we do not like to confront our own personal sinful habits we have built into our own lives. Or, we will rebuke poverty, as the spirit of poverty, but still we refuse to budget and or tithe. We will rebuke sickness but refuse to do what it takes to eat and live a healthy life style. We rebuke anxiety and worry and sleepless nights, yet we refuse to renew our minds, through the reading of the scriptures and spending time in the presencs of God and in prayer. We rebuke those who do evil, those who cause trouble in our community, the thieves and the vandales, but refuse to help solve the problem or to be brought under correction ourselves. So all of this rebuking, or (pointing the finger is another thing we should call it) but, we call it spiritual warfare, and God calls it lack of integrity. The Holy Spirit not only just saves and delivers us, but he also guides and protects us. We need to take responsibility for our action and also the lack there of. I know that spiritual warfare is real, it tell us in the scriptures to resisit the devil and He will flee from you. Jesus rebuked the devil and quited scripture to risist Him. But spiritual maturity has the ability to discern between what is demonic and and what is self induced. We must use spiritual discernment in our christian walk and in the choices we make on a day to day bases. James 1, does not blame the devil, he does not look for the devil behind every bush. But rather it is more the act of people who are “drawn away by their own desires.” And that they need to confront those desires not to be drawn into them. The devil does love to make those desires look attractive, but we need to realize that if we fall for them, it is us, who is making that chice, not the devil. You see, the doors of life are not always opened by the devil. Most of them are flung wide open by each of us falling for our own desires. We walk through those doors on our own accord, the devil cannot push us into making that choice, it is our own free will. And then we stay in those rooms until we decide we want back out and make a good choice. Yet , i this life we point fingers at the devil, and we pray rebuking the devil and we call it spiritual warfare, when actually it is our affair. And, God does not have to protect us, when we choose to walk through those doors, we have opened. But often he still does, especially when we are one of His children. Friends, prayer is a must if we are going to keep from falling for the human desires we have. We must remember that a prayer prayed a miss is an empty use of words. We must pray according to Gods will, and not jus=t our own desires. But, I believe and know true prayer will bring down strong holds, and will see us win spiritual battles. In it we defeat the devils attempts to trip us un, and we do not have to rebuke Him when we make right choices, because then we do not give Him a foot hold in our lives. Prayer without action,is also empty and untruthful. But on the other hand, prayer is powerful, when we pray according to the will of God. When we pray and are full of integrity and responsibility we are a powerful tool in the hands of our God. We need to take note that Jesus disciplined Himself, through fasting and prayer. He withdrew to a quiet place to speak with God and to know His will and how to submit to it. He modeled self-control,in His temptation after 40 days of wondering in the desert. We need to realize the Holy Spirit produces fruit, and one of them is self-control (Galatians 5:23). We need to master our impulses, and desires. We can know the Holy Spirit is truly at work in our lives, when we do not fear and we become stable in our walk with Him. He will give us all the gifts and abilities we need to walk and do His will. He will teach us how to be in control of the life we live by placing it into His capable hands. We will see that having self-control is a good spiritual trait, integrity is also a part of our spiritual walk. So stop looking for the devil behind every bush and blaming him. But rather we need to begin taking responsibility for the dysfunctions we are experiencing and bring our body into a disciplined state and allow Jesus to fix us. As we do, we will begin to see some breakthroughs and we will begin to experience success in our spiritual walk. My experience is that my breakthroughs have come as I have learned self-control, learned to live a life of integrity, and modeled a disciplined structured life with, wisdom and obedience, that came with every victory I had over the past darkness in my life. There is no doubt the devil is busy trying to keep from loosing more people. But as we seek to follow and do the will of God, we are , sabotaging His plans and adding to the defeat He experienced when Jesus arose from the dead. So, I am pleased and thankful, to my God who was patient with me as I matured in the Lord. I grew closer to Jesus and to my God, as I have taken responsibility for my actions, confessed my sins and have experienced Christs forgiveness and have learned spiritual responsibility. I know, God will fight for me, but on the other hand, God will not do for me what He has given you the power to do myself with His help. For I have the power of the Holy Spirit with in me and I am able to live according to His will. He has given me the power to choose. Thank you Lord, for the helper, in the form of the Holy Spirit in my life. AMEN