Welcome back everybody. I hope you had a really good time processing what we talked about last time we were together and I really hope that you took in that short edition that I made for deliverance ministry. I know I opened up a bit of a can of worms with that and I felt it was really important to make sure we're clear on what the demonic realm can do and what it cannot do in the life of a Christian. So please if you have not already taken that in do take it in. It's very important. It's biblical and it's very important that we don't just dismiss it because we're modern people and we feel like we know better and have psychological diagnoses for things because sometimes there is demonic activity behind it due to the strongholds that we've allowed to remain in us in Christ.
This week I want to talk and follow up on what I shared last time which is that Jesus knows how to build strongholds too and he cooperates with us in the building of those righteous strongholds right on the ruins of demonic strongholds that once held us captive and once were open doors for the devil's activity in our lives. And so we want to make sure that we're diligent about seeing to it that we don't allow the enemy to come back like I shared in that brief teaching when Jesus talked about unclean spirits coming out of people he said they come back they find the house swept and they say hey great somebody clean the house for us and this time we're going to make sure they can't evict us any longer.
And so they come back and Jesus said somebody's condition can actually be worse than it was before they had demonic activity cast out of them or and sent away from them in the first place and we don't want that to happen. I don't want that to happen for you. I've seen it happen with many lives I've experienced it myself when I was young in Christ and I don't want to see that happen to you so please take today's lesson seriously and put this into practice and that's really what Jesus said you're very familiar already with the Sermon on the Mount if you took my advice and you read the Gospels as part of your daily reading for your first year in Christ you've already read it it's in Matthew chapters 5 through 7 some of the most classic teaching Jesus ever did it's really the entirety of what it means to walk out this life of love that we've been called into and really gets into the nuts and bolts of it we also find when we read it that it's impossible to do without divine help there are too many commands in there too many things a bar was set so high that no human could attain to it and that was precisely the point Jesus was pointing ahead to a day when we would have Holy Spirit aid and we would have the grace of God and we would have Christ in us to enable us to live this life because without it there's no way we can do it but Jesus ended the Sermon on the Mount with some words that are very very important maybe if you grew up in a church that had a children's ministry you learned an old song about the wise man who built this house upon the rock and the rains came tumbling down the floods came up and so on and he said therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them shall be like a wise man who built this house on the rock and the rains came and the floods came and the house stood firm but the one who hears these words of mine does not put them into practice be like a foolish man who built this house on the sand and the same rains the same floods came and that house as the song went went splat that house collapsed on under its own weight and under the floodwaters and so we can hear the word of God and we can know the word of God we can know it in our minds we can have read it and agreed with it wholeheartedly but until we put things into practice we're not yet building a house on any kind of a rock whatsoever and we can be deceived sometimes we think because we know something that means that we're living something but
what the truth of the word of God is always after is putting things into practice and Jesus was very real about that belief alone is not enough so we built unrighteous strongholds in our lives starting well before we came to know Christ the enemy's activity in our life just like the Lord's activity toward us began long before we had that day where we said yes to the invitation and there may have been several moments and several times over the years but until we really gave our heart over to the Lord we were mainly building unrighteous strongholds and some of those were strongholds of pride some of them were strongholds of sins of the flesh beliefs and ways that we lived and viewed the world that were just ungodly
so brick upon brick or stone upon stone we built those habits that are hard to break and that's what we looked at last time old habits die hard but new habits are built on purpose
the way to build righteous strongholds is to do what the word says every time we say yes to the Lord we're creating new habits and the the reality of discipleship growing in the Lord is that there are no shortcuts to freedom we can't just have somebody lay hands on us for example set us free from something and then think that's it I will never deal with that issue again
discipleship is a lifelong process our journey here we're coming to a close of this teaching series but the journey that we've begun and that you've begun in Christ has only just begun you'll be on this walk for the rest of your life and getting practices into our spirit and into our daily habits to make sure that we maintain what Jesus has given to us we don't want to lose anything of the righteousness and the peace and the joy that Jesus has given us we don't want to lose anything of the new life that we have and so it begins by putting things into practice
