Isaiah 44:20 Such a person feeds on ashes; a deluded heart misleads him;
    he cannot save himself, or say,
    “Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?”

The Bible makes clear that the heart of mankind can easily be deceived. Mankind is made in God’s image. And as such we are good and our hearts are good. However, fallen man (all of us before we meet Christ) is not good and our hearts are bad, infected with sin, prone to deception.

A deceived man does not know that he is deceived, which by definition makes it so hard to say: “I am not deceived”. That is why we need an outside source to determine whether we are deceived. Only a person outside of us can save us.

We need Jesus, we need God, we need God’s Word. God’s Word is the mirror into which we can look, and see whether we are heading in the right direction. The only way to find out whether we are living in deception is to regularly sit under the Word. What is God saying? What is the Spirit saying? What is the community of faith saying?

Sometimes we think we are deceived, when in fact we are being challenged by God to think in a different way. Peter for instance in Acts 10, had to come to the realization that God wanted him to think differently. In Acts 15 that ‘different’ was confirmed by the community of faith.

A deceived heart. We can all be prone to it. And we can all be set free from it.