Pressing On

with Allen Bach and Clay O'Brien Cooper

as told to Dee Ann Burkes

"I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3:14

Deception in Believers

Allen: Deception is everywhere, and sadly, mostly among Christians. We have seen Christian people have so much deception in their life they are hand in hand with people that don’t have the Lord in their life. They are deceived into thinking that money is power, and that love will always be available to them or that time is their friend. The deception that goes on in Christian’s lives tells me people are receiving the truth about God’s will for their salvation, but they don’t know the truth about fruitfulness in their life. People get lulled into a false sense of security. They don’t think they are “evil” – they do nice things and live basically good lives so they consider themselves above the schemes of the devil. In Matthew 24, Jesus talks about deception – beginning with verse four, “Take heed that no one deceives you.”

Clay: That’s just it. How do we know when we are being deceived? In Ephesians 6:12, Paul says, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Without searching the scriptures and learning about the struggles of good versus evil, then we really don’t know these kinds of things are going on. Left to our own way, we can basically let the world and our circumstances form us. I know for me, the way I was brought up and the people I hung around are basically what shaped my perception of my life. I formed my ideas about life on the information and knowledge I had gotten from people around me. Then, when I was born again, I received Christ, but really didn’t know anything about God. All I knew was I loved him and wanted to serve him. That was 17 years ago. In that time I have come to realize that everything I was doing in my life was wrong. I was living my life in deception. Over the 17 years God has brought truth and light to so many areas in my life. That is the journey I am on now, and the process is still taking place. I don’t know where I am on the chart, but I know I have come a long way and I still have a long way to go. But it’s a fun journey. What is so awesome about being a child of God and living with him is that he shows us daily where the deception is and where the truth is. I will do that every day in every area of our life if we let him.

Allen: You know, most people would agree that there is a God and they would relate him to goodness and truth. However, they don’t credit the devil with bad things that happen. If Jesus is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6), then where does deception come from? No one wants to talk about the devil, but where else would deception come from? John 10:10 says the devil comes to steal, kill and destroy. Don’t think because you are a Christian that you are exempt from the devil’s power. Deception and confusion come from the devil taking liberal philosophies into schools, televisions, newspapers and other areas of our lives. It is all manipulated by him and he is so tricky we usually don’t realize what he is doing. Like Paul says in Ephesians, our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against light and dark. I think the biggest deception out there is that we don’t acknowledge there is a battle going on for each of us – truly a good verses evil battle and the devil will use every tactic he can to win. The best way to win a battle is for people to not even know there is a battle going on, and slowly but surely luring the to other side. The devil orchestrates his deception and lies to put the blame on God. Bad things happen and we say, “Why would God kill my child? Why would God steal my wife.” That is not God. The bible tells us over and over God is good – the devil is evil. Again – the enemy is real and he comes to kill, steal and destroy. We underestimate the devil’s powers and that is all part of his plan to deceive us.

Clay: Every day we have the devil to deal with. Paul tells us to fight his schemes with the armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-20). That will help us defeat the devil and the lies and deception he puts in front of us. We have our selves to deal with and the devil to deal with. On one side, we are so good, because God created us. But on the other side, we can be so bad because of our free will. The Bible says to trust in the Lord with your heart, not your head (Proverbs3:5). God bypasses the head and goes straight to our heart, where his spirit dwells. If we are left to our own way of thinking, we will get it wrong. When we get God in our heart, then we trust him to show us where there is deception in our life. God is our heart, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also (Matthew 6:21). The devil’s only way to access you is through your mind. That is how Adam and Eve were deceived. The devil tricked them by using their minds to believe things that weren’t true. Wrong thinking leads to wrong action. Wrong action leads to a result that is not beneficial to us. I Corinthians 3:18 “Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a "fool" so that he may become wise.” But when we operate in the truth and allow God access to our heart – then we operate in God. 2 Peter 1:3 says “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.”

Allen: You know our friends, without even meaning to, can be a huge source of deception. Peer pressure is a very powerful thing. It is easy to give in to little things, and then those lead to other things, and then before you know it you are going down a path you never intended to go down.

Clay: Deception is like piloting an airplane. If start your trip out with your coordinates just a little bit wrong, you’ll be way off course before you know it. At first, you are just a little bit off course and it isn’t a big deal. But the farther you go, the farther away you go in the wrong direction. In a few hours, you can wind up three states from where you meant to go, just by being a little bit off in the beginning. The same goes for us. If we start out just a little bit wrong, then 15 years later we are a long ways from where we started and where we intended to be. Then it takes a big correction to fix it.

Allen: Talk about peer pressure – what if Noah had given in to peer pressure? God told him to build and arc and he didn’t even have a clue what an arc was. Everybody laughed at him and made fun of him, but he stayed true to God, despite what they all said. In the end, they were all wiped off the face of the earth and Noah was the survivor. What if Moses had given in to peer pressure? He led the troops out of Egypt and they wandered in the desert blaming God, creating false idols and doing all kind of things God had no plans for them to do. But Moses kept going to the mountain; he kept seeking God’s face. He knew people were being deceived and he wanted to do everything he could to help them find the truth about God. There are all kinds of people like that in the Bible – Joseph, David, Daniel, Abraham, and others. In fact all the great men of the Bible were faced with opportunities to fall into the trap of deception, but chose to seek the truth of God with their heart.

Clay: I think one of the most profound things I have learned through the word of God is the simplicity of following God with your heart. Faith just steps out and trusts God. It doesn’t lean on your own understanding (Proverbs 3:5). I have learned that I don’t have to figure everything out – God will show me what I need to know if I am in fellowship and communication with him. If I will pray with my heart and ask for guidance, wisdom, knowledge and understanding, then he will pour it out to me.

Allen: To stay away from deception, we can’t be lulled into a spiritual sleep. We have to seek God every day. Thinking we have control of our world is the biggest form of deception. (James 1:22). Jesus said it best, “'These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.'” (Matthew 15:8-9) If your heart is not purified by obedience to the truth (I Peter 1:22) and kept pure by continuing in the word of God (1 John 3:3), then you will abound faith (I Timothy 1:18-19) and be given over to the control of Satan all over again.

Clay: We are deceiving ourselves when we think we have it all figured out and can handle it by ourselves. You have to be willing to lay down your own pride and let God do his work in your life. God wants to be a huge part of our every day life. He wants us to have peace and joy and be in a place with him where we know we are walking in his will. But do that we need to learn how to effectively use our mind the way God designed us to use it. To combat deception, we need to listen to our heart, which is how God contacts us through his spirit. That has been the hard part for me – to trust my heart and not my head, and to let God show me who he is through my heart. It has been hard, but is has been awesome. Following God with your heart is like having someone going ahead of you, pointing out deception in your life and showing you a way to get around it.

Allen: I guess my final comments would be to stay strong and stay wise. Keep reading God’s word and asking for his will in your life. Pray for wisdom and listen to your heart. These are the things that will help you find and destroy deception in your life.