“Get your house in order.” Subtle but firm words I heard this morning while sitting there playing with my daughter. The words sent a sense of urgency to my spirit because it came after me having a dream earlier this morning, that after I woke up from, I felt extremely guilty and sad. You see, in the dream I battled with temptation, not once but twice and both times I willingly wanted to give in; I wanted sin. Feeling both guilty and sad because I felt like I had disappointed God. in addition, I had the hard revelation that my spirit man was weak. This further made me feel like I was disappointing God.
The problem is I know I have gotten complacent-after being on fire for God-doing what I felt like he wanted me to do, I started to allow life’s distractions pull me away and little by little, even though I hadn’t physically done anything, in my heart I was straying away. I realized my heart posture wasn’t in the right place. I was reading my bible but not to “feed” or because the desire was there. I had started to read because I felt obligated-like this was what I was “supposed” to be doing. This mentality and this posture I unknowingly took on, effected my prayer life and just my personal one on one relationship with God. It was like I was doing what was required to maintain our relationship but my heart wasn’t in it… and just like that I had found myself on auto drive, just like our personal relationships with people I was doing what I thought would make Him happy; when in actuality nothing I was doing was making Him happy.
God didn’t really have my intention-meaning my intention wasn’t there to please Him, to love Him, to serve Him and to fulfil His desires. My intention shifted to His promises for life. I was doing what I felt like was required of me to reap His good, to reap His promises. I was drifting further away from God and was only focused on what He could do for me. The longer I did this and the more I felt like I wasn’t seeing the return I wanted, the less my attention and affections were focused on Him. It’s real hard to realize that your relationship and intention with God shifted from purely loving Him and seeking to know Him and the desires of His heart to switching to being in the relationship for your own personal gain and financial/ status growth.
So a few weeks ago, I was having a thought and I began to write it down. I said ” Everybody has a “prophetic word” or a word from God. We live in a time where Christianity has become popular but not for the right reasons. The reality is every self proclaimed prophet or prophetic word is not from God. There are people on social media posting about a prosperity gospel or a doom and gloom gospel and they’re doing it because it’s trending and they know that people will listen to what they’re saying-because the sad truth is people would rather listen to popular youtubers than go read their bible and get what they need for themselves. This is dangerous because not only is it idolatry, because you’re placing that youtuber and the YouTube platform before God. If the first thing you do in the morning or last thing before bed is grab your phone and check to see if your favorite Christian youtuber has made a post or uploaded a video- it is idolatry. You have placed that before God.”
At the time I wrote ” As I’m thinking of this it is dangerous behavior because it’s occult like behavior. It reminded me of the time when I was into new age spirituality or simply put the occult. I was very heavy into zodiac signs, tarot cards/ divination. I spent hours going from channel to channel, looking for readings about my birth month or the zodiac assigned to my birth date. I would received and accept what that person was saying-blindly coming into agreement with what they spoke over my life because it sounded good. I would do this until the videos were no longer enough. I eventually got a personal tarot card reading and even contemplated purchasing my own… because by this time I was already deep into crystals, yoga, sages, incense, candles and more. This is a story for another day…Thank God He didn’t let me stray too far. However, back then I idolized love and the desire to have it. I was caught up in that twin flame phenomenon- and demonically attached myself to a man who was a whole warlock, also a story for another day. Fast forward to me giving my life to God and being delivered, I started to noticed that there are no difference in how the enemy uses his tactics to keep people in sin. What I mean by that is rather it’s tarot card reading videos or listening to Christian youtubers back to back or anything else that you prioritize before God, it’s a sin. We can state the obvious and say, well tarot cards and other occult stuff is worse than listening to Christian youtubers all day and honestly that would be a valid point; however God specifically says there shall be NO other god before Him. That “god” can be anything…my point is the dangers of the prosperity gospel messages are, you think it’s good (because it sounds good) and you find yourself “receiving” all of these things… you’re there with the expectation of God doing something for you, increasing your life in some way, making it to your promise land and receiving the promises God has for your life or another dangerous trend, kingdom spouses, which reminds me a lot of the twin flame thing. We get wrapped up into all of these things and lose sight of the pureness of why we’re in a relationship with God.
God says that He will give life more abundantly ( I’m paraphrasing). All of His promises are beautiful and it’s even ok to want and have desires. My point is salvation should always be more than enough- everything else that comes with God is a bonus, not the actual goal or prize. It is easy to lose sight of this, so this is a reminder to check your intentions and ask God to change the posture of your heart if you’ve found that you’ve strayed and only looking for what you can gain in the sense of finances, status, love etc. repent and stay focus on the love of God and not what you can get from God. Until next time be blessed and stay encouraged.
~Danielle Vorece