Final Word

Life Today Weekly Devotional

War of Words
with Robert Morris

When we talk about spiritual warfare, it can be best described as a war of words. There are man’s words against God’s words, and Satan’s voice against God’s voice. Satan can quickly say so many words which cause us to fear; troubling thoughts he puts into our minds like a flood a flood of words.

In Psalm 69 David cries out to God, saying:

"Save me, O God, For the floodwaters are up to my neck. Deeper and deeper I sink into the mire; I can’t find a foothold. I am in deep water, And the floods overwhelm me." (Psalm 69:1-2)
David doesn’t refer to literal floodwaters in this psalm. He uses floodwaters to represent the words of the enemy. Later, David likens the result of being overcome by the words of the enemy to a pit of death. (Psalm 69:14-15)

Like it or not, all of us will go through times when we feel as though we are in a pit.

Consider Joseph. His jealous brothers threw him into a pit then sold him into slavery and told their father that he was dead. Later, after he’d risen to a place of responsibility within Potiphar’s house, the lies of Potiphar’s wife caused Joseph to be put into Pharaoh’s prison.

Be assured, any time you fall into a pit you will encounter the lies of the enemy lies of accusation, lies of hopelessness, even fabricated evidence. And if you believe his lies, you could stay in that pit indefinitely. If you want to get out of that pit, you are going to have to learn to discern the enemy’s lies and resist them with the Truth.

From the very beginning, Satan’s tactic has been to contradict what God says through deceptive words. (Genesis 3:1-6; 2 Corinthians 11:3) Before he could convince Eve to sin, Satan had to cast doubt on the word of God.

Joseph had to fight against the lies of the enemy, and so must we if we want to get out of the pit. For us to effectively battle the enemy’s tactics, we must know what God says. We know God is faithful. We know His words are true. But when we are in the pit, the enemy will try to get us to focus on our circumstances, rather than on God’s faithfulness. The enemy will even manipulate those circumstances to try to make his lies look like the truth. So if we let the circumstances determine what we believe, we can be caught in the lies of the pit.

It’s important to understand this, because the enemy is very deceptive. He will not only tell you a lie, he will fabricate evidence to support his lies. This is how he was able to get Joseph’s father to believe the lie that Joseph was dead. (Genesis 37:31-33)

The brothers didn’t actually tell their father that Joseph had been devoured by wild animals. Instead, they created false evidence and asked their father a misleading question “Is this your son’s coat?” Jacob believed that evidence, and he jumped to the conclusion that his son was dead. Out of his own mouth, Jacob said, “My son has been killed by wild animals.” But it was a lie and he believed that lie for more than 20 years.

Satan wants your words to agree with his words. He wants you to start saying what he is saying. He wants you to agree with him.

Satan is not original. He stole this idea from God. God wants your words to agree with His words. He wants you to say about yourself what He says about you. So does Satan. Satan wants you to believe the lie. God wants you to know the truth.

If you want to start living free, you must learn to discern the lies of the enemy. When you are in the pit, you are especially vulnerable. Circumstances usually don’t look very favorable. That is exactly when Satan will manipulate circumstances in order to deceive you. He will hold up those circumstances before you as evidence that you should believe him rather than have faith in God. But fabricated evidence is not the truth. Joseph’s brothers held up a bloody coat as evidence, and that evidence looked pretty convincing. But it was fabricated evidence. It was not the truth.

If you want to overcome the lies, you must learn to focus on what God has said. When you encounter difficult circumstances, you must remember that nothing is too hard for God, no matter what evidence the enemy might produce.

When we are in an argument with someone, words are our weapon of choice. The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, is the most effective weapon we have in spiritual warfare. (Ephesians 6:10-17) That is what is successful against Satan’s arguments against us. (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)

Jesus tells his listeners that those who listen to his words and do what he says are like those whose foundations are so solid that they will not be overcome by floodwaters. (Matthew 7:24-27) His disciples are those who are faithful to His teachings. They are the ones who will be set free because they know the truth. (John 8:31)

In the end, Satan is overcome by the shed blood of Jesus and the word of our testimony. (Revelation 12:11) The word of our testimony is what God says is true about us. That’s the final word. Winning this war of words is the first step to living free.



Adapted from Pastor Robert Morris' teachings in "Living Free." Read more about the teaching series.

