[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to the Message podcast of High Ridge Church, Longview, where our vision is to help you know God, find freedom, discover purpose, and ultimately make a difference. We are so glad that you're here, and we pray that this message impacts your life as you apply the spiritual truths from God's word in practical ways.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Let's listen in. Welcome back. I'm so glad that you're here. Welcome to church. This is a little bit strange, a little bit different, because I'm coming to you on a screen. I'm actually on vacation this week, but I did not want to leave you without a message. So there's something. I put together, something that the Lord put on our heart, and I wanted to turn your attention over to Romans, chapter seven. I think God's got something important to speak to you. And so I just want to say thank you for being a generous church. Thank you for, for loving me, for loving my family, for letting us have a chance to rest, to catch our breath, to hear from the Lord about what's next. I am. I am so deeply honored to be your pastor. I'm so deeply honored to be able to do this for a living. I'm so thankful that many of you have stood behind us faithfully. Financial, you're tithing here, you're giving here, you're generous here, and it's a big deal. It takes so much pressure off me every week to sit here and have to complain about money and things like that. I'm very grateful that many of you are very generous towards us. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you that I can rest and I can take this time to be with my family.
There is something kind of new that's coming. I want to kind of keep you in the loop. We do have something called Tap to Give coming. You're going to notice that there's going to be a little round sticker coming on your. The seat back pocket right in front of you. So it's, we're trying to make giving a lot more convenient for you. We believe that people give where it's convenient to give. And unfortunately, we've. We've made it complicated for people to support the ministry. We, we. We have all kinds of hoops and things that happen for people to be able to support us. So we're trying to take care of that issue. And so very, very soon, you'll be able to just tap your phone to the back of the seat. It'll take you right to our giving page, and that will be much more convenient, and it'll be easier. And so that's coming soon. In the meantime, there's some boxes at the back of the room that say giving station. You're welcome to put your, your generosity there, your tithe there, or you can go online. Highridgelv.com give. But thank you for being a generous church. Thank you that I don't have to worry about finances while I'm on vacation. It matters to me. Sometimes you can't rest. Cause all you're thinking about is money and how much these things cost and how much I can afford to do. And I'm thankful that this church takes very good care of me. We take very good care of our missionaries, we take very good care of our, of our ministry departments. And a lot, a lot of people that are much less privileged than us. There's a lot of people that have a lot less. And I'm very grateful that the Lord uses us through your generosity to meet a lot of needs. And it means the world to me. Thank you for that. So Romans chapter 7. I want to bring a message called I feel attacked.
That's, that's a phrase I like saying when, when somebody says something that is mildly relating to me. I feel attacked.
But, but as I was digging into Romans chapter seven, that, that phrase comes to my mind because I have of course been been attacked in, in different areas of my life. And some of those are probably warranted. I probably needed it, some that, that I didn't feel like it. I was deserving at all, you know. You ever been attacked? You ever, you ever been attacked verbally or been attacked at the workplace? You ever been attacked in a, in a marriage or a relationship?
Maybe you've been physically attacked, maybe you've been abused, you know, but all of us, I think, have a different interpretation of what it means to be attacked. And if we're being honest, the very first memory of, of me being attacked comes when I was probably 12 or 13 years old. Me and seven of my buddies happen to be playing baseball at the local Salvation army that had a nice baseball field across the street. We would spend our summers there playing baseball. Just love the game of baseball. So we just spent all day long. There's a bunch of my buddies from church. And, you know, we're growing up and we jockey for position, we're bullying each other, but we're all, we're all baseball buddies and friends. And I remember we're walking back from baseball practice, walking back to each of our houses. We kind of all lived in the same neighborhood and there's a couple of high school kids that were in their garage working on their skateboards and just kind of bullies from the neighborhood that we all kind of usually avoided. But there were seven of us. And so I wasn't afraid today. And so we happened to be walking past him, I saw him just kind of looking over at us young kids and you know, they kind of smirked us. So I said, you know, I said something back. I ran my mouth like I always do.
I had that issue. I recognize myself. So I'm running my mouth and I say something to them and they say, what'd you say? You know, and words were exchanged. I ran my mouth some more because, you know, I wasn't afraid. Number one, like there's seven of us. And number two, greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world.
