Today’s post is something that’s a theme for me as a pastor. I see my job as a shepherd. The job of a shepherd is to get the sheep
from one place to another. The job for
every pastor is to get his congregation from earth to heaven. But there are some difficulties and they are
that 1) there must be a change that takes place in you, in order for you to get
from here to there and 2) that change has to be lasting and permanent. You have to grow spiritually. What is growth, it’s overcoming your
flesh. In other words there should be a
greater distance between you and the sin you struggled with before.
I was sharing some of what I was going to write with someone and they
said, “You have to show them how to change.”
This person was recommending that I deal with specific sin that I see in
people’s lives.
I can easily do that, but to me, I think that you probably already know
that some of the activities you’re involved are sin and that you know what they
are. You know when you’re sinning. But if you don’t let me offer this:
If you’re smoking, stop it.
Smoking is sin. If you’re
getting drunk, stop it. If you’re
fornicating, fornicating is sin. What
is fornicating? It’s sexual intercourse
without being married to the person. If
you’re stealing, or you’re selfish, or you’re gambling or you’re cheating, all
of these things are sin. If you’re
doing any of them or all of them you need to stop.
But I wonder if that’s helpful.
Because most Christians already understand those things are sin and I
believe most Christians are sincere about their salvation. So, I’m offering this post today as help for
you; as one way to find deliverance.
Deliverance, in a purely practical sense, means that God helps you to
quit the sin that plagues. The sin that
plagues you is the sin you can’t seem to kick.
I think this is the bigger problem, you know that what you’re doing is
sin, but you’re not sure how to get past it.
There are some things that will help you to find deliverance and today I’m
going to highlight those things for you.
Romans 8:5-11 (NKJV)
8:5
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things
of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things
of the Spirit. 6 For to be carnally minded is death, but to
be spiritually minded is life and peace. 7 Because the
carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of
God, nor indeed can be. 8 So then, those who are in the flesh cannot
please God. 9 But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if
indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit
of Christ, he is not His. 10 And if Christ is in you, the
body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because
of righteousness. 11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from
the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life
to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.
You Have a Place in the Move of God
We like to think that when we’re dealing with God that God does things
for us. But in reality God does things
through the decisions we make. He doesn’t
pull out a magic wand and just “poof” our problems and addictions
away. He works through the decisions we
make to empower us to change. If God
just changed us without our involvement we wouldn’t need the exhortation of the
Bible. We would just pray a prayer and
our sinful nature would automatically just disappear. If we are honest with ourselves we realize that none of us have
stopped thinking about sin completely.
Why didn’t God take away your sinful nature? Why is it there that are still sins that you can’t shake? It’s because God doesn’t work like
that. If He did Adam and Eve would
never have sinned in the Garden of Eden.
If He did then we wouldn’t ever struggle with sin after we got saved. We
do struggle, though, some more than others.
How do I know that? I know that
because I know that I sometimes struggle, too.
So the question becomes, “How can I ever find deliverance?” First, you will never be completely free
from sin this side of Heaven. The
default position for us is to live in our flesh. We’re carnal beings, carnal means, of meat or flesh. In other words we have appetites that relate
to making ourselves feel good. We all
want to feel good. The Bible calls it
the “pleasures of sin for a season.”
Why drink? It feels good; it
temporarily makes us forget our problems.
Why fornicate? It feels good; we
feel what feels like love. That’s why
we sin because it makes us feel good and we all want to feel good.
I’m sure if you examine whatever sin you are involved in you will see
that in some way it makes you feel good and because of that it’s difficult to
escape sin. It goes against our
nature. There is good news, though, and
that is that sin can be overcome. We
just have to take action to make it happen.
Romans 6:6 (NKJV)
6:6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him,
that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be
slaves of sin.
