Carter Conlon from the historic Times Square Church in New York City. Thank you for joining us today for a call to the nation with Carter Conlon.
Friend, it's no secret we're in a moral and spiritual crisis in America. But as followers of Jesus Christ, we have been lifted out of the kingdom of darkness and brought into the glorious kingdom of light. Here's Carter with today's message. I say thank you for your presence. Thank you for the anointing of your Holy Spirit. Thank you, Lord, for the victory that you're going to bring this present church age into, Lord, in our time. Thank you, Lord. You're going to deliver us from our enemies, the things we see, the things we don't. You're going to take us out of our weakness and into your strength. holy namesake, Lord, not for our sakes, but for your holy namesake, God, that you might be glorified again one last time in the earth before you come. So Lord, we thank you, God. Give us ears to hear what you have to say to your church, in Jesus' name.
I wanna, you know, before I even start, I'm gonna read a couple of prayer requests that have come in. There's such an assault on the mind now. You know that, right?
I'm not telling you anything you don't know. There's an assault on your thought life. There's an assault on your self view. There's ultimately an assault even on the faithfulness of God. It's as if the devil has come down one more time as he once did in the Garden of Eden, saying, has God said? Is it true that God said that? Does it really apply to you?
Does it make any difference in your life? And so many people are succumbing, in a sense, to the voices that are coming against them at this time. From Washington, for example, I'm extremely alone and in torment. Please pray that Jesus will reach down to help deliver me from torment. And from fear and unforgiveness, I need love.
Again, from New York, I've been suffering from anxiety and panic attacks over the last two years. I'm a Christian, and there are many days I want to give up. Please pray for healing. Somebody else says, what if I'm just tired of living?
The more I try to change things, the more they remain the same. Please pray. Another one says, pray for me.
I can't seem to get a grip on school and work. My health is not well. I need God to help me excel in school. I need God to help me get a grip. From Illinois, please pray for me. I'm having an emotional problem today, and I need an answer to prayer that seems like there is no way out.
I pray that God makes a way for me soon. God bless. And the list just goes on and on and on of people who are being attacked in their minds. Now, when I was a young pastor, a young Christian, a young preacher, I think we all get caught in the trap, in the sense of trying to be profound. I went through a season in my life where I studied the Bible, and I would always look up the Hebrew and the Greek translations of everything and focus on sentences and the meanings of words.
And it's good. I mean, you're studying the Word of God, but as I get older, things are changing inside. My message title today is called Get the Devil Out of Your Head.
That's really what it's come down to. Get the devil out of your head. When I first came here to New York City, I started to work with David Wilkerson, who had a reputation of people under his life and ministry just didn't get free. They were transformed into new people. And I remember people would come into his office, and he would never counsel alone, so he would invite me in always to sit there and listen. And people would share their troubles and their sorrows and their trials, and quite often it was even ministers coming in from around the country, and they would share all the stuff. They're going through. And he would say, that's just the devil's gotten into you.
Let's pray him out of you, and everything will be fine. I mean, I'm waiting for something really profound. And yet it was profound. People would get on their knees. He would lay his hands. He would pray. He would bind the devil. They'd get up, and the report would be that they were transformed, the burden lifted.
The struggle was gone. I wonder sometimes, are we just a little too complicated for God? Think about that for a moment. Revelation chapter two and verse seven says these words. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. In other words, God says, I am always speaking to you, but you have to have the ears to hear it. Now, there are all kinds of voices speaking to your heart, right, and to mine.
Well, not so much mine anymore. I'm kinda getting through that. I've learned to hear the voice of God. I've learned to push away other voices that are not from God. But the question comes, how do I know when God is speaking to me, as opposed to my own insecurities? You know, we can manufacture the voice of God. We can't. We can even change the tone and the intonation, and we go to our knees, but it's really just us pretending to be the voice of God and condemning ourselves.
Or it can also be worse. It can be the voice of the devil through powers and principalities that have their inspiration from him, may I put it that way, coming to us and speaking to us in our deepest moments of weakness. I don't know if anybody here's ever had that happen to you.
You're really down. You're like people tonight that have texted in for prayer, and it's just at that moment in your deepest weakness that this voice comes in, pretending to be the voice of God, condemning you, literally putting a sentence of death over your life, spiritually speaking. Now, before I get into more depth in this message, I want to talk to you about how we hear. Now, we hear through our ear, okay, that's the first thing. We hear a voice, or we hear voices. Or we're hearing, in a sense, even by reading. We hear through the human ear. Then what we hear goes into our brain where it's processed in our brain. And if we agree with what we're hearing, it goes down into our heart. And then the Bible says, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth starts to speak. So if it's the wrong voice we're listening to, and it gets into our head, then it goes down into our heart. And the next thing you know, we're not speaking whose report will you believe. We're speaking defeat, we're speaking death, we're speaking despair, we're speaking hopelessness, because we've listened to the wrong voice, and we've let this voice get ahold of us.
