The great prince of Israel- Moses, had been given a glorious assignment by God to liberate his nation Israel from the clutches of their Egyptian slave masters. He strode into Egypt with so much confidence in the power of God that he carried. He thought he could do some little display and Pharaoh in awe will give the Israelites permission to leave Egypt. Little did he know that there were magicians in Pharaoh’s court who were out to undermine his every effort.

Let me tell you a few things about magic: The bible calls it ‘secret arts’. Secret arts are carefully concealed tricks. That is what magic is. Magic is nothing but carefully concealed tricks. It is a sham of the real deal; a counterfeit of the original. And you notice that at some point in the power tussle, the tricks of the magicians failed them. The whole story is found in the eighth chapter of the book of Exodus.

One thing you need to know about magic is that it is very strenuous. Magic is stressful. Pure magic is very expensive; not just in monetary terms, but in terms of the toll it takes on your physical and emotional health.

And a lot of the things you see in today’s world are tricks. For instance, most of the accomplishments that you see in politics today are tricks. Most of the results that you see in business are obtained through deception. The church is not left out. A lot of charlatans have joined the ministry bandwagon and they are having a field day with tricks. A lot of what you see as success in ministries and businesses today are merely magical illusions –people trying to reproduce God’s results with carefully concealed tricks.

Tricks are mere illusions. They are deceptive in nature. Simply put, tricks are designed to mislead you. They are painstakingly crafted by con men to hoodwink you.  With tricks, the more you look, the less you see. It is illusions and more illusions. What you see is not real. They are contraptions of some sort.

As I mentioned earlier, a lot of what we see today is magic. People play all sorts of tricks to get their results. However, the problem with that is that when you are into tricks, you are into deception. And my, it is very expensive to sustain deception! So don’t even venture into it, go for authentic results.

Do you want the tricks and make-believe of magic, or the clearly awesome manifestations of mighty miracles of the Almighty God?