And now I say to you, keep away from these men and let them alone; for if this plan or this work is of men, it will come to nothing; but if it is of God, you cannot overthrow it—lest you even be found to fight against God.” Acts 5:38-39
Are many of our plans of man or of God? I have often had to go to God and repent because I realize I sometimes make my own plans and I want God to bless them. In some cases, I don’t take the time to go to God and ask Him what His plans are for my life. Sometimes we wonder why our plans are not working out when we prayed asking God to bless them. But the reason is clear that God did not agree with the plan, and we did not seek His counsel before going ahead with our own schemes thinking they are good, when they are not of God. These plans will come to nothing, but God’s plans cannot be overthrown and whoever comes against God’s plans comes against God Himself. I wouldn’t want to be fighting against the Almighty God. Therefore, it is always important to go to Him first for His guidance before going ahead with any plan no matter what it is. The Israelites found out about this the hard way because of the Gibeonite deception.
Then the men of Israel took some of their provisions; but they did not ask counsel of the Lord. So Joshua made peace with them, and made a covenant with them to let them live; and the rulers of the congregation swore to them. Joshua 9:14-15
Joshua and the Israelites fell for the craftiness of the Gibeonites who pretended to be faraway inhabitants of another land, when they were actually their neighbors, and their land was in Canaan and should have been captured and taken over by the Israelites. The leaders of Israel did not stop to inquire of the Lord and so they got trapped into making a covenant, which should not have been agreed to. When we run ahead of the Lord and make agreements without asking if He concurs with the agreements we want to make, then we may end up with a lot of problems. Later, we may get upset with God because He didn’t stop us from making a costly decision. However, He may have sent many obstacles in our path to stop us, but we called them the devil’s work and we quote Bible verses like, “If God be for us, who can be against us,” and forge ahead with our plans doing everything in our own strength to remove the obstacles and declaring our victory in Jesus. However, God may just have given us over to our own delusions.
And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. 2 Thessalonians 2:8-12
This may seem like a very harsh Bible passage, but the fact is that if we are not doing things God’s way, then we are being unrighteous and sometimes we are being deluded to think we are following God when we are following Satan because we do not love the truth. And this is not our truth that I am referring to, but God’s truth. I am surprised to hear what some Christians think is truth which is merely man’s opinion. We need to be able to discern the difference and test the spirits because as Peter said in Acts 5, “We ought to obey God rather than men.” We may not know who to follow because there are people who twist the Word of God for their own agenda. Just because Bible verses are being quoted to justify actions, does not mean the actions are right. We need to be led by the Holy Spirit and be in a relationship with the Father to know His heart to be able to clearly see the difference between what is good and merely of man, and what is the best and is of God.
The fact is God’s ways don’t make sense a lot of times. Who wants to dip into a dirty river seven times to be cleansed from leper? Why would anyone pick up a snake by its tail? Why wouldn’t you turn stone into bread if you are capable of doing it and you are hungry? Who would send their perfect son to die for evil people? These are not the ways of man, but the ways of God. Therefore, we need to be walking by His Spirit and not in the flesh to know His ways and to follow them. If not, we may be doing our thing in our way and without God it will be nothing.
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