Mistakenly taking the wrong onramp
Ever get confused and take the wrong onramp to a highway that you thought you were getting onto, only to discover that you were wrong? Most of the time this happens if you are travelling in a new area. But sometimes, when you are overconfident, this can happen to you on the same highway you have travelled before. The onramp to Deception Highway can do that to you.
When you started out it looked very familiar to the Truth Highway, but as you drove along it didn’t take long until things started to look different, unfamiliar. Then you realized that you were on the wrong highway and were not going to reach your desired destination.
Did you let your emotions (or your flesh) and the devil’s thoughts put you on the “false assumption” onramp and onto Deception Highway? You assumed something as true that really wasn’t what you thought it was, and by your response things haven’t turned out like you expected.
Deception Highway will never take you to the right destination of life! It only takes you to the devil’s destination of “steal, kill, and destroy” (John 10:10).
When does this road trip start?
When you want to travel a highway you use an onramp to get on and take you to your desired destination. Like when you want to do something, you chose what actions and words to use to accomplish your purpose.
There are two “onramps” of life – true assumption and false assumption – and they lead to two very different but also similar looking highways – Truth Highway and Deception Highway.
In Proverbs 1:20-23 and 9:13-16 we find how the devil uses deception, as Wisdom and the foolish woman both cry out the same message for the simple minded ones to come to them. Only problem is that one leads to life, that being Wisdom, and the other to death, that being sin.
True assumption is the onramp that puts us on the Truth Highway while false assumption puts us on Deception Highway.
Assumption in itself is not necessarily bad, as we operate this way each day. We do things automatically, which we assume based on past experience and on facts, to be valid - like eating to stay alive, turning on a light switch to get light, turning the key on our car to start it, etc. Based on facts, on truth, assumption can be just an extension of our operating in faith.
But sometimes assumption can become deception when a situation occurs where someone takes something as the truth with a very low level of certainty or with no proof at all, especially concerning a new set of circumstances.
We learn assumption early in life
Assumption usually begins in childhood, and it can be a good teacher as we can learn about life when we start assuming things, especially ones that bring us pain or embarrassment.
For example, take the little boy who learns that he can’t fly like Superman. Watching Superman fly on TV stirs him to want to fly himself. So he makes a cape, then takes off running, and then jumps into the air like Superman, assuming that the cape would make me fly. But, as he lands with a “thud,” truth sets in as he finds out that it didn’t work the way he assumed it would. Later on he learns that Superman’s flying was all rigged on screen, so he now sees that his assumption about the cape and Superman having powers to fly were not based on truth. He learns quickly about false assumption.
The thing is, that if he had asked his father or any adult about Superman’s flying powers, his false assumption about flying would have been quickly corrected.
Of course using the onramp of false assumption doesn’t end with childhood; it just starts there, as all along life’s way the devil tries to keep us using this onramp to put us on Deception Highway.
Sometimes assumptions we used earlier in our lives have to be corrected because the source of what we based our assumption on has changed. For example: years ago you could trust the TV news media most of the time to tell the unbiased truth. But today you had better beware of what you see and hear on TV as the devil is now the controlling spirit behind these major news organizations and he uses deception to change the foundation of our Christian life itself. The news media is now doing as Isaiah 5:10 states, “calling evil good and good evil.”
Assumptions are easily influenced
Assumptions are strongly influenced by our lens of perception as to what we see and hear. We can be more easily deceived into making false assumptions when we interpret what others say and do, as well as what we say and do in response, through past experiences, especially when strong emotions like pain and lust are involved.
The devil very cleverly used emotions, along with the accompanying thoughts he places in our minds, to deceive us and put us on the onramp of false assumption. What we though was a good analysis of our situation becomes false, as our perception of the truth was clouded, because it was filtered through the wrong lens.
Who has travelled this highway?
You are not alone. Everyone has! Both Bible history and secular history are filled with examples of this. From the smartest to the least intelligent, from the richest to the poorest, from the highest social standing to the lowest, from the strongest to the weakest. Much like the certainty of death, false assumption leading to deception is something we will all experience.
This is why it is the favorite tactic of the devil (Revelation 20:10), starting with Eve (I Timothy 2:14) and will be noticeable in the last days (II Timothy 3:13). Our Lord Jesus and the apostles have given us ample warnings to not be deceived by the devil, yet it still happens.
What keeps you on Deception Highway?
There are two basic reasons for this:
1) People’s words and actions can be misinterpreted based on the lens through which you see them. What you saw and heard was from your lens of perception. In other words, you evaluated what you saw and heard from the standpoint of one or more strongholds in your heart rather than from God’s perspective.
Your interpretation of what should take place may be based on what you wanted to take place, rather than what actually did. You base your reactions on your prejudiced thought pattern, without looking at all the facts.
2) Your emotions got worked up and this led you to believe the thoughts from the devil. He told you a lie about why someone said and did something, and you were too quick to accept it as fact. You made a hasty, uninformed assumption, and you quickly took the false assumption onramp to Deception Highway.
He played on your emotions, and rather than reason it out, you appeased your emotions by jumping to the conclusion presented by the devil’s thoughts. You never considered the truth about your thoughts.