But I wasn't afraid because, you know, there's seven of us. And those two guys kind of looked over at each other and like, we're not going to take this lip off this kid. And so they grab their skateboards and start running after me. And I'm like, what? What do you want? What are you going to do? Like, there's seven of my friends. And I turned to my friends and there was six trails of smoke where my friends had just smoked it out of there running for home. And your boy was left all there by my lonesome.
And so my, my last thought before losing consciousness was, was, lord, why are you allowing this to happen to me?
This dude hit me so hard in the back of the head with a skateboard, then end up curb stomping me. I woke up in a ditch.
It was, it was pretty bad. And yeah, I remember it happened to be a Wednesday. And so I struggled all the way home. I finally got home, you know, holding my head and, you know, cleaning the blood off my nose or I just got smoked by these, by these people. And I get home and I walk in crying to my mom.
And of course by this time it's like, you know, 5:30, 6:00. And you know, church starts at 7 on Wednesday nights. Actually just about every night. We had church every night back when we were the most Christian. And I remember I walk in there crying to my mom, like, mom, I got beat up. And she said, I don't want to hear about it, it's time for church. And so I cried all the way to the shower and, you know, clean myself up with the church. And I remember sitting there in service that night thinking, you know, God, why would you allow this to happen to me.
And the pastor was preaching this message about, you know, how Satan attacks God's people. I'm like, that's what happened. Satan just attacked me. He's trying to get me off my purpose. It was attack from the devil.
In all honesty, that was not the devil, and that was not the Lord walking me through some trial.
That was my flesh. That. That was my own stupidity.
That was 100% pure me. I am the product of my decisions. I brought it on myself, and I've learned how to process through that. This, you know, this wasn't Satan holding me back. But in Romans, chapter seven, it's interesting because the New Testament spends way more time teaching Christians how to deal with the flesh than it ever does about how to deal with Satan.
Isn't that wild? There's so much more attention paid to how we.
How we fight the battle within us, the flesh. And it is a struggle for us to overcome the flesh.
We tend to put a lot of things on Satan, and it's. It's Satan's fault. Or maybe God is walking me through a trial. And we, we. We de. Emphasize a lot of times how important it is to recognize our own flesh, my own nature.
Um, the Apostle Paul understood this. So in Romans, chapter seven, he writes this about his own battle with what's going on on the inside of him. And I, I think as, as he explains it, as he writes it down into Scripture, we're able to glean so much of this for. For ourselves. He says this, verse 15, follow along. He says, I don't understand what I do for what I want to do. I don't do it but what I hate to do.
And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good as it is. It is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me. That is my sinful nature. That's my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I can't carry it out.
For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I don't want to do. This I keep on doing.
Now, if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
So I find this law at work. Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being, I delight in God's law. But I see another law at work in Me waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin that's at work within me. He goes on to say, you know what, What a wretched man I am. Like, there's this law on the outside, God's perfect law that I can't live up to on best day. And then there's a law happening inside of me that, that I can't overcome. Like, it's hard. It's everything I want to do that's right. I end up not doing it. The things I end up doing that I know are not right. Leave. Leave me feeling like trash.
What a wretched man I am. He says, who's going to deliver me from this? Thanks be to God that we have this deliverer through Jesus Christ. It's a. It's a wonderful, honest passage. And I think it's so important that we take a real good look at what it means when, when Paul is talking about my. My flesh, my. My nature. I want to give you three things that I think every believer needs to know, but unfortunately, it's not taught in a lot of churches.
But what do you do when you. When you feel attacked? Is this God walking me through a trial?
And how would I know? Is this perhaps just the enemy? Is this Satan that is coming to steal, kill and destroy? Is this an attack from the devil? Or is this a trial? How do I know the difference? Or could it be option number three, more than likely, this is my flesh.
This is me having a war that's going on on the inside that I. That I haven't really learned how to process through.
So here's three things that I think are important for every believer to know and what the Lord, I think, is shining the spotlight on today. Number one, if you're a note taker, you might want to write this down. My flesh is often my worst enemy.
My flesh is often my worst enemy.
It's not your ex husband. It's not your ex wife. It's not that guy from high school. It's not two guys that beat me up and curb stomped me and left me blacked out, left me with my very first of many concussions.
