The Church and Individual Believers are Cheating On God
“Do not be deceived; God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows “(Galatians 6:7 NIV)”
“One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own” (Luke 16:10-12 ESV).
Brief Notice, this coming October of this year would mark our 10th year anniversary as an online Ministry and by the Lord's grace, we never failed to provide messages here and share whatever the Lord gave us to share over these past years. Looking back, we can say it was not an easy journey but as we continue in our God-called Ministry we learned that prayer, faithfulness and obedience to the Lord were some of the weapons we needed to arrive here. New articles and refreshing visions will be shared more regularly. Being limited in our being, we prayed and made ourselves available not to limit the Lord but to allow Him to express Himself mightily through us and for His Glory.
We therefore urge you dear brethren to continue to pray for us as a family and ministry and to support our work in prayer and materially. We can safely share with you dear brethren that there are countless people around the world who writes to us expressing great joy about the impact this ministry has in their lives. By the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ, their feedback serves as a great encouragement to us. Additionally, this ministry has a very large readership around the world and of the literally thousands who visits this blog monthly yet nobody cares about the well-being of this ministry except one brother. By saying this, we are not appealing for money or donations but caring brethren ought to discern that a ministry has needs and a ministry has needy people to care for (Deuteronomy 15:11). Also, while some has viewed us with suspicions our messages has never deviated from the Word of God and neither did our visions. Therefore, as we are waiting for the appearing of the Lord, we will continue to deliver his messages right here with the help of your prayers and support (1 Corinthians 12:14-26).
Sometime ago, the Lord Jesus gave me a message to write an article 'Cheating On God'. Often, people think that it is impossible for us as humans to cheat on God. If we read further, we will find out how a person cheats on God. Also, generally cheating may be considered as infidelity involving relationships amongst people, in this work however, we will confine our discussion to cheating on God.
Beloved people, as you can see that it is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself who decides what we must be taught. I am equally an imperfect vessel and I give Glory to the Lord for choosing me to share His truths with you. Through His grace, I allow His Holy Spirit to direct every activity of my thoughts and conscience so that He be heard and obeyed. We seek to bring honor to our Lord and Master Christ Jesus than to us or our ministry. We serve Him and point man to Him for salvation and justification (Ephesians 1:7). We will again blend this article with actual experiences, Scriptural references and rebukes delivered by the Lord. Have you ever wondered which type of Bible translation the Lord is using when speaking to us? We must remember that Bible translations follow along certain editorial rules. The Lord is bound by none; when He brings a message, He uses words, phrases and expressions that convey the full message unambiguously. Furthermore, although the Lord gives the messages to Charis mainly in English, when addressing Afrikaans-speaking people especially in visions He conveys it in Afrikaans.
Cheating Ourselves and Others
Back to our message, the word “cheat” also means ‘deceive’. If a person is a cheat, then the person is unfaithful and dishonest. When we act dishonestly we are cheating on the truth (Christ) and we thus hide something sinful. We deceive others and ourselves for covering our shameful conduct. While we think we can ‘get away’ with whatever motivated us, with God we have become answerable because all we do will be exposed (Luke 8:17). As people, we cheat for various reasons, including satisfying a ‘need’ or some craving. We also do so to hide some of our mistakes. The list of reasons is long and you know why you cheated!
Cheating is dishonest conduct aimed at tricking someone. As it is, the Bible says: “Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who act faithfully are His delight” (Proverbs 12:22 ESV). Being guilty of cheating, we turn to lies to cover our deceptive ways. The voice of sin speaks so loud within us when our folly is exposed that we blame others or other things for our conscious mistakes (See Genesis 3:10-14). When we cheat, we deny ourselves correction and fruit bearing so that God be glorified (John 15:8). Honest conduct and faithfulness has always been associated with godliness and indeed its root is found in Christ (Hebrews 1:8-9).
