On The Straight And Narrow

The conundrum for me is always - to speak or not.

I pray every morning, what can I do for You today, Lord, and once in awhile the answer is - speak.

Watch this first and then I will explain.

Okay here goes:

I have been a paid subscriber to a particular substack for a year, The author, a well-spoken psychiatrist, is all about his patients being humans who need more understanding and less medications. He claims to be a Christian, is smart and profoundly empathetic, which I appreciate.

Recently, he introduced what he has described as ‘transmissions’ that one of his patients has shared with him that she has been receiving. He has been posting these as Day One, Day Two, etc. The most recent [at this writing] was Day Ten.

My spidey senses, my experience with the red flags of what sounds so good but is not coming from God popped up on Day One. The first tell was the speaker/transmitter refers to themselves as ‘we’. The second tell was the abundance of words - so many lovely words. The third tell was the focus on ‘self love’.

I admit the words given are what our human side craves - love love love, forgiveness, identity, etc. and Day Ten - Love Yourself. Unmasked and otherwise known as ‘Self’ Righteousness.

I waited until Day Four before I made a comment. I was not contentious. I spoke with concern and caring. However, I did not mince words when I pointed out that the ‘we’ telling the encouraging sweet words were demons. One person agreed with me but the author gently defended the ‘transmissions’ even though he admitted he had no idea where they were coming from and thought my calling the ‘we’ demons was harsh.

He even suggested that we all just embrace the ‘fruit’ of the words.

Really? The FRUIT?

I am a sower not a harvester. I plant seeds then let God send whomever He chooses to do (or not) the harvest. I made one post and one response to the person who agreed with me. Then I was done.

I am planting these seeds here and now as a warning. The devil and his minions have always been busy seeking those whom they might destroy, but it seems to me that things are on speed dial now. Time to dust off our discernment skills.

I offer this to consider that while we are all indeed different and finding the way God speaks to us individually determines how we work out our spiritual growth in Christ, nevertheless the snares are out there and, from what I’ve seen, they usually call out to the MIND/BODY experience because it appeals to love of SELF, the gentle call to fix ourselves by loving ourselves first so that we can be our own god, our own healer.

Gosh. Doesn’t that sound great?

This is not only not new it is as old as satan whispering to Eve, “Go ahead eat the delicious FRUIT you will not surely die.

If I feel a call to speak on a touchy topic, I expect to have some kind of confirmation. So, within minutes of my strong urge to respond to the doctor’s substack, I received this in my email -

Some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. (Galatians 1:7 NIV)

It does not require a great deal of intelligence in order to recognize that, throughout the history of God’s work, the master-stroke of the great perverter has been confusion. God is not the God of confusion, but of order. Satan is the god of confusion. To get order out of chaos, God said: “Let there be light.” To get chaos out of order, Satan says “Let there be confusion.” His it is to confuse issues and elements. To do this, he must – as the word suggests – fuse (or try to fuse) elements which are constitutionally different and do not belong to each other. Thus there is a constitutional contradiction and inconsistency.

It is only when his master-method runs amok that we have utter and unmitigated wickedness. His main work is deception by mixture.