I Declare War: Part 1
Notes
Transcript
It’s time to DECLARE WAR!
It’s time to DECLARE WAR!
We just finished a study on freedom. We talked about our freedom being in Christ. God set us free with His Spirit so that He could give us His Spirit and give us freedom. We are no longer slaves to sin or to having to be good enough to earn God’s love and forgiveness. However, even though we are free we still have to fight a daily battle. We saw how the Galatians were turning from the Good News of Christ and the freedom that He brings and turning back to the law. That was the battle inside themselves that they faced. In the same way, we each are fighting a battle against an enemy that wants to take away our freedom. Whether we like it or not, we are in a war and to fight this war we can not just sit and wait for it to go away.
You can see this whole picture played out with the Israelites when Moses was leading them away from Egypt and Pharaoh was chasing them down. When Pharaoh caught up to them, they immediately panicked and wanted to give up the fight and go back to what they knew. Go back to what they were comfortable with. It was time for them to realize they were in a war, whether they wanted to be or not, they were in a war. It was time for them to declare war.
10 As Pharaoh approached, the people of Israel looked up and panicked when they saw the Egyptians overtaking them. They cried out to the Lord, 11 and they said to Moses, “Why did you bring us out here to die in the wilderness? Weren’t there enough graves for us in Egypt? What have you done to us? Why did you make us leave Egypt? 12 Didn’t we tell you this would happen while we were still in Egypt? We said, ‘Leave us alone! Let us be slaves to the Egyptians. It’s better to be a slave in Egypt than a corpse in the wilderness!’ ”
13 But Moses told the people, “Don’t be afraid. Just stand still and watch the Lord rescue you today. The Egyptians you see today will never be seen again. 14 The Lord himself will fight for you. Just stay calm.”
15 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the people to get moving!
In this series we are going to talk about how we declare war. How we fight against the enemy that wants to take the freedom and the Spirit that God has given us and make us slaves once again. This series is based on a study done by a pastor named Levi Lusko, which he based off of his book called, “I Declare War”. I haven’t read the book, so I can’t say anything good or bad about it, but his series by the same name is very encouraging and God wants to give us what we need to “get moving”. It’s time to declare war!
In this war we have 3 enemies:
The devil. He’s kind of the most obvious and the most dangerous. He is THE enemy. He wants to steal, kill and destroy any and everything that matters to God. He wants you to be afraid of dying in the wilderness. He wants you to hate your enemies.
The world. Our biggest enemy will use the world as a way to come in between us and God. This is what the apostle John was talking about in 1 John 2:15. He warned that the world will only make you crave physical pleasure, crave the things you see and pride. That’s all temporary.
Ourselves. Our other enemies have 1 thing in common. They are counting on us to give in to our weaknesses and not fight in this war. They want us to give in to their temptations. At some point this war always ends up on our doorstep. The greatest struggle we face is within ourselves. Our enemy is counting on us giving up, just like the Galatians. Just like the Israelites.
I tend to think in movies so sometimes I think about our enemy as if he is a bad guy in a movie. What does the bad guy in the movies always do. He tries to sneak around and hide so you don’t know he’s there. Attack when his target is weakest. A really talented bad guy will make his targets destroy themselves. Out of fear they start making mistakes or sabotaging themselves. Our enemy is really talented and he loves to make us crumble under our weaknesses. He loves to watch us sabotage ourselves.
In London in 2002 a graffiti artist known as Banksy began painting murals around the city of a girl reaching out to a balloon as it was carried away by the wind. People loved it so much that he made a framed copy of it to be sold at an art auction in 2018. This paining actually sold for $1.4 million. What the people at the auction didn’t realize was that inside the picture frame, Banksy had actually built a shredder and the moment the painting was sold the shredder was turned on and the painting was destroyed.
*video*
The painting essentially self destructed. Security guards were there and actually ran up and grabbed the painting as they were trying to protect it from others, but what nobody realized was that the paintings greatest threat was from within.
Just like the painting, we also have the potential to be our own worst enemy. A traitor to our own goals. We do things every day that are not good for us. So as we go through this series, I want to challenge you to think about the battles you face. The things that make you want to give up.
-Maybe you are the type of person to get anxious and then your anxiety takes control of you.
-Moodiness turns you into a version of yourself that you don’t want to be.
-Stress makes you turn to bad things to be able to calm down or numb yourself.
-Maybe one of those crutches is over-eating, having a constant intake of comfort food as you search for happiness.