Cheating on God and Its Consequences
Moreover, when we cheat the devil rejoices and God is saddened by our deceitful conduct (2 Kings 17:9-23). The children of Israel enjoyed a unique and an intimate relationship with God; they were chosen above all the nations of the earth, they were God’s “Segula” (treasured possession) [Deuteronomy 7:6]. The love the Lord Almighty bestowed upon the Israelites showed His faithfulness and concern for their well-being. He gave them victory over their enemies and provided them with great wealth and possessions. Moses blessed them saying “Blessed are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord? He is your shield and helper and your glorious sword. Your enemies will cower before you, and you will trample down their high places” (Deuteronomy 33:29). This was Israel’s heritage to enjoy the good of the land and to obey the Lord’s commands (Deuteronomy 28). They received every good and faithful promise from the Lord, until they became corrupt through cheating and their judgement was swift and decisive. They secretly did wrong things against the Lord, provoking Him to anger and jealousy and He removed them from His Presence (2 Kings 17:7-23). This was the consequences of cheating, although the Lord returned them to their land as He promised (Amos 9:15); they returned as a remnant (Ezra 2).
The Lord Rewards Faithfulness
This is a true saying, serving the Lord is the single highest calling and honour. While we are not saved by our own ‘good’ works, the Lord expects us to obey His word faithfully every day (John 12:26; 1 Peter 1:14). If we fail to observe the word daily, we are cheating. Before writing an examination, we are expected to observe all the rules and failure to do so results in possible expulsion. Likewise, we are building our life’s on the Word of God in preparation for His Kingdom (Matthew 7:24). The Lord supplies the ‘building material’, His Word, and once the ‘building’ is constructed He approves it as the Master Inspector (1 Corinthians 3:12).
Before I turn to testimonies, the Lord welcomed into His Kingdom a faithful servant who did everything well in acts of obedience (Matthew 25:21). If we say we serve God, let us show through our faithfulness and commitment to Him. The Lord sharply rebuked one sister in our ministry for condoning wrong things saying: “My daughter ……….. Allows drinking, smoking and worldly parties at her house but she is serving God”. This rebuke made us all take note of our walk with the Lord. The Lord Judges deliberate sinful conduct and this He regards as disobedience. This is cheating on God!
Also, cheating on our relationship with the Lord is a very serious sin that leads to Hell. This is unfaithfulness and He regards us as worthless (Matthew 25:30). When cheating on God we fool ourselves and people and our lost is very great as the above scripture declares. The Apostle Paul admonishes us to put all falsehood away (Ephesians 4:25).
Displeasing Ways of Cheating Against The Lord
The Bible chronicles an exhaustive list of cheating, and I will not rewrite it here, I will however point out the most common and frequent rebukes we received from the Lord as ways of cheating. One of our ministry members was solemnly rebuked by the Lord for repeatedly committing the same sins. I regard this as one of the toughest rebukes the Lord meted out. This rebuke, which was a full A4 size (8.3 inches x 11.7 inches) page of sins, brought a great fear upon us. The Lord brought out all the things the person was cheating on. I realised through this rebuke that Lord I am unclean and I could not survive if I received this rebuke. The Lord’s anger was evident through the words He gave. But great praise and glory be given to our Heavenly Father, our beloved sister humbled herself before the Lord and started working on those problems. He said things like, “My daughter Grace is taking advantage of Me and My daughter Grace thinks I am a fool. My daughter Grace must fear Me!” The Lord was displeased with her because she failed to rebuke people and overlooked people’s sins (Ezekiel 3:18-21); this was cheating on the truth and compromising faithfulness. The Lord lashed out on her keeping herself poor to avoid giving to others; this is unfaithful conduct and disobedience. The Lord made it abundantly clear through this rebuke that we should not look to others as a scapegoat to easily live, but to God. He alone can make our lives easy. Admittedly, I was rebuked for cheating on honesty when I blamed others for sins I committed knowingly.
Furthermore, accusing others falsely is a common sin we overlook. The Lord has repeatedly rebuked us for blaming others wrongly (Luke 3:14; Exodus 20:16). Blaming others is distortion of truthful conduct and truth is not seen and appreciated when we accuse falsely.
