Come out from among them…

Allow me to paint this picture…let’s say there was a war in your nation today (God forbid) and you were conscripted as one of the soldiers to defend your nation (God forbid again) & you knew that a lot of what you held dear was hanging on your country’s victory, how serious would you be when facing your enemy? How diligent would you be in ensuring that they don’t kill you or the soldier next to you that is probably your neighbor or brother back home?

Suppose, for whatever reason, the enemy’s camp was to have an entertaining & fascinating war-cry on their side of the war, would you want to pause the fight and watch them do their war-cry just a little bit? just for entertainment’s sake?…‘after-all, ‘it’s just a war cry’… Would you put your gun/sword down, take your bullet-proof vest off, put your shield down, possibly take off your shoes too, sit back, relax and just enjoy the enemy’s war-cry?

Of course you wouldn’t, would you?

If you actually would then I am quite concerned about you & may you never be conscripted in any real life army, amen?

2 Timothy 2:4 No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer.

Here is the thing, from the beginning of time, we have had an enemy who utterly loathed us when we were created and still does today. He hates that we get to have the dominion that he cunningly tried & failed to get by conniving to usurp God’s power. He hates it that once we are saved, when we sin, we get a chance to repent & be right with God whilst he is doomed to hell for his own prideful sin. Oh, and he just doesn’t silently loathe us. He is actively determined to take humanity with him to hell so that he doesn’t burn alone whilst we enjoy being in God’s glorious presence. & in instances that he sees that he can’t quite exactly take us with him, he would rather we live a miserable life, way lower than the one we were created for. For that, he chooses to steal, kill and destroy (or at least attempt to) any of us he can, using whatever means possible, including keeping us distracted & weakened or deceiving us. (Ask Eve)

2 Corinthians 2:11 Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices.

Sometimes, it appears as if a significant number of God’s children are actually ignorant of our enemy’s devices. Despite being warned of an existing enemy, we tend to casually show up at the battlefield and instead of girding up for battle, we choose to be distracted by the enemy’s war-cries & other fluff. We assume that the weapons actually fashioned against us are not that deep. That we can just be entertained a little bit by our enemy, as long as to us it is a little bit because, well, the battle can’t be that bad.

In my previous blog post I mentioned my then obsessive love/idolatry to secular music. After posting that blog, I sensed the leading to write another blog post talking about that exact same topic again so here we are…

When I was deep in that cursed music, I could not simultaneously listen to genuine worship music that worshiped the One True Lord, under the guise of it being boring. I could barely have a consistent prayer life either because in my head, I thought I was wasting the time that I would otherwise use to listen to my favorite song. I equally couldn’t believe that God had any genuine love for me either. I could not serve God and serve whichever god that music bowed down to-the devil, of course. I had to prefer one and be irritated by the other. The fact that I did not realize that my unusually devout love for that music was a form of worship to a false god, did not stop it from happening either.

Matthew 6:24 “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other…“

The entertainment industry has since become extremely worse since the time that I stopped loving what it had to offer. The wickedness has since become more blatant and lethal. We have come to that season described by the word as ‘darkness covers the earth and gross darkness covers the people” and we are commanded by our army general to take a stance of arising and shining in that grossly dark world. Unfortunately or fortunately, we cannot shine in a dark world when we, ourselves, are partaking of the gross darkness. We cannot shine a little bit and be in darkness a little bit, because those two cannot co-exist in one temple. We cannot go to battle against an enemy that we low-key love, that we find adorable, that we think is not that bad, it is like owning a pet anaconda that we allow to roam around freely near our precious babies as we take an afternoon nap.

Isaiah 60: 1-2: Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.² For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee.

I remember the first time I came across an article that claimed that one particular secular musician was now refusing to be called a ‘him’, but was rather preferring to be called a ‘them’ & that he was threatening to sue whoever referred to him in singular pronoun. It was very surprising, shocking and rather hilarious to me. I could tell the source of such a claim was the enemy’s influence, yes, but still, I found it outrageous that one would publicly claim that they are a “they”. This legion of a person really sounded out of his mind, yet in those same days, he had a popular song that people globally, including a considerable number of Christians sang along to called ‘stay with me’ which was seemingly addressing a woman he didn’t want to leave him. Now, knowing what we know about his agenda on earth at that time, you wonder who he was really asking to stay with him. This is a person who was a gate to the unrighteous spirit that is now a matter-of-fact norm in society, yet as children of God, many of us blindly helped him declare into the earth that some spirit should stay with him.

