Deuteronomy 13:1-3 If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a sign or wonder, and if the sign or wonder spoken of takes place, and the prophet says, "Let us follow other gods" (gods you have not known) "and let us worship them," you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. (In our age of what we consider our advanced, sophisticated, evolved state of maturity, we think we are past any such foolish weaknesses and beyond being tricked into such deception as idol worship. Yet, so often we are, in fact, drawn into the sophistry of the enticements of the world, into following after such gods as those of materialism and acquisitions, of career advancement, of frenzied buying and selling, of trying to control people and situations, of our own internal control and self-importance. The Lord tells us clearly these are worthless idols and that we are not to listen to nor yield to them.) The Lord your God is testing you to find out whether you love Him with all your heart and with all your soul. (When the Lord allows such forces to array themselves before us, He uses them to reveal their shallowness, their ineffectiveness, and to open our eyes to our need of Him to overcome such enticements. His purpose always is to draw us to Himself. Often, we need to see the power and subtlety of our sin nature and of the world's pull on us so that we run the other way away from the world's lies and into God's truths. The direction we take reveals the depth of our love for the Lord. Though He already knows where our hearts lie regarding Him, in His continuing great love for us and to open our heart to Him, He knows we need to see for ourselves how much we truly rely on Him and how much we actually need Him and allows us to face challenges that draw us to Him.)
