depravare

May I muse a bit about the craftiness of the enemy? The secular world views him as an ugly demon with horns and a pitchfork going about scaring people to death. The Christian community views him as someone who tries to convince us to sin by tempting us with money, sex, and all sorts of other things that are on our lists of things to avoid. When we think of him causing us hardship, it is almost always financial, and when we think of being blessed, it is almost always financial. The bulk of our testimonies of God’s provision is in the financial realm. We are overwhelmed with financial care. But in reality, he never strikes where we'd expect him. We're always blindsided.
The scripture teaches that he masquerades as an angel of light. I believe that he would actually help us not to “commit a sin” because he knows that the “better” we become the less we recognize the need for Jesus. I believe, and have experienced, that he will spend less effort causing us to “mess up”, than he does to confuse us, with things we think of as God stuff, very worthy, important, indispensable, behavior, mindsets, and pursuits. He’ll help us to get them out-of-order and put effects as causes until we believe that we aren’t because of Christ, but that we are in Christ because we are. Or maybe more understandable, we don’t act and behave because of Christ’s ability in us, but that we can have Christ based on how we act or behave. This is a subtle, crafty, deceptive scheme of the adversary, and we’ve believed it for so long, that it sounds like heresy to contradict him and to reclaim the truth of God’s revelation in Christ.

I’m sorry if my rants sound like I think morality is something to be avoided. By no means! But morality apart from Jesus’ provision and a relationship with him is worthless. And we are not making that clear when we market God-product that delineates methodological righteousness by behavior and avoidance of bad stuff.
I will try to be ultra careful when I espouse the dangers of the idols of missions, theology, church programs, the act of worship, the bible, the scripture as God rather than the revelation of God…