— Brother Phil Enlow: God is just as committed to bringing…to exerting His power to accomplish His purpose in you as He was in His Son. Meditate on that. He is just as committed to you and you and you as He was to bring His Son out of that tomb when all hell was arrayed against that happening, and not only to bring Him back to the surface of the earth but to elevate Him to a place of the highest Name in all the universe other than the Father Himself.
And He has the commission to gather a kingdom, to subdue every other power on this planet. All the powers that He’s talking about there, He will subdue them, do away with them. There will be nothing left of Satan and his kingdom.
Folks, God wants us to step forward into this new year with a confidence in this that is not just in our heads, but it’s when we meet it in the battle.
You know, I was thinking about the simple thing of battles, and I think, sometimes, we think about these force-on-force…there’s an oppression coming against me, there may be some difficult circumstances, maybe I get sick, something external. I have a…you know, a hole in my bank account, and there’s a big bill coming. I mean, we think of these kinds of things…oh, that’s the devil.
But I’ll tell you, the devil has so many strategies that he uses against every one of us, and God wants us to be awake and aware. How many times, in our lives, do we have something come against us? Maybe it’s pulling on our nature, maybe it’s a temptation that we’ve tended not to handle very well. It’s a besetting sin that we call it. And there we are, and our lives are still so polluted with anger, unresolved resentments, unresolved issues that need forgiveness. Do you think maybe God just might want us to shed some of those burdens?
But, here’s the simple truth of that. Boy, it’s gotten quiet. There’s a simple truth about that. It’s awful easy to say, well, just stop doing that. You know, just forgive and move on. Do you know there are things that happen in every one of our lives where that’s impossible, unless God helps us?
So, it really comes down, not just to a question of ability, it comes down to a question of willingness. There are things that we cling to, every one of us, there are burdens that take away our peace. We’re not standing on solid ground. Satan has got an enemy on the inside that’s hindering us and holding us back. I’ll tell you, there are things that God wants to resolve in every one of our lives.
Perhaps, a good scripture for today would have been forgetting what’s behind, reaching forth to what’s before. But that comes into this, doesn’t it? How can we stand our ground, if we’re sitting there carrying the baggage of our lives, and all the bad stuff that’s ever happened, and how bad I think I am and all that kind of stupid stuff? It afflicts every one of us, in one area or another.
Did Jesus not die for all of those things? Is there a single burden that He wants you to carry, and says, I’ll forgive you for everything else, but you’re gonna have to live with that one now?
You know, sometimes we live with consequences, but there’s a freedom that we can have in our hearts and our spirits. If we’re gonna be able to rise up in the morning and look to God and step into a new day, facing whatever challenges come, man, you can’t drag your past into that and have much luck, have much success. We need the Lord to give us the grace to let go of everything that holds us back.
2020 is gone, and we need God’s grace to leave it and every year before that in the past. Whatever has happened in our lives, God wants us to cast our burden upon Him. He has got shoulders that can carry the burdens of the world all at once! There’s a freedom that He wants for me, He wants for you! Do you have it today? That’s part of relying upon His strength.
But, oh God, I just can’t let it go. It was so bad. You don’t know what happened. You don’t know what I’ve been through. Yeah, He does. You’re not any different than anybody else. He longs to set you free from whatever baggage you’re carrying. That’s part of having peace on your feet. It gives you a place to…man, I’m good here, I can stand.
You know, if you get up in the morning, and things upset you, or you’re already upset, you think Jesus went around like that? And He wants to share that with us. Let things happen around us. They can happen, and we can ask God to help us to be the light that we ought to be, but I mean, to take that into our being, and hug it, and just embrace that, you know, it begins to just color our whole personality. It begins to put us in deep bondage, and God wants us to be free.
I pray that God…as we face the battles that are coming, that God will give us a place to stand in Him, where we’re not shackled to our past. If you’re shacked to your past, and you know what Jesus did, then what’s the problem? What does it come down to? Are you willing to let it go?
Anybody here that’s really been forgiven by the Lord, did He wait for you to deserve it? Why do you think the scriptures tell us over and over again, forgive as God has forgiven you? Why does He tell us as brethren, we spoke about this recently, to dwell together in the bond of peace? God wants to take everything out of our hearts, regardless of whether something evil was done, it doesn’t have to plant a seed of bitterness in here.
I don’t know why I’m emphasizing this to the degree I am, but…I know the human condition. I know when we think of powers and principalities and battle and all that, we think of stuff out here that’s bad that’s gonna happen to me, some circumstance. But boy, it gets down to the issues of the heart. This is where Satan attacks.
You know, it uses the word strategies in here. When he’s looking…like you would be looking for a natural enemy, if you were in the military. You know, we’ve got guys here who are or have been in the military…and they’re looking for a way to defeat a certain enemy. Do you think they just say come on, let’s just pile up our resources and ram them head on, or do they look for weaknesses, look for vulnerabilities?
