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BISHOP ROGERS - Perception & Deception

August 15, 2006

PERCEPTION AND DECEPTION

Someone has said that our perception of something has far more influence over us than the “truth”. That is an alarming statement.

If it is true, and for many it is, we are living in a false reality.  Once we accept a false reality almost anything can deceive us. We have no foundation on which to base our conclusions. We are then led down a path of ever increasing confusion developing all kinds of fears, worries and anxieties that are based on perception rather than truth.

 Take for instance our fears as children. When we were afraid of the dark, what terror would fill us at the thought of what was lurking in the dark.  I remember one fear-filled night in which I saw something in the dark over by the door. Immediately my heart began to pound as my imagination began to spin out of control. Imagination can be a great blessing but it also can be the source of indescribable fears and terrors. I was nearly paralyzed with fear. I do not know how long it took for me to get the attention of a grown up to come in and turn on the light but when they did, the imagined monster was a shirt hung over the door knob. As long as the light was on I was OK, but when the light was turned off my fears returned. That is so true of every believer. As long as we walk in the light our fears are gone. Whenever we find ourselves walking in anxiety it is evidence that we are no longer walking in the light.

It would be easy to discern this if it was as easy as black and white.  Satan knows this. He rarely thrusts those fears on us that would throw us into pitch black darkness all at once. That is too obvious. No, his strategy is to try to covertly darken our thinking with one small lie at a time.

This is the method that Satan has used throughout history to gain control of individual lives, families, as well as nations, tribes, and tongues. He caused Eve to believe that she did not have something that she needed – when in reality she had everything she would ever need for all eternity. Satan needed to sow into Eve the “perception” that there was something God was holding back from her that would make her wise and give her ability. The reality was that she already possessed all these things! God was her wisdom. God was her ability.

This process of giving us a false perception is still working nearly to perfection by Satan. In fact he tired to use it on Jesus when Jesus was driven into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit after His baptism. Do you remember the words spoken over Jesus when He came up out of the water? Yes “this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”  Satan’s tactic was to get Jesus to look at the circumstances rather than God’s word spoken over Him.

The definition of perception is to use the five senses to determine something.

perceiving: the process of using the senses to acquire information about the surrounding environment or situation
•  the range of human perception
Microsoft® Encarta® Reference Library 2003. © 1993-2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

 Do you see the problem? The child of God is to be led by the Spirit –

Rom 8:14
For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.  (KJV)

Prov 20:27
The spirit of man is the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly.  (KJV)

Jesus answered Satan not by what he felt or saw – He felt hunger, he saw the wilderness, it looked like He was abandoned. But He knew – what God said.

Again do you see it? It is not what you and I feel or see or perceive – it is what God says that matters. In fact that is what the Christian life is all about. The battle is between the five senses and the leading of the Holy Spirit and what God says about us.

The master magician can easily deceive his audience by fooling the five senses. He can make things appear totally opposite even than what the mind knows to be true. He has created a perception. If we accept his perception we have been deceived. How much more can the eternal deceiver change our perception of reality?

John 8:44
Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar , and the father of it.   (KJV)

2 Tim 3:13
But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving , and being deceived.   (KJV)

 

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