Who is Pulling the Strings? Part 3
Influence: the act or power of producing an effect without apparent exertion of force or direct exercise of command.
Manipulation: to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one’s own advantage.
Manipulation is huge. We have companies that spend billions and billions of dollars to get you to drink their soda, where their jeans, eat their cereal, even use their body sprays! You have advertisers that will try to convince you that if you use their body spray, you have girls jumping your bones. Sorry, not going to happen. The point is to plant a seed in your mind. If they can get you to try it, just to see, they have succeeded. This is how the enemy gains access to our minds, by planting a seed.
It doesn’t have to be a giant demon telling you to sin, it’s so subtle you may not even realize that you have been affected till later on. It could be something so simple as seeing someone attractive that “you can’t get out of your head”. That turns into lust and you act out in any of a myriad of ways which I won’t get into. You own your mind. You ever wonder why you couldn’t get image out of your head? It is a good chance that it is not you bringing back to your rememberance but by the demonic. It starts simple, but can get out of control very quickly. I believe many extreme cases of compulsive behavior are seeded in something supernatural rather than natural. Pastor Mark Driscoll said something very simple but very practical. He said that you should question anything that says “you” are no good. “You” are a failure. Do you think in the third person? Not me. Usually if I am thinking I say “what a bone-head I am!” not “what a bone-head you are!” It’s subtle and deceptive but we need to learn to discern between our own inner voice and the voice of a deceiver.
To be continued…
Kevin
