No Distractions Allowed!

2 Peter 2: 20-23 – If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were in the beginning.  It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. Of them the proverbs are true: “ A dog returns to its vomit” and  “ A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud.”

False prophets…serious stuff.  Heavy penalties too! Those people out there who have lived the lies they were told so long….they have internalized them and live them as though they were true. They spread their false testimonies everywhere they go …tricking even the most faithful of Christian believers to follow their lies. But Peter’s warning here is really for all of us… I dare one of you to tell me that you have never been a false witness to anyone. I wanted to say I hadn’t..my heart just not letting it sink in that I was guilty of such a horrible thing. And as usual I have to admit …when I first read it…I started to skim over it…I just don’t consider myself one of ‘those’. And I just could not see how these verses about  ‘false prophets’ could have anything to do with any sin I needed to ask God to remove from my life….then I read it again…and I let the distractions around me win.

Maybe it was the distraction of camp noise…just before the lights out rule of any summer camp is a reality…..or maybe it was just the fact that I was trying to multitask and wash dirty towels while I read my bible at midnight last night…but I just didn’t seem to see a message for me last night. As I look at my notes I see the  long list of words that Ray Steadman used to describe  false prophets …I wrote them more out of the need to not have a blank notes page to look at this morning …words like ….presumptuous….fearless (in the sense of a wild animal) …shameless…greedy…boastful…slave to corruption…and at the bottom of the list was this note…aware of the scripture…very smart…able to use the bible in an out of context sort of way to support their false claims.  Then I closed my bible and talked for a few more minutes with one of the counselors…listened to her pour out her own heart about life and offered some pretty flimsy words of encouragement…prayed with her…and drifted off to sleep.

It isn’t hard to describe the difficulty of writing this morning….my passion to create a devotional as I process the scripture I read each day is really the only thing that has kept me from giving up today.  The morning started at 5 o’clock …shower …sat down to ask God to help me pick scripture….picked scripture…sat…sat…fixed hair…sat again…changed locations …sat…drank coffee…sat… ate honey bun…drank more coffee…sat…wrote…stopped…drank more coffee…talked about whether animals go to Heaven….sat discussed which version of the bible is the best…typed a few more words…(it is now 7:42) you get the picture?  I start to process...get distracted ... try to get focused again…write a bit…something else happens to distract me….like ….I just pasted an devotional from two days ago into this one…oh goodness me it now it is 8:13!!!!

The world…Satan’s domain…has an unending battery of tricks to suck us into believing more in it…than to really concentrate on God.  Satan’s unending way of distracting us from God …keep our eyes so unfocused on him that we miss too easily what he is saying to us.  You saw it before me didn’t you…as usual I am the last one to process the simple message he had for me today.  I AM A FALSE PROPHET….when I am presumptuous …..wild ….shameless …greedy …boastful…corrupted…or allow my knowledge of the scriptures to get twisted.

Some days…we just have to keep trying…because we live in the world…and fight to separate ourselves from its distractions to find God.  As Peter says in verse 19…we allow those distractions to make us slaves....and we give up…give in to their endless repertoire of disruptions.  We take our eyes off Jesus…and follow the closest thing we can find…because it is easier…and become examples of how to be distracted ...in the same boat as Peter puts these false prophets.  He told us that even the angels in Heaven were distracted once….exiled from Heaven to wait in dark dungeons for the judgment of God.   The danger is clear here…it is better for us to have never known God than to have known him and let the world distract us away from him so much that we teach false things to others.

Father thank you for allowing me to keep my eyes on you this morning and not give up.  I get it….and I never want the world to win again.  Give me strength every day to discern the distractions of the world…to see through the trickery of Satan and focus on only the things that will keep me moving forward in my relationship with you.  Help me Lord to recognize immediately when I am beginning to drift away from you.  Help me to stay so close to your side that even in the distractions of a youth summer camp….on 8 hours of sleep in 72 hours….you can still be heard ABOVE the noise and tricks of Satan…and  the message is still spoken.  Now give me a chance to apply your truth…so it becomes a part of my heart. Amen.