Christian Podcast Us vs. Them How satan uses situations in life to twist the truth

Welcome to episode 266.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I'm gonna continue to talk about us versus them and use my pathetic example on how I've dealt with finances as a jumping-off point. And because I really want to show the contrast, I want to show kind of how Satan works. And if I can't show you in the Word, I can really show you with an example, because it's hard to say, you You know, when you read the Bible, you can't hardly picture yourself. And that's why I want to challenge you to picture yourself in the Word of God. And that's my whole reason for doing this, is to show you not that I'm a pathetic schmo that can't figure out the Word of God, but as I'm walking through life, just like you're walking through life, we have challenges. And we don't have it all figured out because it says that you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. The freedom that you get from knowing the truth, having an intimate relationship with the Word of God, and the Word of God is Jesus because we've known that ever since the beginning of this podcast. If you've been with me from the beginning, you know that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And I know I just messed that all up, but it's John 1:1, and then we go to the— in the beginning, and Genesis, it's the same words. And what we've got to figure out is how did this start and why are we fighting this enemy. Jesus came and overcame the world. He said, to be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. And so we've got to be fired up that Jesus took on the world and won. But the problem is, is he's left, he's gone to the right hand of the Father, and then we've got to sit We're down here in this world. We're not of this world, but we're in this world. And so with all of that said, one of the scriptures that is just kind of glaring to me was when Jesus said, when the Son of Man returns, will he find faith here on earth? And what I want to do is I want to help you and me figure this faith thing out. And the only way I know to do it is just to get involved. And get off of the pew and get into doing this faith walk and this Christian walk. And it says that, that the just shall live by faith and that it is impossible to please God without faith. And I think that's Hebrews 11:6. We read that in a previous episode, but I want to talk to you about how Satan uses and twists the word of God. He always calls into question the the word. And he did that at the garden. He said, did God really say? And he questions Eve about what God said, and Eve didn't get it quite right. And we've talked about that in a previous episode where Eve said, we can't eat the fruit or even touch it lest we die. And let's go to that real quick. I want you to hear how Satan uses the word of God against Eve. I'm gonna pick it up in Genesis 3:1. Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made, and he said to the woman, "Has God indeed said, 'You shall not eat of every tree of the garden'?" 2:16 And the woman said to the serpent, "We shall eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: 2:17 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, 'You shall not eat of it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.'" 2:18 Then the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die: 2:19 For God knows that in the day ye eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and ye will be like God, knowing good and evil." And I'm going to stop there. I want you to see how Satan twists and uses the word of God. Satan knows the word of God better than you know it and better than I know it. Satan knows what the word of God said. Satan has seen God face to face. Satan knows who he's up against. Satan knows he cannot win. But what Satan wants to do— and I want to remind you, he wants to drag as many people to hell in the lake of fire with him as he can. He hates God. He hates everything God has made. God has made you, so he hates you. And his three job descriptions is to steal, kill, and destroy. So he is coming after everything you have— your body, your family, your possessions. He wants to steal, kill, and destroy everything. So with that in mind, he wants to keep you out of this word of God. And this is my soapbox moment. I hadn't had one in a minute. God wants you in this word of God so you know the truth, so that you can ponder. And with the Holy Spirit's help, God said he'd never leave you nor forsake you. And he— and Jesus said, and we've talked about this multiple times also, in John 16:7, that is to your benefit that I go away. Jesus left us here, but he didn't leave us orphans. He left so that he could send the Helper, and the Helper is here now. The Holy Spirit is here and he has as much power as Jesus had. In fact, I believe the Holy Spirit was the power that Jesus used with the word. He combined the word with Father God inside of him and the Holy Spirit out there. I'm not going to explain all that right now, but I want you to understand that Jesus, he's sitting at the right hand of the Father right now, and we have the Holy Spirit here. Now we still have our opposition. We still have the punk here, and we still are fighting this battle, and we're fighting a battle against an opponent that's already been defeated. But he's a lying, cheating, deceiving punk, and he's not going to say, oh, you got me, you, I'm defeated. No, he's not going to say that. He's going to come after you with everything he's got, and he's going to use everything at his disposal, and it is the world system It is your flesh, and it is all his little demons and imps that you can't see because you're looking with your physical eyes. You're— if you look in this book, and Paul said in Ephesians 6, I think it was 12, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, and again, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. And I think that's— but there's 4 of them: principalities, powers, rulers, and spiritual hosts of wickedness. So those are the 4 things that Paul mentions that we are fighting. We're not— it's the us versus them. We're fighting them, the spiritual hosts, the principalities. You get the picture. But Satan is coming against the Word of God. That is his main objective. The most powerful thing you hold in your hand is the Bible, is the Word of God. And whether it's on your phone on a tablet, on a— I like a hard copy. We've talked about this before. Satan comes against the word every time, and then he uses again our past experiences. And that's where I want to talk my way of thinking, because I came from a poor family, got that mentality. The only way that you can become rich is if you win the lottery, or if rich dead relative you didn't know you had gave you a big windfall or money. That was false teaching.. And my parents, and I've talked about this, we didn't go to church. We spent, my mom spent most of her life out of the church. And so I didn't get saved until I was 29. So I had all of the world thinking, I had all of my parents thinking, I had all of this stuff and really no financial background other than what I've learned in school and college. And they didn't really teach you how to budget money and all that stuff. So I, I didn't know I had it. But it was a stronghold that I'm thinking, you know, the only way I'm gonna make something happen is if I, with my