Here are my notes and quotes from this sermon, that I just love! You can look it up on Itunes. Search Mariners Church Irvine and this one is from 8/26/12. Check it out :)
"Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one....."
When we pray the Lord's prayer, we pray a revolutionary declaration of allegiance.
There are tests that God gives us to strengthen our faith and tests the enemy tries to bring to try to destroy our faith.
This prayer says keep us from the kind of faith that Satan would try to use to destroy our faith.
It is temptation designed to ship wreck our faith. Temptation to walk away from the faith completely.
Because of people who see demons behind everything, we live as if they weren't real at all! This should not be! This isn't a vacation. We're on Normandy beach joining in the rescuing and plundering of people!
You have to take seriously this concept of spiritual warfare.
People want to say, "Oh the people who were demon possessed in Jesus' day, that was just epilepsy etc."
Instead of ruling over the creature that moves along the ground, Adam and Even took the authority they had and gave it away. They listened to creation instead of our creator.
Instead of being landowner now we're slaves because we gave over our authority to Satan. That is why Satan is the "ruler of this world." We let him take over. We gave up our authority.
The Prince of Persia in Daniel ch. 10 is a fallen angel. My mom explained to me once that Satan has his demons set up all over the world like chess pieces. We are divided up into states essentially and each has a ruling fallen angel or demon over it. Satan is not like God so he cannot be everywhere at once, but he does have rule over a third of the angels that fell with him. I'm sure they have "meetings" periodically. Maybe they text each other lol. Somehow they are united against humanity, against us. Somehow they are an army set against us, trying to tempt mankind as Satan tried to tempt Jesus. "For our battle is not against flesh and blood but....." these spirits.
"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy."
Three times in the book of John, Jesus refers to Satan as "the prince of this world."
Col. says, "Jesus has rescued us from the dominion of darkness."
2 Cor. "The God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers."
"We know that we are the children of God and the world is under the control of the evil one."
Pastor Mike said, "When I began to have the inklings to become a pastor I started having nightmares that were dark and demonic! There were times I would wake up and felt something sitting on my chest!"
"I heard my answering machine click on one day and I heard this demonic voice coming through and I felt this weight on my chest and I couldn't move. And I simply thought 'Jesus of Nazareth is my Savior.' And it went away."
"Then I started to pray for people. I said, 'I feel the presence of the adversary.' And his whole face contorted. I said, 'I'll be right back.' I went and grabbed a couple pastors......and we said 'in Jesus' name leave him alone!' And the guy just relaxed back in his chair. Then a couple of months later he wrote me an email and said, 'that day everything changed. I was free.' These are my tame stories. I have some crazier ones. What begins to happen is that you wake up and realize....that people have spiritual issues."
Christians CAN be demonized. If not, why then are there warnings if we can't be touched by Satan? Why does Paul said, "Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry and do not give the devil a foothold." This means do not give him a place to stay. This doesn't mean Christians can be possessed but we can open ourselves up, we can open a window to Satan still, throught pride, lust, anger, pornography etc. So be careful.
"The minute you say yes to Jesus you're putting a huge target on your back."
"We need to wake up. We're not born into a nice romantic comedy. We're born into Saving Private Ryan."
"Why is it that you and I that every time we take a huge step forward in our walk with Jesus it's followed by two or three steps back? Do we even ask the question, 'Is our enemy at work?' "
"There are some of you here that are walking around with gapping windows open! Our culture is full of slaves who tell us they're free but are slaves nevertheless."
"When we are asleep to who the real enemy is it's really easy to fight the wrong one. What was the first thing Adam and Eve did? They attacked each other."
"We have a whole arsenal of weaponry that we never use; foot washing, forgiveness, the gospel, being a servant etc. The only way not to add to the evil of the world is to fight for Jesus' message in Jesus' way!" Peace, love, compassion etc.
"Obama is not the enemy. The gay community is not the enemy. All our judgementalness just fuels the powers of hell, not heaven."
"If you come across a demon, submit yourself to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you."
"For every bit of racism that we tolerate in church, we just fuel the powers of Satan."
"So we live generously....to revolt against the power that sits behind greed."
"So we love our enemies....because we disarm the powers and principalities that want to make the fight against flesh and blood."
"The biggest trick of the enemy is to get us to fight against flesh and blood.....It's much easier to war against flesh and blood."
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