Our eyes must be open to the threats of evil and Satan himself. We will be deceived if we are blind to the enemy's work. Peter urges to be alert in 1 Peter 5:8, "Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour" (NASB). We cannot ignore evil because we have an enemy that seeks to destroy us.
Many Christians today say not to give the devil so much attention. Magnify the goodness of God, and while that sounds accurate, it's only half of what He calls us to do. To sincerely magnify the goodness of God, we must stand for what is good and pure according to Him.
We are to focus on what is good, right, and pure, as Philippians 4:8-9 tells us, but we should not look evil in the face and call it good. For instance, we cannot trust that our government is good just because God is in control. Too often, we wave off a dark situation and say, it's okay; God is in control. Please understand that God reigns over all creation, but we must choose to follow Him. And following Jesus means that we say no to evil and deception and stand up for the will of God.
Standing up for the truth may look different, depending on the situation, but we should not comply with practices and teachings against God. We have done this so frequently that we don't even recognize it's wrong.
Isaiah shares a warning valid for today that we must heed! Isaiah 5:20 says, "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!" (NASB). Verses 21-24 warn us against wisdom in our own eyes, being drunk, and justifying wickedness for bribes. Does any of that sound familiar to you? If not, I strongly urge you to pray for God to remove the scales from your eyes and soften your heart because this is the world we are presently living in.
In Isaiah 5:25, God begins to tell us the fate of the people who continue to reject His law, and it isn't pretty.
I consider our current government corrupt because I catch them lying whenever they speak. They don't even bother trying to hide their inconsistencies, and people who make a living out of lying are not doing the will of God. Perhaps your response is, how do you know the will of God? Simple, He wrote it down for us in His Holy Word. The problem is that too many Christians now neglect their Bible or misuse it for their own benefit.
Following Jesus requires action; our faith is not passive. This idea of active faith is not new. God has always required action from those who believe. If I were to sum up the entire Bible, this is what I'd say the message was. God: You can't do this life alone; you need me. Do it my way, don't waste your time with your way. Everything you can think up I've already thought of and deemed unworthy. Just surrender and follow me.
If we follow Jesus, we live differently than the mainstream media. Too many well-meaning Christians have dropped their Bibles and jumped on the world's bandwagon. They side with LGBTQ+, and they call it love and compassion. They say it's what Jesus would do, and it's completely false.
Homosexual acts took place in the Bible times. As far back as Genesis, we know that men desired relations with other men. Genesis 19:5 records, "and they called to Lot and said to him, 'Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have relations with them'" (NASB). Homosexual behavior is not a new thing. Too often, we justify sin because "times have changed," but there's nothing new under the sun. Just look at the book of Ecclesiastes.
We created the trending phrase, "love is love," to make sin appear normal and good. Essentially, it means you can have sex with whoever or whatever you want. We don't say that's the definition, but to define love by itself negates its true definition. Thus, it's diluted to a phrase manifested as a way to argue with people who abide by God's original design for romantic love between a husband and wife.
The phrase "love is love" is merely one of many examples of what I mean when I say we look evil in the face and call it good. The danger of giving in to this movement is that we lie to ourselves (individually and collectively). God is love, and saying anything else is a sin against God.
God defines love, but love is not God. Redefining love by our human standards and then believing God fits into whatever we create is idolatry, or at the very least, rebellion. The truth is God defines love. So to know what love is, you must know the God of the Bible.
What is the danger of fitting God into our definition of love? Eternal separation from Him. God doesn't play games or blur lines; we understand that deeply when we commit to studying His Holy Word.
Humans haven't changed, but neither has God. Humans have deceived themselves into thinking they have all the solutions to make life worthwhile. Feel like molesting a child? That's okay; you were born that way, and you can't help it. Why should you have to restrain yourself? Do you think you were born as a man instead of a woman? That's okay; have surgery to change your sex and make everyone who knows it's an abomination accept your sin so that you can live freely. It's all self-deception, and it counts for nothing in the end.
God told us what He thought about sexual immorality. "You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination. Also, you shall not have intercourse with any animal to be defiled with it, nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it; it is a perversion. Do not defile yourselves by any of these things, for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you have become defiled. For the land has become defiled. Therefore I have brought its punishment upon it, so the land has spewed out its inhabitants" (Leviticus 18:22-25 NASB).
God called His people to live differently. He said, "But as for you, you are to keep My statutes and My judgments" (Leviticus 18:26 NASB). He told them not to commit any of these abominations because if they did, the defiled land would spew them out. "For whoever does any of these abominations, those persons who do so shall be cut off from among their people. Thus you are to keep My charge, that you do not practice any of the abominable customs which have been practiced before you, so as not to defile yourselves with them; I am the LORD your God" (Leviticus 18:29-30 NASB).
Perhaps you count the Old Testament as irrelevant and outdated, but it’s not. Jesus came to fulfill the law of God, and He did so in every way. Jesus even said, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works” (John 14:10 NASB). Everything Jesus said and did was in agreement with God the Father—the same God who spoke these words in Leviticus.
In my lifetime, I've never seen our society push so hard for causes entirely against God. When someone like me has strong convictions against evil, we are told to shut up and die because their comfort is more important than our convictions, but we must be bold in the truth of our Lord.
Now is the time to get serious with your faith and seek God in all things. Ask for His wisdom and dedicate your time to prayer and study of the Bible. God has given us everything we need to live, fight, honor, and glorify Him until His return, but we have to use those holy resources. We must stop sitting on the sidelines, watching the world crumble and burn.
We are so afraid of making the world mad at us that we've compromised the Word of God, but it's not too late to repent and show the love of God to a dying world. If we don't heed God's warning against evil, we will be swallowed up by it.
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/nicoletaionescu
Vanessa Luu is a wife, mother, and faith-based writer. She speaks and writes to believers to encourage them to live authentically with God.