God's Plan When You're Under Attack

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to the Met Church podcast. Here at the Met, we are all about connecting people to God and one another. If you have any questions or want more information about what's happening here at the church, then head to our [email protected] we would love to stay connected with you throughout the week through social media, so be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter now. Enjoy the message. [00:00:24] Speaker B: Well, guys, thanks for having me back. I know Bill. Oh gosh. Their family for 30 some years, they're such a blessing to me. I know they're a blessing to you and it's a privilege to be here. So thank you for having me. Well, if there's any scripture in the Bible that I relate to the most, one that just speaks to me because the author, it feels like I can finally get into somebody's mind that thinks the way I do. And that's Romans, chapter seven and it's Paul and he's just talking about the struggle, this internal battle that he has with sin and sin nature and with hey. With the spiritual in his life. And he says, I don't really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don't do it. Instead, I do what I hate, but I know that what I am doing is wrong. And this shows that I agree that the law is good. So he's talking about the Bible as the law, and he's like, it's good and it tells you the things that you should do and it should tell you the way that you should live. It's good. Verse 17, though, says so. I am not the one doing wrong. It is sin living in me that does it. And I know that nothing good lives in me that is in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can't. I want to do what is good, but I don't. I don't want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. You ever felt that way? Have you ever had those thoughts go through your mind? I mean, maybe even this morning you felt that internal battle that that is happening now. I started teaching spiritual warfare. I got really into spiritual warfare and understanding what spiritual warfare was back in 2000. So I've been teaching it for 26 years. I love it because it is something that is so relatable and it's so practical to our everyday struggle. But through those 26 years, the question I probably get asked the most about spiritual warfare is how do you know? How do you know if you're under attack? How do you know that it's the enemy that's hitting you and not just some circumstance, something that you're going through that maybe you just, you know, could kind of grit your way through it? Or if I just have a little more patience, I'll get through it. How do I know if it's the devil coming after me or if it's just something else? Well, this morning I want to look at some signs, some things that will hit us in our life, that if they do, it's a sure, sure sign that. That it's the enemy coming against us. And the first is, is that we lack the desire to pray. You lack the desire to pray. Or maybe something seems to get in the way of your prayer life. Man, if there's one thing that the devil loves to attack, it's your time with God. Because he doesn't want you connecting with him. He doesn't want you connecting with the Lord. He doesn't want you interceding for others. He doesn't want you doing any kind of warfare against him, obviously. And he's pretty creative of how he can distract us. We see this in the Gospels. We actually see this with the disciples. And it happens in Matthew, chapter 26. And this is the part of Scripture where Jesus knows he's going to die. He knows what's to come. He's within hours of being tried and persecuted and, and. And then hanging on the cross, he's within a day's time of that, of that going down. And his disciples are starting to realize there's something going on too. So he decides, because he knows he needs it, he is going to retreat away into the garden of Gethsemane to do some spiritual warfare. And he wants them to do that with him. He wants them to pray with him. And that's where we pick up in verse 38, the Bible says he told him, that's Jesus. My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me. So he's saying, stay here and pray with me. That's what he's saying now. Have you ever felt that way, that you were crushed with grief to the. The point of death? Something hit your life so hard that you didn't know if you would ever come out at the other end. It's something that hit you in a way that it felt like maybe you were going to die? Well, this is where Jesus is and he needs his friends to help him. Verse 39 says, he went on a little farther and bowed with his face to the Ground praying, my Father, the famous prayer, my Father, if it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done and, and not mine. So then he returns to the disciples and finds them asleep. So he says to him before he leaves, just pray, just come along, you got to hang in there with me, pray for me. And I'm going to go a little bit further into the garden and I'm going to be praying for my heavenly Father, but I need you guys to stay here and I need you to pray. But he comes back and they're asleep. And he says to Peter, couldn't you watch with me for even an hour? Couldn't you pray for an hour? Keep watch and pray so that you will not give into temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak. And you think, well, you know, this happens once Jesus comes out, he gets on him, it's the son of God, they would straighten up. But then it happens two more