Satanic Lie #2 - Victim

It's a dusty idea that I'm responsible for myself and no other person or group of people can make you do the things you do.

Satanic lie # 2 - You are and will always be a victim. To be pitied and accommodated by everyone you come in contact with. You're the wounded one and everyone needs to cater to you. Your every whim needs to be accommodated, and if its not everybody is going to know it. 

In John 5, the man at the pool of Bethesda, was asked if he wanted to be made well. I've often wondered about that question. Some people might consider that a silly or rhetorical question. Of course I want to be healed! Is that what the man would say? He didn't just say "yes", he started with reason or excuses why he hasn't been healed yet. Some people don't want to be healed, that would stop the pity party, so Jesus asked him if he wanted to stop the pity party, stop getting the attention and follow him and serve others. Some people are in need of being healed by Jesus in a spiritual way. And a lot of us have been healed from sin and are still laying at the gate. As long as we can lay at the gate and be a victim of whatever it is we've been healed of spiritually, we don't have to get up and walk and take our share of the load. If we stop being a victim what would we be? Some of us don't understand what we'd be, because its never occurred to us that we might not be a victim any more.

Satanic Lie #1 - Repentance

It's a dusty idea that that little voice in the back of your head that you call common sense sometimes is really just the devil talking to you.

Satanic lie #1: You can't change. There's no use in you repenting of the things you want to stop doing. You're just going to do them again and you've said over and over again, "This is the last time I'm ever going to do this." You just wound up doing it again. Don't go up there and try to say you can stop, then you'll just be lying to God.

This is a lie, you can change and God can change you. Even while you are doing the things you do and think you have your closest friends and dearest relative tricked. They know you need a change in your life.

II Corinthians 7:10 - For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. (ESV)

True repentance has to be motivated by how you offended God. Not by how you were found out or who found you out. If you repent based on who found you out and how you offended other people, you will more than likely just find a more clever way of doing it so as not to be found out the next time. If you repent because you have offended God, then you'll understand that God is everywhere and sees everything. There's no where to hide or no way to cleverly stop God from noticing what you're doing.

What works repentance is "I have offended God and I need to change of my own free will and stop doing what offends God, because I want to." It can't be because my wife, my children or my parents want me to stop and I don't really want to. That isn't repentance, that is trying to stop doing something that I really want to do and I don't want to get caught by my family again.

Luke 13:3 - Unless you repent you will all likewise perish......