That's not my enemy. My. That. That all that all started from the source, which was. It was me running my mouth. I just couldn't control myself. Paul says this. I see another law at work in me, and it's waging war. It's inside of me waging war with my future, with my destiny, with the call that God has on my Life with, With my purpose. There's a war that's inside of me that's keeping me from ever becoming who God wants me to be. It's a. It's, it's, it's. It's crazy how, how there's a big difference between the flesh that's inside of me and Satan that's on the outside. Satan operates on the outside. The flesh works on the inside. And when you put those things together, we end up walking away from what God wants and we walk right into sin and we get stuck there.
It's almost like the flesh would be. Would be dry wood and Satan would be the match. The flesh has tempted me on the inside, but if it's dry, if it's combustible, that's a problem. When I meet the enemy of my soul, that's. That's the match. The match is dangerous, but it's only dangerous because the wood is combustible. It's. It's, it's dry.
And so there's a. There's a very real possibility that this is. This something that's waging war inside of me with, with. With my soul. It's not, it's not the Lord testing me. God's not gonna. Gonna do those things. It's. That's not some trial from the Lord. This is, this is not one of those things. This is the battle with the flesh that's happening on the inside of me. So when Paul says this, there's a work, there's a law at work in me. It's waging war.
He doesn't say that this is, this is Satan.
He doesn't say it's his critics and Paul had critics. It's not, it's not them. He doesn't even say Rome. It's not the government system. No. He said, it's inside of me. It's on the. It's on the inside. It's inside war. I believe this statement to be true that most Christians overestimate Satan and underestimate the flesh.
We pay a lot more attention to the demons and Satan and the corrupt systems than we ever do the flesh. That's what's happening on the inside. We'll blame the devil and we'll blame our boss, and we'll blame all kinds of things.
But perhaps the problem is much, much closer than that. It's inside of me and it's inside of you. Here's what I want to say. I'm not always under attack, but I am always under construction. The Lord is always sanctifying Me, the Lord is always using things in my life to bring out the things that don't belong, to expose my flesh so that the Lord can deal with that. I'm under construction. So when Paul uses that word, the flesh, it's a, It's a wonderful Greek word. The word is sarks. And it doesn't mean your. Your skin and bones. It doesn't mean your. Your earth suit. It's. It's. It's talking about your. In theological circles, we would call this the Adamic nature.
The. The nature that you have inside of you that was passed down from. From the very first man that ever fell into sin, that ever fel.
And Adam. We each have an Adamic nature, and it wages war against our souls. It wages war on the inside of each of us. It's. It's my nature.
And here's the thing about that. My. My flesh is the fallen human nature that still remains after my salvation.
Well, Pastor, I got saved. I'm. I'm a new creation in Christ. Absolutely you are, but you still have a human nature. You received a brand new spirit. You. You received a brand new heart the moment that you got saved. But your flesh did not receive a personality transplant.
You. You can't get rid of it. You're still. You. You're still going to struggle. You're still going to have problems. The only difference is God now has given you the Holy Spirit to help you fight that war on the inside and hopefully win.
That's why saved people still struggle. Because you're human. You have a. You have a human nature. You have an Adamic nature. You have the flesh. So the, the. It's, it's. Here's what's important to know. The flesh is not my identity, but it is my responsibility.
It's not who I am. It is inside of me, but it's not who I am. But it is my responsibility to deal with it. So my dad has a. Has a great saying that, that always sticks in my mind when it talks about your. Your nature and, and the ways that we. That we process things and how we kind of always blame that on demons or blame it on. On the devil. He says this. You can't count. You can't counsel a demon and you can't cast out your flesh.
You can't counsel a demon and you can't cast out your flesh. It's.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: It's you.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: So here's what we know. You cannot cast out what God has called you to crucify.
It's not something you can just declare it like Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy. That. That's not why you. That. That's not how you deal with. With your flesh. I will never deal with this issue again. I am finished. I am. I'm over it. I declare it. That's not how you deal with it.
It's. It's crucifixion.
Now, before we get off on some weird tangent about what. What has to do, not a literal crucifixion, crucifying the flesh is something different entirely. Here's the second point I want to show you. Number two. My flesh gets exposed under pressure.
