The Battle FOR You

Have you felt it? The battle pressing in? I know many of us have felt the battle raging with increased intensity as we have leaned into this spiritual warfare series. Perhaps it’s simply that our awareness of the ongoing battle has increased, not that the battles have actually gotten worse. Either way, I know I’m not the only one who has been feeling a little (or a lot…) weary. Heading into the fourth week of the series, I felt exhausted, a little beaten down, and definitely ready for fresh hope and energy for the journey.

Gratefully, that’s exactly what we received in Sunday’s message. Our series has turned a corner. During the first three weeks, we discovered, or were reminded, that the battle is real. We have an enemy and he hates God, and he hates us: all of humanity, God’s Image-bearers. And our enemy has a battle plan. He has perfected it. He uses it against every single one of us. He is emphatically, 100% against us. BUT… 

“…If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31b)

Here’s the thing… the One who cast our enemy out of heaven like a bolt of lightning, He’s already won. We have talked about this every week, how we fight from victory, not for it. And while we feel the spiritual battle raging around us, we can rest in the truth that as much as our enemy is against us, our God is equally for us. And the proof of how for us our God is? The gift He’s given to us, the friend we have in the midst of the battle: His Holy Spirit. This is very welcome, hopeful, refreshing news–it’s extravagant, really–when the battle has left us feeling weary…

And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Comforter (Counselor, Helper, Intercessor, Advocate, Strengthener, and Standby), that He may remain with you forever—The Spirit of Truth, Whom the world cannot receive (welcome, take to its heart), because it does not see Him or know and recognize Him. But you know and recognize Him, for He lives with you [constantly] and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans [comfortless, desolate, bereaved, forlorn, helpless]; I will come [back] to you. (John 14:16-18 AMPC)

Jesus said these words to His disciples as He was preparing them for what was to come. A few verses later, He talks about the Spirit again. Here are verses 26-27 from the Message paraphrase:

 The Friend, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send at my request, will make everything plain to you. He will remind you of all the things I have told you. I’m leaving you well and whole. That’s my parting gift to you. Peace. I don’t leave you the way you’re used to being left—feeling abandoned, bereft. So don’t be upset. Don’t be distraught.

I love that this version tells us that Jesus was leaving them “well and whole”. Spiritual wellness and wholeness are impossible without the presence of the Holy Spirit living within us and transforming us. Pastor John told us that the Spirit provides us with correction (John 16:13), constant wisdom (John 14:26), connection (John 15:26), courage (Acts 4:31), and companionship (John 14:27). I would offer one more “c” word that comes from the work of the Holy Spirit within us: completion.

“…He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6)

How are we brought to completion on the day of Christ Jesus? Perhaps it’s through the transforming power of the Holy Spirit’s correction, constant wisdom, connection, courage and companionship… He desires to guide us, to remind us of all that Jesus said, to empower us, to set us free, and, ultimately, to give us life. To bring us into the fullness of life that we were created for, and to empower us to bring as many people as we can into that life with us. And it’s so obvious here… Satan’s entire battle plan is a counter-attack. He’s not on the offensive. He’s on the defensive, pushing back against every detail of our Father’s calculated and intricate plan for us. He knows what it means for him if we fully live into God’s plan–it means that his utter defeat is exposed to all. And our pride-filled enemy can’t stand the thought of that. The victory has already been won. Jesus sealed that up a long time ago. But while there are still people to deceive and hurt, our enemy will prowl around with the best battle plan he can come up with–a counter-attack to the way of the Spirit. So he seeks to blind us, steal the Word from us, stop us, set traps for us and, ultimately, destroy the life that the Spirit is cultivating within us.

It is vitally important that we see this accurately. The gift we’ve been given in the Holy Spirit, it’s mind-blowing. God Himself, not only with us, but in us. The beauty, the mystery, the power of this truth for us-I can’t quite find words to articulate the way my heart burns.