And it's so important that we know these simple truths in this generation, because we are, as the people of God, being attacked in our minds like perhaps never before, at least in our society anyway. It's everywhere. The prince of the power of the air is out there. He's got a lot of the airwaves. He's got the music. He's got the daily conversation.
He's got the hearts of people that we have to work with and associate with in the office, and live in proximity to in our apartment buildings. And so that negativity, that voice that is not the voice of God, is literally bombarding us day in, day out, day in, day out. And if you're not careful, that voice gets into your mind, goes into your heart, and starts to come out of your own mouth before you know it. So I wanna look at how God speaks to us. How does God, if it's God speaking to your heart throughout your day, what does that look like? And I just wanna take this one church in Revelation chapter two called Ephesus that he wrote to. Now, here's what he said. To the angel or to the pastor of the church of Ephesus, write these things as he who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven gold lampstands.
In other words, it's the God who has all power, all resource, all ability to do all things for all people. This is who's speaking. This is not a voice that doesn't have power. This is the voice of one who can create a universe with a spoken word. I happen to believe he doesn't even have to speak.
He could have thought the universe into existence. The power of God is indescribable. The power of God when he speaks to you, when he speaks to me. Now, there's a way that God speaks to us, and you'll see it in the pattern of this when he speaks to the church of Ephesus. He starts out in verse two. He says, I know your works, your labor, your patience, that you cannot bear those who are evil. You've tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars. You've persevered, you have patience, you've labored for my name's sake, and you have not become weary.
The first thing that God does when he speaks to you is he reassures you of his love. I see you. I know your heart. I know you have wanted to serve me. I know you have tried your best. I know you have been concerned about proper doctrine and proper truth. I know that you've gotten involved in the work that I gave you to do on the earth, and you have labored for my name's sake, and you've not fainted.
In other words, I'm not starting out by talking about a problem. I'm talking about, firstly, how much I love you. I have loved you, he said through the prophet Isaiah, with an everlasting love.
A nursing mother could forget her child, but I cannot forget you because I've engraved you on the palms of my hands. When you walk through the fire, I'll be with you. When you walk through the flood, it will not overflow you.
You may fall seven times, but seven times, I will pick you back up again, and I will give you the strength to be the person that I have called you to be. And so, when he speaks, he reassures you. That's how you know the difference between he and the devil.
The devil will condemn you right out of the gate. It's as if he can't wait to condemn you. It's like a lion, he can't lick you. He just goes ahead and bites you right out of the gate. He has nothing of compassion in his heart.
He can't even fake it because it's absolutely there. The devil is completely devoid of all compassion. He is hate-filled, hates God, hates the people of God, hates those created in the image of God, hates you, hates your love for God, hates your willingness to wanna get up and serve God, so he can't fake the love of God. He simply condemns you right out of the gate.
That is the difference between the voice of God and the voice of darkness. Now, after reassuring the people in the church of Ephesus, he says, nevertheless, in verse four, I have this against you, you have left your first love. In other words, now he defines a problem. You know, if you're going to define a problem, let's say, to your own children, you assure them of your love first. I love you, I'm your dad, I'm your mom, I'll always be there for you, I will always love you.
Even if you get into trouble, I'll always be there for you. You reassure your child, then you say to your child, but now, there's something in your behavior that I see, and because I love you, I wanna talk to you about this. See, that's the voice of God. That's how he begins to entreat, he reassures you first, and he says, now, there's a problem here going on in your life. That's the voice of God. That's the spirit of God speaking into your ears, not to condemn, but to correct, to bring the conviction of the Holy Spirit.
That's what the Bible calls it. Knowing the love of God, then suddenly, we're open to God speaking to some area of our heart or life that maybe needs to change. And then he speaks to us about the consequence if we don't let him speak to us. Remember, he says, I speak to you only for good and not for evil, to take your life and bring it to an expected end, to that place that you desire to be and I desire to take you to. He says in verse five, remember from where you've fallen and repent and do the first works, or else I'll come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.
That's the type of a parent saying to a child, my son, my daughter, if you don't get this thing right in your life, if you continue in this practice, you are going to become a person that I didn't destined you to be. The light of your eye is going to be gone. The love that you are able to express towards God and towards others is going to begin to go dim. If you don't let me deal with this, you're going to lose your testimony. It's going to be taken from you. And then he goes on in verse seven and he says, but he who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches and to him overcomes.