How do I know that that flesh is inside of me? Put pressure on your life and what comes out to the top will be your flesh. The things that bubble to the surface, here's here, here's the bad news. They're there. The good news is they're not going to lie to you.
Now, you know this to be true because many of you, you live through this. You live through 2020. You lived through Covid.
You lived through the elections. You saw what happened when the world was faced with intense pressure. The entire world, we're on the same page at the exact same time. Things begin to bowl to the surface. The. That revealed what's really going on in the character of our people. We can cover a lot of things up. We can say, oh, it's nice to meet you. We're having a great day too. Blessed to be stressed. Well, you put a lot of pressure on people. You restrict travel where they can't go anywhere. You. You take away their freedoms, you take away their daily schedule, and you realize something that bolts to the surface, that we've made a God out of control. As long as I can control things, as long as I have my way, as long as I can do what I want, I'll be fine. But when you put pressure on that false God, what comes to the top is hoarding toilet paper. What comes to the top is poor mental health. What comes to the top is the exposure of racism in our country and how deep seated that stuff still is. The disrespect for authority and the riots that begin to happen, all of those things come to the top because what is really inside gets revealed under pressure. So many. Here's something else that I saw with many believers. Let me just step on your toes. Many people that are professing to be believers, that are strong believers in Christ found.
Found more of that, more of more of themselves aligned with their political identity than they did with their spiritual identity.
And that bothered me that that was so intense because it told me the truth of what is really happening with many of my friends and fellow pastors and those that I thought were way more spiritually mature. You put pressure on false gods and false systems. You put pressure on people. What boils to the top tells us the truth that we all have a problem with our flesh. And that flesh, if it's left uncrucified, undealt with the things that it comes up with, they're, they're God awful.
Case in point, by the way, if you've ever read the story of God delivering the Israelites out of Egypt slavery. For 400 years they'd been slaves and God walks them into the wilderness. And, and, and their journey is, is the perfect example of what happens. They, they go into the wilderness and it, they immediately start complaining.
In about five seconds, they start doubting God and doubting Moses, doubting their authority, doubting the plan they had. Just remind yourself they saw the plagues of God and God fight on their behalf. They had the Passover where God killed all the firstborn in Egypt, but spared their own children and let them out with was singing and dancing and, and great riches and blessings. And about five minutes later, they're, they're getting naked and partying and dancing around a golden calf like, are you serious? The, the wilderness wasn't the issue.
It exposed the issue.
The remind yourself Covid wasn't the issue because most people aren't, aren't afraid of that.
[00:18:27] Speaker C: Now.
[00:18:27] Speaker B: Covid was an issue. It exposed the issue.
And pressure is not the issue to your life. It, it exposes the issue. I hope, I hope that you can see that this is, this is so prevalent to, to, to what we're seeing today. See, pressure doesn't create character. It reveals character. A lot of times we have that backwards. You put more pressure on a person, you're going to develop strong character. That's not what that is. It reveals it.
What's really going on on the inside, what comes out under pressure was, was already there. And remind yourself, when God led his people out of slavery, he led them into freedom, right? They were free.
Why not just live free?
It took them about five minutes to become the worst versions of themselves. They cast off restraint and the wilderness put pressure. And what comes to the top is a lot of immorality.
Even though they were supposedly free from being a slave. You think, yeah, but that was them. That's not really talking about me. That's Old Testament stuff. Let me show you this. In the New Testament, Galatians chapter 5. I want to pick it up in verse 13. I got several verses I want to read out of Galatians 5. Paul says this. You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free.
But here's what you're doing. You're using your freedom to indulge your flesh.
There's the flesh again, verse 16. So I say, here's how we deal with it. Walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of that flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit and the spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They're in conflict with each other. So. So that you are not to just do whatever you want. And so many believers live that way. I can do what I want because I have grace, because God loves me, because he wants me to be happy, because he wants me to have an awesome life. You're missing the point. There's a real war inside of you between what you want and what the Lord wants for you. And what he wants is always better. He says, they're living in constant conflict with one another. And he says this. The acts of the flesh are obvious. Or, you know this. He says, sexual immorality, he says, that's a work of your flesh. When you're having sexual relationships outside of the covenant of marriage, he said, that's. That's the flesh.
