5). Rev. 3:1-6: The Problem: the church at Sardis was spiritually dead. They were no longer alert and watchful. They had fallen asleep and God exhorts them to Wake up! They had allowed their faith to weaken and were in a state almost as bad as the church at Laodicea.
The Promise: those who overcome will be dressed in white and their name would never be blotted out of the Book of Life.
Battle Arena: Spirit & Psychological.
Type of Attack: unbelief, doubt, despair, loss of faith
Armor Protection: the Shield of Faith.
6). Rev. 3:16 - The Problem: the church at Laodicea was lukewarm, neither hot nor cold. They are an example of those believers who are Christians in name only never taking seriously the price Christ paid for their salvation. They are those spoken of in Matt 7:22-23 - “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? 23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you : depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” (KJV) They never thoroughly washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb, they kind of just rinsed them to have an appearance of godliness. They were “ever learning but never coming to the knowledge of Christ“.
The Promise: overcomers are given the right to sit with Christ on His throne.
Battle Arena: The Psychological
Type of Attack: Worldly Contentedness, They don’t partake in spiritual warfare. They have a truce with the devil when the devil tells them, “if you leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone”. These believers live an easy, lazy life just existing. They are spiritually stagnate, not going forth to do battle.
Armor Protection: the Sandals of the Gospel of Peace
There is a type of contentedness that every Christian should strive for. Phil 4:11-12 “… for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” (NIV) This example of being content is found in surrendering our will to God, knowing that “…all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28). We need to align ourselves with Job who declared, “the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
There are other arenas in which Satan tries to stifle our Christian walk. One of his most popular is through our children. Usually children of preachers and missionaries fall into two categories. Either they are totally sold out to God and following in their parents footsteps or they are overly zealous in their rebellion against God and parental authority. It’s been my experience that the majority fall into the latter category. If Satan can distract our pastors, teachers and missionaries through rebellious children then they aren’t as effective in their ministries as they were before this distraction.
We all love our children and want what is best for them but sometimes we need to exercise a little tough love, especially when they have reached maturity. If we continue to give them money that we know will be spent on undesirable things and if we always take them back in after they have lied to us for a variety of reasons then we are only enabling their behavior and not allowing them the responsibility to grow into the mature, spiritual adult we want them to be. We need to learn to say “No“! The prodigal son came back with a repentant spirit. If our children don’t exhibit that kind of repentance then we do not welcome them back with open arms. We feed them, give them some clean clothes and a place to sleep for the night and then we show them the door. This toughness is only for those who are totally into the world of sex, drugs, drunkenness and may have fallen under the influence of a cult.
This tough love does not apply to those who simply have exercised their free will and choose to live a non-Christian life. In both cases we are to put their fate into God’s hands, pray for them and then treat them lovingly but firmly as our children. Continually arguing over their life choices only widens a gulf and creates an atmosphere of anger and bitterness that may be difficult to overcome if they do come to Christ in their later years.
Here are some other methods Satan uses to try and bring defeat into your life.
1. He will point out some faults and defects within your local body. This usually occurs after the first excitement of being born again fades and the realities of the Christian’s duty begins to dawn on you. He’ll try to get you to become disillusioned in the area of church politics or by suffering hurt caused by another member of the body and perhaps even through the human frailty of a pastor or church leader.
2. He’ll constantly try and get you to feel emotional about your spirituality. As an example, he’ll try and distract you into wondering why you don’t feel forgiven instead of accepting by faith the fact that you are forgiven.
3. As humans sometimes our minds wander and if we’re not careful we will stray into the devil’s territory. He’ll program your mind with sinful images or by conjuring up fears and replaying over and over some past unhappy memory until you have reached a spiritual low point. When you pray, he’ll try to prevent you from praying to your actual God by having you pray to your preconceived, romantic ideals of God.
4. Another tactic is to make you doubt the fact of the existence of demons. If they can keep society picturing demons as little red imps with pitchforks or some sci-fi movie creature then their disbelief in those attributes causes them to deny their existence at all.
5. He may bring new friends or acquaintances into your life that belittle the Christian faith thus causing you to hide what should be worn as a badge of honor and to become ashamed of all that you hold dear. We all want to be liked and validated for who we are but sometimes the price we pay for that validation can lose us our spiritual graces as we stifle down our faith and desire to be accepted by those who have no faith at all.
6. One of the problems we will encounter is that he will try and get us to believe that we are possessors of time. We tend to very closely guard our concept of time and feel quite good about ourselves when we use some of our time to attend church or church functions. The truth is that all of our time belongs to God and He graciously allows us time to accomplish what we desire but all of us waste far too much time that can never be recovered on silly, frivolous things. Compare your “church time” to the amount of time spent watching television or playing computer games. I know that when we all stand before God at Judgment Day we will all be appalled by the hours and in what manner we wasted our time.
Other arenas in which Satan works can include an oppressive spirit in a particular place, with a particular item or in extreme situations possessing a person to the extent that an exorcism is needed. When dealing with a specific place or item the cause is usually the same. The house, building or geographical area has been the dwelling or workplace of someone involved in the spirit world. People like fortunetellers, mediums, palm readers and psychics. Another cause could be a seemingly innocent involvement with Tarot cards, Ouija boards, séances and table-tipping, etc. Anything that could possibly involve something in the spirit realm and not associated with the Holy Spirit of God should be left alone and not attempted by anyone claiming the name of Christ.
When a person becomes possessed of a demon only those strong in their faith should deal with them. Sometimes, as Christ taught, they can only be overcome with much prayer and fasting. I won’t go into detail on this issue as it is too dangerous of a subject to be dealt with lightly and it should be left to those spiritually mature enough to handle it. The Christian journey is full of peaks and valleys. The valleys are our spiritual lows and the peaks are our spiritual highs. We grow more in the valleys. The peaks are the celebrations of our valley growth. We all desire to experience the peaks but shudder at the classroom of the valley, but it is in the valley that we echo David’s immortal 23rd psalm:
“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. 2 He maketh me to lie down in
green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. 3 He restoreth my soul:
he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. 4 Yea, though
I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou
art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. 5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. 6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.” (KJV)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment