In Paul’s day, many people believed the lie that meat offered to idols was unclean. That situation may still be relevant in some cultures today, but not universally. However, the world you and I live in is also riddled with lies. Many people do not believe there is such a thing as “absolute truth,” and think whatever truth does exist applies only to certain individuals or in situation-specific settings; Satan has constructed this entire mentality in order to push aside God’s eternal truths. It enables peeple to believe what is convenient and easy for them, rather than believing and living by God’s principles, which are designed to give life, peace, and victory to us and to give glory to Him.
One of the problems in the World today is that people want to “do their own thing” even if it makes them miserable. They don’t want to take direction from anyone or be told what to do. And they don’t want to read words of truth in a book called the Bible. This kind of arrogant independence and rebellion is responsible for many unpleasant results and even tragedies. I am sure, if you step and consider it, you know of situations in which people have been determined to go their own way and ended up with terrible prob~ lems. This does not have to happen! God has given us instructions for life; They are true-and they work.
To be able to enjoy life and avoid unnecessary problems, we must live according to the truth which is found in God’s Word and not according to the lies we hear from other people, the world, or the enemy. The enemy is always out to deceive us by tempting us to believe things that are not really true, but can become personal realities for us if we buy into the lies surrounding them. When we are deceived, we don’t know, enjoy, or live by the truth. But when we live according to the truth, there are great benefits. If we don’t know the truth because we are deceived, there is no way we can enjoy the benefits. We must know how to separate what is true from what is not. We can do this, but the battle for truth takes place in our minds, and we won’t win it without a fight. We must examine what we believe and why we believe it. it is wise to be firmly convinced so when the devil challenges us concerning God’s Word, we are prepared to stand firm.
We often find the children of Christian parents reaching an age where they begin to wonder if they really believe what their parents have taught them or not. Sometimes they go through a “crisis” period concerning their faith in God. They need to find their own faith because they can no longer live on the faith of their parents as
they have done in the past. This can be a very healthy process. Most of them usually realize they do believe that Jesus is their Savior, but
it was a decision they needed to make for themselves. We cannot stand through the storms of life based on someone else’s faith. We must be fully assured in our own hearts and minds.
Once we make the decision to change our thinking to align with God’s truth, we enter into an all-out war with the enemy, and our minds are the battlefield on which this war is waged. Satan knows that if he can dominate our thinking he can dominate our lives But God has given us the ability to overcome Satan, and we can start by understanding his nature and his strategies against us.
