HAPPY WITH CHURCH TONIGHT
We’ve just ended our women’ fellowship; by any standards it was a good meeting. We praised God, prayed and testify to His goodness and faithfulness. We talked about deception. I was telling them about a friend of mine. She was a successful career woman now retired. She was happily married. She and her husband bought a big plot of land. They built a small house at the end of the land. She told me that is the ‘boys’ quarters’ (In Nigeria, where I live, it is quite common to have a little house behind the main house where the domestic staff or the helpers live). She told me that soon they will start building the real house, their dream house. For now, they decided to move in the boys’ quarters so that they do not have to pay rent anymore.
Then her marriage suffered a serious damage. Her husband left her for other women and for some years she lived there alone. She suffered serious depression. After many years, the husband apologized and they reconciled at last. But she still lives alone in the same little house. That old dream with the ‘dream house’ died in the process. The devil attacked and she was deceived to compromise. She settled for her ‘second best unable to pursue the dream of her youth. It is a sad story…
We prayed that God will have mercy and revive our dreams. We rejected all deception! We prophesied that we are the daughters of Sarah, the Princess and not of Hagar, the slave! Then the Word of God came:
“And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. Nevertheless she will be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control” (1Tim 2:14, 15)

The study of spiritual warfare against deception is useful for all believers, but in particular for us, the women. This is because in the history of humanity, Eve was deceived by the devil when her husband was not. Adam fell into sin not thru deception, but thru open rebellion. This is the spiritual X-ray of the fall in the Garden of Eden. The devil was able to deceive Eve, but not Adam. He chose to disobey God’s command to ‘preserve’ his marriage with a backsliding wife. In this way, both fell in the same time. This is the story of the ‘original sin’. This is a great lesson for us all, especially for the married couples. The devil has not changed his strategy. He will attack the marriage by trying to deceive one of the two. If the wife falls to his deception, the chance that the husband will also fall is very high. It is the same if the husband is deceived first. It is only by the grace of God that the wife will be able to stand firm in faith and to remain faithful to God.

To better understand the devil’s intent, let’s study the word ‘deceive’. It means to cheat, to defraud someone of something dear or valuable; to deprive someone of his rights and privileges; to mislead others far away from truth and safety; to flatter with intent to ensnare; to be sexually unfaithful; to betray, to abuse the confidence of a friend, to take advantage of the trust of another; to insult, to be cruel, to disappoint or to make a fool of another. To deceive it also means to confuse, to exploit, to manipulate, to seduce, to frustrate, to entice or to entrap.
The opposite of deception means to speak the truth in love, to be faithful, to help another, to be honest, to be generous; to protect, to release from a snare or bondage, to save and deliver another who is in trouble.

The devil will try to deceive one so that the other will remain ‘stranded’ spiritually. Deception destroys the unity of the Spirit. Deception is the hidden root of division and divorce. Generally, the women being more emotional than men have a greater tendency to be deceived by others. They are careless with the duty of prayer especially when they make friends or when they want to marry. They do more things they later regret. They become ‘silly women’ burdened by foolish guilt and unconfessed sins. They end up in depression, bitterness, fear and inferiority complex.

We reject all lies of the devil. We reject all deceptions! We plead the Blood of Jesus over our lives, marriages, children, ministries, the work of our hands and our destinies! God’s will be done! We vow to glorify God for His wonders in our lives! In Jesus name, Amen!