Complex Spiritual Distractions Pt 2

Transcript

Hi Everyone! Welcome back the Living on Prayer podcast. I’m Emily and in today’s episode we’re going to pick back up on the topic of complex spiritual distractions. Last episode we touched on this topic towards the end of the episode and I listed out the most common complex distractions so today I want to dive into those in more detail. I also talked last time about who and where these spiritual distractions come from and gave you the American football playbook analogy to keep in your mind as we discussed these distractions. I want us to keep all of this in mind again as we continue talking about these complex spiritual distractions in more detail today. So let’s get started.  

First let’s remember that we have the most basic spiritual distraction which are lies. They’re the most basic and they’re thrown out all the time. You’ll see them and hear them alot because like I said before, Satan does not know how to tell the truth. And Satan is where these spiritual distractions come from and it’s his most basic play in his playbook. And also just to remember that typically once he starts manipulating people in to help him, they too will also start to lie and eventually the more they keep helping him the more consistently their own lying will become. 

Next there is deception. Similar to lying but it’s taking lying to another level. Where lying typically occurs through communication, deception employs strategy. And yeah, deception can include lying as part of its strategy, but deception typically exploits a person’s weakness, many of those weaknesses are their cognitive weaknesses. So let me give you a very easy real-world example. Advertisers can use deception by pricing products with .99 pricing that they like to do instead of just rounding up to nearest dollar. So like $9.99 instead of $10. Cognitively when we shop many of us feel like we’re spending less when we see it price under $10 and then choose to buy it but had it been priced at $10 we might not have actually purchased it. That’s where it becomes deception. Is it false information, no? The deception comes into play when advertisers knew that changing the price to $9.99 would feed into the cognitive weaknesses of some shoppers and get them to make the purchase verses actually pricing it at $10. So just a basic real-world example. 

Next let’s move on to temptation. Even Satan himself tried to tempt Jesus in the wilderness but we all know that didn’t work. Just read Matthew Chapter 4. But he tried. So if he has the audacity to try to tempt Jesus you know he’ll try to tempt every one of us. And temptation looks different for all of us but I’d probably be pretty right to say that we all have at least one thing in life that could tempt us, right? One thing, if not more than one thing, that could get our motors running. And what can temptations lead us to? Lots of things of course. But one of the first things that comes to mind is addiction. It’s easy to get into addictions or habits or routines with things that tempt us. I’m not saying that our temptations will lead us all into addictions or habits or routines but do look for these in your life because where you are tempted by something it is an easier place to fall into these traps in your life. Awareness is sometimes what we need to see it though and bring it to our own attention. When you do become aware of it remember to take it to God and ask Him for help. You don’t have to fix it in your life alone. And look my best advice here, coming from someone who has her own area of experience in this department, is to keep this one in check as best you can. The way I do it is to pray a lot. I keep this one in check with God all the time. He knows all of my weaknesses and vulnerabilities and this is no exception. So when Satan tries to tempt me I turn to God and let Him know what’s going on and ask Him for help. I can’t fix it on my own, I’d make a mess of it. I have made plenty of messes so again this is my best advice on this one! But also let’s be real here too. Stay away from your temptations as much as possible. If you’re tempted by fatty foods or sugary snacks, don’t buy them. If it’s oiled up men or scantily clad women, stay away from the clubs and the websites where you’ll find them. Help yourself and God out here. Don’t help Satan out!

