Eden Podcast - 2: Into the Light - Exposing the Enemy's Lies

Welcome back to the Eden Podcast! In Episode 2 of our transformative live series, we confront the uncomfortable but liberating truth about our spiritual reality. Are you ready to stop hiding and step back into genuine communion with your Heavenly Father? This empowering Christian podcast explores the vital, relational purpose behind God’s voice and exposes the deceptive tactics of the enemy that keep us isolated and ashamed.

In this powerful session, we contrast the voice of God—which is loving, constant, and designed for relationship—with the voice of the enemy. We analyze the tactics of Satan, the ultimate deceiver, who uses subtle lies and twisted truths to sow seeds of doubt about God's goodness and our worth. Have you bought into the lie that God is withholding from you, or that you must earn His love? We expose these toxic narratives and learn how to identify the subtle “weeds” of deception growing in our hearts.

But the good news doesn't stop with simply recognizing the problem; it provides the solution. We explore the profoundly freeing concepts of confession and true repentance. Confession isn't about punishment; it’s about breaking the chains of shame. It's stepping out of the dark shadows of isolation and declaring, “I am struggling here,” allowing God's light to illuminate our broken places. We learn that repentance is not a sign of weakness but an act of bold faith—a purposeful turning away from destructive patterns and turning back toward the heart of God.

It is time to replace the enemy's deceptive whispers with the solid, unshakable truth of God’s Word. You are fully known, deeply loved, and fiercely pursued by a Father who longs for you to live in freedom. Join us as we learn to silence the lies and boldly reclaim our spiritual inheritance.

Transcript

If you are new this morning and you didn't hear last night, you might want to go back and listen to it because um this morning might feel like a gunshot blast to the face if you if you didn't get the back story of last night. So, just a fair warning. Um... one second. So, uh, last night we talked about, um, we talked a lot about voice and how God created the whole world with his voice. And like Kinley said, his voice of affirmation spoke over the creation and what he had made and we were made to live under the voice of God. And we see in the creation and fall story in Genesis 1 through 3 that voices were very important. And the voices that Adam and Eve were listening to and believing were like critical to the story and everything that happened. And so I want to talk for a minute about hearing God's voice, which is a birthright of every believer and also like a mysterious thing that can be hard to wrap our heads around or understand. Um, I want to start by saying that all relationship is communication. That if you don't have communication, you don't have a relationship. A marriage where you don't speak to one another is a bad marriage. Um, a friendship where you never connect or talk is not, it's not a good friendship. Like, relationship is dependent on communication. And it is dependent on knowing one another and connecting. And so in Genesis 1 through 3, we see prominently standing out God's voice of truth and blessing. And then in chapter 3, we see the introduction of a new voice and it's the serpent's voice, which is a voice of lies and deception. And then we also recognize that Adam and Eve's voice is in the mix as well. So there's there's God's voice, there's the enemy's voice, and there's our own voice. And what is so essential to the story is which voice Adam and Eve are choosing to listen to and believe. The voice that they followed changed everything. And the voice that we follow changes everything. So we want to talk about hearing God's voice in the midst of competing voices and we want to talk about how either embracing truth or embracing a lie shapes the story that we're living in.

So like I said, God's voice brought everything into existence from the beginning. And scripture resounds over and over and over again with the promise that God's children will hear his voice and know his voice. And that our lives are really our spiritual lives are really dependent on listening and obeying God. Um, the Bible itself is like a collection of communication. It's one way that you could think about it. It's story after story of God communicating with his people and his people communicating with God and all of the things that happened because of that. So one of the ways that we learn to know and recognize God's voice is through reading his word. And listening to his voice through scripture and getting familiar with what his voice sounds like, what kinds of things he says, what's the tone in what he says, and we learn to recognize his his voice directly to us by grounding ourselves in his voice in scripture. Biblically God speaks in many ways. He speaks through um dreams and visions and angels and prophets. He speaks through circumstances and promptings of the Holy Spirit. But the primary ways are the written word of God and the living Word of God, Jesus. Those are the primary ways we look to see the communication of God. And those are the places where we vet all other communication against. So the way God has communicated with us through scripture is our standard of truth. Everything that we're listening to outside of that and trying to discern the voice of God, we measure that against scripture. The voice of God to us will never contradict what we're reading in scripture. It will always align, it will always complement. So that's the way we stay safe as we're listening.

