"But do not be afraid, Jacob, my servant; do not be dismayed, Israel. For I will bring you home again from distant lands, and your children will return from their exile. Israel will return to a life of peace and quiet, and no one will terrorize them. Do not be afraid, Jacob, my servant, for I am with you,” says the Lord. “I will completely destroy the nations to which I have exiled you, but I will not completely destroy you. I will discipline you, but with justice; I cannot let you go unpunished.” Jeremiah 46:27-28 NLT
I've been playing a newly released game these past few weeks quite heavily called Deceive Inc and have been absolutely loving it. Its in the extraction shooter genre and you basically go undercover as an NPC (non playable character) with 6 other players also who are undercover, all against each other, to achieve one goal; Extract the package. Now that you know a bit about the game, lets jump into the message.
We all have the mindset to make right decisions, but are they always correct? Course not, we make bad decisions too in life. One thing i catch myself being deceived by in this new game quite a bit is the fact that not all weird, odd, glitchy movements from NPC's are players. Like this ridiculously suspicious NPC I encountered just yesterday that i saw moving back and forth in a very strange way on-top of an umbrella. My first thought was he was a player who was legitimately stuck, so id put him out of his misery. Nothing in me told me i was wrong or could be wrong, i was 100% convinced that this NPC was in fact a player. By shooting my gun at this NPC, i also blow my own cover kind of like breaking out of a shell. So its very important to know when to shoot, and when to stay undercover.
It is wise to know what lies the enemy may be deceiving us with, weather it be an umbrella glitch or a NPC defying gravity, or just a random player walking past. In life, there are thieves in this world who hang around to steal your belongings, there are people who label themselves as your friend who only stick around as long as there are drugs in your pocket. Or the feeling of true love in a relationship can be deceived by a spirit of lust if tempted too much to do wrong things with each other. Its important to examine our decisions and not become affiliated with being deceived by people or satan or emotions. For us, Its super easy to blow our cover and become vulnerable, sometimes being vulnerable has its benefits. For Satan, he stays undercover, hiding yet still deceiving us behind a mask/cover that we dont recognize similar to the NPC's in Deceive Inc. He may even convince us to put cover on and hide too, this is where depression and loneliness come in to deceive us. The difference between God and Satan is obvious , but the armor given to us by each is much different. As Christians, we put on the armor of God and use the sword of the spirit (the word of God), while all Satan has is his mask and whole lotta super glue. Yes he is powerful, but we have a God who is much mightier then he is and can show us through prayer if we are being deceived by the evil one.
For myself I'll be honest, prayer has always been very hard for me, not because saying the prayer is hard, but hearing God's response. Sometimes we expect him to answer right away, but what I've been learning lately is that God works on his own time, that deceiving voice that says yes or no right away inside of my head is and has always been the enemy. We must not expect change or confirmation to happen right away because sometimes God SHOWS us the answer to our prayers instead, and only he can take the mask off Satans lies of deception in our lives through the power of prayer. To extract the package of truth and salvation, we must first give ourselves and our entire life to him, including our mask no matter how hard it is to get off our beautiful faces. If we trust in him to guide us in a walk to seek real truth and avoid false lies, we are setting ourselves up for success! We need not not blow our cover for satan and the world to see, but for God to see and for God to use our true selves for doing good. For he is who we find rest in and who we can rely on to save us from the clutches of the devil and his deceptional actions.