Why is it that some folks will more or less live as though God doesn't exist, and skip through life intent upon pleasing themselves, explaining that "organized religion just isn't for me" ... until they find themselves drowning in a situation/predicament/relationship of their own creation and choice?
Oh God please help me. Dear Lord please hear me and get me out of this ...
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Imagine you've been feeling closer to God than ever. You feel so filled with the Spirit that you actually make God this promise: "I won't date or seek a relationship with anyone who's not boldly and confidently a follower of Christ."
Sounds promising, but then maybe you haven't been dating anybody remarkable recently anyway and besides, it sure feels good knowing you've finally got God on your side.
Then a few weeks or months go by and, as things turn out, you meet someone who totally Rocks Your World. Fluttering heart, daydreams of the future you always imagined, total loss of concentration for anyone (or anything) else ... for the first time in your life you've met someone who is obviously and apparently a dream come true.
Except for one little thing: the person who just came to life from your daydreams isn't a believer.
Well you know despite what the preacher or Scripture says, you explain to yourself, maybe "missionary dating" can be a good thing. Certainly seems worth a try, especially since this person is absolutely perfect and complete in every other way. After all, what's the worst that can happen?
I'm willing to guess quite a lot.
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When you make God a promise, how can something suddenly come along that makes fulfilling that promise seem so impossibly hard? What can make us change our minds and turn our focus away from Him, and toward pursuing our personal interests ... and makes fulfilling our own plans and desires so urgently important?
Maybe the question's not so much How or What, but Who.
And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.
- 2 Corinthians 11:14