Hearing from God is not for a select few who are especially gifted or especially mature. Hearing from God is the right of every child of God. Think about a child whose parent won't speak to them. That's not a thing. God speaks to every single one of his children. Learning to recognize his voice takes time, takes trial and error. Right? Um, and we grow in knowing his voice. In John 10 it says that his his his voice is natural and that his followers are are like sheep that know their shepherd's voice. I I want you to think about, it's funny this week there was a couple of times Travis was like voice voice texting back and forth with someone that's like more of a distant friend, and it was like I could hear the voice from the other room. There was an immediate familiarity but I was like, "who is that? What voice is that?" And it took me a while to, "oh, that's who that is". But with the voice of my husband and the voice of my children and the voice of my parents and the voice of my close friends, that never happens. There is an immediate and automatic recognition of who is talking. In fact last night there was something left on a seat over there and there was a journal open with writing, I was like "who left their stuff?" I looked down, "that's Cat's handwriting." I could recognize it like that. And this is the kind of relationship we have with our Father. He wants us to automatically and immediately know the sound of his voice. Recognize his writing. Recognize his language. That's something my father says. He always says things like that. He's always so good to me, he's always better to me than I am to myself. Way better to me than the enemy ever is. I know my Father's voice. This is what it sounds like. This is what it feels like when he speaks to me. It feels like coming home. This is the kind of intimacy that God is inviting us into. He uses um this kind of language throughout the Bible to describe his relationship with us, and it's father, it's friend, it's husband. He uses the most intimate relational language that we know to describe the kind of connection and relationship that he is longing to have with us.

Often he speaks in a gentle whisper. We see that in First Kings 19. Or through impressions or thoughts, sometimes images. We heard that today, that Charlene, she saw a picture of a feast table and had a sense of something God was wanting to speak to us. Genuine words from God um carry weight. I I've tried to just tried to describe here some things I notice about what hearing God sounds and feels like. His words carry weight. They're consistent with the Bible. They often have a calm authority about them. His words are loving. Sometimes they're surprising. Usually very clear. When God speaks, there's clarity. When the enemy speaks, it creates confusion. When God speaks, it creates clarity. His words in my experience tend to be clear and memorable. Sticky. Faith-inducing. It calls something out of me. Humbling. All of a sudden I see myself rightly when I hear his voice. But his his language, his words, his voice draw me closer to him. They don't push me away. They draw me into worship and into faith. They draw me away from worldly things. This is what the voice of God is like. Tends to be, in my experience, simple. Yet profound. Like, one word that feels very simple, maybe even silly to say, and yet so profound, so full of meaning. Like a world of meaning within one word or one phrase oftentimes.

So again to say that the word of God is our standard that we measure everything else against. And that also in the process of learning to hear God, um he's give he's put us in community with one another. And so we submit what we hear to one another. And we ask our brothers and sisters in Christ, "this is what I'm sensing I'm hearing from God, this is what I think I heard from God, what do you think?" And we can be in it together testing it together and there's a lot of safety in that. I also want to say that God is really good. Better than any good father on this earth. And so when we ask God a question, he doesn't allow the enemy to answer for him. You can't find that one time in scripture anywhere. That a child of God came to God asking for something and God allowed the enemy to lie to them. A good father doesn't do that. A good father protects his child. So there's even something of faith in us believing that when I come to God and I ask him and I am intentionally listening to him, I can trust what is coming. And so when we go and we ask God to speak to us, the free flow of thought that can come in that moment is protected. And we don't have to worry that we're going to be shanghaied by the enemy in that moment. Does that make sense?

