Fearlessly Courageous
Desk of Dennis Piller
6 14 2023
Christians playing the victim card.
Transforming the way we think.
What is it that causes you to stumble? What is the piece of yourself you just can’t get rid of? You know… it’s just too hard. The temptation is too great. I try, but I just keep finding myself here, again and again! There is just something wrong with me!
I try and try. I always feel bad afterward. and get this guilt that just washes over me.
I have repented and asked God to help me but either he hasn’t heard or my sin is just too powerful, too embedded and it is hopeless for me…
So what is that for you?
Anger, jealousy, lust, porn, greed making you be a workaholic, adultery, sex out of marriage…what is this obsession of yours that pushes the good things out of your life. video games…contamination…fear or food?
What has become the idol you have elevated before your relationship with god? What have you put before him and then cried out that he doesn’t answer my prayers?
Satan’s Spiritual Bondage
Have you ever thought about how Satan enslaves us? John Piper shares, “One is misery and suffering, thinking there is no good God worth trusting. The other is by pleasure and prosperity, making us think we have all we need so that God is irrelevant. His two greatest strategies of deceit are pain and pleasure. Pain luring us to say, “God is evil”. Pleasure luring us to say, “God is not needed,” When he succeeds in either deception, we are in bondage”.
To be free, we must repent! But we play the victim card. This is just too hard. I have tried really hard, but “I” keep failing. Or it isn’t so bad, everyone does it. It feels good.
(Sin always does.) It has become this habit. It has set its roots and hooks in me. Yes, “I have allowed this to build strongholds within me that seem insurmountable”.
That my friends is the definition of bondage! Wouldn’t you agree?
I was listening to one of Pastor John’s podcasts as they used the paradigm of getting physically fit and the 2 key factors of resistance and reception.
1. Resistance puts muscles under strain, and with time and repetition the process gets us stronger. I have started going back to the gym. I was embarrassed at how much strength I had lost. I kept lowering the weight because of my lack of discipline in pushing those muscles to a higher level of performance and use. (If you don’t use it you lose it!) But just 3 weeks in I could see a marked improvement. I was getting stronger. My stamina was increasing, my resistance was growing into something respectable. The point is I needed to push through my weak muscles. Strain them to the breaking point to make them useful and potent for the task at hand.
2. Reception. What you take in is a key component of getting physically fit and healthy. Eating healthy food and getting enough sleep. We are in a sense welcoming them into our bodies. Taking them in to work from the inside out. It seems foolish to start pushing the weight and continue to eat fast food, French fries, and the comfort food menu. We just fool ourselves, saying we are trying. We are only doing half the necessary work.
James 4:7 says “Submit yourselves, then, to God. RESIST the devil, and he will flee from you” He said RESIST…PUSH BACK… meaning it will be hard at first BUT GOD says.
“Be strong in the Lord and the power of his might”. Col 2:15 says “BE STRONG IN GOD! “James 1:3 says “For you know that when your faith is TESTED, your endurance has a chance to grow. The testing of faith…pushing our faith to a higher limit, is like lifting a barbell. We need to push on the promises of God. Push back the darkness …why?
Because it produces steadfastness…It pushes back temptation and suffering and over time and further resistance…further testing…we finally get strong enough, by the power of his word!… TO STOP THIS INCECENT SINNING!. This area has a lot to do with lust and using the armor of God to PUSH, these thoughts and temptations out of our minds. We have to PROCLAIM, his word. We need to SPEAK TO these thoughts and inclinations and temptations. You have 5 secs before that root reconnects inside.
We have to DECLARE. “your out of here”.
Resistance renews the mind. I know, it sounds exhausting
Read Hebrews 12.
But it’s not just resistance, look at 2 Cor 3:18 and how the reception of God’s word transforms our thinking…and our habits. “But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord”. This is from the lord! We are receivers.
Fix your gaze. Linger in the word. Marinate your mind receptively. Receive the gifts and the promises of God Almighty! Look at it like your life is a Crockpot of God’s words.
Fix your eyes on Jesus. The more we take it in…. the more we will be changed to take on his appearance… to grow into His power and more of his desires, his thoughts.
We must become receptacles of God’s word, his will, and his promises to deliver us.
Your obsessive sin, whatever it may be, is NOT too much for God. But you must let your Hope in God be your anchor! You must resist these pleasures and vices…push back using his word…encourage yourself in the Lord! Matt 7:24 -27 says it succinctly, “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.”
Finally, Col 3:10 is our reminder of how we do this. “You have put on the new self, which is being renewed IN KNOWLEDGE, in the image of its Creator”. We have a new self.
We MUST put it on. How? By being renewed in knowledge… the transformation is renewable thru knowledge! 1 Thes 4:3-5 says, “God’s will is for you to be set apart for him in holiness and that you keep yourselves unpolluted from sexual defilement. Yes, each of you must guard your sexual purity with holiness and dignity, not yielding to lustful passions like those who don’t know God”. Sadly, those who do not abstain are illuded to here as “not knowing God”. We cannot speak like or act like we are victims with no clear way to push back. They haven’t renewed their minds UNTIL they are transformed… Those who are not will be in this whirlwind sucking them into the pleasures and bondage of Satan.
In Christ, you CAN do all things. Confess – Proclaim His Word – Memorize His Words…they are your strength to walk out of darkness into his marvelous light.