The Lord considers us cheating on Him when we don’t spend time reading the Bible daily. The entire body of believers are commanded to read Bible daily and not just our leaders (Joshua 1:8). Moses commanded the children of Israel to read and tell to their children and obey the Word of God (Deuteronomy 6:4-19). Only therein is prosperity. We are His bride and we must listen to Him; if we don’t who are we listening to? Surely, we are listening to something or someone else, the flesh for its cravings, the world, and the devil. If we are called as God’s treasured possession through our adoption in Christ Jesus then we are separated from the world to live for Him (Galatians 2:20). If we are the bride, then as a husband would be provoked to jealousy if his wife is comforted by another man, how much more do we think the Lord would be provoked to jealousy and anger if we turn to other voices for comfort -- like the woman in the vision who listened to secular radio all day and watching television to listen to teachings of other religions and men, or the vision of the pastor who was reading the Bible while listening to pop music (you can read both visions in the Vision of Judgement and Blessings for the Faithful article). This is cheating! This is foundational to our relationship with the Lord, are you listening to Him?
Still, not praying faithfully in our individual service to the Lord is being considered cheating. If we are not praying we are declaring self-reliance. The Lord delights in His children depending on Him for everything. Through prayer we express gratitude and dependence on Him. This is humility and service; the prophet Daniel took His prayer life and commitment to God very seriously that He prayed three (3) times a day (Daniel 6:10). David also prayed three times daily or more (Psalms 55:17). If we pray once or twice daily just to ease our conscience, are we not cheating? Also, if great men like King David and Daniel sought after the Lord through faithful service, how much more for us who have received the better promises (Hebrews 8:6). In the beginning of the Lord Jesus Christ’s visitations to Charis, He allowed certain things to happen to us in order to teach us. We prayed but not enough for our house. We were in arrears for quite a few months with our mortgage repayments. Furthermore, the Lord had us form a prayer group and some of our members started staying away and offered excuses. We turned to the Lord for a solution, just liked the Israelites when they were defeated by their enemies through their unfaithfulness (Judges 2:10-23). We asked the Lord why we were not getting our prayers answered. He told us that we were not praying enough and He considers a person faithful in prayers when we kneel and pray to Him at least three times a day, pointing us to the above Scriptures. I safely conclude in saying the Lord regards us as unfaithful and cheating if we do not pray at least three times or more daily. As further testimony: many, many brethren have requested us to inquire from the Lord a word for them regarding some problem they have or if their walk with Him was pleasing. The Lord would in most of the cases point to their prayer life and Bible reading, as well as witnessing. This to Him is foundational to being faithful. While these are the basic things the Lord looks at, it does not mean we are faithful in everything.
The Lord commanded a girl eight (8) years old to pray for an hour every morning from 6 a.m. She would get up at 6:00am but instead of praying she would either sleep or play. The Lord issued another message exposing her saying that she was cheating and not praying faithfully for that hour. I know of many believers who are cheating in prayers and Bible reading through the messages the Lord gives Charis. They are cheating by either skipping, or not praying heartily and faithfully. In addition, the Lord sees everything we do (Psalm 94:9-11). Some of our members were surprised when the Lord rebuked them for being unfaithful and cheating in fasting. They did not receive what they fasted for because of unfaithfulness.
Beloved brethren, God sees through our duplicity (Jeremiah 17:9-10) and He cannot be fooled. The lack of spiritual fruit in our lives is testimony that we are walking deceitfully and disobediently towards the Lord. We have endless problems and complaints because we walk deceitfully and most of this the Lord pointed out is caused by laziness and comfort. Today, He has sent us to say to you, “Stop cheating in your relationship with Me; you are the one deceiving yourself” (Galatians 6:7). Like the Lord repeated to a few of us, “If My son………. Or My daughter………. Carries on doing these wrong things he or she will end up in HELL”. I encourage you walk upright and in integrity without worrying to look every time over your shoulder, for your key to faithfulness is obedience to God and the Holy Spirit. Obey the Lord Jesus Christ, fear Him and complete this race faithfully (1 Corinthians 9:24; Hebrews 12:1). Please start today and earn the crown of life! (Revelation 2:10).
Have you been cheating on God? Have you been unfaithful to the Lord Jesus Christ, the only One who is mighty to save you from Hell and into His glorious Kingdom? Are you willing to repent from your sins and start running the race of life so as to earn the crown of life? If you are willing, please pray this
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The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you!
Brother Glenn.