I don’t think I’ve ever understood this the way I do right now, in this moment… I was raised in an environment where I was painfully aware of the darkness, of the evil. I wrote about that a couple of weeks ago. I also wrote about how God revealed His light and His goodness to me. But I think I had this backwards in my mind… Like somehow, God was building a defense against the enemy’s attack. That’s not true at all. God has never been on the defensive. Every move has been calculated since the beginning of time, with the power of the Creator and the heart of a Father. And our enemy, he’s been scrambling to keep up. He does have power… and he does come against us. But I think I’ve credited him with far more ability and battle-savvy than he actually has. When I do that–when any of us do that–it puffs his ego and makes him seem like he’s more powerful than he actually is… And that’s what this warfare is all about when we boil it down. Our enemy doesn’t want us to know how much God is for us-how He’s always been for us. So he tries to keep us from discovering the truth for ourselves… I’ve taken the bait so many times… No more, Satan. Not today!

We stand in victory, on the power of Jesus’ Name, over a defeated enemy. It would serve me-and all of us-well to start seeing him differently, in light of the Truth. In reality, Satan is on life-support and our God is in control of the plug. One day He’ll pull it. And it will be over. But until then, we get to choose how much power we give him over our lives. Every time we lean into the power of the Holy Spirit living within us, we diminish Satan’s power a little more. When we commune with Him, trust His wisdom, His leading, and step out courageously, speaking as He gives us words, we take back ground we’ve handed over to our enemy. Pastor John said, “Your story is the truth and proof that Jesus is who He says He is“. When we speak up, not relying on ourselves but on the Spirit, and share our transformation stories, we assume our role as “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14) that will draw others to the life Jesus offers.

Pastor John told us that, “His Life is our light”. He read to us John 1:1-4. It says this:

 In the beginning [before all time] was the Word (Christ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God Himself. He was present originally with God. All things were made and came into existence through Him; and without Him was not even one thing made that has come into being. In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men. 

The life of Jesus is our light. Literally. The word translated “light” in John 1:4 is the very same word used in Matthew 5:14. His life is our light, as Pastor John said. And when we think about being the light of the world, we can flip the words: Our light is His life. We aren’t simply the “light of the world”. We are “His life to the world”. We carry His life within us in the Presence of the Holy Spirit. That’s power. Power enough to scatter every last remnant of darkness, if only we’ll live into God’s plan instead of playing into our enemy’s (terminal) hand…

–Laura

Creator God. Almighty God. Omniscient God. The One True God, The “God is love” God. The victorious God. The Trinitarian God. If you have a relationship with Jesus, 100% of God lives in you.  He doesn’t give Himself in pieces—it’s an unfathomable mystery. Even as I type those words, I have to sit, ponder, and let it sink in all over again. I often forget how highly esteemed we are and how the living God chooses to dwell within us. We are loved beyond our ability to comprehend, and in Him we have everything we need.

He is for us. He is for us. He is for us. He is for us.  

And if God is for us–who can be against us? (Romans 8:31b)  Greater is He who is IN you than he who is in the world. (1st John 4:4)

Laura reminded us of who the Holy Spirit is.  It is imperative that we acknowledge and rely upon His presence and gifts. We must lean into Him to understand truth, to be comforted, to be convicted when we are off base, to be restored, to be strengthened and empowered to be the light of Christ; the life of Christ to the world.

Contrasting the enemy with the Holy Spirit we see:

The enemy wants to blind us,  the Spirit wants to guide us.

The enemy wants to snatch God’s word from us–the Spirit wants to remind us of what Jesus taught.

The enemy (father of lies) wants to deceive us-the Spirit (of truth) wants to guide us into all truth.

The enemy sets traps for us to take us captive–The Spirit wants to connect us with God and set us free.

The enemy wants to stop us–The Spirit wants to empower us.

The enemy wants to destroy us–The Spirit wants to give us life.

Why on earth do we, do I, forget this?  Why do we keep falling for the traps?  Ugh!

I hate to admit it, but what Stephen said to the Pharisees can be true of us (me):

You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit! (Acts 7:51)  Ouch!!

