Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
Select a thought to read by choosing a collection, the month, and then the day:
As I was in prayer early Sunday morning, February 13, 2000, the Lord put it in my heart to write about the seven lies His people believe. I had no idea when I began to write what even the second lie would be, much less the third or fourth. I just knew they would come to me as I went along if it was indeed the Spirit of God that prompted me to begin writing. And they did. Here is the last of the seven principal lies that Christians have persuaded God's children to believe.
Christianity has misled God's people to believe that the Devil is god over bad things that happen and that our heavenly Father is God of all good things that happen. This idea constitutes modern Christianity's form of idolatry, and it is now deeply imbedded in the minds of God's own people. His Old Covenant people were taken in by this very deceptive doctrine, His New Covenant people have been no wiser than they.
If God has numbered to you the hairs of your head (Mt. 10:30), if He is involved in the death of the smallest of birds (Mt. 6:26), if he designs the colors of the most insignificant plants of the field (Mt. 6:28), how, then, will He not be intimately involved with the trials of the faith of His people? "The Lord trieth the righteous", wrote the wise men of old (Ps. 11:5). Then, whence cometh the notion that the devil is trying our faith when bad things happen? And whence cometh the notion that if we err, "the Devil will get us"? It is much more terrifying, and much more comforting, to know that if we err, our heavenly Father will "get us". In whose hands would you rather be when you are hurting?
In the late afternoon of August 23, 1981, the Lord spoke these life-changing words to me, "It tickles the Devil for God's people to blame their troubles on him." And I understood immediately why that is true: As long as we are blaming the Devil for the troubles that our heavenly Father has designed for our spiritual growth, we will neither seek for nor accomplish His purpose for sending those trials our way. We can never come to know our Father while trusting Satan to hurt us, for "The Lord is known by the judgment which He executeth" (Ps. 9:16). If we believe, as some do, that the Lord never causes pain to anyone, and if we believe the "judgments" we sometimes suffer are from Satan, then how can God ever be known to us?
Whom does the Bible say cursed Adam and Eve (as well as the serpent)? The Devil? Did the Devil send the flood that destroyed the earth? Did the Devil confuse the languages of men at the Tower of Babel? Did the Devil send the awful plagues upon Egypt? Or did the Devil anoint Elijah to call for a three-year-long famine upon Israel in the days of her transgression? Did the Devil design the wondrous, gruesome, saving work of Jesus on Mount Calvary? When Peter was determined to fight to the death those who came to arrest his Master, didn't Jesus say to him, "The cup which my Father has given me to drink, shall I not drink it?"
Whom do you trust to be God over the unpleasant circumstances of your life? I can assure you that the answer you give to that question will be a determining factor in how well you come to know and be made like your heavenly Father. No one who trusts Satan to determine his sufferings for him can ever be perfected in Christ. And no one who loves God and steadfastly trusts Jesus to be Lord of both the pleasant and unpleasant circumstances will be disappointed with the results. For "we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose". And that is true only because it is our loving heavenly Father, not our adversary, the devil, who is working the "all things" of our lives.
That the Devil is the god of our troubles is the Seventh Lie that God's children believe.
For more information, check our web site for tract #12, "All Things".