When we allow the devil to manipulate our feelings to think things are bad when they are good or when things are good that they are bad, we are allowing the devil to have a foothold in our lives. Anyone depending on their feelings will be easily manipulated.
Isaiah 5:20 "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!"
The more we know of God's Word the more we will be able to stand against the devil. Sometimes the devil uses ungodly people to use pressure to influence us against the word of God.
Those who want us to follow them instead of God will use intimidation, mocking, and exclusion to cause bad "feelings" in us. The more we trust God the fewer feelings we have when someone attempts to manipulate us. All our actions must be based on truth not on feelings.
People pleasers are easily manipulated, everything they think and do is based on whether or not someone else will become enraged. If someone rages because we told the truth it is they who are sinning not us. No one can make another person angry, if there is anger over hearing the truth then the anger came from within, it is not on us. We must confront out of our love for the sinner and the others looking on who may be influenced by the sinful behavior or attitude.
In these last days, we will see more and more angry unteachable spirits who are stubborn and full of fury toward God.
2 Timothy 3:1-9
"But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.
2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,
3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,
4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
5 holding to a form of godliness although they have denied its power; avoid such people as these.
6 For among them are those who slip into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses,
7 always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, worthless in regard to the faith.
9 But they will not make further progress; for their foolishness will be obvious to all, just as was that also of Jannes and Jambres."
This is the picture of the end times church, full of drama and troublemakers. God said; "they will have a form of godliness but not of God." They are trouble makers divisive over silly things God never commanded and disobedient to the Word of God in many ways, in other words, they are self-willed and self-indulgent. Stay away from these people and be bold enough to tell others just as Paul did when he exposed Jannes and Jambres.
Do not allow others to intimidate you into silence when troublemakers begin their nonsense. Speak out, if no one will discipline them and endorse their bad behavior by their silence then it is time to leave.
When the evil person is allowed to take the lead by the silence of others, that evil person will influence those who are young or weak in the faith. We endorse bad behavior merely through our silence. We are admonished to rebuke in public when the sin was in public. Allowing the sinner to have their say without challenge is the same as endorsing the sin they do.
We are living in a world that denies the need for correction and even exclusion when someone claims to be a Christian but denies Christ in their attitude and lifestyle. We need to stop being "sensitive" about being hated for speaking truth. See it as a calling and do not allow it to intimidate or influence us into sheepish and groveling responses.
We must speak the truth boldly without emotion and receive the response without emotion.
Remember that emotions are the shallowest part of our being driven by stimuli, not rational and reasonable thinking. People in our day are unreasonable and manipulative, they can make a rock feel guilty about being a rock.
Jeremiah 17:7
"7 Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
And whose trust is the Lord."
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