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Paul gives us a beautifully simple reminder of how to to follow Christ when he says :

Rejoice always, pray continually,  give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.  Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt  but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil...May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.  (1st Thess. 5:16-24)

I love those verses. It promises that God is faithful, and that He will work from the inside out in our lives transforming us into people who live in a way that bring glory to Him. Part of that plan is to reject evil and keep the flame of the Holy Spirit burning within us. Without the Holy Spirit, our lives will never be transformed. At the very best we can modify our own behavior to make it look like we’re “doing” the right thing (which typically leads to comparison and judgment, those in and those out), but true transformation and Christlikeness comes from within as we submit to the Holy Spirit in our lives, and the process is a mystery.

I have a dear friend who was in a battle for his life last year. He was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia; within hours he was in a hospital four hours away from home fighting for his life. Two days prior, he had been at church worshipping with us like normal. We could not “see” the disease or the regeneration of disease ridden cells in his body, but they were there looping toxicity throughout his body over and over and over. His only hope for survival was a set of healthy blood cells that would take over and produce life giving cells in him. In order to get to the point where he could receive the new cells, his own diseased cells had to be destroyed. It was a hard and excruciating process-a death. Other life-threatening illnesses attacked his body while he was in his weakened state. He had to receive blood transfusions from time to time in order to remain alive, and a perfect donor match had to be found.

His brother ended up being the perfect donor, so on the day that my friend’s own cell count was at zero, some of his brother’s stem cells were injected into him. My friend had to remain close to the hospital four hours away from home for months. The medical staff checked him regularly to see if his body would reject the new stem cells or start reproducing the new life giving stem cells that he had received. We all rejoiced when he was finally able to come home.

Over the last half year, we have all been amazed at some of the things that have happened that none of us expected– one of which is as his hair has grown back in, it is the color of his brother’s hair. We laugh about that a good bit. He’s being transformed from the inside out, and there is outward evidence of the inner transformation.

Last week he got the results of his one year biopsy. He has none of his own original cells, all of his cells are his brother’s. He is cancer free! I was asking him about the process last Sunday; he told me that he can explain some of it, but the rest is mystery.

What a perfect illustration for us. We are spiritually dead and separated from God with  death coursing through our veins and no hope of healing ourselves. Jesus came to be with us and to be in us. When we come into relationship with Him, He gives us His Holy Spirit to dwell within us. It’s our spiritual stem cell transplant. As we surrender to the work of the Spirit in our lives, more and more of His “cells” multiply in us.  Our goal is to be crucified with Christ (so that) it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us. (Gal. 2:20)  

Can we reject? Can we resist? Can we fight against? Can we quench? Yes. And we all do sometimes. We can all be stiff-necked. We can all be buried in self-centeredness. We can all be blinded by culture and tradition and religion over relationship. But just like my friend, when we surrender to the work of the Spirit within us, when we are being healed from within, there will be outward evidence and it looks like this…

…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. (Gal. 5:22-23)

For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him. (Phil. 2:13 NLT)

And the key:

If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13)

The strength is the Lord’s. The battle is the Lord’s. The victory is the Lord’s. He is IN us. He is FOR us. He is WITH us. And part of the evidence of His presence in our lives is knowing that He is for everyone else too. The ultimate battle is about making His love known. The enemy, our accuser, wants to keep us from from that; he wants us sidetracked and defeated…but guess what? He is defeated by your story with Jesus:

 “Your story is the truth and proof that Jesus is who He says He is“.

For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. And they have defeated him by the blood of the Lamb and by their testimony... (Rev. 12:10-11)

What has God done for you? Can you look back and see that you are not who you used to be? Have you surrendered your ways to the working of the Holy Spirit within you? Is there outward evidence of the inner working of the Holy Spirit in your life? Are you willing to share your story in order to defeat the enemy and bring glory to God? Will you carry His light, His life to those around you? It’s the only way the world will be changed. Are you in?

–Luanne

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Battle: Enemy

I’m sure that you’ve seen the caricatures of the devil, like the one where he is red all over, has a tail, carries a pitchfork, etc. I wish he was that obvious because then his schemes would be easier to recognize and it would be easier not to cooperate with him. Frustratingly, he is crafty and subtle. Some of the names he is given in the New Testament include Satan, devil, tempter, evil one, deceiver, liar, father of lies, thief, accuser, enemy, prince of demons, prince of the power of the air,  and the most frightening to me…he masquerades as an angel of light. (2 Cor. 11:14)  We must be as wise as serpents and gentle as doves. (Mt. 10:16)

Isaiah 14: 12-14 tells us that Satan was a beautiful angel in heaven, but he wanted to elevate himself to the place of being worshipped–he wanted to be enthroned, he wanted to be God, so in an instant, as fast as a lightning strike, he was cast out of heaven to earth.  He still wants our worship.

