Don't Buy the Lie by Mark Matlock

Author:Mark Matlock
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Zondervan

CHAPTER 8: FEARS, HALF-TRUTHS,

AND PARTIAL PERSPECTIVES

Not every deception—or thinking trap—that we fall into comes from our enemy, the devil. As an illusionist, I’ve trained with some of the best human deceivers in the world. They have taught me how to use human nature against itself in order to perform the most effective illusions. The fact is: We humans aren’t that hard to fool. Unless we learn to think clearly and carefully, we’re easily trapped into thinking the wrong things.

It’s one thing to be fooled by a skilled illusionist who makes it seem like a playing card magically appeared in your back pocket or that he somehow read your mind. It’s much more dangerous to allow ourselves to be fooled in our thinking about the supernatural world.

What we need is something we haven’t talked a lot about yet in this book—wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to understand what’s going on in our lives and in the world around us. Wisdom is not about being smart, necessarily. It’s not about getting perfect scores on your S.A.T.

Wisdom is the ability to use what you know to figure out the best things to believe and do. When it comes to understanding the supernatural world, we need a lot of wisdom. The Bible tells us that King Solomon, David’s son, was the wisest man who ever lived. The Book of Proverbs is full of his wise sayings. And from him, we get some important clues about finding wisdom.

First, wisdom starts with respecting the fact that God is God (Proverbs 1:7). As we discovered in chapter three, unless you accept that God exists and that he’s in control, you start with the wrong worldview. Believing that there is no God is foolish and leaves us open to all kinds of deception (Psalm 53:1).

Next, wisdom is worth sacrificing for. Better to risk everything we have to get wisdom—and live wisely—than to take the easy road and believe a lie about spiritual things (Proverbs 3:11-20).

Finally, anyone willing to look for wisdom can find it in three different ways. One, wisdom comes from experience—especially from getting burned by believing a lie. Someone who has lost money on a scam is much less likely to believe the same scam the next time. Wise people learn from the consequences of their actions (Proverbs 21:11).

Two, wisdom comes from studying God’s Word. We’ve already seen that the Bible is part of the armor of God—a weapon against the deceits of our supernatural enemy. It’s also the key to being wise enough to reject easy lies about spiritual things. God’s Word turns simple people into wise people (Psalm 19:7). Building it into our lives is critical to not being duped by supernatural deceit.

Three, God hands out wisdom for free to everyone who asks him for it. You might think that’s the easiest way to avoid being a fool—but Jesus’ half-brother James wrote that you have to ask God for wisdom knowing he’s able to give it to you (James 1:5-8). Still, what an amazing thing that God is willing to give us the wisdom to avoid dangerous thinking traps—for free.

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