The Warfare Of The Believer

This ministry is being produced our production consultant Kym Coan. We greatly appreciate this ministry in allowing us to bring this ministry to you.

https://www.godisgovernment.com

Support Our Ministry - https://www.godisgovernment.com/support-us

https://www.godisgovernment.com/shop

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hello, my name is Paul, and I am the voiceover for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh at God is Government called Your Daily Bread, taken from Christ's teaching of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6, verse 11. This is a daily devotion ministry focused not only on uplifting Scripture, but scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today's focused discussion will be the warfare of the believer. Ephesians, we are examining the warfare of the believer and the resources that he has for victory. By way of introduction this morning, I want to respond to a question that arises always when you get into a discussion like we've been in the last few weeks. We have been discussing quite at length the subject of commitment. We've been discussing the dedication, the commitment, the sort of selling out of ourselves to obedience to fulfill God's will in our lives. We've talked about the matter of disciplining ourselves, controlling our desires, and coming into conformity and coming into the standards of Christ. We've talked about really being a soldier, a warrior, and giving our best effort for his sake. Now this immediately introduces to us another perspective that is often held regarding this area of Christian living. There are some people who believe that all of this exercise and all of this discipline and all of this struggle and all of this effort is really not what God is after at all. And since that question is posed, I felt like, for a moment or two this morning, I ought to answer it. There's a statement in the Old Testament made in reference to King Jehoshaphat that says the battle is not yours, it is the Lord's. Now, that statement has become a byword for a group of people who have been called quietists. It is the movement that basically says the way to live the Christian life is not through self-discipline and through effort and through commitment, but rather through surrender. And you may have been exposed in your youth or in some other time or through reading or whatever to this concept of let go and let God. There was a television program on Christian Station called Let Go and Let God. There is a song called Let Go and Let God Have His Wonderful Way. We hear a lot about the subject of yielding, of resting, of abiding in Christ, of handing it all over to the Lord. I know there's a contemporary song that says, Turn it all over to Jesus. And you hear people say, Stop struggling and stop striving and yield and surrender, totally surrender, completely surrender. And I remember as a young person hearing this quite a lot. I remember going to camps and conferences, and in the particular college I attended, there were constant calls to come to the altar, and students were like yo-yos going up and down, up and down, trying to get surrendered. In fact, we found that there were a lot of us who were willing to be, willing to be, willing to surrender. We just weren't sure how. And it would seem like you'd just to get to the point where the tears would begin to flow, you'd hit your knees at the altar, and you'd surrender. Three days later you would sin, and then you'd say, Well, I surrendered, Lord. Whose fault is this? And so it became very difficult. It's pitch black, and there's a person in there, fumbling around, kicking the chairs and tripping over the lamps and all of this kind of thing, trying to do what he's doing. And the reason it's dark in there is because it has those blinds that completely darken a room, and they're pulled down. And outside is complete sunlight, and the sun is shining brightly, but the guy is stumbling all over the place in the dark room. When all he needs to do is lift the blinds, and the sunlight automatically floods the room, and he can see where he's going. And they say this is how it is in living the Christian life. The Lord doesn't want you stumbling and fumbling and bumbling all over the place in the dark. Just pull the shade, sit down and rest, and everything will be made clear. There are people who take John 15, the concept of abiding in Christ. Not to refer to that act of being saved, but the idea of surrendering, the idea of yielding. You perhaps, when you were a kid, went to a camp service and you heard somebody speak, and maybe they exhorted people to surrender to Jesus and give their all to the Lord, full surrender, and you sang songs about it, and they got emotional. They went on verse after verse. I remember being at a convention with two thousand people where they sang at least twenty five verses of a hymn, talking about people getting surrendered. You've had that experience, I've had it. I've gone to a camp and I saw a kid who was so frustrated by the end of the week. We heard so many messages on surrender, and this poor guy was so totally frustrated trying to figure out how to surrender, he decided that the best way was to surrender his time to the Lord. And so they used to throw a stick in the fire, the emblem of a surrendered life. And he got up there and he said, I want to give the Lord my time, and he took his watch off and threw it in the fire. And you could just see the frustration. You know, that isn't that's not smart, that's bad stewardship, to throw your watch in the fire. That isn't what you do to surrender. But he was at the point where he was frustrated. He'd heard about dedication, rededication, consecration, reconsecration, and he was working awful hard at it. Now maybe you're like some people that I know, who went up and down aisles all their childhood years and in their youth, trying to get surrendered, well that's not uncommon. Not uncommon at all. In fact, there used to be an old hymn that went something like this holiness by faith in Jesus, not by effort of my own. Let go and let God means just kind of cool whatever you're doing, sort of flake out, do nothing. CHA Trumbull, who used to defend this system, said that when you are fully surrendered, get this, you'll never even experience temptation, because it will be defeated by Christ before it has time to draw you into a fight. Well, if that's true, then how do you ever, when you sin, know whose fault is it? It must be Christ's fault, which is kind of scary to think about. Because that would not be true. Surrender is perhaps aptly illustrated in a book called The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life, written by Hannah Smith. In that book she says this. What can be said about man's part in this great work, but that he must continually surrender himself and continually trust. But when we come to God's side of the question, what is there that may not be said as to the manifold and wonderful ways in which he accomplishes the work entrusted to him? It is here that the growing comes in. In other words, what she's saying is if you want to grow spiritually, do nothing, but surrender and let him do it all. She illustrates it. The lump of clay could never grow to a beautiful vessel if it stayed in the clay pit for thousands of years. But when it's put into the hands of a skillful potter, it grows rapidly under his fashioning, into the vessel he intends it to be. And in the same way the soul, abandoned to the working of the heavenly potter, is made into a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the master's use. Now it all sounds good, but if you're nothing but a piece of clay in a potter's hand, and he's making you into what he wants you to be, how in the world do you get out of there to sin? Does the clay all of a sudden say, Look, I'm finished with this deal, hop out of the potter's hand, form itself into what it wants to be, and do its own thing? It's a little hard on the illustration, frankly. One moment, Hannah Smith has the Christian a piece of soft clay, and the next moment, the clay has jumped out of the potter's hand and is doing whatever it wants, some clay. But the point is this there must be more to the Christian life than just a do-nothing approach. The Bible never teaches this approach. The Bible doesn't simply teach that all you have to do at some point in your life is surrender. The Bible doesn't teach that at all. There are many, many Christians who have tried and tried and tried and tried. I'll never forget the illustration of a guy who said to me he was in a church where they were calling for people to do this and do this and do this. And he came forward, down the aisle, he knelt at the front of the aisle, and he started to pray and pray for surrender, and pray for surrender, and pray for surrender. And the pastor watched him going through all this gyrations and and finally said to him, Pray it through, brother. Pray it through. Pray it through. And to everyone in the audience, folks, let's uphold him so he can pray it through. And finally the fellow stood up and turned around and said out loud, Hell I can't get through, and walked right out the back door. Well, that's a lot of frustration. I don't know what they were trying to get him through. But that's the kind of a frustration that comes when you try to surrender, and you don't understand there's some other things involved. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of the warfare of the believer. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovern.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way.