The Simplicity of Jesus' Love

By Bonnie Ricks, This Day's Devotional Monday, January 08, 2007

2 Corinthians 11:3 NIV

"But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your mind may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ."

It's amazing how easily people are deceived and led away from the simple truth that is in God's Word. Educated people. Uneducated people. All people. This means you and me. How can this happen?

It's pretty obvious to most when a hoax arises. Like when Doe, the "prophet", led all of his followers to commit suicide, convincing them they'd all end up on a comet's tail, or something like that. when that kind of thing happens, the vast majority of people can instantly see the deception. Others can't. Some didn't and died because of their own blindness.

Then there are the not-so-obvious deceptions. Psychology, for the most part, is a deception. (Apologies to those good Christian psychologists and counselors who are using God's Word to temper the fallacies in humanistic psychology.) Virtually all self-help books and magazine articles are filled with deception. Psychics and astrologers are the epitome of deception. Your friends, unless they are firmly rooted in God's Word, will deceive you. And sadly, many, many pastors and preachers are deceivers, with the most prevalent deception one that drags whole congregations into bondage to a "law" of some kind - either returning to the Old Testament laws (the ones that were nailed to the cross with Jesus), or to "laws" of their own making... rules and regulations designed to keep people "in line" and in bondage.

So how do you and I protect ourselves from being deceived? How do we make certain that we, unlike Eve, avoid the deception that Satan places in our paths daily? By being like the Bereans in Acts 17:11, who were considered "more noble than the Thessalonians" because they listened with joy to everything that Paul said, and then went home and checked what he had said against the scriptures, to make sure what he said was true! By studying God's Word - ALL of it. by not taking verses out of context to prove what we want to believe. by spending time each day alone with the Lord so that we might listen to His voice and understand what He says. by becoming like children, able to trust totally, to understand the simplicity of His love, and to return that love unconditionally and completely.

Guard yourself against the deceivers - look to God's Word and only God's Word for your truth. It's the only really trustworthy truth that exists.

Used with Permission