Ok, so let’s keep going. talk Doubt and fear. Now Satan will get into our hearts and minds to sow doubt and fear and distrust in what God has promised us and what we know to be true and what the Bible has said to be true and what the Holy Spirit whispers to us. You know, even the disciples themselves experienced doubt and fear back when Jesus himself was with them. In Matthew Chapter 14, Peter doubted Jesus and needed him to rescue him in a storm. Why? Well, in this pretty well known scripture reference, Jesus had just fed the crowd of 5,000 with the five loaves of bread and two fish and that evening he and the disciples left the crowd and got in a boat to go to the other side of the lake. But in the early morning hours they still weren’t at land because they were fighting a strong wind and waves on the water and trying to get the boat to shore when they look up and Jesus is walking towards them on the water but they think it’s a ghost and get scared. Of course he tells them it’s him and not worry and Peter says if it’s really him to tell him to come over to him by walking on the water and Jesus says to come. So Peter gets out of the boat and starts walking on the water. But once he starts walking he looks around and realizes how bad the waves are and the wind is and he gets freaked out and then he starts to sink and screams out for Jesus to save him which of course he does. Then they both get in the boat and everything stops, the wind, the waves everything. And the disciples all realize again that Jesus is the Son of God. Like duh right. How many times does He have to prove himself. Even to his own disciples. But I feel like He has to do that to all of us over and over again because we all do this. We all doubt and have fear at even the smallest things. I do it. I get so mad at myself for doing it but then I just hear Him say to me stop Emily, you’re mine and I love you and I tear up because I don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve His love and forgiveness when I fail Him so often but He continues to give it to me anyway. He’s just like that and He’s like that for all of us. So remember that when you have these moments yourself. Humble yourself too and take it back to Him like I do. 

Ok another one of the complex distractions is accusation and shame. This is a big one! How many of us can feel this one because I can!? Well, let me tell you that in Revelations Chapter 12, Verse 10, Satan is called “the accuser” just so you know. And why is that? Because he is working to make believers feel unworthy of God’s love and grace. And if you haven’t read the book of Job or know what it’s about let me give you a quick recap. Satan basically goes to God and accuses Job of being faithful only because of God’s blessings which basically means he was trying to undermine Job’s relationship with God. Now God isn’t stupid so he didn’t fall for it like you or I probably would. But God did allow Job to be tested to prove Job’s loyalty and faithfulness, knowing full well that Job would pass with flying colors. Job lost everything and I mean everything. And he did nothing wrong in life by the way. He was the most righteous man living and yet God allowed him to lose everything, his family, his wealth, his home, his friends, and even his health. He was an outcast living in a pig pen on the outskirts of town. A laughing stock when he had been the most notable man with everything to his name before. A man who used to help others but then couldn’t get a handout from anyone. Have you ever felt like your life was going in a similar direction? Whether you deserved it or not, have you ever been up in life and then fallen? Did you feel shame or accusation? I’m guilty of this one for sure. I’m not a Job but I have definitely made decisions in my life that caused my life to go from up to down where I have felt the shame and accusations. But God forgives, Satan amplifies. That’s what you need to understand. God wants to return us to our correct paths, to forgive and forget our mistakes and move us back to where we belong in life so we can keep moving forward. Satan wants the chaos. He wants the drama. He wants us to sink in quicksand or in Job’s case, Satan wanted to prove himself to be right and Job to be unrighteous and unfaithful and basically to just die in that pig pen hopefully of a disease and in complete humiliation but God already knew the outcome. And again if you don’t know how Job’s story ends, Job stayed faithful to God and God restored everything to him twofold which means he doubled everything to him that he lost including his wealth, the number of children he lost, and his years of life. God has the final say on everything no matter what Satan whispers in our ears and we need to remember that always. 

Alright, so how else can Satan distract us. Well, there are also the worldly desires. Oh those are so great aren’t they? 1 John Chapter 2 tells us though to be careful in loving the world and its desires as they can pull us apart from God. And there’s nothing wrong with having worldly things, nothing at all. What we have to understand is where our weaknesses are and if that is a weakness for you then be aware because Satan will come at you with it. If you can be consumed by worldly things, worldly pleasures, then be careful and pay attention. Because he will use that to distract you spiritually. And it can be any worldly pleasure. Think of a worldly pleasure as anything in this world that you can’t take with you when you die. So if you enjoy it in this world but can’t take it with you then it could likely be categorized as a worldly pleasure. Everyone’s worldly pleasures look different but if you really want to know what yours are then just take a minute to really look around your home, look in your daily routine, in your spending and savings, in your phone’s photos, and introspectively in your daily thoughts and this should help you understand what you prioritize the most in your life and where your focus is on any specific worldly pleasures. 

