John 10:9-11 “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
There are patterns and rhythms to everything in life. Even Satan follows predictable patterns and rhythms to try to deter and detract us from God by making us less effective. The enemy, the devil, does not have any new tricks in his book. But, one of his oldest and most effective tricks is to get Christians to believe that it is pointless to obey God day in and day out. There are a couple of ways that the devil operates this, first being when the enemy actually uses and then twists the Word of God, the Holy Bible. Lies like, God is going to forgive every sin that Believers commit, so why does it matter what you do today? Satan separates one point of truth then distorts our need to worship God every single day in obedience, holiness and righteousness in other to tempt our weak flesh desires into sin and disqualify us by wrapped logic.
John 8:44 “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”
The most tragically effective satanic method in the life of every Christian is that if the enemy can get a Christian to believe the question: “why bother?”, then he wins. You followed God in morality, ethics, honesty, and with integrity, but you still have problems and you are not getting ahead, so why bother and keep missing out on everything? That doubt is where the devil starts to get us. The enemy wants us to believe that there is not purpose in every step of life and that we are all alone. The Apostle Paul proclaims the truth: I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control. How? He tells us in Galatians 5:16, I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Why is there not always instant solutions? Because, the Christian life is a marathon requiring endurance, patience and trust; it is not a sprint.
Romans 5:1-5 “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
Spiritual disciples keep us from becoming disqualified. As far as Christianity, injuries happen all the time; people assault and disagree and disappointments are all around us, so we disciple ourselves to be spiritually strong to endure it and recover from it. Another way to become disqualified is by cheating and unethical means of enhancement. Spiritually, this would be by taking shortcuts, rather than taking the straight and narrow way that Jesus laid out for us in Matthew 7:13-14 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” Jesus here is speaking of the path to “Salvation”, as He is the “narrow gate” through which we enter the kingdom of Heaven. Remember that in Romans 3:23, the Apostle Paul explains that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” and adds in Romans 6:23 that “the wages of sin is death” (spiritual death, objects of God’s just wrath and destined to eternal damnation in Hell). In Ephesians 2:1 Paul clarifies that we are spiritually dead in our trespasses [inequities] and sins … lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath.” The Apostle John spells out the end for the Sinner in Revelation 20:14-15 declaring that come Judgment Day,“Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”
In John 14:6 Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” He explains God’s plan of Salvation in John 3:14-18 proclaiming, “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” We must ask ourselves: Are we in it to win it?
Let's continue Pastor Kyle's message in the next post.
In Christ, Brian
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