Weak and Beggarly Spirits

Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion.

✙ Isaiah 58:1

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We all know our own star sign. Most of us have probably been told certain characteristics that apply to people of our sign. For example, I'm a taurus, and every time I read about tauruses, I see that I'm supposed to be stubborn. There are other things I'm often told about myself—that I'm also reliable and practical, for example. But the word stubborn is the one that pops up most often. So, fine, I'm stubborn.

Going a step beyond the basics, we can also read our horoscope every day. Depending on who has written the horoscope, it can vary wildly from the one written for the same sign on the same day from another one in a different newspaper or online source. Some people are so willing to trust their horoscope that they pay to have ones drawn up just for them, based on more specific information than the time of year they were born.

As far as I'm concerned, horoscopes are like Hallowe'en: kinda fun occasionally, but nothing a Christian should delve into too deeply. Whether or not the spirits behind these things are real, our obsession with them can, if we're not careful, become all too central to our belief system.

And so I wonder at those Christians who place any trust in the impact the movements of the stars and the planets have over their lives. It is enough to trust in the Creator of the heavenly bodies, and to believe that true freedom is to be found in dependence on God.
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Now, however, that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits? How can you want to be enslaved to them again?

✙ Galatians 4:9

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Prayer after thinking about today's devotion:

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O Lord, in thee have I trusted; let me never be confounded.

✙ Final line of the Te Deum (begins at 6:40 below)

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After your own thanksgivings & petitions, close with the Lord's Prayer.

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