The enemy is on the loose, and his greatest goal is to
distract our troops from what is truly important!
Imagine making believers feel guilty that they don't do enough in their
neighbourhoods! It would be easy enough to do. People are easily fed by guilt.
If we push a bit harder, they might even come to believe that they don't qualify
for heaven. There is no way anyone can live on works alone, and thus, they doubt
that they will ever be able to enter Heaven! A master plan from the evil one
himself!
This is why Paul insisted: "You who are trying to be justified by law have been
alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace." (Gal 5:4 NIV) In other
words, if we believe these lies from the evil one, and if we try to earn our way
to Heaven, we will fall short. Ouch! All that work for nothing! In fact
we have completely erred and "have fallen away from
grace"!
Let no one ever tell
us that anything
we "do" will earn
us Heaven.
Works is NOT grace! Grace means mercy, clemency, pardon. It wouldn't be grace if
a contingency was attached to the price-tag: to be obtained only after having
done 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 community hours. Oh! Did I forget a
few zeros?
This is why the following message is being broadcasted 24 hours a day throughout
the entire New Testament: "For we maintain that a man is justified by faith
apart from observing the law." (Rom 3:28 NIV)
Salvation is an act of faith, not of works. We either believe in what Jesus has
done for us on the cross, or we believe that we can somehow save ourselves. In
reality, we should not see works as a way to Salvation. Rather, it should be a
manifestation of our gratitude towards our gracious Heavenly Father.
The same enemy is manifesting himself all over the world. Take for example the
brown-headed cowbird. It makes other birds believe that they are not up to their
task, that they need to work harder than ever. To help them with this, the
female cowbird lays her egg in an occupied, but temporarily-empty, nest. The
parents are either out doing their "outhouse activities", or they are looking
for a snack. Soon the parent birds come back to find
that they have an extra egg to take care of.
Maybe they miscounted?
The cowbird chick generally hatches one to two days before the others. It grows
quickly, and is an aggressive beggar, often stealing food from its younger (and
smaller!) nest mates. Its host parents truly have their wings
full! How can they manage?
The evil one uses the same tactics, real infiltrators, to make us believe lies.
Some host parents don't put up with such shenanigans. Vireos birds, for example,
bury the cowbird egg at the bottom of their nest, and yellow warblers either
abandon such nests or build a second nest on top! In other words, the
infiltrator can be defeated! But only by standing firm against it.
In the same way, we must also stand up to the infiltrator! Bye bye intruder!
"Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring
lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith,
because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same
kind of sufferings." (1 Peter 5:8-9 NIV)
This is serious business. Our eternity depends on it. Who will we believe: the
cowbird tactic one or the One who conquered death?
What's that egg doing on my porch?
Rob Chaffart
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