The Prestige

April 1, 2007

By: Brian Manning

    "Every great magic trick consists of three acts.  The first act is called 'The Pledge'; the magician shows you something ordinary, but of course... it probably isn't.  The second act is called 'The Turn'; the magician makes his ordinary something do something extraordinary.  Now if you're looking for the secret...you won't find it, that's why there is a third act called 'The Prestige'; this is the part with the twists and turns, where lives hang on the balance, and you see something shocking you've never seen before."

    "Now you're looking for the secret...but you won't find it because you're not really looking.  You don't really want to know the secret... You want to be fooled."

    When you live in a world today that is full of trickery, deception and lies, there are a lot of things that go on that we know is sinful and we know that we shouldn't have a part in it.  To tell you the truth, these things catch our eyes.  Just like the illusions that good magicians use in their tricks, sin is an illusion, we are deceived into thinking that it is something that we want to take part in.  We know that things aren't right about the sin that is set before us, but instead of discovering the truth we find ourselves wanting to be fooled!  I've picked the previous quote from a movie called The Prestige because when I heard it, I thought about the applications that it has in our lives.  Satan is shown to be a deceiver in the book of Genesis but the thing that causes Adam and Eve to fall is their own desires.  The devil shows us things that seem to be ordinary and okay, but they are not.  We then find ourselves not really looking for the trick or the secret because our own desires have caused us to buy into Satan's trick.

    My challenge for you today is to not buy into the tricks and deception of the Devil.  I want you to do what it says in James 4:7 and resist the Devil and he will flee from you.

Because of the Cross,

Brian