times, it happens three times where the disciples just can't stay awake. Verse 37 says that they're over overwhelmed with anguish and distress and they could not stay, stay awake. Well, the devil didn't want them to help, didn't want the disciples to help Jesus. I mean, obviously this is the biggest moment that Satan has before Jesus dies, before he defeats sin and death, before he is resurrected again. The devil has one more chance. So he comes after Jesus in the garden and he comes after the disciples while they're supposed to be praying for him. And he comes after him hard because you know, the enemy loves to use feelings to distract us from the one that can fix why we feel the anguish or fear, anger or jealousy, et cetera. So the very thing that can keep us from feeling those things, the devil wants to keep us from. Now, how many times have you sat down or laid down to pray and you were distracted by something? The phone rings, something pops up on social media, you get a notification, maybe your kids start crying. Maybe you realize, oh no, I gotta fix it. I gotta finish this little to do list thing before I can pray. Some distraction or maybe even you do what the disciples did and you get sleepy. We've all done that. Maybe you go to bed at night and you go, okay, I know, Lord, I need to spend some time in prayer with you. I have some big stuff going on tomorrow, so, man, I'm gonna pray and you lay down and you start to pray. And then before you know it, you're dreaming, you're out. The devil loves to do that to you, because he knows you can't pray and sleep at the same time. And it may not happen at night when you're going to sleep. Maybe, maybe you pray in the morning and you're praying to God and then you just can find yourself nodding off or you find yourself yawning, you're sleepy, you need to go to you just like, I don't know if I can get through this prayer. That can be an attack, a demonic attack in our life to. From praying. And sometimes we just got to change our location. We've got to change our prayer life up to where we get up and we walk around when we pray. Hopefully you're not going to sleep. Walk. Hopefully you can walk and you can pray. Or maybe you jump in the car and you go for a drive and you pray while you're driving. Change the way you pray to keep yourself awake. The last thing you want to do is allow the enemy to lull you to sleep. And this really goes right along with the second sign you're under spiritual attack, and that is that you're constantly worried, confused, and full of anxiety. Now there are times that you're going to feel those emotions, and those emotions are not good. And we have to battle those emotions. And normally we battle that by trying to change the way we think. You know, the Bible says that we're supposed to take every thought captive and bring it under the obedience of Christ. That's what we're supposed to do with the thoughts that get in our head that are just crazy or sinful or wrong. We're supposed to fight back. And we have to understand that if we. We're fighting back and we're battling them and they still don't leave, that's almost always a spiritual attack. And when you feel these emotions with no real reason to feel these emotions, it's definitely attack. So. So have you ever seen somebody before and you went to them and you're like, well, you're not. You're just not right. What's wrong with you? And you seem worried. You seem like you just have all of this anxiety or confusion that's going through what's going on. And if they tell you, I don't know what's wrong with me, I don't have any reason to feel this way. You know, my family's good. My, my health is good. I. Everything seems to be pretty good at work. I don't know what's wrong with me. Almost always it's because a demon, a spiritual attack, has, has tried to take their Life, take their joy and make them feel all of these other bad emotions. How many times have you ran scenarios through your head of. Of worrying about things before they happen? We're super good at that. Especially at night when we're trying to go to sleep. That's one time that we can't sleep is because our mind is racing about all the things that we know we have to do the next day. And then we're running through scenarios of what ifs. What if this happens? What if this happens? How am I gonna handle it if this. Well, if this happens, then I'm gonna say this. Well, if this happens, this is how I'm gonna handle it. And we run through all these scenarios in our mind that we probably won't even face the next day. The devil loves to make us fearful. He loves to make us. He loves to just fill us with anxiety. And the Bible says, actually, Jesus says in Matthew 6, so don't worry about these things, saying, well, what will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear? These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers. So right there he's saying, this is. Unbelievers can feel this way, but you don't need to feel this way. You're different. You're set apart. But your heavenly father already knows what you need. He says, seek the kingdom of God above all else and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need. Doesn't say some things. It doesn't say, well, he'll give you the stuff that he wants to give you or that he feels like giving you, or stuff that maybe that you feel, he feels like you've earned. This is everything you need. So don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today's trouble is enough for today. I have a staff member, and she always