“7 Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost says, To day if you will hear His Voice,
8 Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness:
9 When your fathers tempted Me, proved Me, and saw My Works forty years.
10 Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known My Ways.
11 So I sware in My wrath, They shall not enter into My rest.)
12 Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.
13 But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.” Hebrews 3:7-13
Many are decieved because they listen to counselors who recieve their information from the vanities of their own minds or demon spirits. Israel challenged the Lord to make them a table in the dessert and when He did, they decided Pharoah’s was better and sought to make a capain and return to Egypt (Numbers 14:3-4). They did, as many continue to do, err in their heart because they follow the statutes of the heathen (the ways of the world) and do not know the ways of God.
Instead of believing God to deliver us out of the wilderness, we err in our hearts and seek the ways of the world. We seek worldly means to obtain love, joy and peace in our life by compromising with the world instead of coming out from among the world. The Lord did not come to bring peace, He IS peace (Luke 12:51). We do not know love, joy or peace until we learn to rest IN Him…His Yoke is easy.
“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.” Romans 8:2.
It is only by faith (by belief) in the redeeming work of Jesus Christ as the source and Calvary’s Cross as the means by which we may be saved and given dominion over sin. When our faith is placed solely and exclusively in what Jesus Christ did on the Cross for whosoever will believe, the Holy Spirit is commissioned to isolate our sin nature (which we were all born with due to Adam’s fall) and give us dominion over sin.
“3 And wherefore has the Lord brought us unto this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey? were it not better for us to return into Egypt?
4 And they said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt.” Numbers 14:3-4
Friend, if our faith isn’t in Christ Jesus for our deliverance from the wilderness…if we look back to the world and declare it’s table better, we are bound by the law of sin and death.
Religion will offer many methods to overcome, overthrow and cast out the unpleasant circumstances in which we may find ourselves. Many of these methods will seem Scriptural but were not and are not given to overcome sin…and sin is the reason for the unpleasant circumstance, it may not necessarily be your sin but the sin in the world. These are not the Ways of God but the ways of man…statutes of the heathen.
We are alive unto God through our faith in Jesus Christ, Who redeemed us to God as the Sacrificial Lamb of God on Calvary’s Cross. Jesus Christ was resurrected on the third day and now sits at the Right Hand of God. His redeeming work saves us from eternal damnation and gives us dominion over our sin nature. This finished work of Jesus Christ is still and will always be God’s prescribed order for victory over the world, the flesh and the devil. No schemes of man, no matter the religious spectacles, will give us dominion over sin.
“Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.” Hebrews 3:12
Do not depart from the Living God. Be determined to know nothing else among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. There in lies the power of God (1 Corinthians 1:18).
-Donna Clark Warren
Living in The Spirit 