Good News

Excerpt from Ed Stetzer post:  My Time on TBN

Here is the gospel definition I used on the broadcast (though I messed up the quote a bit). More information about the definition is here:

The gospel is the good news that God, who is more holy than we can imagine, looked upon with compassion, people, who are more sinful than we would possibly admit, and sent Jesus into history to establish His Kingdom and reconcile people and the world to himself. Jesus, whose love is more extravagant than we can measure, came to sacrificially die for us so that, by His death and resurrection, we might gain through His grace what the Bible defines as new and eternal life.

Belief

Christine Wyrtzen Devotional:

WHAT I BELIEVE WHEN TROUBLE HITS
 
Let no man be disturbed by these afflictions; for you yourselves know that we have been destined for this.  I Thess. 2:3

    The grid of my true beliefs is revealed when trouble visits my front door.  What I really believe about myself, and what I believe about how He rules His kingdom becomes apparent.  When there is a cancer of disbelief, down deep, pain drives this faulty theology to the surface. 

    Satan's goal has always been to become the object of my worship.  He attempted to assume God's throne and to this day, he is driven to destroy any reason upon which I would want to worship God.  If he can convince me that God is weak, that things are beyond God's power to heal, or that I am being punished through my trials, then he knows that it will be almost impossible for me to worship my Father.  Jesus said that God has to "seek for those who will worship Him."  (John 4:23)  Obviously, Satan knows how to make serious inroads to steal Jehovah's worship.

    While I may not be attending Satan's church and bowing at his altar, I can be suspended into limbo by the lies I believe about God, revealed through my hopeless ranting.  He snickers just out of sight that the arrows he shot at me, arrows of mis-interpretations of the events of my life, were embraced and believed.   He is always all too willing to analyze my troubles and concoct a version that encourages distrust of God's promises. 

    Self-examination when trouble comes is critical.  Have I disobeyed God and brought these consequences on myself?  Have foolish choices resulted in my plight?  Or, is this the suffering Jesus talked about, the kind that would accompany every child of God into the kingdom.  Let not a painful period in my life cause me to let go of my Savior's hand.  It is time for courage, for faith, and sound theology.

I am committed to let nothing interrupt my worship of You, Lord.  Amen

Bedrock

I love you, God— you make me strong.
   God is bedrock under my feet,
      the castle in which I live,
      my rescuing knight.
   My God—the high crag
      where I run for dear life,
      hiding behind the boulders,
      safe in the granite hideout. 

Psalm 18:1-2 [The Message]

Thoughts

Miscellanies post:  Hard Thoughts

C. H. Spurgeon:

Let us repent heartily of every hard thought we have ever had of our God and Father. I am forced to look back upon some such sins of thought with much distress of mind. They have come from me in serious pain and depression of spirit; and now I pray the Lord of his great mercy to look at them as though I had never thought them, for I do heartily abhor them, and I loathe myself in his sight that I should ever have questioned his tender love and gracious care. If you have similarly transgressed, dear friends, in your dark nights of trouble, come now, and bow your heads, and pray the Lord to forgive his servants concerning this thing; for he is so good, so gracious, that it is a wanton cruelty to think of him as otherwise than overflowing with love.

Fear

Justin Taylor post:  Fighting Fear of Man

“The fear of man lays a snare,
but whoever trusts in the LORD is safe.”
Proverbs 29:25

“Fear of man is such a part of our human fabric that we should check for pulse if someone denies it.”

—Ed Welch, When People Are Big and God Is Small.

In order to fear God not man, here are the steps Welch sets forth in his book:

Step 1: Recognize that the fear of man is a major theme both in the Bible and in your own life.

Step 2: Identify where your fear of man has been intensified by people in your past.

Step 3: Identify where your fear of man has been intensified by the assumptions of the world.

Step 4: Understand and grow in the fear of the Lord. The person who fears God will fear nothing else.

Step 5: Examine where your desires have been too big. When we fear people, people are big, our desires are even bigger, and God is small.

Step 6: Rejoice that God has covered your shame, protected you from danger, and accepted you. He has filled you with love.

Step 7: Need other people less, love other people more. Out of obedience to Christ, and as a response to his love toward you, pursue others in love.

You can read chapter 1 of the book online for free.

