1 Peter 5:8-11

Father I pray that what I am about to write will be pleasing to you o Lord.  Take away my anger towards what is going on and put in me a righteous indignation and the desire to stand up for the truth of your word and who you are, not serve my own agenda or purpose..  Protect me and my friends from the lies and deceit the devil is spreading.  Bring those who have fallen prey to wrong thinking towards you.  Break the hearts of those trying find truth in the lies so much so that they have no other choice than to turn towards you and see the one and only truth.  Rise up a person or people who have fallen prey to the 'religion' of the devil already has a large sphere of influence and cause them to become a mighty warrior for truth.  Help others to see you in their changed heart and know you are the one true God.  Convict and take away from us the confusion, guilt, fear, hurt, discontent, greed, and all the other parts of our sinful hearts that cause us to want to believe what the devil offers is light and beauty.  Help us see it for what it is, sin and filth, blasphemy against the one true God.  Allow us to turn our hearts back to you and be a generation, a people who love and know the God of the bible, of Abraham, Moses, and David.  Make yourself known and bring glory to your name.  

Well lets just say I am not all that excited to share what God has laid on my heart to write today.  It is something that has been a burden to me for about 2 years now.  I have carried it around trying to fight it with debates, books, reason, logic, and even outright anger and disgust for the whole issue.  I eventually let it go and decide the battle is the Lord's only to pick it up again and it allow it to anger me so much so that its all I can think about some days.  Whats funny to me now is that I thought this was something new.  That this deceit and evil was a new way to cause people not to see the need for Savior.  What is even more disturbing is I believed it all for a while.  I turned my back on all I knew, on the God I loved, and decided there just had to be more to life than what I had always been taught.  Surely it wasn't just that Jesus was it.  He wasn't enough for me to be happy.  He wasn't enough for me to feel fulfilled.  He wasn't enough to give me purpose and hope.  He wasn't enough for me.  I of course didn't realize at the time that that is what I was saying, but it is what I was feeling.  I wanted more.  More of what?  I don't think even I knew.  But I think I wanted more wisdom, clarity, and to feel lighter.  I wanted to cleanse myself of all that was weighing me down.  I couldn't identify what it was but I knew my burden was heavy and I wanted it gone.  It wasn't self esteem I was lacking,  it wasn't positive thinking that I needed to learn, it wasn't anything that most self-help books and even psychologists try to tell you is your problem.  It was SIN.  Jesus wasn't enough for me.  I wanted happiness and peace.  Jesus wasn't providing that for me the way I thought he should so I had to look elsewhere to find a way to get me what I wanted.  I looked to myself.  That's what your supposed to do right?  Find the truth within, realize the reality of who you are, get in touch with the power you have inside.  It worked for Oprah and plenty of others (so it seems) so why not for me.  I of course was overwhelmed with all the information that was out there.  I wanted to know "the secret" and "heal my life". (referring to The Secret by Rhonda Byrne and "You can heal your life" by Louise Haye)  I learned I was a part of the divine, that we all are.  That all I had to do was apply certain principles in my life, cast of all masks of "perception", begin my journey towards self awareness, and then my eyes would be opened to the truth of this world and nothing would be impossible for me.  Sounds great doesn't it.  Thankfully God has put intelligent and excellent writers out there who can better express what I want to say, so to complete part one of however many parts this series of blog posts may become I will leave it to Erwin Lutzer to identify the issue that has so taken over our culture and become "normal".  I was given this book by a wonderful Godly woman who loved me enough to tell me I was WRONG in what I was pursuing and once the Holy Spirit convicted me and I asked God to please forgive me and protect me from the ways of thinking I had adopted, to turn my heart and thoughts back to him, this book put perfectly the contradictions I had noticed and showed me plenty of other issues and that this is a battle for truth.  It is an attempt to deceive millions of souls.  The devil may appear to be winning the battle but we know he WILL NOT win the war!  Jesus is Lord over all the earth and he will be victorious in the end.  Every knee will bow down, every tongue will confess that he alone is Lord!

"The Satanic Strategy"
From Oprah, Miracles, and the New Earth

"Let's dream for a while.  Suppose you were Satan, burning with a hateful passion to deceive everyone on the face of planet earth.  What if you had the ability to inject thoughts into the minds of some people and tempt others to take your suggestions?  What if you were preparing for a final worldwide takeover?  Suppose you could do all of your initial planning without being detected.  What schemes would you use to get your message across?
  Obviously, you would sell your product by providing some tangible dividends without arousing unnecessary fear and attention.  You'd package your ideas in a form that the public would accept.  All the while, your intentions would have to remain skillfully hidden.  Like a fisherman, you'd want to give some immediate gratification but keep the hook out of sight.
  Your primary goal is not materialism, immorality, drugs, or despair.  There is something else you long for:  you want recognition and worship.  You desire personal contact with humans who will interpret their experience as a meeting with the true God whom you hate.  In the end you want them to be willing to take your mark, and pledge loyalty to your schemes.  Deception is the name of the game.
  To do this, you have to teach that God is impersonal- the force, energy, and the one all-pervading reality.  In fact, everything is God.  Salvation comes by meditation, by an experience that unites us with the divine.  You teach that whereas Christianity says heaven is in the life to come, the good news is that heaven can't wait!  It is pressing in upon us, simply waiting to be acknowledged and accepted.  All around us there are signs that we are entering a new age of peace, where death does not exist and spiritual harmony rules.  And we have the potential to make it happen. 
And so it is that Satan plies his trade, leading millions to believe that his benefits come, not through the study of doctrine or attending church or even the confession of our sins, but, we are told, through one or more techniques that put us in touch with our "true self".  One way or another we can access the basic power of the human mind.  By taking a journey within, we can find spiritual reality and fulfillment. 
Satan has never lost sight of his long term goal-the enslavement of multitudes.  He wants us to believe that the spirit world around us is a friendly place, and therefore connecting to the supernatural is both beneficial and not to be feared.  Satan makes promises like a god-but pays like the devil."

I wasn't excited about sharing this because I know it is not popular.  I know I could lose friends over taking such a stand.  But now that I have written it out I am excited and hopeful that maybe one person will read this and try and prove me wrong.  In order to prove that the God of the bible is not the one and only true God they'll have to get a bible, open it, study, and read it.  I pray the holy spirit will move in their heart and show them who God is.  That what he offers is so much greater than what the world offers.  I pray they are overwhelmed with his majesty, fall on their knees, accept and worship the one true God!