Endure Warfare
55:01 Teaching begins
Notes
A major source of discouragement is the suggestion that I am on my own. There is no one to help me. It’s overwhelming to be cut off from other people. Pandemic lockdowns really brought this out. People were not prepared for the quiet, the stillness, the emptiness. God Himself says: It’s not good for man to be alone.
But that’s an extreme example. You can be alone in your marriage. You can be alone at your job. You can be alone in your sin and feeling hopeless.
I’m looking at two ways in which the Holy Spirit has encouraged me by His presence in my life. that I want to pass on to you.
1. Realize that you’re in a spiritual fight. You have to fight in a spiritual way.
A. The devil is against you. That’s pretty scary.
1. He’s stronger than you. He doesn’t get tired. He waits until you get exhausted and worn out and then he makes a move that you then have to resist.
2. He’s smarter than you. The Apostle Paul speaks of the schemes of the enemy. He does things that confuse, that mislead. He attacks you with thoughts that aren’t yours and then makes you feel bad for thinking them.
3. One thing he does with me is lead me into arguments or discussions with people in my mind. They aren’t there in the room but I’m reliving a discussion with them. Or it’s what I want to say to someone but I wouldn’t do that. But I’m yelling at them in my mind.
B. I realised that I’m wasting time and energy working out a discussion with someone who’s not in the room. Nothing is being accomplished except I get tired and upset. The devil wants me angry and exhausted. He wants me to waste my time and energy. He wants me afraid to do things. He wants me to doubt God. He wants me to believe that my situation is hopeless.
C. This mental battle is all in my mind. So I have to fight back in my mind. Here’s one thing I have learned to do. It’s in two parts.
1. Don’t talk to anyone who is not in the room. When I catch myself doing it, I have to remind myself: don’t talk to anyone who is not in the room. As I was preparing for this retreat I found it happening much more than usual.
2. The second part is: talk to the One person who is in the room. Jesus is in the room with me. He said He would never leave me, He would never forsake me. Why waste my time talking to someone who’s not there? I could talk to the one who is there, who can do something constructive.
D. You have to fight a spiritual battle in a spiritual way.
2. You fight with prayer. But I’m weak in prayer. I need help. Here is one thing that I do in Romans 8:26-27. I spend time groaning before the Lord.
A. I’m weak because I don’t know what to pray. What do I tell the Lord to do? I’m supposed to pray for His will to be done on earth like it is in heaven. What is that? How do I pray for someone with cancer? I know lots of people with cancer. If prayer depended on me I would fail. If God depended on me to pray the right thing I’d be in trouble.
B. I’m also weak because I’m not very intense. In myself I don’t care enough. I can’t carry the burden.
C. The Holy Spirit helps me to pray because He intercedes with groans that can’t be uttered.
1. I groan before the Lord and that counts as prayer to God.
2. In fact, the Holy Spirit is interceding according to the will of God. That’s perfect prayer.
3. I don’t know what I’m praying for. But then, do I need to know? It’s enough that God knows the situation. He knows what to do. I am agreeing with His will and saying, yes, do it. In 1 Corinthians 14:15 Paul says I pray with the Spirit and I pray with the mind. So I do both: I groan and I pray along.
4. When I don’t know what I’m praying I’m not limited by my small faith. I’m praying but inside I think this is something God can’t do. I can groan in confidence that God will answer my prayer because it’s His will.
D. Do this until you’re done. One time I made an experiment. I’m going to groan and see if there is an end. It went on for a long time and I said, whatever You want, that’s what I want. At a certain point, I stopped. That’s it. I’m done. In Jesus’ name, amen.
E. That time I was at the beach. The waves covered my noise. Generally I groan quietly. I don’t want anyone to think I need a doctor. You can use a pillow. Or you can do it quietly, with the same intensity and focus.
F. Psalm 55:22 Cast your burden upon the LORD and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken. When you stop you have peace. You have given this burden of prayer to the Lord. He will keep your heart from being shaken. I think this is a great way to get endurance.
3. The Holy Spirit satisfies our hearts in a world of dissatisfaction, Psalm 90:10.
A. One part of our spiritual fight is to be satisfied and happy.
1. They are two sides of the same coin. You can’t be happy when you’re not satisfied. You can’t be satisfied if you’re not happy.
2. Happiness is not a luxury, like a 30-meter yacht. That’s fun, but you could live without it.
3. You need to be happy and satisfied. Why? The joy of the Lord is your strength. When you’re not happy and satisfied you’re weak.
B. The devil wants you to try to satisfy yourself with anything.
1. Could be a material need. If you get this thing you’ll be satisfied. You spend money, you satisfy yourself for a little while but then you get dissatisfied again. This is a slippery slope because it’s never enough. You can be satisfied in every area of your life and still be dissatisfied. It’s like trying to scratch an itch that you can’t find.
2. There are other areas in life where you can be dissatisfied. Relationship difficulties. Job challenges. It can be any place where you are not satisfied and not happy.
C. Moses was in this situation. He led Israel in the wilderness for forty years. There was lots to be unhappy and dissatisfied about.
1. There is only one food to eat: manna three times a day.
2. There isn’t any satisfying fellowship, you’re stuck with 2 million complainers.
3. There is no job satisfaction. You’re job is to wander in the wilderness until a whole generation dies off.
4. There’s no beautiful scenery to look at. There’s only sand, rocks, snakes, and scorpions.
5. There’s not one satisfying thing in this existence. It doesn’t give you any happiness and satisfaction, it takes it all away.
D. I think at one point Moses said to God, “I can’t do this anymore. Kill me now. Kill me now.” And God answered with pouring out His love on Moses. And Moses said, “That’s good, but You have to do this again tomorrow or I can’t do this.”
E. He found that if he had God’s love in his heart he was happy and satisfied. The outward circumstances didn’t matter.
1. All the outward circumstances are temporary and finite. If you had enough 1-euro pieces you could fill up the Grand Canyon.
2. But God put eternity in our hearts. You can’t fill eternity with any thing. But God’s love is not created. It’s eternal.
3. So here’s the truth Moses learned. The job God gives you to do cannot satisfy you or make you happy. Marriage can’t satisfy you or make you happy. No created thing can satisfy you or make you happy. Only God’s eternal love can satisfy you and make you happy.
4. So what? Build your relationship with the Holy Spirit.
A. This is because the Holy Spirit communicates to us the love of God.
1. Romans 5:5 and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
2. Love is not a thing. Love is a person. God is love. The Holy Spirit is God.
B. Paul talks about a very real experience we can have with the Holy Spirit in Ephesians 3:14-19 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
C. Nothing can happen until you are right with God. Begin receiving the Holy Spirit by receiving forgiveness for your sins. Receive Jesus as your Saviour and Lord.
D. Jesus is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit. Ask Him to fill you with His Spirit. He wants to do this.
E. Then you will begin to experience God pouring out His love within your heart.
1. He might give you a powerful experience like a flood, an earthquake. Pow! He does do that with some people sometimes. I don’t think that is the normal way that God has us live. I don’t think we could stand that powerful love.
2. In Ephesians 5 Paul commands us to be being filled with the Spirit. That’s not so much a flood as a river that keeps on flowing and never stops. In Colossians Paul says let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. In Ephesians he says, be being filled with the Holy Spirit. If you let the word of Christ richly dwell in you, you will be being filled with the Holy Spirit. You will experience a constant flow of God’s love and be filled to all the fullness of God.
F. In the presence of God there is strength to endure. That joy of God loving you is your strength.
Shall we pray?