Good Morning friends! Today we are going to tackle the Negative influence trait of evil. I know we have this idea that evil is only meant for satan and his minions or even more , that evil is only meant for fairy tales. You know- the evil stepsisters, the evil queen, Ursula, Gaston, Cruella DeVille……But when we take a closer look at these characters what do we see…They were only concerned about themselves. NEVER do you see a loving, kind, selfless person depicted as an evil person. Why? because they are polar opposites. You CANNOT have love and be evil at the same time!
How do I know this?
The Bible is very clear.
But he will pour out his anger and wrath on those who live for themselves, who refuse to obey the truth and instead live lives of wickedness. 9 There will be trouble and calamity for everyone who keeps on doing what is evil…..Romans 2:8-9 NLT
Sin=wickedness/ Evil. And sin is ANYTHING that goes against God’s word. So If God commands us to Love and gives us a description of what that looks like and we choose to disobey then we are choosing evil..
That’s a sobering thought!
It’s hard to swallow for sure because that means when we choose our own way- we are choosing evil.
But what we choose……
16 Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living.
That means we can choose love over hatred…..Joy over negativity…peace over anxiety…..kindness over rudeness……goodness over evil……faithfulness over unfaithfulness…. Gentleness over harshness……and self-control over a lack of self-control! WE ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE!!! ALWAYS! and what we choose determines what kind of influence we have. And that is POWERFUL!!!
It’s our choice but what we choose has two outcomes.
- It determines our influence now.
- It determines our consequences. in the future.
“We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the One who was born of God keeps them safe, and the evil one cannot harm them” (1 John 5:18)
Obviously we aren’t perfect, right? We are going to make mistakes. These verses are talking about those who are continually and habitually making sinful choices. And as much as we want to say this is for “the really bad sins, It’s really about ANY and every habitual sin and sin is rooted in selfish ambition. Seeking our own good over others. AND THAT breaks the two greatest commandments
- To Love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength ( you can’t do that if you are battling selfish ambition)
- and love your neighbor as yourself. Again we are commanded to put others over ourselves.
If we don’t do those things we are choosing evil.
So the nagging question is this: How do we combat the natural tendency to be selfish?
The great news is the Bible has a very specific verse about this very subject and the great thing is it’s simple too!!
1 Don’t let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good. (Romans 12:21 NLT)
Yep that’s it- you conquer evil by doing good.
Making the wise choice to embrace goodness fights evil and we will over time train our hearts and minds. Is it easy? Absolutely not! It takes hard work and a lot of prayer AND a lot of Faith! (ahem I do believe that is what we are going to chat about tomorrow).
Now It’sYour Turn
It time for that hard heart work we have become accustomed to.
The first step is to do a deep heart evaluation- Why do you do what you do? This is to determine what motivates our hearts. Why do we do what we do? Ask yourself what does your speech reveal about your heart? Does your speech, actions AND thoughts genuinely reveal your love for God and others? (Hint if you are saying a lot of “men’s and I’s when you talk to others you are more than likely self focused). Do you think about who might be hurt or blessed when making choices.? As you open up your hearts to God he begins to reveal even deeper things about ourselves we never imagined.
A Little explanation
If you have been here through the series you know that I have used the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) as a series of Positive Influence Traits that serve as markers for true Christians- image-bearers of Jesus. And when we finished with the positive influence traits I flipped them so we could discuss Negative influence traits that believers sometimes fall into as a way to have a means to measure where our hearts are at.
I want you to know that I appreciate you coming each day to hang out as we chat about these topics. If you are new here you can check out this links to see the rest of the series.
Write 31 Days 2018 Influence Posts
Choosing Courage 100 Day Writing Project
Write 31 Days 2021 Link up List. (Scroll to the bottom)