You know, as I say, we live, as Paul said, we live in a context of a world that is…we can’t see, but it’s real. How many of you know that it’s real? We don’t need to say this to be fearful of it, but we do need to be aware. There are real spiritual beings. They are real. They have names. The Lord has opened people’s eyes, in the past, to be able to see some of this. It’s real. And we need to…we need to be aware of that.
But do you know that there are spirits that are studying you…like I say, they know your “buttons”? And do you know, sometimes, the Lord allows Satan to test?
I mean, this is…you know, I’m starting again on the Bible that’s in order…I mean, in the chronological order. I couldn’t remember the word, the Chronological Bible. And you barely get started in the first few chapters of Genesis when you jump into Job, because most people, most scholars believe that Job actually lived between the time when the nations began to be spread out after the Tower of Babel and Abraham, sometime in that period.
Way off in central Asia somewhere, a man named Job lived, and you have this recounting. But how many of you remember how that started? Satan becomes before the Lord. I don’t know how that happened, but it records it.
Who brought Job up? God did! Do you think He was mad at Job? No! “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him.” (NIV). And, of course, the Devil says, yeah, sure. You put a hedge about him. You made him rich. Of course, he’s gonna serve you. Give me a break. So, the Lord says, all right, you can touch everything that he has, just leave him alone. And all of the sudden, he’s lost his possessions, his family, other than his wife, and she wasn’t much help.
And…but what was his response? You think about how he responded to that, the grace that this man who knew next to nothing about God. He’d heard about God. Noah could have still been alive at this point, but the truth of what happened in the flood was still pretty fresh in people’s minds. And there he was, and he said, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” (KJV).
So, the Devil goes back before the Lord, and the Lord brings Job up again. Come on, Lord, give me a break here. I’m serving You. I’m doing the best I know how to do. What’s this about? And, the Devil says, yeah, people will give up everything, but You begin to touch them, they’ll curse You. Don’t worry. He says, all right, you can do what you want, just save his life. And so, he gives him boils from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet.
And Job went through a pretty low time. And it wasn’t a matter of somebody being strong and saying, boy, I’ve got this. This guy went through hell. Interesting thing is, he said the thing that I greatly feared has come upon me. Do you know the Lord was looking down and knew that Job was in a place that He wanted to bring him to a better place?
Do you think maybe some of the battles that God is going to set us in, give us to fight, do you think maybe He has that in mind, He wants to bring us to a stronger better place where these truths are real, and we’ve experienced them? Yeah.
And of course, that’s what happened…with Job at the end. I’ve heard of You with the hearing of the ear. I’ve heard about You, but now I see. And he comes to a place of repentance and trust, and God blesses him twice as much as he ever had before. See, God wasn’t trying to hurt him, God was trying to bless him.
We need to see that God is seeking to bless us, when He allows you to be tempted, when He allows you and me to experience a challenging thing that brings us even to a place where we just throw up our hands and say, oh, God, I’m in a dark place. I don’t know what to do. But what did David say? When I go through the valley of the shadow of death, You’re with me.
And many times, you and I will face battles this year where we won’t have any feelings to go on. We’ll just be standing there, trying to do the best we can, and we’re looking to God. We’re confident we’re gonna do the right thing. We get to be like Peter. I’d never deny You. And suddenly, the Lord gives the devil permission to touch us in way that brings out, not our strengths which we don’t have, but shows our weaknesses and our needs.
Does He do that to hurt us? Does anybody here believe that God does that to hurt you? Of course, we act like that, don’t we? But I believe we…that God is gonna bring us through things that will make us stronger.
Think about what He did with Paul. I mean, like I say, I don’t think I’m saying anything new this morning, but somehow, I think we need a fresh, some fresh thoughts, some fresh thinking about this. All that Paul went through, that he refers to in the beginning of 2nd Corinthians when he just despaired of life.
Do you think Paul was happy-happy? No. Paul was…as far as Paul was concerned, it’s over. I’m about to die. Do you think his emotions were high, and he was just living in this high realm? I’ll tell you, the people of God, the most Godly people we run into in the scriptures, have times when they just are at the bottom, emotionally, David certainly. Oh God, where are You?
But here was Paul going through all of this, and then, he comes out the other end, and he says that God did this so that I would learn to rely on Him. Not only that, now I’ve been through something that He’s gonna give me the power to give somebody else comfort.
Oh, we have a God who’s purposed to do some things in us that we desperately need. And think about the foundation of what Paul is saying here. When he talks about the fact that…when he pictures the beginning of chapter 2, he pictures the condition that we’re in. I mean, it is one of totally being a helpless slave in a world system that hates God, and we’re just part of it, and that’s our destiny.
And it has nothing to do with any virtue in us, but because of God’s love and mercy, that’s what drives Him. That’s the reason He reached out to you and to me. It wasn’t because we deserved anything. It’s because He’s a God who loves to show mercy. He reached out, and He did what was necessary at the cost that we see at the cross.