In Luke 10:18 Jesus tells us that he was a witness to that event, he saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. No doubt, Satan is powerful, but we must always remember that he is not most powerful. God is the almighty One, the all powerful One, and He is who we worship. However, all good warriors know the tactics of their enemy, and Satan most assuredly has a battle plan that we must be aware of.

Pastor John pointed out five pieces of the enemy’s plan for us to look for.

1. The enemy wants to blind your mind. (2 Cor. 4:4) The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers…  I’ve said this before, and will say it again–I believe followers of Christ can fall into this category. I know there have been times when I’ve doubted God; times that I’ve lost sight of who He is. More than once I have found myself praying the prayer of the father in Mark 9:24 I do believe, help me overcome my unbelief! When we choose doubt, when we choose unbelief, we allow our minds to be blinded, and we cooperate with the scheme of the enemy. Our minds are powerful–it is incredibly important to pay attention to what is going on in that arena. AND it is incredibly important to realize that people who don’t yet know Jesus are blinded. They cannot see. Jesus said that he came to preach good news to the poor, proclaim freedom for the prisoners, recover sight for the blind, release the oppressed, and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18-19) We who know Him are the ones carrying out His ministry today. We must recognize that people are blind, pray for their sight, refuse to judge them for acting lost, and enter into their lives with love, compassion, action, and words.

2. The enemy wants to steal God’s word from you (Mt. 13:19) When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. The enemy is actively working against us to make the truths of God’s kingdom hard to remember. That’s why we must invest time and energy into studying, memorizing, and reading God’s word. All scripture is important, but as Christ’s followers I think it’s incredibly important to read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John over and over and over again–we have to know our Savior–and the rest of it is then read through the lens of Jesus.  We must take time daily to get God’s word into our lives. The enemy wants it out of our lives…let’s refuse to cooperate.

3. The enemy sets traps. (2 Tim. 2:24-26) And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful.  Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance…that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.  I hate acknowledging how many times I’ve fallen for his traps. Any time I take on an us/them mentality or a me/you mentality or an I’m all alone mentality, or a poor pitiful me mentality, I have fallen for the trap. Any time I give in to a temptation, I have fallen for the trap. James 1:14 explains very vividly, using conception and birth language, how this happens: …each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

1. Satan tempts us according to our own evil desires. It’s personal. What might be tempting for me may not be tempting for you and vice versa.
2. We follow the temptation, join ourselves–our heart, our soul, our thoughts, our flesh–with it.
3. We carry the action through to giving birth to sin–doing what we were tempted to do.
4. If we continue along this path, it leads to death. ( Can be death of relationships, death of purpose, death of dreams, death of unity, many things can die…)

We are never at the mercy of Satan. We can stop the process at any point, we can repent at any point, we can run to Jesus at any point–but we must be aware of the process in order to recognize it when it’s happening.

4. The enemy fights to stop you. (1 Thess. 2:18) For we wanted to come to you—but Satan blocked our way.  We must be aware that when we are on mission with God, the enemy will not make that easy for us. Paul circumvented what the enemy was doing by writing letters…he still got his message to the Thessalonians even though he was unable to get there in person. Roadblocks must not stop us. We have one purpose on this planet, and that is to populate the kingdom of heaven.  Jesus taught us to pray “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth….deliver us from evil….. If His kingdom is to come on earth, it will come through those of us who call Jesus our Lord and are being transformed to His likeness.  We must recognize the “stop” tactics for what they are and persevere in our mission to love people into the arms of Jesus.