So, there it is, we have to crucify the old man. All that really means is that we put the
will of God before our appetites or as our text puts it, be those, “who live
according to the spirit.” Be
spiritually minded rather than carnally minded. If the default position is to be carnally minded, then how do we
overcome to be spiritually minded? We
have to make a decision to overcome the flesh and then take the actions
necessary to make it happen. Our desire
to live in our flesh is relentless, it’s like a flood, it just comes no matter
what. The Bible tells us the enemy also
comes in like a flood.
Isaiah 59:19 (NKJV)
59:19 So shall they fear The name of the Lord from the west, And His
glory from the rising of the sun; When the enemy comes in like a flood, The
Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him.
He comes in like a flood; he’s relentless in his temptations. God will lift a banner against him. Do you know what a banner was used for? A banner was a call to the battle. It showed the place where the battle was
taking place. God raises the banner but we
have to fight the battle.
The devil relentlessly drives us to live in the flesh. He doesn’t force sin on us he only appeals
to that appetite to feel good. We call
it temptation and it’s relentless.
Everywhere we look we see something that is appealing to that desire to
feel good. The only way to overcome sin
in your life is to stop the flood of temptation.
Deliverance 101: Damming the
Flood
If this were a college course today we would call it "Deliverance
101: Damming up the Flood." Let me start with an illustration:
Say that you live
near the beach. Your House is right on
the beach, and every night the tide comes in and destroys it. You build it as strong as you know how, but
every time the tide comes in; it comes in like a flood and destroys your
house. So you decide to build a brick
wall to keep the ocean out.
A wall will keep the water out.
A wall will protect your home from the flood. So, how you build the wall will depend on how valuable your home
is to you. If you don’t care too much
you will just do what’s easy and hope for the best. If your home is valuable to you, you will do whatever it takes to
protect it. So, how valuable is your
home?
Let’s go back to our illustration:
You start to lay the
bricks and at first you are very careful to put the bricks in. But the work is hard and the bricks are
heavy, and it stops being fun to think about how well your house will be
protected. So you skip a brick here and
there.
This is how a person who doesn’t place a lot of value of their home will
build the wall. He’s done what’s
easy. He didn’t invest too much into
the protection of his home. There are
people in church who think that way about their salvation. They think, “I’m getting enough of the word
of God at one service a week.” They think, “I don’t need to read my Bible. I don’t really need to pray that much. I can be late every service and miss out on
worship. I can just attend church once
a week…mostly…and it’ll be all right; but do you know what you’re really
doing. You’re leaving bricks put of
your wall and every time you
leave out a brick it leaves a hole in the wall that the tide can come
through. If you leave out too many
bricks when the tide comes in your wall won’t stop it from destroying your home
again. If the wall has too many holes
it’s worthless as a protection against the flood.
Those things I mentioned, church, Bible, praying, worship, those are
opportunities to enter into the presence of God. Every time we’re in the presence of God we strengthen our faith
and our resolve to live for Him. Every
time we’re in the presence of God we add another brick in the wall. If we build a good strong wall, we’ll keep
out the flood. Living in the Spirit is
really just living for Jesus.
Secondly, we will never overcome sin through willpower. We can’t say, “I’m not going to sin,” and
keep sin from happening. Say, for
example your sin is drinking. You can’t
keep yourself from drinking just by saying, “I’m not going to drink. I’m not going to drink. I’m not going to drink.” Ask any sobriety counselor. They will tell you you’re always a
recovering alcoholic not an ex-drunk.
Let me illustrate a truth for you.
Don’t think about a
pink elephant. Don’t think about its
big floppy ears. Don’t think about the
little purple flowers printed across its back.
Don’t think of the big trunk with all its wrinkles. Don’t think about it! What were you thinking about? You were thinking about a pink elephant.
If you’re using
willpower to stop drinking and you say, “I’m not going to drink.” What are you thinking about? The answer is obviously drinking. Now, think about a green giraffe. Look at the long neck. Look at how it reaches into the trees to eat
leaves. Look at how it wiggles its
ears, the way it chews slowly. What are you thinking about now? You’re not
thinking about a Pink Elephant.