And He did it, and He didn’t just bring us up with Christ, He set us on a throne with Him, in a place of power and victory. And even entering into that, which required faith, where can I find faith? It’s just…I look in here, it’s not in there. And He looks down and He says, I know, I’m giving you My Spirit. My Spirit is gonna make it possible for you to have faith. Yield.
You see that sense of a passive relationship? It’s passive in the sense that I have to receive something. I can’t muster it up. It’s passive. I have to allow God to possess my heart. I have to allow Him to give me faith, and then in the strength of that, I step forward, and I say, yes, Lord, I believe. I hand over the reins of my life. My destiny in Your hands. I am Yours, come what may. I’ll tell you, that’s what real salvation is about.
But you know, it doesn’t stop there. When he describes that process, it’s not by works that we’ve done, nothing that we can boast, but he says, “…unto good works, which God hath before ordained….” He’s planned them ahead of time, that we should do.
I’ll tell you, we’ve got a God who’s gonna go to work. You come to that moment in time when you surrender, and you hand your life over to Him to do with as He pleases, to prepare you for something that’s way beyond this. Okay, then He goes to work. But how does He work? He’s gonna put you and me in situations.
See, Paul unlocks this whole foundation that we were talking about. It begins in the heart of God, doesn’t it? It begins with a purpose, but a purpose that just sits there, that doesn’t do anything…God, not only had a purpose, He had a plan, which means, how I’m going to carry out my purpose.
And that purpose, I mean, that plan centered in the life of His Son, since we had no power to participate in it. God knew about us. He planned for us. And He gave us, in all of this, for those that He reveals Himself to, He calls them into a kingdom and gives you a brand-new identity.
Folks, if you and I enter this…the new year, whatever it is…if we enter this new year, thinking of ourselves as, basically, losers, what hope do you have when the battle comes? I’m just a loser. I’m just a failure. And the devil can look at you and say, you’ve been here before. We know how this is gonna turn out. Quit struggling.
But God absolutely has made you and me His children. He has given us His Spirit, and the gift of His Spirit is the guarantee that He’s gonna finish what He’s started. Folks, you and I are not who the devil says we are. You and I are not who we think we are because of our own weaknesses. We are who God says we are!
( congregational amens ).
See how that underlies all of this? Because here’s what happens when we get in the battle. It’s all…like I say, it’s wonderful to sit here on Sunday morning, and talk about this and say, yes, Lord, this is wonderful. But when you and I get in the battle, it comes down to the ability to lay hold of these truths, not just as theories that we know about or truths…objective truth that we know, this has got to be me!
I can think about how all the things that He did and how wonderful they are, but does that include me? Anybody here ever fought that battle? I mean, you might not put it in those words, but somehow, all these things don’t quite mean me, and they don’t quite mean now. Am I the only one that ever feels that?
It’s not really…I mean, yes, it’s all wonderful, but look at me. Look at my weaknesses. Look at my history. Look at…all these things about me somehow negate that. And so, instead of being able to pick up the sword or pick up the shield…I guess the shield would be this way if you’re right-handed. Instead of being able to pick them up, I’m…who, me? I don’t have a right to do that. Who am I?
I’ll tell you, you are who God says you are, not who the devil says you are. But you’re not who you think you are. You’re not who the world says you are. You are who I say you are. I have planned for you from the foundation of the world, and I’m gonna finish what I started.
This isn’t gonna end this year. Well, I hope it does. Actually, that would be great, but anyway…this isn’t just gonna go so far, and then, okay, I can’t finish it. This is a God who will finish what He started.
And everything that happens, every battle that comes that He brings you through, He has given you and me everything we need. Everything we need is here. The same mighty power that brought Jesus out of the grave, is yours and mine, to enable us to stand just as surely as Jesus stood up to the temptations of the devil.
Do you think Jesus was just proof-texting the devil when He spoke the Word, or do you think that was something that was living and real, and that God had made real in His heart…and He spoke it? And He said, this is what God says.
You and I have that same power, and God is gonna accomplish things in you and me so that when 2022 arrives, if it does, when that arrives, we will be different people than we are today. We will have grown.
God will have set us free from things that have held on to us our whole lives. You and I will be in a place of greater strength so that we can help other people who are going through the same things we are. This isn’t just about you. This is about us.
And God has promised that…you think about what he said in chapter 5 about how He gave Himself to the church, to do what? To present her to Himself as a glorious church without spot, wrinkle or blemish or any such thing, but that includes you, as individuals and me.
Can you visualize that, that God has got a purpose to speak His Words into our heart to change us into His image, and actually be able to present us as finished products in glory one day? Only God can do that, but that’s the hope of the Gospel! And that’s what He wants everyone here to know.
There are battles coming, don’t be afraid. But the Lord wants us to, not just wait for the battle and put on the armor, but learn how to live in the reality of these truths. And when the battles come, we are equipped to stand, and the devil has no power against us, when we stand in His strength.
And I just praise Him this morning for His goodness. I praise Him for His faithfulness. I praise Him that that same power that brought Jesus out of the grave is on our side and with us to help us. He is just as committed to you as He was to His Son. And we need to live in that reality this year. Praise God!