Songs are decrees, affirmations and proclamations because you sing them out loud into the atmosphere. It is close to impossible to hear a catchy song and not feel tempted to play it over and over and over in your head and ultimately sing it out loud. Even with movies, particularly series, if you watch a movie for long, it is highly likely that you will unconsciously find yourself acting out the mannerisms, speaking certain phrases or thinking thoughts related to the main character. 97% of the time, entertainment is not entertainment, it is warfare.

This principle of summoning spirits or displacing spirits through music is registered in the word of God in the story of David and Saul. It is clearly stated that demonic spirits left Saul whenever David would play the harp for him. Our enemy is not that original, he just duplicates and perverts that which God does. I will say it one more time for the people at the back, what we deem as entertainment is actually warfare. You can almost always tell the enemy’s next agenda in the earth by looking at the evil that is aggressively modeled as good in the media industry.

1 Samuel 16: 23 And whenever the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, David took the lyre and played it with his hand; so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.

Many many many wicked spirits have been released into the earth through the guise of ‘entertainment’. Surely, your enemy has no intention to amuse you, just like how a war-cry in battle is not meant to entertain the opponent but rather strengthen the attack against that opponent. You are a soldier in battle, your enemy, who absolutely hates you, cannot be responsible for your entertainment. Come out from among them that practice iniquity.

As of recent times, no form of entertainment from the world is subtle anymore. Gone are the days where the enemy used to put a veil on his wickedness, hoping to deceive you. Now he is blatant. Even cartoons are preaching heresies, blasphemies and misquoting the word of our God. Just the other day, I came across a ‘Christian’ tagged movie that turned out to be an outright witchcraft movie that was randomly sprinkling a tiny dosage of God to keep to the ‘Christian’ theme. All I could think of was how mighty dangerous that movie was to someone who doesn’t know God much, possibly considering Him, only to see that gross misrepresentation of who He is.

There is an aggressive agenda to misinform people about our God, to deceive, lure, & convert them to the kingdom of darkness. Even some ”Christian music” is no longer Christian at all, & neither is it inspired by the Holy Spirit. It is now all about feel-good, hypes and vibes. We now have Christian musicians who aspire for the same things worldly musicians aspire for. We now have ‘worshipers’ who are interviewed about who their role model is and they publicly mention a worldly artist!

God is not a vibes God, He is still very much a Holy God and He is still expecting us to be Holy as He is Holy. He is still requiring us to guard our hearts with all diligence because love for the world is enmity with God. God is not a feel-good deity, He is a Sovereign Almighty God that we ought to revere when we claim to be His children.

1 Peter 1:15-17 ¹⁵ But like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves in all your conduct [be set apart from the world by your godly character and moral courage]; ¹⁶ because it is written, “You shall be holy (set apart), for I am holy.” ¹⁷ If you address as Father, the One who impartially judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves in [reverent] fear [of Him] and with profound respect for Him throughout the time of your stay on earth.

I know there is a reason I have been led to repeat this blog topic, so I implore you to give back to the world what belongs to the world and take up the full armor of God for you are a soldier in God’s kingdom whose dedication should be to pay attention to the commander’s commands. You cannot be swayed to the left or right by worthless things.

Let’s Pray:

Heavenly Father, we repent of the sin of wanting to mix You with the world. The sin of treating you as just another thing in our lives. We repent of having other gods outside of You. We have done this through the things that we have allowed space into our lives and hearts. We thank you that you encourage us to come & reason together with you, even when our sins be as red as scarlet, You promise to wash them until they are white as snow. We refuse to be compromised due to the flimsy distractions we do not discern for their true agenda as weapons fashioned against us. We choose to throw away worthless idols and exalt You in our lives as the One True Lord. Forgive us. Teach us to love You and to love Your ways. Teach us to have eyes of the spirit that discern the meaning of our position in Christ and in the kingdom of our God. Amen.

Shalom