I Know Who You Really Are –
Lies of the Enemy #21– Purity 1033
Purity 1033 05/03/2023 Purity 1033 Podcast
Purity 1033 on YouTube:
Good morning,
Today’s photo of a tree, blue skies, and the sun’s
light shining just below 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 its just the beginning
as my shifted schedule has me reporting to work for the next five days. But
that’s no reason for me to have “a case of the Mondays”, 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 death 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 in 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 had a one time experience of the 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” 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 have 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 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, that the enemy tells us to cause us to
doubt our faith, lose our peace, cause division, or influence us to not follow
the Lord with the way we live our lives.
Today’s big lie is:
Lie
#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 try 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 that you have made, you are still a
no good low down sinner who will probably will 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 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 to 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 I “really” am because
of my past – is that I am not a Christian, I am not saved, or I haven’t changed.
But
it’s a lie. Although Satan may know who we
REALLY are in Christ, He seeks to deceive us by telling us 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 (NKJV) that says
9 "The heart is
deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?
As former sinners we know our hearts could be lustful, proud, or hateful at times and on occasion 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 Jerimiah 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
36:26-27 (NKJV) where He speaking for the Lord said:
26 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.
27 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! That old stone cold heart has been transplanted with a
beating heart of flesh, and if we will walk with the Lord and “keep His
judgements (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 (NKJV) tells us
17 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
(NKJV) assures us
16 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 (NKJV) proclaims
20 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 (NKJV) encourages us
1 There is therefore
now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according
to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
Ephesians 2:10 (NKJV) directs us
10 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 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!
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For those who want more evidence for Christianity
than my simple apologetic will provide, I offer apologist, Frank Turek’s
website, https://crossexamined.org/ .
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Today’s
Bible verse comes to us from “The NLT Bible Promise Book for Men”.
This
morning’s meditation verses are :
Romans 12:1-2 (NLT2)
1 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.
2 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 will 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 continue sharing from “Satan, Demons & Satanism: A Sinister
Reality” By June Hunt.
As always, I share this information for educational
purposes and encourage all to purchase June Hunt’s books for your own
private study and to support her work. This resource is available online
for $7.99 (https://june-hunt.myshopify.com/collections/keys-for-living/products/keys-for-living-on-satan-demons-satanism_ ).
Satan, Demons & Satanism
A
Sinister Reality
by June Hunt
D. What
Are Satanic Rituals?
A ritual
is a prescribed form of religious ceremony that can be either traditional or self-styled.
Although the Black Mass, based on the Roman Catholic Mass, does not represent
the teachings of The Satanic Bible,
many satanic groups consider it to be the ultimate allegiance to Satan. Almost
all satanic rituals involve sex and sacrifice.
• Black
Magic
— The
use of objects and sayings in an attempt to control natural forces for evil
purposes
— “The
most violent and cruel of all pagan practices”
— The
root of today’s satanism
• The
Black Mass
— A
point-by-point perversion of Catholic practices
— Begun
in the eighth century
— The
sacrifice of a baby is often required
“The
sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you
to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the
cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the
table of demons.”
(1 Corinthians
10:20–21)[1]
---------------------------more
tomorrow------------------------
Join our “Victory over the Darkness”, “The Bondage Breaker”,
"Freedom in Christ" series of Discipleship Classes via the
mt4christ247 podcast!
at https://mt4christ247.podbean.com, You can also find it on Apple podcasts
(https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mt4christ247s-podcast/id1551615154). The mt4christ247 podcast is also available
on Google Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartradio, and
Audible.com.
These teachings are also available on the
MT4Christ247 You Tube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@MT4Christ247
Email me at mt4christ247@gmail.com to receive the class materials, share your progress, and
to be encouraged.
My wife, TammyLyn, also offers Christian
encouragement via her Ask Seek Knock blog (https://tammylynask.blogspot.com/ ), her
Facebook Group: Ask, Seek, Knock (https://www.facebook.com/groups/529047851449098 ) and her podcast Ask, Seek, and Knock on
Podbean (https://feed.podbean.com/tammalyn78/feed.xml)
“The views, opinions, and commentary of this
publication are those of the author, M.T. Clark, only, and do not purport to
reflect the opinions or views of any of the photographers, artists, ministries,
or other authors of the other works that may be included in this publication,
and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities the
author may represent.”
Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship
[1] June
Hunt, Biblical Counseling
Keys on Satan, Demons & Satanism: A Sinister Reality
(Dallas, TX: Hope For The Heart, 2008), 5–6.
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