ready, fire, aim, again, my personality type is just jump in. So I was always looking for that quick hit. I don't know if you can relate, but I invested in stupid stuff all the time. I guess there's a sucker born every day and two to take 'em. I would invest in some technology or I've got a multitude of things that I've, put money in, and it— they've all failed. But the one thing that I have found over the course of my walk with Christ is that this kingdom of God— and that's why I'm here, and that's why I've been over a year, because I've kind of, in quote, in figuring this thing out. And it's the daily, daily— it's boring as all get-out, but the daily progression of just doing a little bit more every day, just doing a little bit more every day, and continue with habits making good habit, making good choices. And what I'm finding is that this kingdom of God is so much better than the way I had it figured out. And I want to kind of straighten everything up that I've been talking about. I believe that when I present my body a living sacrifice— this is in Romans 12:1— I believe that I can then have the power because I've submitted to God. James 4:7 says, submit yourself to God, resist the devil, and he'll flee. So I've submitted myself to God. So in the spirit realm, I have the authority to make any punk or demon flee. When I shake hands or make agreements or whatever you want to do in my mind with a false teaching, then I kind of invite them back in. And, and not so much that they can manipulate me or rip the peace of God from me, but they can take that teaching that I'm a little off on and they can enter into my world and they can jack it up, which they've done a pretty good job of. But I want to tell you that I have been— because I tithe, they can't really— I don't know that they've been able to get into all of my business. They've made it uncomfortable. And I, and I don't know that I'm explaining this well, but what I have found is that my mentality— and I think Dave Ramsey does a wonderful job and he's figured this thing out a lot quicker than I have. I did not go bankrupt or anything, but it's just been a slow screw-up after screw-up trying to invest in something. And it wasn't a lottery. I knew from an early age, because I got my degree in statistics, that the lottery was garbage. But I didn't have that same reasoning that all this other stuff was garbage. So anyway, all of that stuff, that get-rich-quick thing, I think it's more of a get-rich-slow. And I'm not here— again, this is not a prosperity gospel. If you are listening to this in a different country or you don't have the same freedom, I want to tell you God's blessing is on his word. And he came, he became poor so that we might become rich. And rich is not financial money wealth, it's not just money. I want to show you in the word another example of how Satan manipulates the story of Joseph in Genesis. It's in chapter 37. And we kind of see, I want to kind of give you a backdrop. I'm going long, but I want to, I want to make sure you get this when I'm talking about it. Joseph, if you don't know the story, go to Genesis. It's like around in 37, he starts getting dreams. He's special. His dad has a special love for Joseph and he gives him a coat of many colors. And I don't know that Joseph handled it well. I'm sure he, he paraded around like a peacock and his brothers are out there working and he's wearing this special coat that his dad gave him. So his brothers, for whatever reason— there's a reason that they didn't like him. And so he then starts telling him these dreams that you're going to bow down. And he even told his dad and his mom, hey, you're going to bow down to me. I had this dream. His dad's like, settle down, son. And it— but his brothers started hating him. And so his dad sent him off to go find his brothers, and his brother saw him coming. He's got this jacket on. He's got this, hey look, I'm special jacket. And I'm going to pick it up in Genesis 37:18. Now when they saw him afar off, even before he came near, they conspired against him to kill him. Then they said to one another, look, this dreamer is coming. Come therefore, let us now kill him and cast him into some pit, and we shall say some wild beast has devoured him. We shall see what will become of his dreams. But Reuben heard it, and he delivered him out of their hands and said, let us not kill him. And Reuben said to them, shed no blood, but cast him into this pit which is in the wilderness, and do not lay a hand on him, that he might deliver him out of their hands and bring him to his father. So Reuben was saying, hey, this, this ain't right. But anyway, they're going to go, and I want to pick it up again just to kind of show you, just keep on this theme, and then to finish this up, we're going to probably have to go to another episode to finish my, my rant on my inability to, to do well with finances. But I want to make this point that Satan uses situations, Satan uses things that happen in the world, and then he brings it about to bring despair and to bring hurt and chaos. And so they— what they did is they threw him in this pit, and then they killed a young goat and put blood all over this jacket, his coat of many colors. And then he— they sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites. I want you to see what happens when they bring the coat to the father, and I want to pick that up. This is in 37:32. Then they sent the tunic of many colors, and they brought it to their father and said, we have found this. Do you know whether it is your son's tunic or not? And he recognized it and said, it is my son's tunic. A wild beast has devoured him. Without doubt, Joseph is torn to pieces. And I want to stop there. We just saw that Jacob, or Israel, said, without a doubt, this is my son's jacket. And so he, in his own mind, he just, because of his dealings, he knew there was lions and wolves and bears and that the wilderness was a tough place. So he took all of that experience and put on, hey, a wild beast has devoured— this is Joseph's blood, wild beast, Joseph is gone. So then I just want to show you that Satan can— Satan will— can and will use circumstances and situations that really are not true, and he makes them look true. And then he'll make you think, and again, we're going to go to our imagination and we start picturing things our imagination. And we're gonna go to that next episode because I just looked up and I'm way long. But I just want to thank you for being a part of this, making it to this part. And let's pray because I, I'm trying to close this up, but this is a big can of worms. And I just want to make sure that, that you're understanding what I'm talking about. I'm— that you're picking up what I'm laying down, if you want to put it in today's terminology. But anyway, here, let's pray. God, I thank you so much. For your word. I thank you for the examples. God, I bind up in Jesus' name Satan and any of his imps that come against us, that come against us in our finances, that come against us in the peace of God that you've given us, and they come against our health. God, we pray that you would just continue to lead and guide and direct us. We thank you for this listener. I pray that they have a wonderful week, and I pray that you would help encourage, empower, and inspire them in your word. God, we thank you.

We love you.

We ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.