does this. We'll be talking about something that needs to be done. And she'll. Her name is Julie. And she goes, that's tomorrow Julie's problem. That's not today Julie's problem. And we got enough to worry about today, right? We don't need to be worrying about stuff tomorrow. But the devil loves to hit our mind with as many things as he can to distract us. The third thing is super common, is that you may lack peace. You may lack peace. You may be here this morning because you need peace. You may come to the net because when you get in the parking lot, when you come on campus, when you get in this worship center and you start feeling the presence of God, you get a peace that you don't get the rest of the week. You might be here for that reason, but with God leading your life, you can be assured to get something that the Bible calls a peace that passes all understanding. That means when all hell breaks loose with you, nobody will even know it because you have this peace that's beyond all understanding. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense that I have peace. It doesn't make sense that I know that everything is going to be all right. It doesn't make sense because it's spiritual and God gives us that gift. I Love Philippians, Chapter 4, and written by Paul as well. And he's writing this letter, and he's in prison. He's been beaten, falsely accused. He's totally innocent. And he decides to write this letter to the Philippians, and it's all about joy, in spite of your circumstances. And he says, don't worry about anything. Instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank him for all he has, all he's done in your life. Then you will experience God's peace. God's peace. So when we tell God what we need and then we thank him for what he's done, he's going to give us a peace which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus, man, that guarding the heart and mind, that's big, because that's what the devil likes to attack more than anything. But when God isn't in your life, peace can be something that's really hard to find. Now, we see this in Saul's life. Saul in the Old Testament, he was the first king of Israel. You remember his story. And he starts off good. He has God's favor in his life. And then he starts just making really stupid decisions. And these stupid decisions open up the door for the enemy to come against him. And we see this in 1st Samuel 16. The Bible says, verse 14. Now, the Spirit of the Lord had left Saul. That's a big deal. Think about that. In the Old Testament, some of us don't even realize it, but only certain people got the Holy Spirit. Certain kings would get the Holy Spirit, or certain prophets would get the Holy Spirit. That wasn't just for the everyday believer. But in the New Testament, it's different. If you believe in Jesus, you can have the Holy Spirit. That's incredible. In fact, most of us, we couldn't even wrap our mind around the fact that we could lose the Holy Spirit. How we would feel if we lost the Holy Spirit. That's what happens to Saul? And the verse continues on, and it says, not only did he lose the Holy Spirit, this is the Lord sent a tormenting spirit that filled him with depression and fear. So God allowed this tormenting spirit to come upon him with those two things, depression and fear. You ever feel depressed? You ever feel fear? Absolutely. The devil loves to use those two things against us. It's like his specialty. And then verse 15 says, Some of Saul's servants said to him, a tormenting spirit from God is troubling you. So even the people around Saul knew he was messed up. They knew he was being attacked. And then he said, let us find a good musician to play the harp. Whenever the tormenting spirit troubles you, he will play soothing music and you will soon be well again. Now, if you know scripture, you know that that person is David. David is the one that comes in. David is the one that is playing that harp to try to settle Saul down. Now, this would be like your wife coming to you and saying, you're a mess. You are such a mess. I'm going to go to Billy and I'm going to see if there's any way the praise team and the band here could come and play in our house 12 hours a day just to settle you down. That that's what's happening in Saul's life. He was in such a horrible state, so he lacked peace, that if you don't have peace in your life, it's a good sign you might be under attack. Number four, you are easily irritated, angry, and take offense. Now, it's one thing to be on edge, and that's going to happen, right? That's going to happen every once in a while. But it's another thing to live on edge. And we know people like that in our life. Maybe you're like that. Maybe you live on edge. And it's not just a season. It's a lifestyle. And you know when it happens because the people around you stop wanting to be around you, or maybe you know somebody that lives this way and you don't want to be around them. It is no fun to live around somebody this angry all the time, that's upset all the time, that has a problem all the time. I mean, we have to be careful with what we allow to get into our head. Because the truth is, if I watch too much news, I get angry. And it doesn't matter what side of the aisle you line up on, if you watch too much news, you can get irritable, you can get mad, you can get angry. You can start. Want to throw stuff at the tv. And I just don't watch the news anymore. I can't do it. It just gets. I just get so frustrated. And there's things like that that can