5. The enemy plans to destroy you. (1 Peter 5:8) Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. (John 10:10a) The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy… We are the deeply loved image bearers of God. Satan hates God. Satan hates us. He wants to keep those who don’t yet know the love of the Father from ever knowing it. He wants to keep those of us who do know the love of the Father from being all that God made us to be in Christ therefore rendering us ineffective in kingdom work.

What is our response to his scheme?  James 4:7-8a  Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you…

A couple of things to note in that verse–

1. Submit means to place yourself under the control of, be subordinate to–So we must place ourselves under the control of God and do life His way.
2. Every use of the word “you” in these verses is the plural form.
3. Resist is a military term which indicates that all of the forces on one side are working together to go after the one common enemy–Satan– not against one another. It means every believer in every denomination, in every country, all across the face of the globe– The Church– recognizing that we are on the same team to advance the Kingdom and principles of Jesus and to keep the enemy from gaining any territory. None of us fight the battle alone. When the capital “C” church gets this figured out, it will change the world.

Any time we fall into the trap that our battle is against flesh and blood rather than against our one enemy, we are headed for trouble. Jesus tells us over and over in Matthew 24 that it is possible for his followers to be deceived:

verses 4-5 Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many.

10-11 …many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other,  and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people

24–false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect

We, His children, must pray constantly for the Holy Spirit to reveal to us our blindspots, the areas where we are deceived, the ideologies that we take as “gospel” truth, We must be careful about elevating people and blindly following. We must be careful about following tradition or culture over Truth. Satan masquerades as an angel of light. Not everything that appears good is good. We must be careful about worshiping things other than God–whether it be political figures, nations, policies, news stations, sports teams, celebrities, money, pastors, teachers, authors, spouses, children, work, self, etc. and ask the Lord to open our blind minds to see clearly. We must ask Him to show us who we’ve “othered” and ask Him to help us love them well and remember that we are all on the same team. Our fight is for each other against the one enemy. His word is clear. His kingdom looks like the Sermon on the Mount–(Mt. 5, 6, 7) Do our kingdoms look like that?  Let’s not be afraid to repent, let’s not be afraid to step out of our comfort zones for His name and His glory. Let’s fight the good fight and do this His way. Are you in?

–Luanne

  Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you… (James 4:7-8a)

I love that Luanne broke down James 4:7 and defined the imperatives “submit” and “resist”. I am grateful for the reminder that submission isn’t forced–it’s a choice. We choose what we place ourselves under. And we all place ourselves under something… If that something is anything other than God, we are playing right into our enemy’s hand. It is also vitally important that we know and remember that resist is a plural word. It’s not something we do all alone. And who we resist is never one another–it is always our enemy. His ways, his lying words, his plans… When we stand together in resistance, he flees from us. The Greek word for “flee” in this verse is “pheugo”, which means “to seek safety by flight, escape safely out of danger, to vanish“.

There is one more imperative in these verses out of James: “Come near to God…” And the promise: “…and he will come near to you…” When Pastor John read these verses on Sunday, I knew I wanted to spend some time digging in here. When I looked up root words and definitions for the phrase “come near”, I found some things I didn’t expect. [I love it so much when that happens–it’s another great reason to really spend time in the Word, to dig into this gift of Scripture that we’ve been given and really chew on it–not just the words themselves, but also definitions, connections, and applications for our lives. The Holy Spirit will illuminate the words and enlighten us if we’ll give Him the chance…] 

When I followed the words back to their roots, one definition of the phrase stood out above the others: “to join one thing to another“. One of the examples given was the arms of the oceans… They are joined together so seamlessly that we can’t distinguish where one ends and another begins.

This is our invitation… 

Place ourselves under the control of God. Work together to send our enemy fleeing for safety. And be joined to God. And He will join Himself to us. Seamlessly, intimately–so close that lines of separation are indistinguishable.

This same phrase with the same root words is used by Jesus in Matthew 4:17:

From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

Through Jesus, the kingdom that He talked at length about in Matthew 5,6,7 which Luanne mentioned above, the kingdom of heaven, has been joined together our earthly experience. It’s not something we wait for on the other side, something that exists once our time on earth is through. The kingdom of heaven is here. Now. Inextricably connected to us and living within those of us who know Jesus.