so one of the most misunderstood and most misquoted promises in the entirety of the word of God is the truth will make you free you'll hear that that quoted in movies you'll hear it quoted by politicians you'll hear it quoted by people that have absolutely no faith in Jesus whatsoever and it's as if the truth itself and the belief is well knowing is power knowledge is power you've heard that expression that comes from that belief system that if I know about something it means that I really know it and and the truth is as we've seen by reading the scripture is that we don't know anything until we've actually lived it and actually experienced it and so Jesus didn't come to give us doctrine or good teaching or like a self-help improvement guide you know on par with all the other great prophets and teachers of all the other religions of the world no he said he didn't say I came to share the truth with you I came to show you the way and I came to teach you about the way of life he said I am the way of the truth and the life I am truth the way of living and the life that lasts through the grave that's not embodied in a belief system it's embodied in a life that's lived unto the Lord Christ in us us in Christ that's the way and that's what Jesus was communicating
so he said to them these Jews that believed uh so he had disciples among the Jews there were many more disciples just so you know besides the 12 even besides the 70 that were sent out the scripture says that Jesus showed himself to more than 500 people after he rose from the dead probably all disciples that he just wanted to reassure I'm back what I said came to pass I made it through the other side of the grave and now everything I promised you is yours in me and so he was saying to these Jews that believed in him it goes like this John 8 verse 31 and 32 he said if you continue in my word if you continue in my word don't hear it the word continue means keep carry on keep walking keep journeying don't just stop here and say hey that was a great message thank you so much put it into practice and make it part of your daily walk with God continue in my word then you are truly disciples of mine a disciple of Jesus is very different than a convert to Jesus we all began as converts which means conversion simply means we were once in darkness and now we're in the light we were once dead in our trespasses and now we are resurrected with Christ we were once unrighteous we were dead in our sins and now we are the righteousness of God in Christ we were once a sinner and now we're a saint that's conversion
and that happened at whatever point in your testimony you believe that God really got a hold of you and you said yes and turned your life toward him that's conversion
discipleship is is as if I was heading in the sinful direction I turned my life around now I'm facing toward God but now I'm continuing I'm going to walk
that's discipleship
discipleship is I had a start and now I'm going to keep moving toward a finish line I'm going to run this race with perseverance as the book of Hebrews puts it and so discipleship means I'm going to keep following Jesus
it's really interesting to read the early accounts in the gospels and I encourage you to make this maybe a study in the next season of your life to look at how each of them were called and you know what was their moment when they decided that I'm going to follow after you and Jesus always said follow me he never said believe these things in fact he made no other requirements of the disciples when he first called them I mean the 12 except come and follow me you know the fishermen come follow me and I will make you fishers of men
there were two disciples namely John and Andrew that were following him and they were disciples of John the Baptist first and they followed after Jesus when he was baptized and Jesus turned around to them and he asked them a really interesting question what do you seek and that's a really good question isn't it because if we're just seeking after some kind of improvement in our life or maybe we're seeking after some words that will comfort us or words that will give us wisdom or something of that nature we we aren't actually following Jesus yet and there's a lot of reasons why people come to Jesus mainly it's because they want their needs met I need help right now right the most constant prayer the consistent prayer of saint and everyone else alike is I need you right now God I need you it's that you know the foxhole soldier whose life is on the line it's that one who's about to go into life altering surgery and how many people have promised God if you get me through this and I'll give my life to you I'll follow you forever which has about a 50 50 rate of conversion on the other side of it though that's one that's one thing entirely but being a disciple of Jesus means I'm going to keep on keeping on I'm not going to fall back now that doesn't mean that we're constantly step forward step forward step forward many times in our journey it's three steps forward two steps back sometimes it's one step forward two steps back the point of our journey with Jesus and being a disciple means I'm following so when when Jesus asked that of those first two disciples so what do you seek and he said come follow me and you will see you're going to see some things I can't tell you everything right now Jesus so many times said to his disciples I can't tell you everything right now you're not going to be able to handle it all I am the way the truth and the life your brain can't handle it your heart's not ready to handle it and so little by little day by day