You're living in it. And he says this. Impurity, debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, distinctions and factions and envy, drunkenness and orgies and the like. He says, sounds like a normal Friday night to me.
He says, look at this. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. That's strong language, very plain, very clear. Verse 24. Those who belong to Christ Jesus, what have they done? He said, they crucify that flesh.
They crucify it with its passions, with its desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. I want to back up to that verse where he says the acts of the flesh are obvious. He didn't say that. They're mysterious. He didn't say, we're going to have to figure them out. He says, you know. You know exactly. And if you're going to be honest, when you look at your life, you know, the acts of the flesh that come to the top when you put pressure on your life, when that. When that pressure season comes, when you're walking through a difficult situation, when. When pressure is happening, you know, now Yours might be different than the person sitting next to you, but you have a war with your flesh the same as I do. Every single human being has a war that they have to fight with their flesh. And he says those acts of sin that come to the top, the things that you walk into when, when you allow the, the dry, combustible wood of your life to meet Satan's match, you know where this goes.
You know where those passions and desires begin to burn. And he.
He tells us that they're obvious. Now. We often misdiagnose our real problems. We say, oh, Satan made me do this. Oh, you know, that was a devil that attacked me, that caused me to do like.
Was it?
No, it's. Is the war raging within that's 100% you. That's your nature. And we misdiagnose real problems all the time. And if you ever worked in an audio world, we call this chasing ghosts. If you're, you know, dealing with a microphone and is it this bad cable or is that bad cable? Is it this bad switcher? Is this bad connection? Is this a bad monitor? Is this a bad fader? You start chasing ghosts because you're misdiagnosing the real problem.
What I found that is most helpful is just unplug it and plug it back in. Come on, somebody. We do the same thing in cars. You call it chasing ghosts. You know, is it. Is it one of this hose? Is it that hose? If I replace this one, then I have to replace that one. And we just keep changing things all the way through the line until you find what the real issue is. And we have, we have the same thing happening in things like our health. Like, oh, is it. Is, is it just a headache or do I have brain cancer? You know, is it. Do I need. Just need water? We start chasing ghosts in our. Our anxiety starts going, and we start going through this list of things that, that it could be.
Your, your flesh works the exact same way. It causes us to misdiagnose issues all the time. Paul says, if you're going to be honest, you really know what's going on here. There's a much deeper thing that's happening. It's the war with your flesh. Let's call it what it is. Not an attack from the enemy. It's not a trial that the, the Lord is taking you through to teach you something. No, no, no. It's. It's something very, very basic.
It's the war with your flesh.
And I've, I've heard this so many times. And, you know, Pastoring college, young adults and pastoring young married couples.
Pastoring singles and those that were single. Again, I had to cut my teeth on, on a lot of, on a lot of misdiagnosing issues.
It's, and the, the more, the more Christianese that people speak, the more they blame everything on the devil. Well, the devil attacked me.
And they'll say things like, you know, I just, I keep having, I keep going from, from one relationship to the next one. I keep going from one bad relationship to the next bad relationship. The enemy's attacking me. Maybe it's not an attack. Maybe it's loneliness controlling your bad decisions.
Maybe loneliness on the inside is the flesh issue that you're dealing with. It's not that you're going from bad relationship to bad relationship.
You make bad decisions because you're lonely.
Let's not chase ghosts and let's not blame things that aren't to blame or. I've, I've heard, you know, Pastor, I can't stop looking at porn. I just had this porn issue. I just can't stop. I can't stop. Is the enemy's attacking me? Is he?
Or is that your flesh?
Is, is it the enemy? Or perhaps it's you not knowing a healthy discipline and response to your stress.
Could it be that you have, you have some intimacy issues?
Could it be that you want to control things without being vulnerable?
Let's call it what it is. That's, that's part of the world with our flesh or. Pastor, you don't understand. I, I, I, I can't, I can't keep a job. I just go from job to job to job. The enemy just doesn't want me to work. Like, is it, or, or do you have an authority issue?
Could it be you just, you just don't like to submit?
I mean, let's call things what they are. You, you know what they are. He says those acts of the flesh are obvious.
You know it. If you're going to be honest. This isn't the devil and it's certainly not the Lord.
This is you. This is your nature.