The usage of “you” in James 4:8 (“…and he will come near to you…”) is the same word used in verse 7. Again, it is not talking to us as individuals. It is plural and it is a call to all of us who follow Jesus as Lord. Verse 7 tells us to collectively place ourselves (as one Church) under the authority of God and to come together to resist our enemy. And verse 8 begins by telling us to then be joined together with our God. It is not a me and my God concept. It is us and our God. All of us who, collectively, make up the bride of Christ.

WE. HAVE. TO. GET. THIS. RIGHT.

We have to stop separating ourselves from each other and living judgmental, critical, individualized lives. We have to stop fighting with each other and understand that the body of Christ is so beautiful because of our differences, not in spite of them. We need each other. If every soldier on the battlefield thought exactly the same way and had the same gifts and set of skills, that army would never be successful. It is necessary that armies engage their battles from all sides, with many different strategies, and from different positions in the field. The same is true fro us. I’ll say it again–we need each other.

Carlos Rodriguez, in his book Drop the Stones, writes these words…

“I am one in heart with every Catholic, Pentecostal, Lutheran, Methodist, and all others in our family who celebrate the name (and the ways) of Jesus Christ… Through us the prayer of Jesus will be answered, ‘That they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.’ [John 17:23] We need our Orthodox family. We need our brothers and sisters in the megachurches. We need the underground church in China as well as our Reformed relatives in America. We need one billion Catholics to join hands together with us in solidarity, in prayer, and in service… I believe that not one of us owns the full expression of the faith we love. And maybe God made it that way so that we would have to come together. To learn from each other. To grow with each other. And to stop calling each other the Antichrist.”

What do you say, Church? What will we choose? Will we continue to see our enemy in other flesh and blood? Or will we embrace that our earthly lives have been joined together with the kingdom of heaven and move together as the collective Church of Jesus against our real enemy? The enemy has a battle plan. He knows it inside and out. James gives us our battle plan, the one that will send our enemy fleeing. Let’s make it our goal to know it, to remember it, and to put it into practice. Together.

–Laura

Coming Together

1st Peter 5:8-11 “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers through the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.  And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast. To Him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.”

We have an enemy. He is real. He is mean. He hates God. He hates us. And His entire goal is our destruction.  Sometimes he’s subtle, sometimes he’s overt. He’s good at what he does.

So what does he do?  When we look at Isaiah 14: 12-14 we see that Satan wants to exalt himself, he wants to be like God, he wants to be worshiped. He even tried to tempt Jesus by promising to fast track Jesus to greatness if Jesus would bow down and worship him. (Mt. 4: 8-9) Basically, he wants us to worship anything but God. If he can’t get us to worship him, he wants us to worship ourselves, to make self the center of our universe. He’s fine if we worship other people, sports teams, food, created things, cars, clothes, political parties, political figures, ideologies, etc. And his main methodology is to lie.

Jesus tells us in John 8 that Satan is a liar, he’s been a liar since the beginning, and he’s the father of lies. I have fallen for his lies more than once. Some of the lies I’ve believed are that I’m invisible, I’m stupid, I’m ugly, I’ll never amount to anything, I’m friendless, I’m alone, I’m unlovable, I’m a bad mom, I’m a bad wife, I have to take care of myself, I’m unforgivable, God can’t use me because of my past— my list could go on and on. Many of the lies in this list have plagued me for years and can rear their ugly heads at any time.   So, I must be sober and alert and recognize them as the attacks they are when they come. And here’s the subtle thing, if I choose to believe the lies, not only am I cooperating with Satan in my own destruction, I am also focused on myself.  Absorption with self, whether negative or positive is self-worship. Ugh!

John told us in his sermon that the word devour means to consume in order to replenish strength. That caught my attention. So if Satan is seeking someone to devour, he is looking for someone to consume so that he can replenish his strength. Put in those terms, I am absolutely certain that I do not want to feed him or participate in strengthening his destructive mission.