This happened to Eve when she assumed that the devil’s lies were on the same level of truth as God Words were, and she took Adam with her in her sin. Her assumption changed her foundation for her actions from a true foundation to a false one.
King Saul fell into traveling Deception Highway as well, concerning his assumptions based on his reasoning for not following God’s directive to completely destroy the Amalekites.
What keeps you off of Deception Highway?
1) Following the Holy Spirit and the truth of God’s Word, not the flesh, or emotions. The devil can play with your emotions, which are influenced by the thoughts he places in your mind. If you listen to the Holy Spirit, He will place a feeling of uncertainty within you of the thoughts you are entertaining, as well as your response to those thoughts. He will place a check in your spirit, or “blow the whistle” on you when you are entering into sin.
In I Samuel 24&26, the Lord kept David from harming King Saul twice, by a check in David’s spirit. The devil put thoughts of revenge in David’s mind, but he took the time to listen to the check of the Holy Spirit and he did what was right, not touching King Saul’s life.
2) Test or evaluate the spirit behind your thoughts (I John 4:1). Is the thought from God or the devil? If you hear a negative, or critical, or judgmental spirit about what someone says or does, then it is probably not from God. If your response to what you hear and see is evil, then know for sure that God is not in it.
Do as we used to say in the business world, “Take a check-up from the neck up.”
3) Investigate before you come to a conclusion, or interpretation of what you saw and heard. Don’t believe based on little or no evidence. You have to be like the Bereans, not automatically accepting what you see and hear as true.
In Acts 17, as Paul and Silas preached the gospel in Berea, verse 11 states, “…they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.” Their evaluation of Paul’s words with truth put them on the Truth Highway.
However, the religious leaders of Jerusalem, who claimed to know the Scriptures, fell into travelling on Deception Highway. They assumed because Jesus hailed from Nazareth that He was born there, so they rejected Him as possibly being the Messiah. Had they done some research, they would have found that He was from the lineage of King David and that He was actually born in Bethlehem, which fulfilled the scriptures about the Messiah.
They assumed wrong because Jesus did not appear in a manner they expected the Messiah to come, and they also were not part of the miraculous moving of God as done through Jesus. Their emotions deceived them into being easily stirred up against Jesus. As their emotions got the best of them, the spirit of hatred moved in, and, along with the spirit of murder, they were deceived to doing the work of the devil in crucifying Jesus, the very Messiah they were looking for.
Jesus tried to direct them off of Deception Highway by referring them to the Scriptures that spoke about Him, and the works which He did that verified who He was. He even told them that He was “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) yet in their unbelief they failed to heed His advice as they were so entrapped in their emotions that they could not reason anymore. It was easier to stay on Deception Highway than to find a reason to exit off.
Even the apostle Paul got caught up on travelling this highway until Jesus met him on the road to Damascus and he was converted.
Four great false assumptions that can lead someone to travel Deception Highway
1) “That God does not mean what He says; that His word is not absolute truth.” This is the first lie the devil used against Eve and because it worked so well he continues with this tactic. There is only truth in God’s Word, so what He says will be established and He does not change, to include being a holy and just judge (Number 23:19, Hebrews 13:8). Hell means hell, forever means forever, lost means lost, saved mean saved, etc. No need to interpret His words any other way, as the devil had Eve do.
2) “God is love, so He will overlook my disobeying Him and His Word.” Ecclesiastes 8:11 states, “Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.”
God tried to correct this misconception in the early church with the example of the sudden death of Ananias and Sapphira for lying to the Holy Spirit. But even with this example, Christians used the premise of Ecclesiastes 8:11 to keep sinning. But be sure of this, that as the natural law of sowing and reaping always works, so does the spiritual law of the judgment of sin. God’s character cannot allow it otherwise.
3) “All I need to do is make Him my Savior.” No, you also have to make the commitment and effort to daily make Him your Lord. The price Jesus paid as Savior for your redemption automatically gives Him ownership of you. The devil will be constantly trying to get you to go back to serving him, so there will always be that battle of who you are going to serve and make master of your life.
Once you accept the price He paid for your salvation, the real evidence that Jesus is your Lord is shown by your obedience to His Word (John 14:21).
4) “You have more time.” Today is the only day you are guaranteed (James 4:13-15). You
may have good intentions of repenting of your sin, but, even if you are a Christian, living a lawless life will get you rejected by Jesus (Matthew 7:21).
Hell is full of people who did not repent when they knew they should, who put it off, thinking that they would have time to do it later. But later never came for them, and now torment forever is their fate, set forever to never be changed.
DECEPTION
Beware! False assumption makes it easy to get on Deception Highway, but once on it is hard to get off. Make sure your assumptions are based on God and His Word so that you are on the Truth Highway to God’s designed destination rather than the devil’s deceptive destination.
Deception Highway is a very broad road, as today even more so as we as a nation have fallen away from God. In these last days the devil knows that he can accomplish a lot through deception. Make sure you are travelling the narrow way, for that is the way to life (Matthew 7:13&14).
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