Be On Guard Against the Yeast of the Land

Several years ago and after one particularly wet and snowy winter in the foothills of Mt. St. Helens, I was excited (and a little desperate) to get my kids outside on a hike. My 3 year old daughter and I had been looking at local foliage online during our long winter and were ready to go put our new knowledge to the test. I was surprised to see flowers already blooming so early in the season!
The flowers were perfectly beautiful! Upon closer inspection, I was absolutely amazed that they did not move one bit when the strong spring mountain winds blew on them. In fact, it was a little creepy. I thought maybe we had gotten a freeze overnight to render the blooms so hard and rigid. I poked one with a stick (yes, extreme scientific fact finding methods only in our household) and the petals and the stem all had the same hard texture. The petals should have been velvety soft and delicate and the stems should have been firmer. I took a picture and did a quick search on the flowers and came up with two results that looked exactly the same! It was a good idea that we hadn't touch it as it was a type of toxic fungus that caused breathing difficulties if the spores were inhaled. What?? It looked exactly like the flowers that usually bloomed outside our door.
As the rest of the spring played out, I noticed that many other copycat fungi was popping up everywhere next to the real creation. This fungus essentially studies and copies the flowers, the leaves, the ferns, and even the roots of the trees around us and became exact (almost) replicas of whatever it studied. To my understanding, the fungus highjacks pollinators and tricks them into pollinating them so they are able to take on some of the qualities of the real thing. What set the fungus apart from the real thing was what was inside. One was moveable with the wind and the other stood rigid when the wind came. The real version gets bruised, dirty, and in some cases looked like it had been through a war! The copycat version in fungus form looked beautiful, perfect, and dangerously delicious. One carried creativity and life. The other could only counterfeit what it saw but it was carrying illness or death to anyone who breathed it in.
For a few months now, I've heard this in my Spirit,
"Be careful. Be on guard against the yeast of the land".
Be transformed and set free with faith in the unaltered Truth. Christ has made us free. It doesn't do us any good to be a seasoned veteran if we forget how to be a soldier of faith. It is the Blood of Jesus that transforms through grace. Don't be seduced by lies masquerading as Truth that will be dangerously delicious if swallowed. Why would we want to rebuild what Christ has torn down if it brings death? Jesus builds the house. The rejected Stone is now the Cornerstone. Be on your guard of anything wishing to see circumcised flesh as the result without a care of a circumcised heart. Don't allow the yeast of the land to be what puffs up. Be moved by the Holy Spirit.
The Book of Galatians explains this much better than me. I read it often. It never fails to encourage my faith.