If we concentrate
on not sinning what we’re really concentrating on is the sin. But if we turn our thoughts toward Jesus and
we concentrate on Him we’re not thinking about the sin. So, how do we focus our thoughts on
Jesus? At church we preach about
Him. In our Bibles we read about Him. When we pray, we have direct access and
conversation with Him. The more we concentrate
on Him the less we think about the sin and how good it feels.
Third, what we
receive from our salvation is in direct proportion to what we put into it. If we put forth a lot of effort we will have
a large return. It’s like bank interest.
The bank used to actually give interest that amounted to something. They don’t anymore, well; they still give
interest it just doesn’t amount to much anymore. Your interest was given based
on what you put in the bank. If you
wanted more interest you had to deposit more money. The same is true of Christianity: if you want more from God you have to put more into receiving
from Him.
We expect God to do
for us. Some of you look at God as
someone who exists to meet your needs.
However, what you receive from God in terms of deliverance is in direct
proportion to what you do to overcome.
I had a friend who was a heavy smoker.
He smoked more than one pack of cigarettes a day. He always said, “God is going to deliver me
one day,” but do you know what happened?
He died of Lung Cancer. He
expected God to “poof” away the sin, so he never took the step to get rid of
his cigarettes. He never stopped
smoking. He never threw them away and
took the steps to build a wall against it.
Had he done those things God could have delivered him.
If we want deliverance we have to take the steps to get it. We have to make sure that we keep the holes
out of our wall of protection. We have
to learn to focus our minds on Jesus and his plan for our lives, and we have to
be willing to take the steps to receive deliverance. Deliverance is a partnership with God
Deliverance is a Partnership with God
I hear people say, sometimes, “I don’t need to go to church to be a
Christian.” There’s no rule in the
Bible that says, “You will attend church!!!” but did you know that Jesus attended
church, regularly?
Luke 4:16 (NKJV)
4:16 So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as
His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to
read.
That verse right there tells us that Jesus regularly attended
synagogue. He went to church. If you are a follower of Christ, that’s what
Christian means, are you following Him to church? Another illustration:
Diets have
directions. They tell you that you can
and can’t eat certain foods: That you
have to eat certain amounts and quantities of certain things. If you follow the instructions you will have
success in your diet. But what if you
change the instructions and don’t follow the diet and basically do whatever you
want? Will you lose weight? Maybe, but it will only be by accident, not
because you followed the diet.
There are guidelines to help you find deliverance, but you have to
follow them. I’ve heard the Bible
called “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.” The Bible has instructions that will help you to live out your
salvation successfully, In other words to make it to heaven, but you need to
read the instructions.
There are a lot of people these days that are struggling with doubt and
confusion. The problem is that you’re
not following the directions. For
example, in our church, I never know if people are coming or not. I’m usually worried in the moments before
Church starts because the place is empty.
Someone who wants to protect their home, because they see it as valuable
is going to be there to make sure they get all the bricks they need.
Worship service is a part of the service. It helps to prepare you to receive the word of God, but some don’t give
it any importance and that’s a mistake.
Worship will help you to focus on Jesus and take your mind off the
sin.
Sin is oppression. It’s a
hardship. Serving God is a
blessing. I have to be honest, as a
pastor, I’m concerned, because I see some people beginning to struggle and
doubt. I’m seeing them have less and
less interest in their salvation. I’m
seeing them leave more and more bricks out of their walls and I know the
outcome of that.
There is a guy who spent four years in my church. Over the years he gradually started coming
less and less. First, it was a couple
of weeks a month. Then he would come one
month on and one month off. Then he
missed five months in a row. I tried to
talk to him about it and he got offended and now he says he won’t come
back. You know that is? That’s a guy whose wall couldn’t hold back
the flood. In every church there are
others who are going in that same direction.
It won’t help for them to get mad at their pastor for telling them the
truth. It will help for them to seek
the power of Jesus to change your life and deliver you from sin. Deliverance comes through Jesus Christ. It’s about resurrection power. We’re dead in sin but raised to eternal life
through Jesus. It’s a partnership with
God…You have your role to play.
