Are you taking shortcuts on God?

There are no shortcuts to reentry" is the slogan of the City of Houston's Reentry Program's (CRNP) program. After possible years of being programed as worthless,the majority of former inmate's desire is to immediately assume action with  a purpose given by God, as well as getting a job  Yet there are no shortcuts to anyone who is trying to achieve anything this worthwhile. It takes time and planning

One example is in Jesus who was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.  After he fasted for 40 days, He was challenged by the accuser to take a shortcut other than the cross.Yet there was a plan written by major and minor prophets that was a part of him as In the beginning was the Word.  The Word was with God and the Word was God. The first messianic prophecy was written when God addressed Eve after she took the bait (early Genesis 3) of a shortcut to "knowing " with the Gen 3:15 " And I will put enmity between thee and the woman , and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shall bruise his heel" (Namely the calcaneus - the largest bone composing the heel)

We are challenged daily to take shortcuts by the world and by our flesh. This is sin. We want the milk without buying the cow sometimes in our youth. If and when we get to know someone, we are concerned more about the outer person that we are or that our prospective partner is, as opposed to the inner person that we must live with if we are to marry. We fail to carry out the plan to check their credit, and their relationship with their mother and father. We consider ourselves "super man and woman' neglecting to get out of the telephone booth or we never go in to change. We did it before and we try to take the shortcut again as an unwise decision. We fail to plan. Therefore we plan to fail and pay the consequences later for years of not sticking to the plan of even asking God about the person that we initially desire to be with.

 We must remember that nothing is given by taking the easy way out. We must prepare ourselves with prayer and a plan in order to anticipate the attack of the enemy and the inevitable onslaught of the temptation to take a shortcut. We must then daily avoid the temptation to throw out the plan  and stick to it at all costs, especially avoiding the temptation to take a shortcut.

This is probably how Jesus recognized the accuser when he was coming . This is how we should recognize him as our enemy. He will offer a shortcut. He will offer a better way when your business and or  relationship with Jesus was not broken and did not need fixing.