THE GLIDE OF SIGNS

I remember I had this employee once who was a born again Christian to the extreme. He was the type of “in your face, turn or burn” kind of believer. I did appreciate his passion for the faith, but in his zeal to share his faith he often offender far more people than he made disciples. And he wasn’t always persuaded that there were two views of truth, his and the wrong one.

While such a description is of course one that could easily be given to a number of people who seem to thrive on confrontation and preaching without listening, it isn’t one that I personally feel is all that uplifting or beneficial. But nothing ever could dent this individual’s feeling that he was right and in any way possibly understand how he might actually be doing more harm than good. Plus God could hardly be expected to us another person to get him to listen since he was way too busy talking to hear anything anyone said.

What truly amazed me was that this person was also the type that thought God spoke to him personally. I remember once how he claimed the Lord had told him to vote for a given person for President because the person was going to win. Well the person lost by a wide margin.

I think any truly honest person would have at least accepted he had made a mistake. And would have also considered the possibility that God might not have been talking to him as he assumed.

Instead this man just went right along claiming the Lord spoke to him regularly and eventually even said that he had been called as a “Prophet to the nations.” Obviously I had a lot of trouble taking that claim very seriously.

How easy it is to allow one’s personal desires to blur our logic. And in spiritual matters it is so easy to glide into seeing signs of God’s approval even if they aren’t really there. If one wants it in his heart bad enough the eyes can easily find evidences to support that desire.

But the Lord has no reason to deceive us or mislead in any way. He will not contradict what he has said and above all he will not let us know something with him as the author that is not true.

However that can be difficult to remember when we have a certain desire that we think is God’s will, but it in fact the fruit of our own passions. It might taste good, but it doesn’t mean it came from the Lord’s garden.

It is so difficult to set aside our ego and accept at time when what is the Lord’s will for our lives may actually be something without fanfare or flash. He is God of the ordinary as well as the supernatural. We have to be willing to resist that slow and steady spiritual decay that will glide us into justifying our actions by seeing signs that are sadly just our imagination. If we pray, God will show us the true, but we still have to be willing to look.