Summer Camp 2021 Friday Night

Introduction

Psalm 141:3–4 ESV

Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips! Do not let my heart incline to any evil, to busy myself with wicked deeds in company with men who work iniquity, and let me not eat of their delicacies!

Psalm 141:8–10 ESV

But my eyes are toward you, O God, my Lord; in you I seek refuge; leave me not defenseless! Keep me from the trap that they have laid for me and from the snares of evildoers! Let the wicked fall into their own nets, while I pass by safely.

Because only God can deliver us from our sins, we need to depend wholly on him.

Illustration: my experience with coming home from camp, needing to be fixed, getting fixed, coming home and crashing.

By nature we choose sin over good

I think we all came into this week knowing that there are some things in our life that need some changing. We all probably can think of several things, several habits, that are going to have to change when we get home. Maybe we already knew that they needed to change, or maybe we just realized it this year at camp.

Hopefully we all feel motivated and convinced that our prayer life needs to change, and that the way that we live needs to be changed as well; and don’t forget that those go hand in hand!

Why is it that all of us have those things? Why do we need fixing? Because we are sinful by our very nature. Our hearts have desires, and they desire the things that God hates. What’s the problem with that?

It deserves death

What about when Christians sin? Are there negative effects when someone who trusts in Jesus still sins?

2. It interrupts our relationship with God and causes our hearts to be hard and miserable

What are some examples of that? What does that look like in real life?

we slowly stop caring, stop feeling, stop loving. Our sin stops bothering us, but our sin is still evil.

Its like if you continually hold your hand over fire; eventually, your nerves will be fried.

Maybe that describes the way that you feel, or have felt. Maybe you have heard about sin and known that you sin, but you don’t really care that much. And hopefully this week you have started to become more aware of how you sin and how bad it is, how evil it is.

And finally, hopefully you are motivated to change the way that you’ve been living. Hopefully, you are excited to get back home not so that you can go back to the way you’ve been living, but so that you can live a changed life.

Hopefully, you want to pray like the Psalmist prays when he says

Psalm 141:3–4 ESV

Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips! Do not let my heart incline to any evil, to busy myself with wicked deeds in company with men who work iniquity, and let me not eat of their delicacies!

The Psalmist recognizes that his heart does incline to evil, that he does keep himself busy with wicked deeds with the wrong crowd, that he is tempted by the flashy sins of the world; sins of laziness, pride, idol-making, and more. He knows that his heart naturally wants those things, so he asks that God would stop his heart from wanting those things.

But recognize this; his heart was wandering to the wrong things, and so do ours.

God gives us a new heart that desires good

Have you guys ever heard of a tourist trap? Its something that is normally on the side of the road that promises to be something awesome, but you get there and its nothing at all. (Giant Clam)

While you have been at summer camp, the enemy has been setting up traps for you back home. You need to be careful that you don’t run home immediately into them. This is something that I used to do as a student; I was on a spiritual high at the end of Summer Camp and I felt like I was never going to sin again. I felt like all my problems were fixed and I didn’t have to worry about it anymore. Then, almost every year, I would crash again within a month of returning home. That is, until my senior year, when I realized that camp isn’t real.

I don’t mean that it’s bad, I just mean that this isn’t real life. This is a good opportunity to step out of our schedules and fix our priorities, but real life starts again tomorrow. Here you have your schedules all set up for you and you don’t have much say in what you do; you are plugged in to God because you have to be. Next week, you will be responsible for doing that yourself. And hopefully this week has done more for you than help you have fun or wreck your sleep schedule, hopefully this week has prepared you to return home and avoid the traps of the enemy.

How are you going to avoid those traps? What’s your gameplan?

The Psalmist had a gameplan:

Psalm 141:8–10 ESV

But my eyes are toward you, O God, my Lord; in you I seek refuge; leave me not defenseless! Keep me from the trap that they have laid for me and from the snares of evildoers! Let the wicked fall into their own nets, while I pass by safely.

He is deep in prayer

This psalm itself is a prayer. Before anything else, before acting, before planning, before anything, the Psalmist prays.

Before you start to develop your gameplan for when you go home, you NEED to makes sure that you are praying.

Why? We can only be sure our plans are effective if God is directing them.

And what does he pray for?

a. That he would be kept from the trap. The best thing we can do is ask that God would remove the temptations altogether.

b. For a solid defense and a refuge. No city is safe without walls. Your heart isn’t safe without God’s protection around it. We will naturally be tempted at times, and so we also ask for strength when those temptations do come. We ask for walls that can withstand those attacks.

1 Corinthians 10:13 ESV

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

When we are tempted we have an escape hatch into a refuge that can weather the storm.

2. His eyes are on God

The best way to avoid tourist traps is to keep your eyes off the billboards and on the road.

The best way to avoid sin is to keep your eyes off the world and on God

How do we put our eyes on God?

His Word

Prayer

Church

Fellowship

You need to think about this gameplan, because you need the same one. You are about to go back into battle, and the enemy is going to try to wear you down.

I promise you this: the enemy is going to win unless you have a plan, and unless your plan involves these things. If you aren’t in prayer, if you aren’t fixed on God, if you aren’t in fellowship with other soldiers in this fight, you are going to fail.

But if you do pray for God to remove temptation or to give you strength in the midst of it; if you do fix your eyes on God, if you do remain in fellowship with other soldiers of God, I promise you that you will win this war, because God will fight for you.

Let me say that again: you WILL win the war, because God is going to fight for you. When you struggle with temptations to sin in any way, you have a safehouse that will protect you and keep you from sinning, and that safehouse is God. Read the word, pray, and seek out other Christians to fight alongside you.

With God, you will win the war against the evil that tries to control you.

We need to depend wholly on God in our fight against sin

PRAY