Worst Days and Best Days

Tullian Tchividjian post:  Good Days, Bad Days, and God (excerpt)

Well, reading through the manuscript was such a rich experience for me that I went back and picked up some of my favorite Jerry Bridges books and began reading through them again. Recently I read through chapter one of The Discipline of Grace and was once again devotionally wowed by the power of God’s truth explained so clearly and compellingly through Jerry’s pen. In talking about the necessity of the gospel for both the self-righteous and the guilt-ridden he writes:

Pharisee-type believers unconsciously think they have earned God’s blessing through their behavior. Guilt-laden believers  are quite sure they have forfeited God’s blessing through their lack of discipline or their disobedience. Both have forgotten the meaning of grace because they have moved away from the gospel and have slipped into a performance relationship with God…Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace.

That’s a keeper. Thank-you “pastor” Jerry for this gospel-soaked reminder.

Gracious Guest

Ed Stetzer post:  Thursday is for Thinkers:  Michael Carpenter

Last week I kicked off a new feature called Thursday is for Thinkers, where I will invite guest bloggers to share every week. Today's guest blogger is Michael Carpenter. Michael is pastor of Matthew's Table, a missional church community in Lebanon, Tennessee. He is sharing today on Stranger-Centered Hospitality.

"I was a stranger and you welcomed me." -Jesus.

When we first moved into our city to plant a church, we were strangers, outsiders. "You ain't from around here" is the most common phrase we heard. But we soon began to settle in and our church purchased a local coffee shop to serve as a hub of mission. We began meeting the regulars and quickly made several friends. We were becoming "acceptable outsiders."

In order to engage the creative community in our city, we discussed hosting a visual art show at the coffee shop. One of our regulars at the coffee shop, Amanda (iced white chocolate mocha with a quad shot of espresso), owns a local tattoo parlor. So I ventured out to her shop one afternoon to see if she and any other of the artists would like to produce some paintings around the theme of redemption. She and some of the others at the shop that day began pulling out their work and we all huddled around and began discussing it. I began telling them how we wanted to have a big opening with live music and a facilitated discussion on the various views of redemption represented by the artists' work. They all seemed interested, so Amanda and I sat down to hammer out some of the details. During the course of our conversation, I began telling Amanda about our church.

What happened next I never would of imagined. Amanda began back peddling while screaming over and over, "I am a pagan!" and demanded that I leave her place of business. Startled and wondering what I said or did I respected her wishes and left. I reviewed the conversation, looked down at my forearms examining my many tattoos, and could not understand what caused that sort of reaction. Needless to say, the art show did not happen. What I soon began to realize is that while we were trying to demonstrate hospitality to Amanda and her tribe of tattoo artists by hosting a show of their work, I lacked the ability to deal with myself as a stranger - an outsider.

My experience that day led me to an exploration of the missional role of hospitality in order to gain a deeper appreciation of the importance of receiving hospitality in Jesus' life as he often found himself as a guest of others. For this reason, I define hospitality as: "the transformation of the unknown traveler into guest, from stranger into one of the circle of friends." In this definition, I tend to view myself and my church community as the stranger, the unknown travelers who are seeking to be invited into the social circles of those who are far from God.

However, we have discovered that many followers of Jesus are unable to be gracious guests. But unless the person who extends hospitality is also able to become the stranger and be received by another, we are merely creating unidirectional lines of power flow - however unintended this may be. Mission has then become something we do to people, rather than something we do with people. Moreover, if we are only extending but not receiving hospitality, mission becomes quite antithetical to the example of Jesus and his habit of being a guest.

Throughout the Gospels Jesus sat at other people's tables as a guest, he was a recipient, and he allowed others to minister to him. Only as we understand Jesus as a wandering stranger can we then begin to understand the missiological implications of entering a (sub) culture that is not our own. That is, to be a stranger and invited in.

We all know that extending hospitality to others is essential to mission, but so is receiving hospitality when you are the stranger arriving on the scene. The mission of the church is not only giving, but also, more importantly, receiving hospitality. Only then can we claim to be engaged in truly mutual relationships.

Surely, since we do not have a "lasting city" (Hebrews 13:14), followers of Christ will always be "strangers and exiles on earth" (Hebrews 11:13). Thus our longing for a better country, a heavenly one, where God has prepared a city for us (Hebrews 11:16) is the locus of missional activity.

Waiting

Christine Wyrtzen Devotional: 

WAITING FOR WHOM WE LOVE

...to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come.  I Thess. 1:10

            Getting ready for company that I enjoy is a lot of fun.  Though it also means considerable work, the labor is obscured by the anticipation of being together with people I love.   Just before they are expected, everything is double checked.  If their arrival is late in the evening, the coffee is ready to drip, a cobbler is usually baking in the oven, a candle is lit in the kitchen, and if it's summertime, a vase full of bluish/lavender hydrangeas from my garden sit on their bedside table. All my senses are engaged as I listen for their car, and then, a knock on the door.

