|
Previous Daily
Devotional
About true and false godliness…
Acts 16: 16 Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a
slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a
great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. 17 This girl followed
Paul and the rest of us, shouting, "These men are servants of the Most High
God, who are telling you the way to be saved." 18 She kept this up for many
days. Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the
spirit, "In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of
her!" At that moment the spirit left her. (NIV)
In this verse, a demon possessed girl proclaims the gospel. A lot of strange
and weird things happen in the world and in our lives. What appears to be good
is not always godly and what appears to be godly may not always be from God.
Evil has a way of twisting and using the truth to drive us crazy. Evil has a way
of twisting and using the truth to evil's advantage and to our disadvantage.
Regardless of how things appear, the point is this…evil stands no chance
against God. Evil has no power against God. In the time between the slave girl's
first encounter with Paul and her eventual freedom from the evil spirit, she
spoke the truth about Paul, Silas, and the message they were telling the world.
However, Satan and his evil spirits never have a godly intent. In living our
life, we must always be careful and discern what is good from what is not good.
Satan and evil have a way of hiding and camouflaging what they do. Evil can try
and hide within what is good and beautiful. Evil can try to convince us what is
truly ugly and awful is truly beautiful and wonderful. However, when we
continually rest all we have and all we are in the heart of God, we can see the
difference between His beauty and the beauty of the world. We can see the
difference between His wonders and the wonders of the world.
|