that's discipleship
if you continue in my word then you are truly disciples of mine
and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free that's the full context of that promise you continue with Jesus you grow as a disciple then you'll know the truth not know the truth in the mind but you'll know by experience the truth of the word of God we're back to your testimony again I hope you've remembered to write down all those times that you heard something from the Lord whether by reading the scripture or just in your heart you knew it in prayer and you follow through with some action and you saw God come through on the other time write that down and make it like another book of your Bible because that is part of your journey with the Lord and it's every bit as important as knowing the scriptures what's your experiential knowledge of your salvation that's what makes you a disciple that's what means makes you know the truth I read the Bible as a literature major in college before I became a Christian and I knew every page of it I read the entire book as a work of ancient literature and I compared it with all the Hindu writings and the Buddhist writings and the Quran and I read all of the you know the religious writings of the world and I treated the Bible just like I did those well after I really got born I came to Christ got born again I started reading the scriptures and I realized there's something happening inside of me that demands a response it demands a lifestyle this is how we build righteous strongholds by taking action on what the word of God reveals to us then he goes on and he makes this promise so if the son makes you free then you are free indeed really really free wouldn't you love to be free from those entanglements the as the scripture puts it the sin which besets us that thing that's living in you remember we talked about sin that dwells in you and it rises to the occasion sometimes the temptation becomes overwhelming we trip and stumble again into some kind of sin that we thought we dealt with and we thought we never do again that's common to every believer whether it's sins of the mouth sins of the flesh sins of every type all of us do it we want to be free from that once and for all it's going to take some action on our part to co-labor with Christ and building righteous strongholds on the inside of us continuing in his word means we keep going forward don't go back don't believe the lies for a minute I can't say it often enough in this series don't believe the lie for a minute that just because you fell short again of the glory of God that your salvation didn't work the fact that you're convicted about it means it worked now follow up on that conviction instead of doing the cycle of I sin I ask for forgiveness I feel good again so I sin and then I ask for forgiveness and I feel good again that's a death trap that's a death spiral trap similarly don't fall into the trap of I sin shame on me I'm going to send myself to my room I'm going to keep away from God now because I'm going to punish myself for what I did don't fall into that cycle either I sin I punish myself I feel better I sin again I punish myself so I feel better like you're making your own salvation that's what that trap is those two cycles really need to be avoided at all costs just walk with him though a righteous man stumbles he shall not be utterly cast down for the Lord upholds him in his strong right hand because your steps are ordered by the Lord now not yourself Romans 12 2 this is the process Romans 12 2 if you want to turn there he says there don't be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind why so that you might prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God so we have a process here the first thing we see in here is that we shouldn't be conformed to this world did you catch what that actually is saying think about it for a minute if we're going to be conformed to this world it means that we're not of this world conform means you're getting reshaped into the into something or reformed into something that's not who you really are the reality is when we start thinking the way the world thinks behaving the way that the world behaves it's not who we actually are that's why we feel that grief on the inside of us that we've been talking about it's like something in us is saying this is not who I am anymore I don't actually relate with this although my carnal side wants to do this sinful thing wants to indulge itself in some kind of behavior there's something in me that's grieved about that so to be conformed to this world means that we're resisting something that's alive on the inside we're not just resisting sin and the temptation to sin when it comes our way when we sin we're actually resisting the life of Jesus which is being formed inside of us that's the reality of what our life is about right now and why we're exhorted don't be conformed to the world don't let the world convince you for a minute that this is the right way to live because you know better because there's something alive in you that's that's the reality don't be conformed to this world it's like we're trying to be forced into a mold that we just don't fit into anymore don't be conformed to this world how are we going to be transformed by the renewing of our mind ultimately like I shared last time the warfare that happens spiritual warfare ends up in a battle of the mind which side of us will be convinced will my mind connect with my