Symptoms are misleading, when will you find the root cause?
The title of this post says it all…”symptoms are misleading…” Just like an iceberg, symptoms are what can be seen, but the root cause is still below the surface. Before I gave my life over to Christ and became His child, I thought I was a Christian and was going to heaven when I died. I truly believed I was His child and that all my poor decisions and negative reactions in life were just symptoms of what life threw at me daily. Just because the symptoms were negative reactions and poor decisions, that did not mean I was not his child, right? Wrong. For me the symptoms that I diagnosed as “what life threw at me” were really a missing relationship with our Heavenly Father.
Life prior to my relationship with Christ was filled with a bitter, cold attitude followed by heartless reactions and decisions that did not seem to care who or what was hurt in the process. This same mentality was directed towards family and co-workers as well as strangers I encountered in different situations. Again, I was under such a delusion (lie) from the Devil, that I truly believed I was a Christian going to heaven. The Devil let me believe that these symptoms had nothing do with a relationship with Christ, rather that people were ignorant, that I needed to react this way, or that others would take advantage of me my whole life. The Bible clearly states that the Devil is the father of lies:
John 8:44 says: “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies”.
I truly believe one of Satan’s most successful lies is to persuade church attenders and “religious” people to believe they are God’s children when in fact they truly are not. The Devil was not threatened by me for going to church or spending time with other Christians, what he is now threatened by is me having a “real” relationship with God. Therefore, if he could get me to believe I truly was a child of God’s when I was not, then he successfully accomplished his goal.
God states in John 13:35: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Based on the way I acted before I became His child, I was not filled with love. I was quite the opposite: cold, heartless, vindictive, prideful and seeking revenge against those who wronged me. Maybe your symptoms look different than mine did, but the principle is the same or at least the question is. Are these symptoms the real problem? No, the root cause of the problem stems back to our relationship with Christ or in my case the lack of a relationship. Satan would prefer us to focus on the symptom and never figure out the “lasting fix” which only comes from correctly identifying the root cause.
I grew up in a Christian home all my life being fooled by the symptoms and thinking I had a relationship with Christ. I thank God that He did not give up on me and He allowed me to focus on the root cause.
I just want to encourage you to look at your own “symptoms”. Are they misleading you?
Comments
Leave a Reply
-
Page Views Since January 2008
-
