I Know Who You Really Are – Lies of the Enemy #21– Purity 1033

To see today's photo, go to mt4christ.org or follow me, M.t. Clark, on Facebook or Twitter. Good morning. Today's photo of a tree, blue skies, and the sun's light shining just above— shining just below, below my— the peak of my place down by the river comes to us today from yours truly as I paused to look up and decided to capture this scene back on April 25th after another day at work. Well, it's Wednesday, and I thought that this photo of the twin peaks of my home's roof was a good way to visually represent our arrival at the midpoint of another work week. Although for me, it's just the beginning, as my shifted schedule has me reporting to work for the next 5 days. But that's no reason— or 4 days, right? Yeah, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Sorry, 4 days. Um, but that's no reason for me to have a case of the Mondays, or the Tuesdays, I guess, as I intentionally begin each day with the practice of gratitude, prayer, and Bible study to get first things first and to remind me of all the things I have been blessed with, rather than focusing on the things I don't have or would rather not do. Although Christians have more than just the hope of heaven, I fear that for many They view their faith as something that won't have any value until the hour of their deaths and they are welcomed into heaven, they hope, and thus their faith sits on a shelf, unutilized and underdeveloped, as they go about their business in the "real world." These malnourished and weak Christians thus become consumed with managing the circumstances of the world and the pursuit of happiness, and often have little or no patience for spiritual things. They have their ticket to heaven, but in the meantime they have work to do building a circumstantial heaven on earth that they have to build with their own hands and have little patience with their heavenly-minded brethren who seem to indicate they can have some sort of relationship with God. They have a one— they've had a one-time experience of joy of their salvation and consider themselves lucky. But don't want to press their luck by pursuing God too closely. They are just a sinner saved by grace after all, and they don't want to have God change his mind because they know who they really are and are thankful just to be in God's kingdom. So they will sit in the back of the church and not speak too much about their faith because they don't know much and because they are not a saint, quote unquote, like other more mature Christians. While I would encourage that we should keep it real as Christians by addressing the real-life problems and responsibilities before us and by not having an attitude of being holier-than-thou as we walk through the world, I would insist that we should get to know God better than when we first believed and to get to know ourselves better as new creations in Christ. But the world, the flesh, and the enemy, uh, don't want us to know God or what he has done for us. And this brings us to our current series, The Lies of the Enemy, which is an examination of some of the common lies, sometimes sneakily whispered into our minds as first-person statements, uh, that the enemy tells us to cause us to doubt our faith, lose our peace, cause division, or or influence us to not follow the Lord with the way we live our lives. Today's big lie is Lie Number 21: I know who you really are. Now, this statement that is whispered or shouted in the confines of our minds is also an accusation, a true red flag that the thought is demonic. Satan is the accuser of the brethren, after all. But this accusation is also a lie. Or at least Satan is trying to lead you away from the truth, in that Satan is trying to convince you that no matter what prayer you have said or what declaration of faith you have made, you are still a no-good, low-down sinner who will probably be tossed out of God's kingdom by the slightest provocation, or if they discover what a mistake was made in saving you. Satan tells this lie to accuse you of being a no-good sinner who can't serve the Lord, seek the Lord, or represent the Lord by sharing your faith. Satan wants to keep you humble and silent and to be of no effect for the kingdom of God. I share this lie because I've heard it before. I've had a very sinful— I had a very— I had a very sinful and selfish life before putting my faith in Jesus, and the enemy loved to condemn me for my past attitudes and actions. As I decided to follow Jesus as authentically as I could, the enemy was there continually to remind me of my checkered past and discourage me from trying to learn about my faith or to apply it to my life. The implication of this lie, that Satan or others in the world know who you really are, uh, because of your past, is that you are not a Christian, you are not saved, or you haven't changed. But it's a lie. Although Satan may know who you— who we really are in Christ, he seeks to deceive us by telling us what we that we are the same old sinner on the highway to hell as we always were, and any behavioral or attitudinal bumps on the path of Christian discipleship that we make proves it. Unfortunately, some pastors unwittingly support the enemy's smear campaign by often quoting Jeremiah 17:9 that says, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" As former sinners, we sh— We know our hearts could be lustful, proud, or hateful at times, and on occasion we still, we will have bad thoughts that remind us of those days before we were saved, so we think nothing has changed. However, something did change since the time Jeremiah said these words. His name is Jesus Christ. He came to pay for our sins, to give us new life, and to fulfill Ezekiel's prophecy in Ezekiel 36:26. 26 and 27, where he, speaking for the Lord, said, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will keep my judgments and do them. A new spirit in you, as in the Holy Spirit, and a new heart, guys. Uh, the old— that old stone-cold heart has been transplanted with a beating heart heart of flesh. And if we will walk with the Lord and keep his judgments— know his word and do them— we will know that we are no longer who we used to be, and we are now really children of God. 2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. John 3:16 assures us, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Galatians 2:20 proclaims, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Romans 8:1 encourages us, there is therefore now no condemnation for— to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. And Ephesians 2:10 directs us, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. So don't listen to the lies of the, um, listen to the enemy's lie that he knows who you really are, because you really are a born-again child of the King. Who has been given a new and eternal life that is rich in meaning and purpose. So rather than listening to the condemnation of the enemy, tell him and anyone else that you are not who you used to be. You are now alive in Christ and have been washed clean of your former darkness and will never walk in those shadows again. Today's Bible verse comes to us from the New Living Translation Bible Promise Book for Men. This morning's meditation verses are Romans 12:1-2, and the word of God says, and so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice, the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person