Sometimes in our longing to hear from God, we don't hear from God. This happens a lot. And so what do we do when we don't hear? We keep listening and we keep trusting. There will be seasons that are quiet, there will be times we want an answer and it doesn't come. We keep listening, we don't force anything, we keep trusting. We draw on scripture and we respond accordingly to scripture. We um ask for prayer from our community of faith. We ask for other people to listen and pray. And we rely on one another. And we make the wisest decision we can and move forward in trust. I was thinking about like, oh there's like a decision I need to make and it's one I would want to make with Travis. It's one I wouldn't want to make on my own, I would want to like have a convo and kind of like yeah we're same page and this is what we're doing together. But I can't get a hold of him and I have to make the decision. What do I do? Well I go off of what I know of him. My long history with him. What I know he would say, what I know he cares about, and I make a decision based on honoring who he is. Does that make sense? That's what we can do with the Lord. And we trust that even in the quiet, that God has not left, that he's still with us, because that is a promise that we live with in Hebrews 13, that he'll never leave us and never forsake us, that he's always with us, even when he's quiet at times. And that's the point. That hearing God is not about chasing special revelations or proving some sort of spiritual maturity or gifting. Hearing God is about knowing him. Knowing him more, trusting him more, obeying him more, living a life of love for him. That's the point of listening to him.

Okay, so I wanted to talk about his voice and how we hear him and how we listen to him and how we live a life of communication with him before we now talk about the enemy's voice and what the enemy sounds like. Okay? So as we saw last night, um creation was born into a war. Um Kinley mentioned this this morning, we're still living in this war. We're still living in the midst of a battlefield, and we're living um in between Eden broken, Eden restored through Jesus, um through the kingdom of God that is here now and available to us in the midst of the war, and we're in between the times when Jesus will come back and fully restore Eden to this earth. Where sin will be destroyed forever, there will be no more sorrow, tears, pain, brokenness, the enemy will be taken care of once and for all and forever and we will all live within this perfection and wholeness that God created us for. Sometimes in the midst of living in this broken world I drive around and I just imagine what that world is going to be like. Like just imagine what a world without sin would be like and feel like. Imagine a world where everybody that you walk past on the street is the fullness of who God created them to be. Without sin, completely trustworthy and safe. How much joy and life that will produce. I long I long for this day when God comes and restores this world and makes all things new. So we're living in the midst of of a battle, and we have access to everything that God has provided for us here and now in the midst of the battle. I love the word that Charlene shared because it's that perfect picture. We are at a table feasting on all God has provided for us in the midst of a war. That's the tension that we're living in now.

So we live in a spiritual war, whether we recognize it or not, and sadly um Jesus' church can often be asleep to this reality. We can fall asleep to this reality. The enemy's goal is not just temptation, it's deception and accusation. He wants to distort the truth of who God is, and he wants to distort the truth of who you are. He wants to steal your identity in Christ. Ephesians 6:12 says, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness. Isn't that a good description for the world we're living in? Present darkness. Against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. So our fight isn't against people or circumstances or emotions, it's against unseen spiritual powers. And we we already know um that the war has been won. That Jesus is the victor. But we are we still find ourselves in the midst of current battles that we are fighting. And so we are we don't fight for victory, we fight from victory. We already know Jesus is victorious. He wins this war at the end of the day. And these battles that we're fighting in we're fighting from a place of victory.

First Peter 5:8 says, be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. I don't know, um, you might be new to faith altogether and you are just finding out that you have a cosmic spiritual enemy. Welcome to the family. You may have grown up in the church for a very long time. You may have been a Christian for a very long time, and you you may have been a part of a a tradition that completely um minimalized, that's a better word for that, downplayed the enemy. So you may have been a part of a church for 20 years and you never even heard him talked about once. You may have been a part of a church that talked about him all the time and maximized the enemy, right? We can we can see these extremes in the church. We fall asleep to the reality of him, he doesn't exist, we're not going to talk about him, or we're maximizing his impact and power and there's like a devil behind every bush and and and actually everything is his fault all the time including the consequences of our own sin. Or our sin. The enemy made me do it, right? So we can minimize or maximize the enemy. In First Peter 5, I want you to hear the language that the Bible is is giving us for how we relate to our enemy. Be alert. Be sober-minded. Um other language we can find in the Bible of how we relate to our enemy is to be aware, to be informed, to be wise, to be discerning, to be shrewd, to be vigilant, to be watchful. Notice that it doesn't say to be afraid. But there's an invitation to sobriety, wisdom... don't be ignorant, don't fall asleep, don't underestimate him, don't be afraid of him, don't overemphasize him, don't make him more powerful than he is. Be wise, be alert, be watchful, be discerning. Okay? So that is that's how biblically how we're commanded to hold this.

