All Is Not What It Seems Series

Jesus says, "I told you 2,000 years ago. He’s a murderer and he accomplishes it through deception, and he will not tip his hat to his existence because he doesn’t want to overplay his hand," but there’s an invisible world that impacts our visible world every single day. And it’s why I, as a somewhat rational human being, lean hard into the teachings of Jesus. It’s why I pray for me and my family every day, "Keep falsehood and lies far from me. Keep falsehood and lies far from us. Keep falsehood and lies far from me." It’s why I pray every day, "God, please help me to see as you see. I just want to see as you see, not through the lens of culture, not through the lens of deception, not through the lens of my emotions. I want to see the world like you see it."

Because there’s a deceiver and there’s a twister, and I don’t fear what he will do to my physical body, and I don’t fear that he’s going to show up in some strange, weird, Halloween kind of way. That’s not the fear or the concern. The concern is that our realities get twisted, that our views of one another get twisted, that our views of marriage, of raising our kids, our money, our world, our politics, our religion--that somehow they gets so twisted that we make decisions that result in the destruction of relationships, possibly the destruction of human life.

So, for the next four weeks, we’re going to look at some of the major twists and pray that God, through his Word and through his grace, would help some of us see things a little bit different, respond to things a little bit different, because things are not always as they appear to be. We live in a world that’s been twisted.

Let’s pray together.

Heavenly Father, this is a big subject. It’s way bigger than me. And, yet, Lord, everybody listening has, at some point, looked at something, heard something, read something, and thought, "How could that happen? How could that happen? How could that happen?" Father, so many of us have been protected because we live in a world and we live in a culture that still acknowledges that there is one true living God, and that your Word is true. But most people in the world don’t live in that kind of culture, in that world. Father, would you use these next four weeks, not to scare us, but to bring our thinking into a context where we see things as they are. Father, for the men and women who are caught up in stuff and they just wonder how they’re gonna get out, I pray that their world will become untwisted. For men and women that are in marital issues and they just can’t get past them, I pray that they would they have a common enemy and it’s not each other. For the son or the daughter that’s running hard from home, I pray that they would see that their problem isn’t their parents. There’s someone who would love to destroy their lives physically, relationally, at every level, because he’s a murderer and a deceiver.