Bind the Strongholds, pt. 1

   For Christian Home week, it would be good to understand why there is a need to prioritize the home, or as James Dobson said it, to focus on the family. If you read Heb. 2:14, you will see that Satan was rendered powerless by the death of Christ on the cross. “Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”

    We are weak when the enemy attacks us because we oftentimes are unaware that we are at war, we are generally unaware of our weapons to be used and almost always unaware that we are already the victors of that war. At least that seems to be the way we act when we willfully allow sin into our lives, our marriages, our homes and our families.  When we willfully sin, we allow Satan a “free pass” into our Christian Home.

    If you have a stronghold of Satan in your life, how can you defeat it? You may not think you have a stronghold of Satan, but look at the following definition.

Stronghold  -- any area of your life over which you have not given Jesus full-control.

    What that means is that you may have an area in your life that is not sin, is not an addiction, is perfectly socially acceptable  but yet still is an area over which you have not given Jesus full and complete control. That is a stronghold.

     The devil knows where we are weak and wants a strong hold over you and me. If he cannot get it the form of a vice, he may attack you in the form of a virtue. Do you take pride in a certain area? Have you ever said, “I will never do ______________.” Are you willing to admit that there are areas of your life over which Jesus has anything less than full control?

      Satan begins his attack on us in our minds. Only God can read our minds but the enemy can definitely put thoughts in our minds. If there is an area which you find yourself having the need to justify it to others or yourself, it likely is a stronghold. If there is something that you have confessed a dozen, a hundred or a thousand times to God, yet are still committing it, it is a stronghold.

    How to defeat a stronghold.

1.       First admit and recognize you are not stronger than the stronghold without the aid of Christ. The surest way to defeat is to not recognize the problem. If you justify it and think “everyone struggles with this” or “no one is perfect” then you will never defeat it. Even if the “everyone’s” and “no one’s” argument makes sense, you are not everyone and no one. Even Michael the arch angel knew that he could not defeat the devil and said “the Lord rebuke you.” Do not fight on your own strength.

2.       Listen to, read, memorize and meditate on the Word of God (2 Tim 3:16-17). That is not a cop out answer. Jesus did it in His temptations (Matt. 4:4, 6, 10). God’s word says it is the only defensive and offensive weapon (Eph. 6:17). If you struggle with fear, pride, lust, anger, worry, low-self-esteem, greed, selfishness (I can keep going, you know), find verses on those topics.

3.       Submit to God and resist the devil (James 4:7). Sometimes we are defeated not because of Satan overpowering us, but simply because we are used to giving in. We fall because of WSS—weapons of self-destruction. A stronghold may not be of disobedience, but rather because of a failure to submit to God. Are you speaking words of others that are not edifying? That is an area of failing to submit, and gives the devil a stronghold, even in other areas unrelated. Submit to God in all areas, and the devil will flee, at least for a season.

4.       Battle with spiritual weapons, not fleshly (2 Cor. 10:3). Don’t resort to human solutions, look for spiritual, godly solutions. No self-help books or 12-step program will work without God. Not that there are things wrong with those things, but first and foremost look to God’s instructions (Ps. 20:7, Zech. 4:6, Rom. 13:12, 1 Cor. 2:5, Eph. 6, 1 Thes. 5:8, 1 Tim. 1:18).

Tests from the Rains--Believe in God

Christian Home Week, 2015

    There’s an interesting phrase in the Bible which says, “God sends the rain on the just and the unjust” (Matt. 5:45). That can be interpreted two ways, either He is good to both just and unjust people or He allow bad to happen to just and unjust people. Both are true.

     When we read about the storms that come to the two houses in this parable, we first hear about the rains. Rain can be both good and bad, but one thing is for sure: rain is necessary for life.

     Tests from heaven can also be good or bad, but when God is testing us, it is also for sure that it is necessary for our spiritual life. As Robin Williams’ character said in Jumanji in response to the truth, “A little rain never hurt anybody;” “Yeah,” he responded, “But a lot can kill you.”

     You may have experienced a test from God. If you are wise and have your house built on the Rock, it may not kill you, but even tests from the Lord may hurt you. God has a plan and purpose for every test that He places on you. The disciples went through a storm that rocked their world on the Sea of Galilee. As Jesus slept on the bow of the boat, the disciples came to Him and shouted above the wind and rain, “Master, don’t you even care that we are perishing,” (Mark 4:38).

     As this is Christian Home Week, tell your children about some of the storms God has brought you through. Tell them of mistakes (as long as they are not too embarrassing!), of victories, of lessons learned, of times when you thought perhaps God didn’t care if you were perishing. Show your kids the importance of prayer and time with God.

     If God our Heavenly Father tests us, then we as loving parents should put limitations and times of testing on our children, not so that they will fail, but so that they can learn the joys of victories.

     The tests from God are not so that we can fail, but so that we can learn and grow from them. Someone has said that Faith is not really faith until it is all you have. God wants you to be at a point where you are utterly dependent on Him.

     There was a man who was imprisoned in a dungeon during the reign of Napoleon. Alone and dejected, he carved the words in the wall, "Nobody Cares." But in a small little crack in the floor, there came a small little plant, which grew and leaned toward an equally small beam of sunlight from his prison window. The man gave a part of his daily water to the plant as it grew into a beautiful flower. In tears, he scratched out the word “nobody” and wrote “God.” The guards saw the writing and the words, “God cares” and it was eventually reported to Empress Josephine. She was so touched by the man’s plight and restoration of faith that she convinced Napoleon to set the man free.

     The rains you experience in life are not signs that nobody cares. God cares and how you respond in the storms and tests of life are going to reveal that God cares. A life based on hearing and heeding the words of Christ are going to be the foundation that keeps our house from falling in the rain and failing His testings.

