There
is a lot of confusion these days as to what comes from God and what
does not. I am talking in particular about things like going to
fortune tellers, Tarrot card readers, psychics, playing the Ouija
board, or going to mediums, and many other practices that come under
the general term of Occult. A lot of people just consider them
harmless fun; besides what could possibly be wrong with them?
God
expressly warns us in the Scriptures to stay away from such things.
In the book of Deuteronomy it says:
You
must not have in your midst anyone... who practices divination, or
anyone who consults the stars, who is a sorcerer, or one who
practices enchantments or who consults the spirits, no diviner, or
one who asks questions of the dead. For the Lord abhors those
who do these things (Deuteronomy 18:10-12).
In
another book it says, ‘Do not have recourse to the spirits of the
dead or to magicians; they will defile you. I, the Lord, am
your God’ (Leviticus 19:31).
Now
I would like to try and explain why these things are a problem for
us, because the Lord God doesn’t just give us rules for the sake of
rules. If God tells us to stay away from something it is with
good reason, just like you will tell your children to stay away from
the fire or they’ll get burned. The Lord does the same for
us, telling us what to avoid if we want to stay healthy.
So
why are these things, which are now available everywhere, a problem?
The first and most important reason is that they interfere with our
free will. Our free will is an extraordinary gift which the
Lord has given us, because it means that we have the freedom to do
anything we choose, be it good or evil, although of course the idea
is that real freedom is freedom to choose what is good. We can
even reject God if we choose. It is an extraordinary thing that
the Lord who has created us respects us enough even to giving us the
freedom to reject him, and sadly some people do this by the way they
live. Going to fortune tellers or any of these other things
that I mentioned is basically an attempt to gain knowledge of the
future. The problem is that if we have any kind of knowledge of
the future it is going to influence our freedom to choose, because we
will probably start acting out of fear or what we think might
be going to happen. The Lord does not want us to be afraid, but
to be at peace. That is why the Lord does not reveal the future
to us. We don’t need to know it. If we did, He would
show us, because He wants the very best for us.
The
second reason why these things are a problem for us, is that by
dabbling in them we are going directly against something God has
asked us, which is a way of creating an obstacle between us and God.
We sin when we do this. From a spiritual point of view they can
also have a hold or influence over us. If God does not reveal
the future to us, then where is this information coming from?
It is not coming from the Lord, even if the fortune teller starts off
by praying the Hail Mary, which I know some of them do.
I
worked with an exorcist priest friend of mine for a while and saw
first-hand the mess that some people get themselves into by dabbling
in these things that the Lord tells us specifically to keep away
from. They are very real. Satan is cunning and will do
anything to lead us away from God, because he hates us as God’s
creation. And yes I did say Satan, which may surprise you, but
if Satan is not real then Jesus is a liar, because Jesus frequently
mentioned him in his teaching.
I
guess we have to ask ourselves do I believe what Jesus said is true
or not? Either the Bible (the Scriptures) is the word of God or
it isn’t. If it is, we have good cause to listen to it.
If it’s not true, then what are we doing here?
The
Lord wants the very best for us and will continually guide us along
the right path, the path that will help us to reach our full
potential as human beings. But sometimes we get misled and go
astray. That’s not a problem so long as we recognise it and
come back again. I’m sure you want God’s blessing for your
lives and for your families, just as I do. But if we mess with
what God expressly tells us to stay away from, we will be blocking
God’s help from us.
If
you have dabbled in any of these things at any stage, confess it,
which is what the Lord asks us to do. By confessing it you
break any spiritual hold that it can have over you. By
repenting of it you also open the door to God’s grace as well.
In
the readings today the Lord is assuring us that He does and will
answer our prayers. We have to trust that the Lord in this.
God only speaks truth. If God has assured us of his help, then
we would be foolish to look for any spiritual help from any other
source. We know that God wants the very best for us and if we
believe that then we must also listen to what He tells us to do and
what He tells us to avoid.
‘I
have come that you may have life and have it to the full’ (John
10:10)
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