In Second Corinthians 2:11, Paul tells us, we are not ignorant of his schemes. It tells us that when we walk in unforgiveness, we can be outwitted by Satan. That unforgiveness in particular can create an opening for the enemy in our lives. Everything is not the devil, but how convenient for him if the church has become oblivious to him. And the scripture tells us that the enemy has schemes, he has strategies, schemes, tactics, plans, okay? Uh we already talked about this one last night, but one of his first tactics or schemes is isolation. He gets Eve alone. He gets no other voices in the room. She can only hear his voice. So he isolates us. Another age-old scheme of his is deception. We saw this last night. He lies. The serpent's first move in Eden was to twist the truth and plant doubt about God. He lies to us, he lies about God, he twists the truth of who God is. His goal is to make you question God's goodness and to make you question your identity in God. The Bible says that he is, the Bible calls Satan a liar and the father of lies. It says that there is no truth in him. Even when Jesus was um being tempted in the wilderness, you can watch how the enemy took truths from scripture and twisted them to entice Jesus to disobey God. That's one of his schemes.

Another one of his schemes is accusation. In Revelation 12:10 it says that the the accuser of our brothers and sisters in the faith, he accuses them before our God day and night. He tries to bury believers in shame and condemnation. So they live as in reality forgiven sinners rather than redeemed sons and daughters. Saints who sometimes sin. He's gonna overemphasize things about us to get us living from a false identity. When God has called us forgiven saints and is ready and able to forgive us right now, right now, right now, right now. Do you hear accusation in your mind? Do you do you live with an accusing voice that is opposing you? Sounds like your own voice. But it's not nice to you. It's always pointing out your flaws and where you've missed it and what you're doing wrong. And something else I want to point out is when we're living with the accuser's voice in our minds, we become accusatory of the people around us. So this could be another way to notice, I am harsh towards the people around me. I accuse people around me very quickly. Am I living under a harsh voice myself? Am I living under an accusing voice myself? Oftentimes those two things go hand in hand. And there's gonna be an overflow from your life of entertaining an accusing voice. Does that make sense?

His next scheme or strategy is through temptation to sin. Oh, nope, I'm coming to that. Pause. Okay, temptation to sin. So in James 1:14 it says each person is tempted when they're dragged away by their own desires. So he comes in on desires, he rides in on unmet longings, even good unmet longings. Like God has made us with things that we long for in our hearts, right? And sometimes when those aren't met, when those aren't met in relationship, when we're not getting those met by God, when they're not met in maybe some of the relationships God's designed to meet those needs or those longings, we can be led and tempted away to take and fulfill those things for ourselves in ways that God has not created us to do that. And we can end up enticed to sin through unmet longings. Then desire when it is conceived gives birth to sin and sin when it is full grown brings forth death. We talked about this last night. Sin produces death and separation from God and each other. Believing the lies of the enemy produces death and separation with God and one another.