Christian Home Week 2015 Tuesday

The key to the House built on the Sand

    Who would build their house on the sand? Look around the world. Apparently, there are a lot of people. Intelligence is not necessarily the same thing as wisdom. Jesus said the foolish man builds his house on the sand. The word for foolish is the same word we get for moron. Only a moron would build his house on shifting sand.

    Sand is beautiful, soft to the touch and feet. It certainly is much more pleasant than the hardness and immovability of a rock. I remember reading a book about a person who was contrasting a wall of brick and a trampoline and relating them to our faith. Amazingly, he was favoring a trampoline as an analogy to our faith than a wall of bricks. He might as well have used an illustration of sand and a rock. Trampolines are fine for fun, but for foundations for a house, give me a rock and brick walls, and not shifting sand and trampolines.

     What is your life built on? Some people live for the weekends. Others are longing for retirement. Younger people are longing for independence, a solid career, education, a life-long relationship, marriage, a family. All those are wonderful, necessary even, and certainly worthy of pursuing. But please note: None of those are permanent. All of those will shift. Only one thing is truly worthy of building your foundation on, and that rock is Jesus’s words and living our lives by them.

    How many college students have switched majors? How many marriages have started off so well and yet ended so terribly? How many parents have poured their lives into their children, only to see them go in a different direction than the one to which they have pointed them? Even churches have turned sour on their members. Pastors and church leaders have failed their congregations.

    Jesus is culminating his Sermon on the Mount with this introduction to his conclusion: Don’t place your faith in knowing about Jesus and His name. Don’t place your faith in doing works, even good works, even good works in the name of Jesus. Don’t get hung up in good works, good formulas, and yet being outside of being in the will of God. Jesus says to miss the reign of heaven by an inch is as good as missing it by a mile.

    Is the foundation of your faith based on a formula of works and wonders? King James renders those whom Jesus never knew in Matt. 7:23 as “those who work iniquity,” NKJV and NASB say, “practice lawlessness,” NIV translates them “evildoers,” HCSB calls them “lawbreakers.”

    Jesus doesn’t sound much like a trampoline, does He? He sounds, well, hard. He almost sounds contradictory because those evil doers who will be rejected by Christ did great and marvelous things in the name of Jesus. If it wasn’t clear enough in Matthew 7, Jesus underscores the coming judgment in Matthew 13:41, “The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness.”

    The key to the wise man’s house is found not in the works done in Jesus’ name. It’s not found in avoiding practicing lawlessness, since we all have broken the law. It’s not in calling out, “Lord, Lord.” The key to the foundation of the house built on the rock is found in doing the will of the Father; it’s found in the Lord’s prayer, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven;” it’s found in doing the Father’s will by becoming a part of God’s family (see Matt. 12:50). We are not become a part of God’s family by being born into the right family (“born, not of blood,” John 1:13a), not by working our way to heaven (“nor of the will of the flesh,” John 1:13b), not by any man-made institution or denomination (“nor of the will of man,” John 1:13c). We become born into God’s family by receiving Him and believing in Him (John 1:12).

    Titus 2:4 says that even if we are “evildoers,” Jesus redeems of “from every lawless deed.” Even though God hates lawlessness (Heb 1:9), He will forgive us and not remember our lawless deeds (See Heb. 8:12 and 10:17).

    Perhaps John the Apostle summed it up the best in 1 John 3:1-10 in saying that we all have practiced lawlessness, once we become a child of God, we have a new relationship with Him. We may not be what we are someday going to be, but praise the Lord, we aren’t what we used to be! Read this from the ESV:

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

No Cookie Cutter Houses

Matthew 7:21-27

²¹ “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. ²² Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?^’23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’

²⁴ “Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: ²⁵ and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.

²⁶ “But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: ²⁷ and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.”

     Have you ever noticed that in the Bible there are no cookie cutter houses or homes? A cookie cutter house is something that military housing and Killeen should be very familiar with. Designers come up with a good design, supposedly, and then they replicate it over and over again.

     In the Bible, there is no typical family. In fact, it's pretty hard to come up with a Biblical example of any stereotypical family, especially one of a Father, Mother, Son and Daughter, so often thought of in the American Family. In fact, that scenario is now a minority in today's America. Some houses are Single Alone, Never Married, Widowed, Divorced. Others are Single Together, either Roommates, Not Married Yet, Not Ever Going to Be Married.

     Then there are Houses with Single Moms, Single Dads, Married With Kids, Married No Kids.

     Or there are Homes with Extended Family Members (cousins, grandparents, relatives), and Homes with family and friends.

     If you look at the families and houses in the Bible, you will find that many of them would be deemed "dysfunctional" by our definitions. I believe Lydia in the book of Acts was a single mom raising her children in Macedonia, yet she became the first European Convert in Acts 16:14-15. Paul (and Jesus for that matter) was Single, likely a Widower or some even think he was Divorced, perhaps his wife left him after his conversion, since members of the Pharisees were typically married and Paul had been a Pharisee. Peter was married. Timothy was raised with his mother and grandmother close by but his father was not mentioned.

    If you look in the Old Testament, the houses there were even more diverse (to say the least). Whatever our house and home look like, in all of our varieties and different stages of life, God wants us to have one Foundation, one Rock on which to build it upon. That Rock is Jesus, our Cornerstone. That foundation will be strong.

     How do we build upon that Rock? By hearing and doing the words and commandments He has said. In fact in John 14, Jesus says this:

²¹ He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.... ²³ If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. ²⁴He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me.

     God relates to us as a family unit, whatever form it takes.