What Would You Say…

What Would You Say… by Randolph Jason for Gospel News Network

Having the honor of working with men just out of prison / jail this is something that happens on a regular basis. The men that I meet are just a few days removed from their drug of choice – lots of heroin and lots of meth – crystal meth. These two drugs a scourge on the landscape of life; they are, absolutely, instruments of the devil, weapons of spiritual war.

We don’t have to live the life we have been living, we don’t have to believe the lies we tell ourselves everyday. The devil is very good at convincing us that we are someone that we are not, then hides behind our pain while whispering a false identity in our mind over and over and over and over – a million times a day. Ask it to stop, tell the voice to be silent and it must leave, it must follow the directions given.

If you could tell an addict or alcoholic ONE thing on their first day of sobriety, what would it be? 🤔

— chelsea ♡ (@sipandsink) August 25, 2021

We can learn what the devil does in the Gospels when Jesus Christ, was under attack by the devil who was trying to get Jesus to give up His identity as the Son of God. Three times the devil questioned Jesus, three times Jesus denied him.

And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered. And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread. ~Luke 1:1-3 KJB

This is what the devil, the tempter, the accuser, the deceiver does us to in our weakened state. The devil prowls around looking for a crack, a tiny way in to our mind to whisper a lie, a temptation or an accusation against our identity. With Christ he went full frontal attack – “If thou be the Son of God…” with us it may be different but the goal is the same. Get us, the children of God, to believe something false about our Christ identity so that we may be knocked down to allow the pain to begin driving the bus of our life.

We must know the spirit is the Holy Spirit and an agent, like Smith, that can morph into any voice, any face and even quote scripture. We must test these spirits.

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error. ~1 John 4:1-6 KJB

Simple, but not necessarily easy. Just like everything else in life we must try and try so that while practice may not make perfect it does make better – that includes us.