kind of open up the door to us. So we gotta be careful. So Saul doesn't have the Holy Spirit. He doesn't have peace. And instead he's filled with these dangerous emotions. And then this next central figure that all of us have read about in the past comes on the scene, and it's David. And David has already. He's. He's. He. He's killed Goliath. He's been given Saul's daughter Michel as his wife. And so great things are happening in David's life. He's already been anointed to be king, even though he's not king yet. And he's been given the responsibility of going out and defeating these enemies of Israel. So he does it, and he has great victories, and he becomes really, really popular. And God is just totally blessing his life to the point that the women of Israel are writing songs about him. Okay, yeah, I know Taylor Swift writes a song about every one of her boyfriends, but this is a big deal when the people are writing songs about how great David is. And this particular song is talking about how David has killed. Or how Saul's killed his thousands and David has killed his ten thousands. And we read how Saul responds to this in 1st Samuel 18. You know, he could have received it and just said, hey, man, I got a warrior out there that's doing great things for the. For the country. That's awesome. Let me cheer him on. But. But instead, the Bible says that it made Saul very angry. He says, what's this? They Credit David with 10 thousands and me with only thousands? Next they'll be making him king. He didn't know he was a prophet, too, because that actually happens. So from that time on, Saul kept a jealous eye on David. Oh, he kept an eye on him. But it wasn't only an eye. It was a jealous eye. Verse 10. The very next day, a tormenting spirit from God overwhelmed Saul, and he began to rave in his house like a madman. David was playing the harp, as he had done each day. So David was in there. He's trying to calm him down. He's playing his harp, playing his heart, you know, all the best he can, best he can. But Saul had a spear in his hand, and he suddenly hurled it at David, intending to pin him to the wall. But David escaped him twice. So this happened Multiple times. I think this is what they call a toxic work environment. You may have a bad boss. Hopefully he's never chucked spears at you. But that is the state of mind that Saul is in. He is in such. He's under such spiritual attack that he's absolutely losing it. He's irritated, he's angry, he takes everything. Are you. If you're offended easily by things, are you easily offendable? That can be a sign that you're under demonic attack. Number five, you doubt God and his plans for you. Have you ever been so discouraged that you just start doubting everything? You doubt your purpose, you doubt your job, you doubt your faith. Maybe even you wonder if God even cares. We have all been there at some season in our life, we've been there, but once again, hopefully we don't stay there. Now we really know it's an attack when it comes on us, when we shouldn't feel that way, we shouldn't feel this way, but we do. Man, that can be spiritual. And we see this in Elijah's life. I love the story of Elijah. Elijah is this great prophet and he goes out and he's trying to basically save the spirit spiritual state of Israel. And so he challenges the spirit of baal, or he challenges these worshipers of baal, who's a false God during the time, a false religion that has completely taken over the country. And he challenges their prophet. And it's incredible. You can read about it in First Kings, chapter 19. But God does a miracle and God proves that he is the true God. And as a result, the entire country of Israel converts. They convert back over to the true God. It's amazing. An amazing miracle. That would be like somebody in the United States, maybe like a Billy Graham type figure. He shows up on the scene and he does this incredible miracle and everybody in the United States converts to Christianity. Like that. That would be cool, right? We could pray for that. That would be really awesome. But what a miracle. And you would think that Elijah, after doing that incredible thing, which God of course, did the miracle through him, but after being a part of such an incredible thing, he would be on a moun. He would be so pumped about what is happening and all of these people, their lives being changed and them having a new home in eternity one day, and it just basically completely turned this spiritual atmosphere of this entire country upside down. That's what happened in Elijah's life. And you would think that this would be the greatest moment. He would never come down from it. But when we read in Scripture what We find is that Elijah gets to a point where he wants to kill himself right after this massive miracle, right after this great win. And he is down, he is depressed to the point where he wants to take his own life. Boy, that's the way the enemy works. I can't tell you how many times I've seen this happen in my life and in others lives where we're praying for some big breakthrough. Maybe it's a big business deal, Maybe it's a home that we want and it finally comes through. It finally is there, and we get to experience it. And instead of praising God for it, the devil steals the joy from the fruits of our labor. And we don't celebrate what's happened, and instead the enemy hits us with anxiety or depression, and we don't even get to enjoy the blessings that God has given us. Man, that is so demonic. That is such a spiritual attack. The