The. And I've, I've, I've heard that in so many different ways. I, I can't help it. I keep overspending. The enemy wants me to spend all my money. Is it, could, could it, could it be.
Can I, can I be honest with you? Can, can we, can we just talk about how you, would you, you're kind of more intrigued with impressing people, and that's the real issue. You want people to be Impressed with things that you keep overspending, trying to impress people. Could. Could that be the issue that is part of your undisciplined flesh?
I don't know. Just saying, perhaps there's something more that we can see here. And so here's what I want to say. We ask God to move the struggle with. But God wants to remove the appetite. God wants to change the hunger that causes the issue.
God wants to change the appetite.
[00:26:32] Speaker A: Why?
[00:26:32] Speaker B: Because when we talk about bad decisions because of loneliness, Jesus says, I'm a friend that sticks closer to the brother. And there's a reason why you're struggling in that way, because you're looking to find those needs and things that could not possibly satisfy. I want you to have a relationship with me. But go, Lord, you don't understand. I'm looking at porn because I get it. I'm dealing with my flesh. But I don't know how to respond very well to stress and to a really, you know, a difficult schedule of my anxiety. And Jesus says, hey, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden. I'll give you a rest. He wants to change the appetite and how you're feeding that flesh by feeding the.
The spirit.
Walk in step with the. With the Spirit.
Everything that we need is found in our relationship with the Father. And the more that we spend time with him, the more God begins to weaken our flesh and the Spirit becomes so much stronger.
That's a beautiful thing for believers.
God wants our loneliness to lead us to Him. The same with our stress and our shame, our authority issues.
God wants us to take those issues to him and have our needs met in Him. He wants to help us in our insecurities.
And that's a beautiful thing. Everything that we need is found in Him. Here's the third and final point. I'll leave you with number three. My flesh has a cure. It has an answer, it has an antidote. And that really is the point. Not to this leave us exposed and to make you feel guilty and condemned. That's. That's not what I'm. I'm here to say, by the way, because Romans 8 after Romans 7, Paul talks about all the things that's going on inside of me. Romans 8 says, There is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. He said, there is a cure and it's not being condemned. This message isn't to condemn you. It's saying, there's a. There's a cure, there's an answer, there's a hope. And even though you May have the flesh. Battle for the entire part for your entire life until you go and be with Jesus. That doesn't mean you have to lose.
No, sir, it doesn't. No, ma'.
[00:28:31] Speaker A: Am.
[00:28:31] Speaker B: Here's what we know. Is that Galatians 5. Look at verse 24. It says, those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh. And that really is the clue. That's, that's the antidote right there. Is that word crucified. Paul did not say, you're going to negotiate with the flesh. You're going to make a deal with it.
You're going to find a way to let it have a couple of days, and the rest of the time I'll shut it down and let it go to sleep. You don't negotiate it with. You don't educate the flesh.
You don't coddle it. He says, crucify has to be nailed to the cross of Christ.
It has to die.
It has to be crucified.
Crucify the flesh. Here's something I want to make sure that you see. My flesh will never become holy and it will never mature.
My flesh will never become holy. It will never mature. It never graduates. It never gets saved. It must be denied. That's the reason why Jesus says, hey, take up your cross daily and follow me. Notice he doesn't say, you have to do it once.
That's salvation. You get saved once, you get baptized once. Unless you're a race Pentecostal like me and you got baptized every other week.
The battle with your flesh has to be done every single day.
We die daily. Paul says, take up your cross and follow me.
So most, most Christians want deliverance. Well, here's what God wants for you. God wants discipline.
Give me deliverance. God said, no, no, no. I want you to discipline. I want you to crucify your flesh. So he gives us this key. Paul says, keep in step with the Spirit. And I love that word, keep in step. Paul is describing a phrase that they would, that we would understand differently in English than he does in the, in the Greek language.