Ok now we’re moving on to worrying and busyness in our daily life. The devil uses these distractions of our daily life to pull us away from focusing on our path and purpose and from our spiritual life. I am a walking example of busyness. My regular day job is very hectic, very busy and keeps me working a lot of hours. Add that to my personal schedule and it gets difficult for me to find time for what should be the most important part of my life which is my spirituality. It’s not an excuse at all. It’s a lack of prioritizing what matters most. And here’s where at times I find that I can be a hypocrite honestly. I have a huge problem with not prioritizing what matters the most in my life. I think we should prioritize the things and people that we love and care about the most first and foremost. But do we? Think about that. Do you, like me, prioritize the people and things you love the most in your life at the top of your list in your day and week and month and year? Or do they fall to the middle or bottom of your list? How much time do you give them in your life? If you died tomorrow, would they know you love them or would you just hope they know. Would you have regrets from how little you prioritized them, how little time you spent with them, how little you communicated with them? I say all this because I am very busy all the time but what I am busy with is stuff that is not and should not be my priorities. I have people and things in my life that I love dearly but I don’t get to see or talk to because I’m too busy. And busyness is my distraction and who caused this distraction? Well, you see where I’m going here. Now later, I’ll talk about what we do with these distractions. But knowing our distractions, understanding them, seeing them for what they are, being able to get a handle on them, that’s very important first. Like I mentioned with the American football analogy, these distractions are like the opponents plays, we can know their plays and see them coming but that doesn’t mean we’re not on the field taking the hits. 

Now these last few complex distractions I really want to discuss as a group and I want to mention them to all of us as Christians. These are extremely important because Satan uses these so often to target Christians specifically to keep us from coming together as a family of believers and it’s disheartening to me. These distractions are division, conflict, and distortion of the Scripture. Paul mentions in Ephesians Chapter 4 not to let anger give the devil a foothold which can lead to division and conflict. Satan is the author of disunity and conflict. He fosters it in hopes it will distract us from the missions and purposes that God created us all for. You know remember, we’re here to help others. To be Christians, to be disciples, to fulfill our divine purpose. And since Satan can’t take our soul anymore because we’ve already given it to Christ then what he wants to do is distract us off our paths, keep us from fulfilling our purposes, keep us from helping others. Those are all wins to him. And I’m not about to help him out and I want to do what I can to help other Christians not let him succeed in any way either. Look, I’ve said this before and I’ll say this again, I’m a fighter through and through. Yeah I guess I’m a lover too since I’m a Christian and God is love and therefore I am love and all. You know that old saying, are you a lover or a fighter. I would say that from a spiritual perspective, we should all be both. As Christians we’re all born again, and God is love and therefore we are love too which makes us the lover per se. But we’re here to fight against the evil in the world and Satan is the ruler of the world and therefore we should all be fighters as Christians. So we’re both. And I don’t have a problem saying that. And when it comes to Satan I’m a freaking fighter and I don’t back down to him or anyone like him because God already won my football game, I’m just playing the position He assigned me on the team. What about you? Are you playing your position? Are you sitting on the bench? Are you injured? Or did you decide to quit the team? 

Ok folks well I hope I gave you more details on these complex spiritual distractions and hopefully this information can help you while you’re out in the field every day in your assigned position. I also hope you will share it with your fellow teammates so they can become more aware of the opponents’ plays which can help them in their positions on the field as well. Either way, please remember to reach out to your head coach constantly because God loves you and wants you to succeed in every single move you make. Whether you’re injured, sitting the bench, on the practice field, or in the big game itself, He’s your number one fan and wants to help you achieve greatness! 

For today I will close us out with another Psalms from King David. This one is Psalms Chapter 145, Verses 3-5 “Great is the Lord! He is most worthy of praise! No one can measure his greatness. Let each generation tell its children of your mighty acts; let them proclaim your power. I will meditate on your majestic, glorious splendor and your wonderful miracles.”

Thank you all again for joining me on today’s episode. I look forward to having you back again next time. Until then, please be safe everyone. Take care!