And let's just talk about sin for a minute. Um, I think it's been like a couple years but I remember Lori and I on a walk one day and we just had this moment where we were like have we forgotten about repentance? And we were like self-examining, when's the last time I said out loud to another human being, "I need to repent of this sin." And we were starting to notice that the language in the church had changed from "I repent of this sin, please forgive me" to "I'm struggling with this. Pray for me, I'm struggling with this. Pray for me, I'm struggling with that." And just kind of over time it had kind of crept and shifted and changed. And another thing that we were talking about is and we're seeing this now actually even across our nation where the presence of God is showing up in places on college campuses and his spirit is being poured out in a really special kind of way, um some people call that revival, it's a word they use to describe that when God shows up. Those moments are always marked by public confession and repentance of sin. And even when I look back over the course of my life, moments that we as a community have experienced this, it always started with public confession of sin and repentance. Now sometimes our sin is connected to believing the enemy's lies and sometimes it's not, it's not always connected. But I I want to call us back to, and actually God's already doing this in our community, we're having a revival of repentance around here. And it brings life and healing and joy and peace. God has made it so clear that sin leads to our death. And and I feel like this is one of the things we're not going to ease up on. Like we're not going to be influenced by the world that would say, "what is sin and who gets to say?" No. We're gonna call sin what God calls sin. We're gonna find in the Bible the things that God calls sin and we're gonna call them sin. And we're gonna be ruthless against the things in our lives that are killing us. We're gonna be women who kill what is killing us, right? No, I'm gonna take you down and destroy you before you destroy me. Like this is the reality of what happens, sin destroys us. It destroys who God made us to be, it destroys our relationships. It destroys our future in God. And he's calling us to be vigilant and ruthless about sin in our lives. And so we're going to call sin what God calls sin.

Sin we saw in Eden separates us from God, our home. Jesus came and sacrificed himself so that we could have a bridge back to Eden. But part of that is us owning and repenting of our sin. And so what that sounds like because sin destroys my relationships is not me saying to a friend, "I struggle with comparison, will you please pray for me?" It's me saying, "I have sinned against you by coveting what you have, I have envied you and I have hurt our relationship. Will you please forgive me for my sin?" There's a scripture in the Bible that talks about the difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow. Worldly sorrow is "I'm bummed I got caught. I wish you hadn't seen that." Godly sorrow is "I've grieved the one I love. I've done things that have damaged my relationship with the one I love the most. And I'm grieved. I've operated in things that are sin and it's damaged my marriage. It's damaged my friendships. And I'm grieved over the death it's produced in the relationships I care about. And I'm repenting because I'm grieved and I'm gonna turn my back on that sin and I'm gonna walk in the life God has called me to and I'm gonna believe the truth and I'm gonna operate the way God has called me to operate." That's what repentance is. Acts 3:19 says, repent then, turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out. How good is that? We have an offer that's available to us every moment of the day that never runs out, it doesn't matter if it's the thousandth time I have coveted. The offer is still on the table and it's this simple. Repent and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord. James 5:16 says, confess your sins to one another so that you may be healed. So there's a difference between repentance and confession. Repentance can happen alone between me and God and no one else knows about it. And sometimes that's enough, that's all it's needed. Confession, there's another scripture that says confess your sins one to another, and he will be faithful to forgive you and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. There's something that happens when we get our mouths open out loud with other witnesses. There's a power that comes to the transaction that's happening between us and God, and there's healing that comes, because when things stay private we can very easily stay under shame and accusation with the enemy because no one else knows about it. But when we confess one to another, and our sisters hear our confession of sin and they witness our receiving of the forgiveness of God, it's harder for us to live under shame and accusation, isn't it? And our friends are going to remind us, "no remember, I was there. God forgave you. You're not under shame anymore." So confession is a gift. Confession is a spiritual, powerful gift that God has given us. And we want to be a church, um, something that we have started to say is soon and small. We want to be a church, we want to be women of God who go soon and small, soon and small with our confessions and our repentances. Because sin that is left in the dark grows, it has a snowball effect. And we can see this. It's like lust starts small, it starts hidden and small, but it doesn't stay there. It grows and it expands. No one starts out looking at child pornography. No one starts there. They start with a simple little lust. And they keep that up and it grows bigger and it grows bigger and it expands and it twists and it twists. This is what sin does when it's left in the dark. And so we want to be women who go quickly and easily to confession and repentance. Like it's culturally completely normal to grab your sister and be like, "hey, I have something I need to confess, will you pray with me? I want to repent, I want to receive God's forgiveness today. I want my sins to be wiped clean. Will you witness this with me?" And we're going to go quick, we're going to go soon and small so that these things don't grow in our lives, don't expand, don't twist, don't start to take over more and more.