inner man and begin to think with the mind of Christ the supernatural way of viewing life the way of life that originates in heaven the way that Jesus imparted to us it didn't just teach us but imparted to us and gave us the grace to be able to live am I going to choose to live that way and will I follow and listen to that voice inside of me that's telling me which way to go or am I going to just continue on as if nothing's ever happened there's a new man already alive on the inside of us being transformed means I'm being changed so that my outside reflects what's already on the inside it's like what happens to a butterfly you know baby you learn this in elementary school but it fits spiritually and I think it's the best of all of nature's examples of what happens to us when we come to Christ the the butterfly is born a caterpillar it lives its life as a caterpillar it eats and you know does what caterpillary things it does and then comes this moment in time when it's ready for its big transformation it's metamorphosis it's going to be changed into something that doesn't even resemble what it is right then and so it spins itself into a cocoon and it becomes what's called a chrysalis that is a very interesting time a very vulnerable time for that caterpillar it's also a thing that really makes absolutely no sense and we really don't have an explanation for it science even though we we know exactly biochemically and all of what happens during that time it just doesn't make sense there's nothing else that really does it like this it turns into like a goo on the inside called a chrysalis which doesn't resemble a caterpillar and it certainly doesn't resemble a butterfly yet the truth about that chrysalis that time of transition which is what we're all in during this life until we are resurrected from the dead the full butterfly that is the reality of who we are won't be revealed we can't yet see exactly what we're going to look like when we have that glorious body at the resurrection but right now we're in that chrysalis stage which is kind of this reshaping the truth is everything about what will become a butterfly was in the caterpillar everything that will become that butterfly is in that chrysalis it's already written in hardwired into its dna if we'll submit to this process that butterfly has no say in what's going on inside of it as it's in that cocoon becoming something new and glorious so it is with our walk with jesus we we are becoming something brand new and as we submit to the process and stay in it stay in the cocoon of his grace continue to be clothed with christ that's the picture of a cocoon i'm wrapped up in his glory i'm wrapped up in his presence and he's taking care of everything jesus on the inside he's working on the outside and little by little and becoming that butterfly and becoming that beautiful thing that jesus already knows that i am it's just not manifest on the outside of my behavior just yet so let's talk about this practically just a few tips for how to continue in his word you already know about reading the bible i'm not going to share again and again about that but the first thing i want to say is keep moving forward don't look back don't consider what happened in the days gone by to be who you are right now uh the you know the story about cortez when he landed on the shores of mexico and they had dreams forget the fact that they were you know about to conquer and do some brutal things there he recognized that the men would when hardship came have dreams of going back home and as long as those ships were anchored off the shore there was a chance that they would mutiny and go back to the ships and make their way back to spain well let's burn the ships and that way they have no thought in their mind that i can go back and that's exactly what we need to do when we're in christ just burn those ships there is no going back there's only going forward you might slide back a little bit during the journey don't be discouraged about that it's common to every believer especially in the early days of walking with him there's that war going on between your flesh and your spirit and the enemy sure wants you back and so keep moving forward remember that you're buried with christ by baptism into his death that was your burn the ships moment when you did that you did it by faith you did it because you knew that you knew that you knew that this was your path and that you were going to go into christ and be raised in christ from that baptism tank don't allow the enemy to convince you that life was better before that because you know all the way in your heart it wasn't and that's why he came to christ obey the promptings of the holy spirit and you can trust your own heart now it's not that the heart can't be deceived it's not that the enemy is still good at deceiving he tricked adam and eve into it he could trick us into things too but when you're sincerely walking with the lord and sincerely with all of your heart want to please him and want to grow in him you can trust the prompting of your own heart walk in the spirit galatians says and you will not fulfill the desires of your flesh keep that spirit out in front live a spiritual life don't allow yourself to get trapped and just carnal living where all of my decisions are made in my mind alone and all of what i go about during the during the day is just to please my flesh i'm just going to eat i'm going to do my job i'm going to sleep i'm going to watch some tv and i'm just going to cruise through life i can assure you that you're going to run out of momentum if you just try to cruise the the