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Pastor Craig Groeschel recently delivered a message to Christians, urging them to stop deceiving themselves this year.

New Year 2024

Many individuals, including unbelievers, begin the New Year by embracing what is commonly known as the “New Year’s Resolution.” This entails creating a list of aspects about themselves that they wish to change, reflecting on areas that were not satisfactory in the previous year. This list then serves as their set of goals to accomplish throughout the coming year, hence the term “New Year’s Resolution.”

Meanwhile, for most Christians, the concept of a “New Year’s Resolution” is deemed unnecessary, as it is inherent to every believer’s stance to continually strive to grow and become more Christ-like. Consequently, there is no need to wait for a specific time, such as the New Year, to cultivate a desire for personal change. Instead, each day presents a fresh opportunity to seek wisdom from God and undergo transformation through Him.

Stop Deceiving Yourself This Year

Even in light of this understanding, Pastor Craig Groeschel delivers a powerful message to Christians for the New Year 2024. He boldly states, “Stop deceiving yourself this year.” To illustrate his point, he draws on the example of David, a prominent character in the Bible.

“If you watch his life, you’ll discover that over time, David started to understand the same thing that I hope you’ll understand,” the pastor said. “He started to understand his propensity to lie to himself. He was the master, just as all of us are, the master of self-deception. And step by step by step, sin by sin by sin, he didn’t recognize his own sin. Because the heart is deceitful above all things, and we are the master of self-deception.”

“Psychologists call that a cognitive bias,” he stressed. “The Bible calls it flattering yourself or deceiving yourself, or the Bible calls it having a deluded heart.”

Then Pastor Craig quoted Psalm 36:2 in the Bible, which says, “In their own eyes, they flatter themselves too much to detect or hate their own sin.”

He explained, “’I’m not that bad,’ ‘I’m not doing anything wrong,’ and we flatter ourselves and deceive ourselves. And that’s why it’s important to adopt the habit of self-examination.”

The pastor advised Christians not to neglect the act of “self-examination” or self-evaluation during this year.

Listen to his message in the video below.

 

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A post shared by Craig Groeschel (@craiggroeschel)

Reference | Instagram – Craig Groeschel

Header Image: Craig Groeschel [@craiggroeschel]. Pastor. Instagram, 16 Jan. 2024, https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2IcGMkPwde/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link