Kill what is killing you. This is not a game. We are in a spiritual battle for life or death. The enemy does not get to live rent-free with us, you guys. Sin does not get to live rent-free. We want to be free women who are walking in the life of Christ. All that he's promised us. Sin cuts in on that. Lies cut in on that. We want to kill what has come to destroy us. Does anybody need like a... Should I wet your whistle with just a few examples of sin to get the juices flowing? Do we need help? Okay, here's a few. Here's a few. Sexual immorality, lust, impurity, drunkenness, anger, rage, jealousy, envy, pride, arrogance, lying, gossip, cursing, boasting, giving false witness, covetousness, greed, love of money or materialism, worship of other gods, spiritual practices related to other gods, hatred, bitterness, unforgiveness, violence, murder, stealing, cheating, pride, disobedience, rebellion, unbelief, and self-reliance. Just the beginning guys. If you need more, what is that, food for fodder? Just look it up. We're going to call sin what God calls sin. And we're going to go soon and small and quick to confess and repent that our sins could be wiped out, that we could be forgiven so that we can live free and experience the life of Christ.

Another one of his tactics is division. Mark 3:25 says, a house divided against itself cannot stand. If the enemy can divide believers, in marriage or friendship or the church, he weakens the power of the kingdom of God. And he spreads death. This is another thing I want us to fight for is unity. I want us to fight for unity. If the enemy can divide us against one another, if the enemy can divide a marriage, he can destroy a family and wreak havoc. If the enemy can divide godly friendships within the church, he can destroy whole communities, breed death through whole spiritual communities. If he can divide leadership in the church, he can take out whole churches. I want you to understand he is strategically after these things, he is strategically after our relationships. He is the language that First Peter used is he is stalking you like a lion. He is following you. He is looking for weak places. He is anticipating moments where he could attack and be successful. Because he wants to take you out, he wants to take your marriage out, he wants to take your godly friendships out, he wants to take our church out. Why do you think you see like so much falling in the leadership of the church? There is so much spiritual warfare against the leadership of churches. And if the enemy can sneak in and start to lie and divide within the church, against the church and leadership, he can wreak havoc in the places that are supposed to be outposts of heaven on the earth. He is stalking us. He is after us. Be vigilant about these relationships that God has given you. Be vigilant to walk in unity. Do not allow division into your heart. And again, I'm calling us to soon and small. If you're starting to have divisive thoughts against your spouse, get to a friend and confess what is happening. Repent of what you can own. Get help. If you are starting to have divisive thoughts against relationships God has put in your life that are godly, that are for your good, be on high alert. Be wise, be sober, be watchful, be vigilant. If God is starting to divide your heart against the church, the church at large, your church that you're a part of, your leaders that God's called you to submit to and be in unity with. Be on guard against that. That is a strategy of the enemy because he has a mission to divide and especially to divide these relationships God has given us. Guard the unity in your life. Be wise and shrewd and discerning. This is so, so important. Go to people when you're hurt. Go straight to them quickly. Go soon and go small. Repair. Tend to these relationships because they're so precious and they're so powerful. Do not let the enemy get a foot in.

