The Other Son...

At GTIME, our Wednesday night worship service for 1st-6th grade, I've been going through a series about Satan's tactics to get to us. I've used the temptations of Eve and of Christ to show how Satan wants to get us to trade something good for something bad, how he lies, and how he wants us to focus on ourselves rather than others. We've looked at how he gets us to change small subtle things and how they snowball into worse things. We've looked at how he convinces us to ignore the consequences and believe we can beat them or dodge them and how the consequences will never make it worth it. Last week we began looking at the story of the Prodigal Son and how Satan will lie to us and make us believe that, once we've messed up, God doesn't want us back.

As I've prepared for this week, I see more of what goes on in our very churches. This week, we are studying about the "other son." The son that was just as rebellious but stayed with his father and didn't see his own faults. We are looking at how Satan lies to us and tells us that as long as we are in church, we are fine. That Satan will convince those in church that it's all about how things look rather than how they really are. It's so difficult to convince people that it isn't about how it looks, but rather how it really IS. As we focus on how things look, we find ourselves in some Shakespearean play where things appear normal to everyone, but everyone is plotting and focusing on their own needs. As all the people's selfish plans begin to go awry, they desperately try to hold their appearance together until they get into a situation so awful, they kill themselves or something. We will never be able to hold the appearances of a good life together when we are living a life of sin. The consequences of that sinful life will always surface in some form.

I pray that we can be a light to the lost world, but also reach out to our brothers and sisters among us that are struggling and that they will take the first step towards freeing themselves from that bondage by coming before the Lord broken. And also, I pray that each one of us will realize how quickly and easily we can be where they are if we let sin have a single foot in the door of our lives.