You remember when you were little and you would say, left, right, left, right, left, left, right, left, up, 2, 3, 4. You remember those, those little things you'd say as you're kind of mimicking people that are in the army and they're all there. I'm watching and I remember thinking that way. And this is the phrase that Paul is describing when he talks about keep in step with the Spirit. He's talking about a military formation that takes discipline to become in step with the rest of the soldiers. He says, this is how you crucify that flesh. You, you keep in step with the spirit. Whether the spirit's going, I'm going, I'm learning from the spirit. I'm communicating with the sp, keeping my eyes on the spirit. I'm being led by the spirit. He's disciplining me. Every day I allow the spirit to be fed so he can grow, so he can become the, the ever driving force in my life that I need him to be. The, the one that I listen to, the one that I defer to, so that I can overcome my flesh. How do I, how do I do that? You crucify it by daily discipline and you're keeping in step with the spirit. How do I do that? Practically, I ask him, holy Spirit, would you come? Would you order my steps today? Help me to follow you. Help me to listen to you. Help me to crucify my flesh. Lord, I don't want to struggle in these areas which are normal for me when pressure comes. So, Lord, I'm going to press into you instead that it's just an ongoing conversation and a yielding to the power of the Holy Spirit. I yield. You know that word yield? I, I, I, I take a back seat and I allow him to tell me where I'm going. You lead the way. Not my flesh, you. Not my desires, not my wants, not my insecurities, not my shame, not my bitterness, not my unforgiveness. Those things don't lead the way. You lead the way. And I ask him, holy Spirit, would you help me?
So the Christian life is not learning how to fight Satan every day. It's learning how to surrender to the Spirit every day. So this, the goal of this message is not condemnation.
It's not to put more guilt on you. It's clarity. You need to be very clear about the battle that many believers don't ever see and they never learn how to fight. So you blame everything on the devil, or you get mad at God for walking you through a difficult situation when neither of those may be the case at all, More than likely, it's your own flesh. So before you start blaming anybody else, before you blame your boss, before you blame your pastor, before you get mad at your church, before you blame God, before you blame the demons and the enemy that just try to attack you and, and make you angry, before you do all that, I want you to ask yourself a question and we'll put it on the screen. Is this happening to me? Or is this something inside of Me that's being revealed.
What's being revealed? What's coming to the surface? Because those are the things that the Lord wants to deal with. This is how God redeems our battle with the flesh. Because when you. When, when. When you identify the battle correctly, that's a battle that you can win.
I think many believers are fighting the wrong battle and wondering why they're losing.
You can absolutely win the battle against your flesh by dying to him and dying to self daily. By picking up your cross, following after Christ, by walking in step with the Spirit, by yielding to what he says and what he wants. By spending time in your word, spending time in prayer, by crucifying that flesh every day, saying, that's not of God. That's not me anymore. You're not in charge of me. I'm not led by my emotions. I'm not led by my hormones. I'm not led by my earthly desires. I keep my eyes on something that is far, far more worth, more worth anything else that I'm risking here on this earth by crucifying those passions and desires. I want what he wants. I want his desires and not mine. He must increase and I must decrease. That's my heart. That's my hope for you. And I want to finish up right there today. I hope that's okay. So go ahead and put away your Bibles, if you would, and put away your phones.
I believe if I've done my job correctly, that there's probably some things that the Holy Spirit is showing you. When we talked about the. The gifts, the works of the flesh are. Are. Are obvious. Some things begin to pour up in your life where you recognize that, yeah, there's some. There's some issues that's happening inside of me. I. I think the Holy Spirit's doing that probably inside of you right now.
The good news is I'm not here to condemn you. But the Holy Spirit brought those to the surface so he can deal with them today. Might be unforgiveness, might be a sexual struggle, might be a pornography issue. Maybe for you, it's. It's a.
It's an issue of your character. Things that pressure has exposed anger towards somebody else.
What is that?
I want to give you a chance to maybe respond to the Lord. I want. I want to pray for you. Would you. Would you bow your head and close your eyes right where you are and let me pray for you? And as I pray for you, can you just submit and surrender to the Holy Spirit? Look, Lord, I want to be in step with you. I want to be led by you. Would you forgive me of these things? You help me to crucify this flesh.
Lord, I recognize that I'm human and I make mistakes, but I want what you want.
Let me pray for you, Father in heaven right now. Father, we come before you as broken human beings. Lord, we have a sin nature and we recognize that so often a lot of our issues are simple poor discipline. We've not learned how to allow you to be the Lord of all of our life.
Father, there are still things that come up inside of each of us when we put pressure on our lives and we see it in our world.
Father, we are mistake prone.
We are faulty in a lot of ways.
Father, we recognize that you have something so much better for each of us.