This battle is fought in our minds, primarily. We see in Job that when the enemy was opposing Job, okay I also want to say sometimes we are experiencing spiritual warfare from the enemy because we have opened a door through sin, that's possible. Or because we're believing a lie of the enemy, that's possible. And sometimes we're experiencing spiritual warfare not because of either one of those reasons and we see that in the life of Job. Job was clean before God and he experienced spiritual opposition. Oftentimes leaders experience spiritual opposition, anyone who is taking ground for God experiences spiritual opposition. And in Job's life, it looked like a lot of his stuff getting messed with, a lot of his people getting messed with, a lot of his property getting messed with. So that's one way we see that spiritual warfare happens. Primarily though, the battle is fought in our minds. And there's a call um in the Bible to be transformed by the renewing of our minds continually. In Second Corinthians 10:4-5 it says that the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds. What's a stronghold? It goes on to say, we demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. So that's everything in our minds that's false, that is not true. Everything in our minds that is in opposition to God or the truth of God is a stronghold. And what does it say we do? It says we take every thought captive and we make it obedient to Christ. So it's um what did someone say it's frisk your thoughts. So like our thoughts our thoughts don't live rent free either. It's like hm what was that thought? Where did that thought come from? Whose voice is that? Is it mine, is it God's, is it the enemy's? Is it true? If it's not true... So we take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. A stronghold is a pattern of thinking that is fortified by lies. The enemy builds them through repeated deception and truth demolishes them. We also build them with the enemy by agreeing with his lies. We give the enemy power in our life by hearing a lie from him and saying, whether it's out loud or not, "yep that's true." I agree with that. I partner with that. I repeat that, I repeat that, I repeat that. And we help him build a stronghold or a fortress where he has a place he can operate in power in our lives because we have agreed with him. So a foothold or a stronghold is an agreed with lie. The Bible says in your anger do not sin, do not give the enemy a foothold. So how do we fight? We fight out loud. We get verbal, we watch this happen with Jesus and his disciples. Satan can't read our minds, but he can hear our words. And so we get verbal and we say things like "in the name of Jesus and by his blood, I renounce you Satan and all your lies and all your works and all your ways." And we get specific. So as were recognizing ways that he particularly lies to us, we get specific with our words. If I was your enemy, how would I lie to you? What lies would work on you? And we can see, we have weak spots. We have places in our story where we've been hurt that make us especially susceptible to certain lies. We need to recognize those so that we can fortify those areas of our minds with truth.

We put on the full armor of God in Ephesians 6. With the belt of truth buckled around our waist, you guys know, we've learned like how important the core is, not that I'm doing much about it. Supposedly it is it's everything. And I love that the belt of truth is buckled around our core, like the our core, our spiritual core is the truth of God. We have a we have a breastplate of righteousness. This is like probably the most important defensive piece of armor right here. And it's that we stand behind Christ's righteousness. And so I'm protected by the life he lived and what he has done and what he has accomplished for me, because my performance was never enough. And even though I tried so hard, I always failed. And so we're protected by the life of Christ and his righteousness. We walk in shoes of peace, we move confidently because our foundation is we've been reconciled with God. We're at peace with God because of what Jesus has done for us. We get to walk in peace. We have a shield of faith. Like we like we talked about earlier, sure of what we hope for. We know our future. We know what God's gonna do, we know where we're headed, and we're certain of what we do not see. We know that if God opened our spiritual eyes we would see that there is a spiritual army that we're not aware of most of the time. So the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation guards our mind with the assurance of what Christ has done for us. The sword of the Spirit is the word of God, it's our only offensive weapon and it's truth spoken out loud against lies. We get that sword going. And you see this when Jesus was tangoing with the enemy in the wilderness and being tempted by the devil. Everything he said back to the devil was scripture. He fought him with the truth of God's word. John 17:15 says, I do not ask that you take them out of the world. This is Jesus praying for us. I do not ask that you take them out of the world but to keep them from the evil one. How does he ask for that? He prays that the Father would sanctify us in his truth. He says sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth. So we're not going to be living a victorious life in Christ if we're not in the word of God. If we don't know the word of God. If we can't speak the word of God back to the enemy when he's accusing us. And we're asking and believing that God would penetrate our hearts with the truth, that the truth would become our core, the belt of truth, our operating system, the place that we live from, our foundation.

I want you to understand the authority that you have because of Jesus Christ. In Colossians 2:15 it says that having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. When we resist the devil from our identity in Christ, he must flee. James 4:7 tells us that. So the battle is real, it's already been won. The enemy's primary weapon is lies. Our greatest weapon is truth, believed in our guts and spoken out loud. Also, I think um, two other things I want to say about the enemy. One is that he causes confusion. And so often times if I'm feeling confused over something or if I'm meeting with someone and as they're processing it's marked by confusion. Nine times out of ten, enemies involved. And also I think one of his um real strategies is distraction. And especially now in the day and age that we're living in, you know we're doing a media fa a social media fast right now as a church, and they've been putting up that thing that shows like how many years of our life we spend eating and sleeping and all this stuff. And everything that's left is almost completely filled up by scrolling on our phones. And the enemy is using that space to lie to us, we need to be watchful about that space, and we also need to be watchful about how much time and energy we're giving there that's just being wasted away. When God's calling us to live a spiritual life of authority with him.