enemy loves to make us doubt God and his plans for our lives. Even when we can see miracles happening. And when we don't trust God, we can lose hope, just like Elijah. And a warrior with no hope is a defeated warrior. And he's called us to be warriors for him. So we have to watch that. We have to be so careful that the enemy doesn't steal those things from us. Elijah also shows the sixth sign, and that's where you're constantly tired and weary. Constantly tired and weary. Now, I'm not talking about young moms. With infants, you have every excuse to be tired and weary. This is where it becomes the norm in your life. I'm always tired. I just always feel like I can't get up in the morning or I can't get motivated or whatever. The devil loves to wear us out. And he will wear us out with all kinds of circumstances in our life to the point where we just want to quit. He makes us so exhausted that we just want to give up. And he wants us to stop trying. He wants us to stop fighting. He wants us to stop believing. He wants us to stop trusting. And I can't tell you how many times I'll be in counseling with somebody and they'll just tell me. They're like, I've given up. I don't pray anymore. I don't go to church anymore. I don't. I used to have a small group that I was in. I used to serve. I don't do any of that anymore. I just tired and I don't want to do it anymore. Man, that's the enemy. The enemy wants to wear you out. To a point where you will stop fighting because it makes his job easier, right? So you're constantly tired or weary. And then, number seven, you might be drawn back to some old sins or patterns in your life. The enemy loves to try to lure us back to our old ways. He loves to do that because he knows that nothing is more defeating than when we feel like we've finally got a handle on something. Maybe we've gone to rehab, had great success, or maybe we've gone through some counseling, or we've got a really good accountability group and we see some success and whatever that hot button issue is in our life and we think we have it, and then, boom, we fall back into it. There's nothing more discouraging, there's nothing that will make you feel more shameful than when you fall back into something that you thought you'd beaten. And the devil knows that the devil wants to make you fall back into that. I mean, there's been times in my life where I'm like, you know, lord, I wish I would just fail in some new way. I fail in the same old way over and over and over again. The devil doesn't have to be creative. He's super good at what he does. So we fall back into old patterns. Solomon, when he wrote in Proverbs 26, he's kind of descriptive of what this looks like. He says, as a dog returns to its vomit, as so a fool repeats his foolishness. We will fall right back into that foolishness if we're not careful, if we're not doing our due diligence. And we're going to talk about that in just a second. And then eight. This is the last one. This list is not exhaustive, but it's a good list. And that is that you give up easily and find no joy in life. You give up easily and you find no joy in life. The devil loves to steal your joy. Because the Bible says in Jeremiah 8, 10, the joy of the Lord is our what. It's our strength. We get stronger when we have joy in our life. I don't know about you, but, man, I've gone through seasons where I didn't feel like I had any joy, and I wanted joy back and I prayed for joy. And I'm not talking about happiness. Happiness is something that's totally dictated by circumstances. You can be happy when you get a new car. Joy is happiness that lasts. It's happiness that isn't despite your circumstances, and the devil wants to steal that from you. Do you ever look back at your life and go, man, I wish I could go back then. I was happy then. Those were the good old days. When Christ came that we might have abundant life, he said, the abundant life, not the abundant season. The devil has stole something from you. You have to take it back. You go into the enemy's camp and you steal what the Lord has taken from you. It's a spiritual fight, guys. It's spiritual warfare. But the devil has done so much work on lulling us to slee that we've lost our joy. We've maybe lost our passion. Now, going through seasons of struggle where you don't feel rejoyful, that's normal. But going through a drought of joy, it'll destroy us. So we've talked about all of the ways that we might know that we're under spiritual attack. And when I taught this message in Grand Junction about, I don't know, six weeks ago or so, I had people come up to me in the lobby afterwards and they're like, I have every one of those. What do I do? Really? I got all eight. I couldn't get a break on any of them. Sometimes that's the way it is, but we can do something about it. And I'm going to talk, just briefly, as we just have a few minutes left, about what God's plan is when we're under attack. And now as I give this to you, you've heard these points before. It's not rocket surgery, okay? It's not. See, I did that. Rocket surgery. Okay, it's not rocket surgery. These things you've heard before. But the thing is, we just don't do them. We know we should and we know it's good if we do, but we just don't do them. And as a result, the enemy creeps into our life and he steals things from us because we're not on guard. And one of the things that we have to do is repent and humble ourselves. That's not anything we haven't heard before. Ask for forgiveness. When you mess up, ask for forgiveness. The last