            Since Jesus hasn't visited earth during my lifetime, it's hard to believe He's really coming.  It's easier to coast along and convince myself that it has little chance of happening.  Why go to all the trouble to prepare for someone I've never seen, especially when I have no idea when He will appear?  It's like being on suspended alert with a vague promise of a main event. 

            What do you say to such logic?  If you've got your face in the headlines and your Bible open, you'd shake me and tell me to think twice!  This could very well be the generation that experiences the rapture.  Signs are everywhere and though scripture says that we can not know the exact hour, we are given signs to clue us in as to the general time of His arrival on the kingdom clock. 

            The earth groans for the commencement of end times and the eventual restoration of Eden.  Oh, for King Jesus to reign one day!  The air seems electric and the fragility of mankind has never seemed so fragile.

           Having once had an impersonal faith, I was unable to sustain the passion of living with my eyes glued to the skies.  The discipline required to stay ready and to watch for His appearing failed on account of my deadened heart.  Not anymore.  I'm breathing prayers, dozens of times a day, for His coming.

Let me live this day as if it were my last.  Even so come, Lord Jesus.  Amen  

Jesus Can and Does

I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?

The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different. 

With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

Romans 7:24-8:2 [The Message]

Four Words

Ray Ortlund post:  The gospel in four words

“‘Come unto me,’ he says, ‘and I will give you.’  You say, ‘Lord, I cannot give you anything.’  He does not want anything.  Come to Jesus, and he says, ‘I will give you.’  Not what you give to God, but what he gives to you, will be your salvation.  ‘I will give you‘ — that is the gospel in four words.

Will you come and have it?  It lies open before you.”

C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, 1950), I:175.  Italics original.

You Knew I'd Need a Savior

"I'd Need a Savior"

How many names
Can I use to explain
The love of my Jesus
The life that He gave
And so many times
Will I praise You today
I lift up my life
Cause You're always the same
And my offering
To you I bring

Your name is Jesus
Your name is Jesus
You're the wonderful, counselor, my friend
You're what I hold on to
I know that You brought me through
All the days of loss and to the cross, You knew
That I'd need a Savior

...

Yielded to Him

Ray Ortlund post:  Not primarily ethics

The Christian life is not most profoundly a matter of ethics; most profoundly, it is a matter of faith. Abraham trusted God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. As Kierkegaard points out in The Sickness Unto Death, “The opposite of sin is not virtue but faith. Whatever is not of faith is sin (Romans 14:23).”

Ethics we can manage on our own. We can even observe biblical ethics to keep God at a safe distance. But if our hearts are believing the promises of God, we cannot say no to him. We yield to him. We suffer dislocation in this world for his sake. We feel the ground shifting under our feet and we don’t panic. Nothing seems stable, but we accept that. We surrender to God. Drawn on toward his promises, we start changing.

The most urgent question in our lives today is not moral versus immoral but true versus false, heavenly versus earthly, divine promise versus human control, trust versus possession.

Good news for sinners.

Every Thought, Emotion and Impulse

... fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ.

2 Cor 10:6 [The Message]

Preeminence and Sovereignty

Excerpt from Len Sweet and Frank Viola:  nano-Manifesto

We declare that only Jesus can transfix and transfigure the void at the heart of the church. God has chosen to vest all power, authority, and life in the living Christ. And God in Christ is only known fully in and through His church. God has no hands but our hands; no feet but our feet. If we are doing today what Jesus did then, we wouldn’t be doing what Jesus did in the past. We’d be doing what Jesus is doing today.

We, therefore, members of the body of Christ, assembled in virtual space and real space, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the moral integrity of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the holy Scriptures, solemnly publish and declare, that we return to the absolute preeminence and sovereignty of Jesus—the triumphant, victorious, resurrected, ascended, enthroned, glorified, Lord of the universe and God’s All in All.

 
And for the support of this Manifesto, with a firm reliance on God our Creator, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor in pursuit of our passion, our mission, and our very life – which is Christ Jesus, this world’s true Lord.

Christ for the World

Christ for the world we sing,
The world to Christ we bring, with loving zeal,
The poor and them that mourn, the faint and overborne,
Sin sick and sorrow worn, whom Christ doth heal.