So, who God is and who you are in Christ, the enemy can do nothing about. He cannot change who God is, he cannot change who you are in Christ. He can't touch it, there's nothing he can do about it. But if he can get you to believe a lie about God or a lie about who you are, he can get you to live like it's true. He wants us to forget about the authority that we have in Christ and through the blood of Jesus. In Luke 10:19 it says, behold I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy. How much of the power of the enemy has he given us authority over? All. All the power of the enemy. And nothing shall hurt you. This is part of our inheritance in Christ. That Jesus has generously given us everything that he has, and part of that is authority over the enemy and the powers of darkness. Jesus' authority has been delegated to us believers and it's exercised through his name, through his truth, and through the power of his Holy Spirit. And his disciples experienced this in Luke 10 when they came back reporting, "Lord even the demons are subject to us in your name." Key part being, in your name. Right? And they were so excited. So who you are in Christ is unchangeable. There's nothing Satan can do about it. No child of God is inferior, useless, dirty, or abandoned, but if you believe you are, you'll live like it. Your past, what's been done to you, what's been done by you, cannot change your identity in Christ. If Jesus loved you as a sinner, pursued you as a sinner, rescued you as a sinner, he's not going to stop now that you're his saint. This is not behavior management, this is belief management. Our behavior flows from what we believe. We have to get our thoughts right. And this is our daily way back home to God. Confession, repentance, receiving forgiveness. Renouncing the agreement that we have made with lies. Renouncing, renouncing means to formally break an agreement that I have made. To formally break up with a lie that I have partnered with, a lie that I have believed. That's what the word renounce means. And so in our lives of freedom in Christ, we confess and repent of our sin, we receive God's forgiveness, we recognize where the enemy's lies are operating in our life, and we renounce his lies, we break up with the relationship we've had with the lie the enemy has been getting us to believe, and we replace that lie with the truth of God. Specific lies we replace with specific truth. So it sounds like this. I renounce the lie that I am unwanted and ugly. And I partner with God's truth that Jesus died so that he could have me because he wanted me, and that I am wonderfully made by him.

We see that in Eden in the garden, the choice was over voice. So whose voice will you listen to? Whose voice have you been listening to? Whose voice have you been partnering with in your life? Who have you been agreeing with? Adam and Eve were appointed by God to rule the earth, to have authority, dominion, influence, to name what he created, and to multiply beauty on the earth. And when they submitted to their enemy's voice and partnered with his lies, they handed over their authority to him. They gave their authority away. The choice is over voice. Kill what is killing you. Be ruthless. Go soon and small like a farmer that's watching his field and his crop and knows, this weed, if it takes root, will multiply and spread like wildfire and destroy what I am growing here. And he's going to be ruthless about not letting that take root. We go soon and small. So we're going to take um some time right now to we're going to take some time to reflect. So in your booklet there are two pages. One says repent and receive. And there's space for you to journal and write. There's space for you to journal and write sin you're recognizing you've been operating in in your life. The stuff that you don't want to confess. Honestly you guys, it's the stuff we don't want to say out loud where the enemy has us the most trapped in darkness. So if I could ask God for anything right now, it would be the courage to kill what is killing you, to confess and say out loud the things that are keeping you in darkness, the things that are growing, the things that are keeping you under shame. God wants to wipe this clean today. So there's space to journal and write, these are sins I've been entertaining. On the next page it says renounce and replace, and there's place to journal and write, these are lies I've been believing. Lies I've been believing about God, lies I've been believing about who I am. Maybe even lies I've been believing about someone else. And then we replace it with truth. What is the truth? What is the specific truth about God the enemy's trying to steal from me? What is the specific truth about who I am the enemy's trying to steal from me through this lie? And there's space for you to journal and write there as well. And then we'll give you next instructions after a little bit.