gas and the engine and the the propeller behind this thing that we're walking in right now is found by walking in the spirit meaning always remain spiritual remain prayerful remain watchful take seriously the thoughts that you have if the thoughts of your heart are turning away from the lord take that seriously and don't just cruise along hoping that it's going to go away tear down those things like we learned about last week follow the practices that we covered in week one to strengthen yourself in the lord we talked about reading the word we talked about praying we talked about living a lifestyle of worship and look when all else go and when all else fails we're living in a great day you can listen to the bible if you're struggling to read the scripture then just put it on in your car make it your spotify playlist the bible you can find many ways of the bible being read out loud even some of them dramatized whatever it takes to keep the word of god coming into you do it of course the best is to read it for yourself and to have it imparted to you that way but do it whatever way you can that we're living in an age where there are new worship songs being birthed that are absolutely wonderful every week there's a new wonderful worship song coming out in every single musical style that there is some of them i don't really care for but whatever you whatever suits you if it turns your heart toward worship of jesus then it's a good song put it make a playlist of those songs make a playlist for the days that you're down make a playlist for the the day that you sinned really bad and you need a psalm 51 in your life whatever you need just do it you have the capacity now it's easier than ever to maintain a full vibrant spirit in christ and don't forget that practice of prayer even if your only prayer that you got it's god i need you and that's it then just pray that prayer sometimes the holy spirit needs to make intercession for us and it says in romans that it's with groaning that no words could even utter sometimes it's just a groan but the point is we're turned toward god connecting with him having fellowship with him that's what bet the best prayer is if you have specific issues that you keep getting stuck on we looked at this a little bit last week and you're just trying to um you're trying to do all of these things but you're stuck and there are particular issues the first step that i want to encourage you to and i have a handout for you that'll be attached to this lesson that'll give you lies that are commonly believed and then what the truth is about that promise now i don't want to say take two goss pills and call me in the morning because there are some things like i shared we may need deliverance in that we may need some extra help we might need to be healing if you've been genuinely abused and traumatized deeply especially when you were really young then you might need some extra help and you might need the ministry of those that have gifts of healing to come into your life and help you get free from that thing there's no shame in that thousands upon thousands of people have needed that well millions really over the years there's no shame in that get the help that you need to overcome that but that handout is going to help you make a list of the lies that you believe pay attention to them when do you find you thinking of yourself thinking a thought and you know you're arguing with things you know from the scriptures are true um find a scripture that tells the truth about that lie i'll give you i'll get you started on that handout but you can also do that do that with your mentor or father mother in the lord whoever you're walking with right now ought to know the word well enough to say i got a scripture for that put that scripture on your mirror put it on your fridge meditate on it day and light there's a power than having the word of god in our heart my word your word have i hidden in my heart psalm 119 says so that i might not sin against you hide the word in your heart find a song that has that scripture in it so you could have that look there's some kids songs look up uh steve green has a couple of cds that's how old this is now of all songs about they're just scripture songs salty the singing song book from hosanna ministries we're going back to the 80s and 90s now tons of scripture songs whatever it takes to get that word into you so that you're meditating on it songs are powerful because you're thinking about it even while you're sleeping your dreams begin to be filled with whatever you fill your mind with so we used to fill our minds with all kinds of junky songs before we came to christ i can still quote them today verbatim from the 1970s god help me songs are powerful so that might be another great way if you need help putting scripture into you that's how you build a righteous stronghold on top of the ruins of an old stronghold so whatever you've been set free from if it was really dramatic especially be sure that you start speaking some truth into your life about that and make sure that there's no room for the enemy to come back and rebuild a demonic stronghold by building a righteous stronghold in that area what god what used to be a mess god intends to turn into a ministry and it comes about by building a righteous stronghold so let's do that together if you have any questions about that or need some help for sure talk with the one that you're working with but you always have access to me too i'd be more than happy to help you share help you know what does the word of god say about that i want to build righteous strongholds now amen god bless