Worship the Lord Your God

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only

Luke 4:8

By now you are probably beginning to realise that the devil never gives up. He doesn’t stop attacking you simply because he made one or two advances and failed, no. He is very persistent and so must the children of God. 

After his first failure at getting Jesus to provide for himself what the Lord had not given to him (turning the stone into bread simply because he is a child of God), the devil came to him again. This time, “The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendour; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.” (Luke 4:5-7).

There is no doubt that Satan has control of the world and could actually give it to anyone he wills. The bible tells us that Satan is the ruler of this world (John 12:31) and the prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2) by the popular election of mankind since the days of Adam.

However, the devil knew Jesus had come to win the kingdoms of the world. He knew that very soon, it will be said that The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever (Revelation 11:15). The way this will happen according to the Father’s plan is that Jesus will suffer first, then enter His glory (Luke 24:25-26). When this happens the devil will be totally dethroned. In order to avoid this, he offered Jesus a delegated authority instead; in exchange, Jesus only needed to avoid the cross and circumvent the Father’s plan. This was a temptation to work his way around God’s process to achieve the same result. 

The devil didn’t stop this temptation model with Jesus, he continues with us today. For God, the process is more important than the outcome because there is an intent behind the process. In fact, God is not as concerned about the outcome as He is about the process but the devil’s formula is precisely the opposite. He tells us that ‘the end justifies the means’, he shows us the outcome and the good it can do and keeps us so focused on that until the process matters nothing to us. The only problem is that it conflicts with the way of the Lord. 

These days ministries are built without God’s process; people can go into a marriage breaking all of God’s laws and still have a really great home. People can choose career paths in rebellion to God’s instruction and still make progress. The result only means much to men but to God, it counts for nothing. 

So check your life again, what you are doing now is it according to God’s process or you have opted out of the process and used other means to achieve the result. It may be good but it still won’t be God.

PRAYER