thing we want is to have any sin in between us and our relationship with God. That doesn't mean that you have lost your salvation. That just means that there's something there. I need to say I'm sorry. For if your spouse has hurt your feelings, your relationship with your spouse is not going to be the same until you say, I'm sorry, I was wrong. That's hard to say, but we need to say it. And that we have to say that to the Lord. I'M sorry, Lord, I was wrong. Forgive me. And then also humble ourselves and walk humbly. The devil loves to use pride in our life because pride is the sin that caused Lucifer to lose heaven. Pride is dangerous. It's dangerous. And so when we stay repentful before the Lord. Sorry, Lord. Forgive me, man. It helps us to be weak. Walk humbly as well. Next one. Once again. Probably heard this thousand times before. We got to make sure that we worship and praise, worship and praise, and not just on the weekend. Corporate worship is so important, right? We need that. We need to be together. We need to be worshiping corporately as a group because there's strength in numbers. That's awesome. You want to make sure you're doing that. But are you worshiping out throughout the week? What is your playlist on Spotify? Get a man. Get a worship playlist. Because here's the thing. The only offensive weapon we have against the enemy is the sword of the spirit. And when we sing scripture, it weaponizes that sword. Especially when you think about the fact that Lucifer was over worship in heaven. He's over music. He's really good at music. And if you don't believe that, look at the music industry and look what's happening in it. But when you take scripture, put it to music, and you sing it to the Lord, it drives the demonic crazy. It drives them out of the room because they can't listen to it. And you are using the sword of the spirit in a way, you're using the devil's weapon against him. You're using his specialty against him. So make sure. Make sure. Listen to it when you're in traffic. Listen to it when you're getting ready in the morning. If you want to change the spiritual atmosphere in your home, turn your stereo on and play worship in your home while you're gone. It will change the spirit in your house. You might feel like your home's been a place of strife and anxiety and maybe fighting, but when you play worship in your home when you're not there, watch what it does. It's incredible. It will change things. Number three, prayer and fasting. Once again, simple. But are we praying? Do we really pray? Are we praying on a daily basis? Are we giving God time where we can communicate with him? Your marriage is only as good as your communication. Your relationship with God is only as good as your communication. Communication. And not only that, but fast. Now, I know a lot of people fast. Man fasting is hard. It is. And. And scripture talks about all the different benefits that you can you can have from fasting, from food. But I want us to look at it a little differently this morning. That's important. But one of the reasons why they fasted from food, especially in biblical times, was because it took so much time to prepare food. You had to go out and pluck the chicken, you had to go out and gut the chicken, you had to then cook the chicken, then you fed everybody, then you cleaned up, and then you went out and you, you killed a goat and then you gutted the goat and then you skin the goat. It was. If your responsibility for your family was to prepare the food on a daily basis, that's all you did. You barely had time to do anything else, let alone pray. And so they would say, take this time, fast. You don't have to worry about preparing food. You're going to have all of this extra time for spending with God. Now, in today's society, we can go through Taco Bell, drive through, we can eat and five minutes. So preparing a food is not the issue. So I challenge people all the time. Hey, what takes up most of your time during the week? What do you spend the most of your time with during the week? That's really a waste of time. And almost always they come back with media, right? Social media, television, movies, whatever the case. And so we have this thing where we just tell people, try fasting from social media or, or from media in general for a week. Try it. And then take the time that you would normally spend on your phone or on your tablet. Take that time and pray. Man, if we could do that, every Christian in the country, this country would have no problems if we would just stop with the media and just spend that time in prayer instead. Try that as a discipline. It will chase the enemy out of your life. Number four, reading the Word because that's the sword of the Spirit. And seeking God's presence, reading the Bible once again, simple. But only 31% of Christians read their Bible every day. Just a third man. We need to do better than that. Especially if it's the sword of the spirit. It's our only offensive weapon. Get a Bible plan. There's great Bible plans out there. Through the Word is really good. Great Bible app you can get on YouTube. You can find all kinds of great teachers on there that do verse by verse, chapter by chapter studies. Use that technology for good. Use that for something positive in your life. Number five, learn how to fight using spiritual warfare. When you use spiritual warfare for fighting, basically what you're doing is you're taking whatever you're feeling and you're binding that in Jesus name, you're casting it out of your life and