And so, Father, we ask for forgiveness of our sins.
Forgiveness for the times that we failed you. Forgiveness for the times that we've been led by our flesh and allow the enemy to take over things that have that are so embarrassing for things that we wouldn't do on a noble day that our flesh will cause us to walk right into. But we recognize that we are human.
We make mistakes, we ask for forgiveness. Father, would you allow your grace to come forgive us of our sins, Lord, and help us not to have to return to the same battle.
Help us, Lord, to be enlightened, to recognize where the battle is really coming from and to crucify that flesh by walking in step with your spirit. Holy Spirit, we invite you to come lead us. Lord, we follow after you in Jesus name.
Now with heads bowed and eyes closed, maybe you're watching this today. You're saying, pastor, if I'm going to be honest with you, I don't have a relationship with Jesus at all. I need that relationship with Jesus, my friend. Yes, you do.
Maybe you were raised in church, but you've gotten away from God. You've been running from him. And you know that you need to come home, my friend. Yes, you do.
So whether you've never had a relationship with Jesus or whether you need to come home, I want to lead you in a prayer right where you are.
And I think that you need this. You need a starting point. And this is yours. I want to help you just like somebody helped me one time. So with heads bowed and eyes closed, let's pray this prayer out loud together. I'll tell you the words to say. I want you to repeat after me. As a matter of fact, if you're, if you're watching this family, let's all say this out loud together. Pray this with me. Say, jesus, I believe you're the son of God and I believe that you came and died.
And I believe you rose from the grave so that I can have life and forgiveness for all of my sins.
Please forgive me now, give you the rest of my life in Jesus name with heads bowed and eyes closed. If that was you, you say, pastor, I. I prayed that prayer. I meant that prayer. Would you just lift up your hands all across this place? I'm not going to embarrass you in any way, but would you look up at the screen if you wouldn't mind, and lift up your hand and say, that was me? Pastor, I'm acknowledging right here and right now, today I made that decision to ask Jesus to forgive me of my sins. I'm coming home. I'm so proud of you. The decision that you just made. If. If that's you, I want you to do something for me. If you wouldn't mind. There's a phone number appearing on the screen right now. I want you to text me. Text the words I pray to that number.
I'm going to send you back the link to some things that will help you understand what just happened and what to do next. I'm proud of you.
Good for you.
How Ridge family and people, go ahead and look up at me if you would. I want to say thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for allowing me to just bring this while I'm on vacation and getting a chance to rest and spend some time with my family, to spend some time with the Lord. I love you. I'm so proud of you. I love being your pastor. It's a beautiful thing. Thank you so much for giving me your attention today. I'm gonna turn it back over to your service host. God bless you. I love you.
[00:38:36] Speaker C: I. You love.
What a great word, right?
Challenging. If you're joining us online, do us a favor, hit the like and share button. We believe that a lot of people need to hear this message right now. So we had six people respond to the gospel so far today.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: That's a big deal.
[00:38:52] Speaker C: We love seeing people come to come to Jesus. So I'm going to call the elders and their spouses up.
If you need prayer, please do not hesitate to come up here. This is the best prayer group that I know. They're our prayer group. And I also want to say thank you. Thank you for your generosity to be able to send Pastor Tim on sabbatical. We believe in health here and I think that too many churches overlook health, overlook their pastor's health, but we want him healthy so that he can be healthy for us. Correct?
If you all stand up, I'm going to pray you out and dismiss you.
Lord, I thank you for today. I thank you for the message. I ask that it resonates in our heart that Lord, we will deny our flesh and we will take the steps that you're asking us to that we will live that out.
I pray for each and every person at the sound of my voice has a blessed day and a blessed week. In Jesus name, Amen. You guys are dismissed. Have a good day.
[00:39:48] Speaker A: Thank you so much for listening in today. Our prayer is that you are encouraged and strengthened by the message. If you haven't done so yet, be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave us a review wherever you're listening. If you want to be a part of our online community, connect with us through Facebook or Instagram with the handle hyridgelv or you can check out our
[email protected] lastly, if this ministry has impacted your life and you'd like to support its work, visit highridgelv.com give we appreciate your support and we're believing with you today for God's best in your life. Have an incredible week and we will see you next time.
