A couple of weeks ago, I was driving somewhere with my son Isaac. Isaac has a way of asking questions that will make you stop and have to think before you answer. We were driving down the road and he asked: “Dad, what is the oldest trick in the book? He wasn’t asking what does the oldest trick in the book mean, he knew that but he was asking just as it sounded what is the oldest trick in the book?
What would you say? Well, I thought about saying I don’t know, and may have said as much. But then I thought, let’s see if he can catch this, and I answered: Deception: Telling a half-truth to deceive someone. Then I asked if he knew the second oldest trick in the book and he answered, hiding. And what about the third and we decided together that it was playing the blame game.
Maybe you have caught on or maybe you haven’t. But, I took this moment in the car to remind both of us that there is nothing new under the sun. Ever since Adam and Eve in the garden the enemy of our soul has been trying to get men and women to step outside of God’s will, outside of God’s design and desire for them by deception: telling half-truth that sound pretty good which then tempts us to act or live our lives according to a lie rather than by God’s truth.
The problem with being deceived is that you form a new reality based upon a lie. A lie that you don’t readily see or understand is a lie. That’s what deception is. If you and I have been deceived, it means that until we recognize the point of our deception we are in essence acting upon or living or lives based upon a lie.
We are forming what we believe, how we see life, how we respond to life, and even how we understand the world around us not based upon God’s truth but a lie told us by the enemy of our soul.
Can you imagine how destructive that might be? And yet in some area most if not all of us are doing this in some way. And we don’t even realize it.
God’s grace is so great that when we confess our sins and trust in His goodness and mercy we do find His grace to help in our time of need. God’s mercy is more than we could ever have hoped for and as He did for Adam and Eve, he covers our sin by the blood of His lamb, Jesus and cleanses us from all unrighteousness so that we can be and become all that he has designed and desires for us to be.
What a great promise of hope for those who will turn from their sin and lean into the heart of God. For those who no longer trust in themselves or try to hide from the presence of God for those who no longer lean on their own understanding but instead acknowledge God in all their ways and trust in His truth that their crooked paths will be made straight.
What if you step backwards for a moment? Can you think about times or events or even current places that arise in which you find yourself quickly blaming others?
Remember the pattern goes: Deception, Hide, Blame.
So if we reverse the film we will see Blame, Hide, Deception.
What are the areas in your life where you can look at honestly and acknowledge your cover for pain and sorrow, your cover for hurt and brokenness, your cover for shame and fear, your cover for bitterness and resentment is found by blaming others or perhaps even God for allowing such a situation to occur?
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