-Maybe it is something else you use to numb the pain. (drugs, alcohol, shopping, gambling, social media, or some kind of distraction)
We do things every day that are not good for us. For example, there have been studies of people who have gone to the doctor and been prescribed medicine. I would think that if someone felt bad enough to go to that effort would take their situation serious, however studies show that 1/3 of people who walk out of a doctors office with a prescription will never even go to get it filled. Of the 2/3 that do go get their medicine, half won’t take it properly (miss doses, quit taking it, or not take it at all.) This is even true of Anti-rejection drugs for transplant patients.
Interestingly, their is a better rate if the medicine is prescribed by a vet for your pet. What does that say about us, that we take better care of our pets than we often do of ourselves?
For the next 4 weeks we are going to talk about 4 keys to winning the battle within, because we need to declare war. So, why the strong language about declaring war? For one thing, Paul said as much. He warns us that we are at war and our fight isn’t with other people, it’s against unseen powers.
10 A final word: Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil. 12 For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.
We need to look at this as a very serious endeavor. Declaring war is where it all starts. The moment when you set yourself wholeheartedly in a singular direction. When we declare war on our enemy it puts us in a certain mindset. As Americans, one of the things we often do is embark on half-hearted quests with a nonchalant attitude. I look at my own life and see how many times I’ve set out to do something, like losing weight, and thought, “Well, I better get back on my diet. I slipped off the wagon during the Christmas holiday back in 1995.” Then I do it for a few days and then a couple weeks go by and suddenly I remember that I was supposed to be dieting. But when I declare war on my bad health and bad habits I take it seriously, and I have battle plans and strategy and start seeing battles actually getting won.
When we go out to fight, we should fight like a wolf. On July 1, 1898, during the Spanish-American War, Teddy Roosevelt and a few other volunteers grouped up and called themselves the “Rough Riders” and decided to take the San Juan Hill. In journals, Roosevelt described a moment where he approached a barbed wire fence that lay on the battlefield. At that moment, he fully committed to the action before him. He said that as he crossed the barbed wire fence a wolf rose in his heart. His fellow soldiers said that he moved into battle and fought like nothing they had ever seen.
As we go through this study, don’t get caught up on the “wolf” bit. It is just an illustration to help us remember and understand the principles that God teaches us. I understand if you are thinking, “I don’t want to be a wolf! Jesus said that he was sending us out as sheep in the midst of wolves.” That is true. If you keep reading that same sentence, Jesus also says to be wise as serpents. So at least we are talking about wolves and not using snakes as our illustration!
On a serious note, wolves are intelligent, fierce, loving, pack animals. They develop such strong social bonds for their family and other loved ones they have been known to sacrifice themselves for the survival of their family. The wolf is not just a brave warrior, but it is also a loving nurturer.
Today, we want to DECLARE WAR and set ourselves in a specific direction with a focused mindset. In other words, we should...
THINK LIKE A WOLF
Our thoughts are important. We should focus our minds and be in control of our thoughts and train our minds to obey our leader, our savior, Christ. Just like Paul told the Ephesians that we are in a spiritual war, he also told the Corinthians...
3 We are human, but we don’t wage war as humans do. 4 We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. 5 We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ.
When our enemy lies to us and tells us that we can never be loved, never be good enough, never successful, always depressed, always defeated, that we will die in the wilderness even though Egypt was better, we have to capture those thoughts and teach them to be obedient to Christ. You become what you think about. If you allow yourself to constantly think you are these things, you are never going to be motivated or encouraged to be different. Negative thoughts can’t lead to a positive life.
This does not mean that the answer to every problem is just positive thinking. We can’t just look into a mirror and repeat a mantra every day and hope to become whatever we proclaim, but our mindset is an important part of becoming who God is calling us to be. But if you focus your mind on God’s truths, who God calls you to be, who God says you are, you will be tracking in the direction He is leading you as He equips you to do battle in this war. God wants you to let Christ renew your mind, transforming it by loving and focusing on Him, not on things of earth.
2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
1 Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. 2 Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth.
When Jesus was asked, “What is the most important commandment?”, how did he respond?
37 Jesus replied, “ ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’
Our thoughts are important. The things we focus on can help us or hurt us in this war. Again, we are NOT saying, “MIND OVER MATTER”. We ARE saying, “What happens in your mind REALLY DOES MATTER.” Positive thinking is not a replacement for God, it is a response to Him.
Our minds are powerful things. There is an interesting thing that happens in our minds that Stanford professor Arnold Zwicky defined in 2005 as “The Frequency Illusion” where once we notice something, you will suddenly begin seeing it a lot more often.
THE FREQUENCY ILLUSION: A process involving two cognitive biases: Selective attention bias followed by conformation bias. Noticing things that are salient to us and disregarding the rest, followed by looking for things that support our hypotheses while disregarding potential counter-evidence.
