SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
04/18/2004
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 Their
Revolting
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 2 Peter
2:14b-16
Message of the
verses: “They captivate the unstable
ones, and their technique of getting what they want is, through long practice,
highly developed. They are born under a curse, 15 for they have abandoned the
right road and wandered off to follow the old trail of Balaam, son of Beor, the
man who had no objection to wickedness as long as he was paid for it. 16 But
he, you remember, was sharply reprimanded for his wickedness—by a donkey, of
all things, speaking with a human voice to check the prophet’s wicked
infatuation! (Phillips).”
I was talking about a person who my wife and I were
giving money to soon after we became believers and the Lord showed us that He
did not want us to give to this man. The
way that He showed us I will not get into, but as soon as the incident happened
we knew that we had to stop giving to him.
The problem with ministries like there are that are on TV is that one
has to be very discerning as to whether or not to give to them. The first thing we do with our money is to
tithe to our church and then there are usually other ministries that go along
with our church we give to along with have a small monthly amount we give to
different missionary projects. There are
times that we will invest with other ministries, but we have to pray about it
and see if this is the Lord’s will for us to do. Discernment as stated along with prayer is
the best way to do this.
Peter states at the end of verse fourteen that these
apostates were born under a curse and the KJV version says “cursed children,”
as these were not the blessed children of God but the cursed children of the
devil as seen in John 8:44.
One of the commandments that these apostates are surely
breaking is the 10th commandment which talks about covetousness,
which is the desire to have more, more money, more power, and more
prestige. In today’s world these
apostates will even brag about all the things that they own and ask for more
money to get more things and even tell their audience that they will be blessed
when the send them money. Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:10 that the
love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.
We will close with a story from Dr. Wiersbe’s commentary
which illustrates covetousness: “I have
read that the people in North Africa have devised a clever way to catch
monkeys. They make a hole in a gourd
just large enough for the monkey’s paw, then fill the gourd with nuts and tie
it to a tree. At night, the monkey
reaches into the gourd for the nuts, only to find he cannot pull his paw out of
the gourd! Of course, he could let go of
the nuts and escape quite easily—but he doesn’t want to forfeit the nuts! He ends u being captured because of his
covetousness. We might expect this kind
of stupidity in a dumb animal, but certainly not in a person made in the image
of God; yet it happens every day.” 9/15/2017
12:15 PM
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