Everywhere I turn, someone or something is giving me a message. Now most of these messages I actually filter out and ignore for the simple reason that if I didn’t, I would be so overwhelmed with information that I would have difficulty functioning.

Marketers know this is the case for everyone, and so they understand that you probably won’t pay attention to their message until you have seen it at least seven times. And so they bombard you all the more.

The messages come from multiple arenas. Television, radio, social media, billboards, and advertising of all sorts. And then the people that you interact with are also giving you the messages that they have been given. Doctors, news anchors, politicians, office holders, family, friends, and neighbors. They all are telling you their message.

Paul is warning us here that we should not be deceived when we come under this bombardment of messages. The implication here is that the MAJORITY of messages that are coming at you contain something that can DECEIVE you and CORRUPT you.

Listening to the wrong message and believing it will actually cause you to do sinful actions. BELIEVING wrong will cause you to start DOING wrong.

And this is why it is so critically important to watch what we are putting into our minds!

If you think you can watch the evening news and come away unaffected by their ungodly bias in life, you are deceiving yourself! You can’t!

If you think you can hang out with a bunch of people who do nothing but discuss all of their various maladies, symptoms, and prescriptions and not be affected by their negativity, you are deceiving yourself.

What goes into your ears has an extremely high chance of going into your heart. And it takes Christian discipline and maturity to keep it out.

Now this is not a salvation issue. Paul isn’t saying that by listening to these messages and being corrupted by them that it will change our Christian identity.

But he is saying that believing all these lies will change our behavior.

And when our behavior changes, we begin to look exactly like the world. And when we look like the world, those who are looking at our lives are unable to detect the presence of God in us.

Paul says that if those looking at your life can’t come to the knowledge of God through what they see, this is a shameful development.

Is this a problem in the church? It really is! Christians spend far too much time listening to messages that nullify their faith in the promises of God.

When unbelievers look at a group of Christians and see that they are just as sick and stressed out as they are, they will head to the football game on Sunday morning instead of heading to church.

But Christians are only sick and stressed out when they have allowed themselves to be deceived and corrupted by messages that bring them into defeat.

We live in a dangerous world that is doing everything it can to kill you with its messages. But the Word of God will bring you life.

The problem is that all those myriads of messages that are coming at you from the world are all trying to convince you that the promises of God don’t apply to you.

Awake to righteousness! In other words, you have to actively reject what the world is telling you and actively confess that what the Bible is telling you is the ONLY truth.

Until you do this, you will be defeated by what you are hearing.

Reject what “they” say. Or what “they” say will kill you.