#ThinkingTuesday – Change your thinking; Change your life

Today we start off #ThinkingTuesday with a story by Ravi Zacharias of RZIM MInistries. It goes something like this:

There was a man sitting next to a woman on a plane, he was dressed well and on the face of it, the man looked well to do, so when the man propositioned this woman, she was considering the deal until he said, “for 10 dollars”, to this the irritated woman tries to explain that there must have been a misunderstanding because she wasn’t doing anything for 10 dollars. He then says, “How about $1 Million?”

She answers, “Sir, what kind of woman do you think I am?!”

He responds: “Oh Madam, we have already established that, we are just haggling over the price.“

Ladies and gentlemen, I come to you with a question today: What is YOUR price? 

Is there a seduction that can cause you to turn from God in your heart?

Let’s search our minds thoroughly, is there a breaking point, an experience that if this one thing ever happened to us, we would immediately turn our backs on God.

Hunger was the experience & Porridge was the seduction that caused Esau to turn from His birthright

A fruit caused Eve to throw away her dominion

For 30 shillings Judas sold His soul and betrayed his Lord & friend Jesus Christ.

Do you know that the temptations of Jesus Christ in Luke 4: 1 – 13 can be summed up in that one question “what’s your price?”

All the devil was doing in Luke 4 was indirectly asking Jesus for His price. What would be the price at which Jesus abandons His mission, forsakes the people He came to save and chooses the world over the glory that was destined for Him.

If the devil can dare with Jesus, know that we face the same challenge every day. The devil asks us that question everyday whenever we face one temptation or the other.

masturbation, fornication, greed, vanity, pride, anger etc, the list is endless.

Whatever satan presents you with, he already knows, that you can have all of these things in a legitimate way, a way that is pleasing in God’s sight, but the devil is a master negotiator, he will come and offer it to you on a tempting platter with twisted logic, just to make you fall so he can go to God and accuse you: “see that your so called son/daughter, the price to turn their back on you was just ordinary lust, ordinary lust can you imagine?! Didn’t even take much!”

We face a lot of these challenges no matter where we are in life, but particularly when we are in university or college or any form of educational institution really, we tend to find that there are so many distractions that are just calling you to neglect God. It’s like a “what’s your price” buffet everyday. You get emails, phone calls, texts, social media notifications about events and places you know you should not be but everyone else is going so why shouldn’t you?! Look there, that top christian brother or sister I follow on twitter is going to be there, surely it must be okay for me to go then.

No, no no. Do not let the devil use another to cause you to sin. If something does not line up with God’s word, the fact that others are doing it is no excuse. The fact that Eve ate the fruit was no reason for Adam to follow suit, even though they were husband and wife and were one flesh! No matter how close that person to you is that is committing a sin, it is never and will never be good enough an excuse to give in and join them.

High-School/Uni/College is the one place where there is usually a lack of morals because the devil is out to purchase the souls of the youth at whatever price he can. Please do not be found amongst those who can be bought with one worldly item or the other.

For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.

1 Corinthians 6:20

We often forget that we have already been bought with a price; we already have a price and it has been paid for. Let the price tag on our souls remain that which Christ paid, through the shedding of His precious blood and His death on the cross, He paid far more for us than we are worth.

This is the price at which we have been bought and it is the greatest price there is. Don’t let the devil deceive you that anything less is your price or what you are worth. You are worth more than the lust, pride, fornication, vanity, greed or selfishness that the devil throws your way daily. The precious blood of Jesus, that is the price we respond to because that is the price Christ considers us worth and it is the price at which we have been bought.

When we let the devil cause us to fall through temptations, what we are doing is essentially offering ourselves to the devourer for sale at a lower price than we are worth. If Jesus says we are worth the shedding of His blood and His death on the cross, and then we betray him through fornication or vanity or corruption, then we have sold ourselves cheap to the devil, sort of like buying something at a discount. Particularly with physical act of fornication, its like a buy one get one free because it’s two people involved in the act. Fornication can be spiritual and one sided but let’s not get into the physics and logic of that today.

The key thing is that when we carry a seduction in our heart that can cause us to turn from God, it’s like putting a half price sale tag on our own self and carrying it around just begging the devil to come and tempt us with that one thing or seduction. Eventually the devil will smoke it out of your heart and use it to cause you to stumble!

So think deeply, is there any seduction or any thing that can cause you to betray your Lord like Judas? Get rid of it from your heart today and strive to glorify God in every way. As we do this, may we receive grace to persevere and endure in all our endeavours and may the Lord teach us long suffering so we never turn our backs on Him no matter what.

Selah!