In other words, what you look for, you will find. Think about the last car you bought. For me it was a bicycle. You decide you want a Jeep Wrangler, and then all of the sudden everywhere you go you see Jeep Wranglers. Everywhere I go I see Specialized bikes. Before, I didn’t really notice them much. But as soon as I decided I wanted one they were everywhere! Then your brain rewards you for noticing these things. “Look, another Specialized! They are everywhere. These must be really good bikes! Everyone has one!” I’m not the only one who likes these. Look, I found more! I’ll go look for another one!
There probably aren’t any more Specialized bikes out there than before, I’m just noticing them more now. What’s your illusion? You going to win the lottery? You know they take advantage of things like this. Social media app dings that someone liked your post? Maybe it’s at work. Is this person always mean to you? So you go to work expecting them to be mean so as soon as they say something that isn’t nice the alarms in your mind go off, “See! They did it again! They don’t like me, never have!”
The more you think about and talk about all the things that are going bad in your life, the more you’re going to see those things in your life. Once you focus your attention on the negative thing you are going to see a lot more of it, which will CONFIRM your BIAS to the negative. Here is the cool thing about “Frequency Illusion”. You can change it. God can change it. You are not controlled by your sinful nature, you are controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you. All we have to do is stop returning to that slavery. Hold every thought captive.
Romans 8:5–9 (NLT)
5 Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit. 6 So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. 7 For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will. 8 That’s why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God.
9 But you are not controlled by your sinful nature. You are controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you...
Are we going to be grateful or grumble? Pray or Pout? Encourage or Complain? My point isn’t to make you feel condemned, what I am saying is that YOU CAN’T BE ACCIDENTALLY NEGATIVE WHILE YOU ARE BEING INTENTIONALLY POSITIVE. One of the amazing things about having freedom in the Spirit is that we always have something to be positive about. No matter who you are, where you’ve been, what you are going through, what is going to happen to you in the future, God’s love for us is always reason for celebration. When I was younger I would hear people say that and think, “Yeah, blah, blah, blah.” But think about that painting that got shredded. The place that held the auction said, “We have not experienced this situation in the past where a painting spontaneously shredded.” That self-destructing painting that ruined itself. Caused its own undoing. Something that has never happened to anything else. But, because of the unique circumstances around that painting, it is actually more valuable now than it was the moment before it was sold.
When it comes to us, God loves us so much that He loves us even though He knows we are prone to self-destruct. He wasn’t surprised by the horrible things that you did and wish you could do different. Your perfection was never part of His plan. Your shredded canvas was always going to be the opportunity for Him to show His great love for you. A perfect pretty picture was never part of the plan because He wasn’t counting on your goodness, He was always banking on His. His love and grace taking your broken messed up painting and finding you valuable as he creates the masterpiece of His plan.
I want to leave you with one final thought as we close. This comes from Judges 6 and is about Gideon. My hope and prayer is that you will see yourself the way God sees you. In this part of the story the Israelites had been doing what was evil to God so He handed them over to the Midianites for seven years. The Midianites were very mean and cruel to the Israelites so they found any place they could to hide from them. They would come and take the Israelites crops and animals and leave them to starve. They would strip the Israelites land bare. So God was going to send Gideon to rescue the Israelites. When the angel of Yahweh went to him he was threshing wheat.
Normally, when they threshed wheat, they would do it in a windy place such as a hill because they would toss the wheat in the air so the grain would fall and the chaff would blow away. However, Gideon was hiding from the Midianites so he was threshing wheat in the bottom of a winepress. Listen to how the angel of Yahweh greats him...
Judges 6:11–12 (NLT)
11 ...Gideon son of Joash was threshing wheat at the bottom of a winepress to hide the grain from the Midianites. 12 The angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, “Mighty hero, the Lord is with you!”
Mighty hero. Hiding in a winepress! Let that visual sink in to your own life. What is your enemy? Your illusion? The war that you need to declare? Mighty hero! What made Gideon a mighty hero is the same thing that makes you a mighty hero in the war you face today...
Judges 6:14–16 (NLT)
14 Then the Lord turned to him and said, “Go with the strength you have, and rescue Israel from the Midianites. I am sending you!”
15 “But Lord,” Gideon replied, “how can I rescue Israel? My clan is the weakest in the whole tribe of Manasseh, and I am the least in my entire family!”
16 The Lord said to him, “I will be with you. And you will destroy the Midianites as if you were fighting against one man.”
Realize who you are. Think like a wolf. Take your thoughts captive and set your minds on things of the Spirit. Take the strength you have and God will be the rest. YOU. ARE. A MIGHTY HERO.