then you replace it with the fruit of the spirit. I'll give you an example of that. Let's say you struggle with depression. That's it's a spirit of heaviness. So you just say, in Jesus name I bind the spirit of depression, get it out of my life and instead, Lord, I pray that you would release joy in me, give me the spiritual fruit of joy. Now every day I always pray the fruit of the spirit over myself. Lord, give me joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, goodness, self control. I pray that every day over myself. But there's times throughout the day where something heavy might hit you, where you just have to go, in Jesus name, bind up that spirit of heaviness, that spirit of depression, cast it off of me, give me joy instead, Holy Spirit, maybe it's something, maybe it's something like lust. Maybe you struggle with that. Say, lord, take the spirit of lust from me in Jesus name and instead give me self control. Maybe it's anger. Lord, help me to stop being so angry. So in Jesus name, bind the spirit of anger up off of me and instead release peace in me. So you bind up what is bad and then you just ask God to loose or fill you with the fruit of the spirit. That's good. That's spiritual warfare. Prayers. And because it works, and you might have to do that more than once a day, you can't just do it in the morning because there's times, especially at first, well, you're gonna have to do that throughout the day. But it works, guys. It works. It will bless you in such an incredible way. Number six, stay in community. This is the last point. Stay in community with other Christians. Don't miss church, get into a small group, serve in some way. Scripture says that the enemy goes around like a roaring lion, seeing who he might devour. Doesn't say he's a lion, it says he walks around like a lion. Now, I know you've watched National Geographic, you've seen shows on lions. You've seen how they stalk their prey and they creep around in the tall grass. And what do they do? They, they look for the weak person or the weak animal in the flock. That's what the devil does to us. Whoever's the most susceptible is the one he's going to attack. Now, when we come together as a church, we come together in corporate worship. We come to, this is a flock. There is safety in the flock. There's there's such great things that you can have from a relationship with others in church, with accountability, and you're. You're further in your study and getting closer to the Lord. Those are awesome things. But you don't want to be the. The weak animal that gets kind of separated from the herd, that takes shots. You don't want to be that. I have this philosophy. I'm like, you know what? I know I'm going to have. There's going to be spiritual oppression. I know that demons are going to try to attack me. The Bible just says that. But I want to make them so miserable that they're going to want to wish that they were not assigned to me. Right? I want to play worship. I want to pray spiritual prayers. I want to bind them up and get them out of my life and understand what's there and how to fight against it so that they are not successful against me. I want the other demons to look at the demons that mess with me and feel sorry for them. That's what I want, and that's what we should all want. Don't stop going to church. Get a group of people around. Serve, man. When you become a part of a larger mission, there's great ways to serve here at the Met. And you heard Amber talk about some of those earlier, earlier today. Make sure you're serving, because when you serve man, it takes the focus off of you and puts it on everybody else. So as we close, if you guys will stand with me. Lord, we just want to. We just want to. I just want to pray a blessing over you, Lord, we love you, and we recognize that we are fighting a battle, and we know the enemy wants to take us out. His mission statement is to steal, kill, and destroy. But I pray that you would help us to not be a victim of that. And, Lord, I pray for the people in this room that feel like they've lost things to the enemy. I pray, Lord, that you would make them bold and you would help them to see themselves as a warrior. And I pray, Lord God, that you would give them the strength to walk into the enemy's camp and to take back what he stole from them. Holy Spirit, give us back our joy. Holy Spirit, give us back our relationships. Holy Spirit, give us back the marriage that we dreamt of. I pray, God, that you would just help us to not have the anxiety. Lord God, I pray that you would just come against the enemy in any way that he might be coming against us in our life. Help us to have the. The willingness to fight. Help us to recognize when we're being attacked. And I pray in Jesus name that you would help us to have the tools to fight back. We love you God and we thank you. We thank you that you died, that we might have an abundant life. And I pray, Holy Spirit, that you would lose abundant life in this room. Holy Spirit, fill us to overflowing. Help us to feel those fruits come against the enemy in our life in every way. And show us, Lord God, how to walk and walk victoriously. And we pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. God Bless you guys. Have a great week. [00:39:21] Speaker A: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have any questions or prayer requests, please contact us by visiting metchurch.com so that we can follow up with you this week. We look forward to seeing you next week. [00:39:35] Speaker B: Sam.