By changing the way you think, then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. Today's verses go hand in hand with the new life in Christ. We fully experience the reality of our new life in Christ when we surrender our bodies and minds to the Lord's will for our lives. We are new creations, and thus we are to reject the world's ways and wisdom for the wisdom that comes from God, and we decide to live our new lives in Christ by renewing our minds with it and living according to it. We were saved and made new the instant we put our faith in Christ, but we have to repent to change our minds and behaviors to reflect the new life that we have been given. Otherwise, we'll be unstable in all our ways, double-minded, believing we are part Christian but mostly sinner, when the truth is we have been made brand new and can demonstrate it on earth long before heaven by living according to our new nature as saints. As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org, where I always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk. Today we can, uh, we continue sharing from, um Satan, Demons, and Satanism: A Sinister Reality by June Hunt. And today, um, we're sharing a section that highlights— it's section number C or D, uh, What Are Satanic Rituals? And it gives a little information about the black mass, black magic, and the black mass. So it's just a short section today basically that addresses those things. But we put that out there so we'll know, you know, we— so we'll know the darkness. Well, we're more concerned with the light, but some people don't believe Satan's real, and they don't— there are Satanists that would disagree. So we share that resource to educate and encourage you to follow the Lord because the world out there is very dark in some places. Extremely dark. So that's why we encourage a life of faith, so we can, you know, get past, have victory over the darkness, and to experience our freedom in Christ, where we don't beat ourselves up with condemnation saying we're nothing but a sinner saved by grace, when the fact is Paul addressed everyone he wrote his letters to as saints. Anyone in the church, if you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, Regardless of your behavior, you are a saint, and, uh, you are to repent. So if you're living a life or thinking thoughts that don't really reflect the Christian life, um, what do you think's got to change? It's not going to be the word of God, it's you. Um, you're to repent. So, you know, easier said than done, I know, but, um, that's why we provide, uh, discipleship, uh, classes that, that teach you about who you are in Christ, teach you about the spiritual forces that darkness and teach you to find, uh, to resolve your spiritual and personal conflicts, to find your freedom in Christ. Um, those classes are called Victory Over the Darkness, The Bondage Breaker, and Freedom in Christ, and they're all available on our podcast and our YouTube channel. And if you wanted to take a deeper dive in the material, we provide, um, the handouts and study guides, uh, that we handed out when we taught those classes back in 2021. You can receive those materials for free by emailing me at mtforchrist247@gmail.com, and I'll just email you a bunch of Word docs for each class. Because guess what? I wasn't always free in Christ. I had a sinful life of the flesh, and thankfully the Lord, um, the Lord reached out of the darkness and showed me the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That I didn't have to earn my way, and I didn't have to be a quote-unquote good person to go to heaven, that I could have a new life, new eternal life, by making Jesus my Lord and Savior. And I did that, and on the long road of repentance, and I've come to a place where I have my freedom, and I want to share that joy of the new life in Christ with as many people as I can. That's why I do the podcast, and that's why I blog, and serve wherever I can to tell this story, to tell this testimony of God's goodness and how he can transform your life from something that's, you know, a mess to something that's clean and pure and good. So that's why we do what we do here. And next week we enter in to try to do it in the flesh as we start a recovery ministry at Starpoint Church in Clifton Park. So if you're anywhere local and want to join us, you're invited on Wednesday evenings at 6:30 starting next week, a week from today. So I have a lot of preparation to do to try to keep it all under wraps, to get ready for the teaching that I'll be doing from the Celebrate Recovery material, along with a bunch of stuff that I'm going to throw in for my personal testimony and stuff that I've learned from Freedom in Christ and, uh, Deeper Walk International, um, to, to really try to make this ministry a life-giving ministry of joy rather than one of, um, shame or guilt. Um, you know, I want to, I want to help people know who they are in Christ and experience the joy of the new life, um, that they enter into as they leave the darkness of their hurts, habits, and hang-ups behind. So that's what we got ahead, but we also have work to do, as in literal work. Like I said, I'd rather not, but guess what? We have to work to support ourselves, and my work starts soon. So, you know, but one thing I would recommend is, as you know, as much as we have the real things to take care of, we should seek the Lord every day too, and prayer and Bible study. You know, this message was actually born out of my prayer session today as some condemnation came in, and I was like, oh, that's the enemy. You know, because I have people in my life from my past that would tell me that, you know, I'm not really a Christian, or, you know, they know who I really am. And, you know, I'm no longer that person. I've been made new in Christ. And so it sort of hit home. So I recommend seeking the Lord and knowing what his word says. So we encourage Bible study, and we encourage you, if you need a Bible study to sit in on, um, we did 100 episodes of a Bible study. It's called Bible Study with the Sincatis, and they're all available on the YouTube channel and our podcast for your listening enjoyment, as we basically look at the word in topical study form and just talk about, you know, applying our faith to our lives. And so hopefully that would be helpful for your walk as well. Anyway, if nothing else, I'll pray for you. So let's do that. Lord God, Heavenly Father, thank you for another day in your kingdom. Lord, we thank you so much for all that you've done for us, making us new in Jesus Christ and giving us the Holy Spirit to guide us as we go. Um, Lord, we just pray for anyone who's listening or reading this, uh, message today, that you would come alongside them in their walk and come alongside them in their prayer requests. Lord, we all need your help and guidance and strength as we walk through this world, and we're going to need it again today. So we pray for you to go before us to set things up. And, uh, Lord, we pray for you to open our eyes to the things you want us to see and lead our paths things you would have us do. Because Lord, all we want to do is represent you in your kingdom as we go about this earth. And, um, we just want to thank you, uh, Lord. We thank you, we love you, we praise you. And we pray all these things in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.