Satan, the liar, has also convinced many that he is the “good guy” the “fun one”, and God is the stern mean one. How many cartoon drawings have we seen where Satan is portrayed as mischievous, but not evil, and God is portrayed as ready to throw lightning bolts?  I’ve heard people blame God for all of the world’s evils and decide they’d rather spend eternity in hell with Satan than in heaven with a God who, in their minds, sends people to hell. They have believed a lie- a dangerous distortion- rather than embracing the truth that God loves us so much that He provided the only solution to hell in the death of His son.

So, how do we overcome? Or, as the title of this sermon in the “Coming Apart” series is, how do we “come together” after things have fallen apart?

We focus on the One who came to set us free. In Revelation 1:17, the apostle John has just described the image of Jesus that he is seeing, the one where Jesus has on a priestly robe, blazing eyes, white hair, and a sword coming out of  his mouth. When John sees him like this, he falls down as if dead. He faints. Think about how interesting that is. This is John, the beloved disciple, the dear friend of Jesus. John who writes prolifically about the love of God, the grace of God, the nearness of God. But in this scene, John sees his friend in an entirely new way. He sees Him as majestic in power, as mighty, and even as scary—enough so that he ended up unconscious on the ground. And this resurrected, ascended, scary Jesus reached out his right hand, touched John and told him not to be afraid.

I love that.  The resurrected, ascended, all-powerful Jesus is still gentle and kind.

Going back to 1st Peter 5, Peter tells us to resist the enemy who wants to destroy us by standing firm in the faith. He tells us that believers all over the world are suffering, and that we too will suffer.  But in the middle of all of that he says that the God of all grace—stop for a moment and think about that phrase—the God of all grace. (Doesn’t sound like a lightning bolt God to me.)— this God of all grace has called us to his eternal glory in Christ. Stop. Think about that phrase too. He has called us to his eternal glory in Christ. Peter continues by telling us that God himself will restore us, and make us strong, firm, and steadfast.

Pastor John taught us this morning that restore means to mend—completely and thoroughly mend us—put us back together, full restoration. He reminded us that healed broken bones become stronger at the point of the break once they are healed. God will heal our broken places and make us strong, he will establish us by setting a new direction for us that realigns us to him. He joins us where we are and takes us someplace new. He will make us firm and steadfast meaning that he will hold us up, he will shore us up, he will put all of our broken pieces back together. Our part is to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, to walk with Him, to spend time with Him, to believe Him, to trust Him, to follow His lead, and he will mend us along the way.

The apostle John saw the glorified, all powerful Jesus, and it was so awesomely terrifying that he fainted. There is no doubt that scripture teaches about the almighty power of God. But guess what. His power is not against us, it is for us because He is for us. We must recognize the lies of the enemy that seek to destroy us and distance us from God, and replace them with God’s truth backed up by His word and the life of His son, and live from that place.

One more thought—1st Peter 5 tells us that Satan prowls around like a roaring lion, but Revelation 5:5 tells us that Jesus is the Lion. The counterfeit lion leads the whole world astray (Rev 12:9); the real Lion leads us into relationship with the God of all grace. Be sober, be alert, know that there is one who wants to devour you, but never forget that he has been defeated by the One who came to save you. Hold on to Truth. He is holding on to you.

“To him be the power forever and ever. Amen!”

—Luanne

Luanne wrote that “Satan prowls around like a roaring lion, but Revelation 5:5 tells us that Jesus is the Lion. The counterfeit lion leads the whole world astray…”                     The counterfeit nature of our enemy is not creative. Ingenuity is not his strength. He comes after us the same way every time: as a fake, a fraud, an imitation of the real thing. He is desperately grasping at what he once had-what he can never have again. In 2 Corinthians 11:14, we’re told that he “masquerades as an angel of light”. Oftentimes, he comes to us not in all his evil, hateful nastiness, but as something that looks almost good. He is not a creator-but he is masterful in the art of imitating. If we’re not careful, if we’re not deeply connected to Jesus and focused on Him, we can mistake Satan’s lies as the voice of our Savior. He’s that good at lying, friends.

And he’s not only a liar-he is hateful and he is mean. So mean. If we begin to listen to his voice, we can begin to believe awful things about ourselves, about others and even about God. It made me cry to read my beautiful friend’s list of the lies she’s believed about herself. And I know Luanne’s list is not unique to her. I have a similar list-I’m fairly certain you do, too. The details of our lists are different, but the devil’s purpose is the same: To steal our God-given identities; to kill our purpose, our dreams, our hope, our faith; and to completely and utterly destroy us from the inside out.