Christ for the world we sing,
The world to Christ we bring, with fervent prayer;
The wayward and the lost, by restless passions tossed,
Redeemed at countless cost, from dark despair.

Christ for the world we sing,
The world to Christ we bring, with one accord;
With us the work to share, with us reproach to dare,
With us the cross to bear, for Christ our Lord.

Christ for the world we sing,
The world to Christ we bring, with joyful song;
The newborn souls, whose days, reclaimed from error’s ways,
Inspired with hope and praise, to Christ belong.

Christ for the World We Sing by Samuel Wolcott

Reaches Both Directions

Tullian Tchividjian post:  The Double-Reach of Self-Righteousness

The Bible makes it clear that self-righteousness is the premier enemy of the Gospel. And there is perhaps no group of people who better embody the sin of self-righteousness in the Bible than the Pharisees. In fact, Jesus reserved his harshest criticisms for them, calling them whitewashed tombs and hypocrites. Surprisingly to some, this demonstrates that the greatest threat to gospel advancement is not unrighteous badness, but self-righteous goodness.

In Surprised by Grace: God’s Relentless Pursuit of Rebels, I retell the story of Jonah and show how Jonah was just as much in need of God’s grace as the sailors and the Ninevites. But the fascinating thing about Jonah is that, unlike the pagan sailors and wicked Ninevites,  Jonah was one of the “good guys.” He was a prophet. He was moral. He was a part of God’s covenant community. He was one who “kept all the rules”, and did everything he was supposed to do. He wasn’t some long-haired, tattooed indie rocker; he was a clean-cut prep. He wasn’t a liberal; he was a conservative. He wasn’t irreligious; he was religious. If you’ve ever read S.E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders, than you’ll immediately see that the Ninevites and the sailors in the story were like the “greasers”, while Jonah was like a “soashe.”

What’s fascinating to me is that, not only in the story of Jonah, but throughout the Bible, it’s always the immoral person that gets the Gospel before the moral person. It’s the prostitute who understands grace; it’s the Pharisee who doesn’t. It’s the unrighteous younger brother who gets it before the self-righteous older brother.

There is, however, another (perhaps more subtle) side to self-righteousness that younger-brother types need to be careful of. There’s an equally dangerous form of self-righteousness that plagues the unconventional, the liberal, and the non-religious types. We anti-legalists can become just as guilty of legalism in the opposite direction. What do I mean?

It’s simple: we can become self-righteous against those who are self-righteous. Many younger evangelicals today are reacting to their parents’ conservative, buttoned-down, rule-keeping flavor of “older brother religion” with a type of liberal, untucked, rule-breaking flavor of “younger brother irreligion” which screams, ”That’s right, I know I don’t have it all together and you think you do; I know I’m not good and you think you are. That makes me better than you.” See the irony?
In other words, they’re proud that they’re not self-righteous!

Listen: self-righteousness is no respecter of persons. It reaches to the religious and the irreligious; the “buttoned down” and the “untucked.” The entire Bible reveals how shortsighted all of us are when it comes to our own sin. For example, it was easy for Jonah to see the idolatry of the sailors. It was easy for him to see the perverse ways of the Ninevites. What he couldn’t see was his own idolatry, his own perversion. So the question is, in which direction does your self-righteousness lean?

Thankfully, while our self-righteousness reaches far, God’s grace reaches farther. And the good news is, that it reaches in both directions!

Far Happier

I'm glad in God, far happier than you would ever guess ...

Philippians 4:10a [The Message]

Jesus Is

Ray Ortlund post:  #8 My dad's message to me on the day he died

Sunday, July 22, 2007.  Dad woke up very early in his hospital room in Newport Beach.  He knew it was finally his day of release.  He had the nurse call the family in.  Jani and I had just arrived in Northern Ireland for ministry there.  We didn’t know what was happening back home.  But the family gathered around dad’s bed.  They read Scripture.  They sang hymns.  Dad spoke a word of patriarchal blessing and admonition to each one.  He pronounced over them the Aaronic blessing: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace” (Numbers 6:24-26).  He fell asleep.

I asked my sister about dad’s message to me.  It was this: “Tell Bud, ministry isn’t everything.  Jesus is.”

Above All

Attention, all! See the marvels of God!
      He plants flowers and trees all over the earth,
   Bans war from pole to pole,
      breaks all the weapons across his knee.
   "Step out of the traffic! Take a long,
      loving look at me, your High God,
      above politics, above everything."

Psalm 46:8-10 [The Message]