July 15

 

UNMET SPIRITUAL NEEDS

 

1 John 2:17

The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God abides forever

 

Over the last three decades, people in the West have begun to sense that there is more to life than science has revealed and their senses have experienced--and, of course, they're right. On the surface this new hunger may sound encouraging to those of us with a Christian worldview, but in fact the same people who are disillusioned with the materialistic world are also disillusioned with established religion. Instead of turning to Christ and His church, they are filling their spiritual void with old-fashioned occultism dressed in the modern garb of parapsychology, holistic health, Eastern mysticism and numerous cults marching under the banner of the New Age Movement.

 

Attempting to meet spiritual needs apart from God is nothing new. Christ encountered a secularized form of Judaism during His earthly ministry which was bound to its traditions instead of to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The religious leaders of the day didn't recognize the Messiah as their spiritual deliverer. They perceived the oppressor to be Rome, not Satan, the god of this world. But Jesus came to undo the works of Satan (1 John 3:8), not Caesar.

 

Satan's ultimate lie is that you are capable of being the god of your own life, and his ultimate bondage is getting you to live as though his lie is true. Satan is out to usurp God's place in your life. And whenever you live independently of God, focusing on yourself instead of the cross, preferring material and temporal values to spiritual and eternal values, he has succeeded. The world's solution to this conflict of identity is to inflate the ego while denying God the opportunity to take His rightful place as Lord. Satan couldn't be more pleased--that was his plan from the beginning.

 

Prayer: Mighty God, I renounce any inclination within me that I am capable of being the god of my life. You alone are Lord and King.