So what do we do? How do we defend ourselves against a liar who has perfected his craft? I thought a lot about the first words of the first verse John read to us in his sermon, out of 1 Peter 5:8. The translation Luanne used above tells us to “be alert and of sober mind”. The translation John read used the words “self-controlled and alert”. I rolled the words around in my mind several times as I listened.

To defend against our very real enemy, we must be self-controlled and alert…so how do we do that?

WE don’t. Thankfully, our gracious, loving God didn’t leave us to figure it out on our own. Not only is the incomparably great power that raised Jesus from the dead for us (Ephesians 1:19-20); that very power lives in us (Romans 8:11) in the person of the Holy Spirit. And the self-control we need to have to combat the devils’s scheming in our lives? It is a fruit of that Spirit living within us. We cannot muster up the self-control on our own. Our humanity will fail us if we try to beat our enemy in the flesh. But as vessels that carry the very Spirit of God Himself, we have all of the power of our Risen Savior to draw on, to lean into, to rely on.

Luanne wrote these words above: “If I choose to believe the lies, not only am I cooperating with Satan in my own destruction, I am also focused on myself.  Absorption with self, whether negative or positive is self-worship.” 

Absorption with self can also show itself in our attempts to fight our enemy on our own. Choosing not to draw from the endless well of power that we have access to through the Holy Spirit alive in us, choosing to wage war on our own, is not strength or courage. It is pride and foolishness and a win for our enemy as our focus is, once again, on ourselves.

It is only when we are connected to Jesus through His Spirit that we can even discern the object of our worship. Because it can be disguised so well… We can truly believe we are worshiping God, serving Him, loving Him-but in reality we are worshiping ourselves, serving ourselves and loving ourselves. The evidence that proves the real object of our worship is found on the inside, in the depths of our hearts. Sometimes, we can’t even discern the truth on our own. And so we have to regularly check ourselves. We have to not only stay alert to our enemy’s tactics, but also to the rhythms of our own hearts. How do we do that? We admit that we can’t do it alone and we ask, as the psalmist did:

Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.                     (Psalm 139:23-24)

The Spirit will reveal truth to our hearts-if we let Him. I am so grateful that we aren’t left alone to defend ourselves against our enemy. I’m grateful that baby Jesus grew up and that the Jesus I worship today is so powerful that His name alone makes demons scatter and flee. I love the tender, kind, gentle Savior He is to me–and–I love being reminded that His power is unmatchable, and totally FOR me and you.

I want to leave you with some words that speak beautifully to the power of our Jesus. We sang “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” on Sunday. The words to this hymn were penned sometime before 800 AD by an unknown monk. Somewhere in a monastery, during what we refer to as “The Dark Ages”-a time when Scripture was inaccessible to most-someone got it. Someone understood the light, the power, the supremacy of our Jesus and the words had a profound impact on me today:

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here,
Until the Son of God appear.

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny;
From depths of hell Thy people save,
And give them victory o’er the grave.

O come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer
Our spirits by thine advent here;
And drive away the shades of night,
And pierce the clouds and bring us light.

O come, Desire of nations, bind                                                                                                        All peoples in one heart and mind.                                                                                                 Bid envy, strife and quarrels cease                                                                                                      Fill all the world with heaven’s peace.
I pray that Jesus, who ransoms captives, who frees us from Satan’s tyranny and saves us from the depths of hell; Jesus, who gives us victory over the grave, who cheers our spirits, who drives away the dark of night; Jesus, who binds his people as one and destroys the quarreling and chaos and fills us with the peace of His heavenly kingdom–I pray that this Jesus will leave you in awe as you marvel at His power that is for you and alive in you. He is mighty to save us from the schemes of our enemy. Will we give Him the worship He is so worthy of? Will we lift our eyes from the chaos of our enemy and gaze into the face of the conquering lion? Our enemy has already been defeated. Let’s start living like we believe that’s true!

-Laura