I will give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God. So God's word to you will always finish with a promise. Always. The devil will condemn you. He will talk about the problem. Then he will tell you it's hopeless. You'll never change.
And lastly, he'll say, give up. Your life is not worth living. Don't even try to live for God.
It's hopeless, it's pointless. Don't even get up, don't believe because nothing's going to happen. Or you've fallen so far that God's fed up with you now. Even imitating the voice of God and saying these things. But that is not the voice of God. It can be the frailty sometimes of your own heart because we, if we were God, it's like a comedian that said one time, I would never join a club that would have somebody like me as a member. And if we were God, we look down at our own lives and we see our own frailties and our own failings and somehow we convince ourselves that somehow God feels about us the way we feel about ourselves which is not true. That's why the Bible says if my own heart condemns me, God is greater than my heart. God is greater than my sense of failure.
God is greater than my feelings of insecurity or inability to get up and change. And where the devil says give up, God says no, I'll give you to eat of the tree of life. Now the tree of life for you and I in this world is the cross of Jesus Christ. Everything that was one at that cross. When he rose from the dead, the Bible says he took captivity captive and gave gifts unto men. He gave us the power to live a new life. He gave us the ability to have a new mind. He gave us the ability to walk where we couldn't in our own strength. He gave us the ability to believe that we can become everything that God's called us to be.
That's the tree of life. God says if you'll let me speak to you, if you'll let me talk to you, if you'll let me warn you of the consequence that can happen if you disregard my voice, I promise you that everything that was bought for you on the cross will be yours. You will become a new creation. You will bring honor and glory to the name of God. You'll have bounce in your step.
You'll have light in your eye. You'll have hope in your voice. There'll be power in your prayer. That's the voice of God. And it's so important now in this generation that we have an ear to hear what the Spirit of God is saying to the church. Because he's calling us to rise now. He's calling us to take his hand. Just if we might feel like the lame man at the gate of the temple, but he's reaching down, says take my hand now and let me lift you up. Let me make you into the person that I've destined you to be. Let me give you the strength that only God can give to you. I have not come to condemn you.
The Son of God did not come to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved. I came because I love you. I came to reclaim you because you couldn't come back to me in your own strength. I came to give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and nothing, nothing shall by any means hurt you. I came to answer your prayers and to tear down powers of darkness.
I came to make you more and mightier than you could ever be in your own strength. You see, the voice of God always comes with a promise. The voice of the devil always comes with the words give up.
Don't get up. There's no hope. See, I'm speaking to somebody online and you've gotta come to the point where you stop listening to the devil and get him out of your head and start listening to the voice of God. Start recognizing and realizing that God has promises for you.
The Apostle Peter says that by these promises you become a partaker of this new life that God wants to give you. We've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God so don't let the devil tell you there's no hope for you. We've all failed. We've all fallen. If we've not fallen physically, we've fallen in our minds.
I can assure you of that. Every last one of us. But God laid on him the iniquity of us all and by the beating he took on that cross, you and I are healed.
We can get up. We can walk with God. So don't listen to these voices anymore. The devil is a liar. He can't speak the truth. And when he lies, Jesus said he's just speaking from what's in his own heart for he was a murderer in the beginning. He hates you. He hates Christ and he hates the life that Christ has promised to give you. But remember, when God speaks, he speaks with reassurance first.
He identifies the problem if there is one. He talks about the consequences of that problem goes undealt with and then he gives you a promise and me a promise that we can partake in the tree of life. Oh, thank God.
Oh, thank God, oh, thank God, oh, thank God. And so I think it's time for the Church of Jesus Christ for everyone who's called by the name of Christ to literally get the devil out of our heads. Say, Satan, you got no place in me. You got no place in my thinking. You got no place in my life. You don't belong in my home. You got no place in my family. You don't determine my future.
My future's in the hands of God. So I'm not listening to your lies anymore. I'm not listening to all your sneering condemnation and your speech of hopelessness and your threatenings that I should give up. I'm not listening to it anymore. I'm getting up, I'm going with God, and I'm gonna do damage to your kingdom.
I'm gonna do damage to you. And some people, you've gotta get the devil out of your head. You gotta put those thoughts away and stop listening to them. They're not from God. They're not the truth.
They're not your future. They are not what God's thinking about you. I know the thoughts I think about you, says the Lord.
Thoughts of good and not of evil to bring you to and expect it. And I know the thoughts I'm thinking about you. I didn't come and die for you because you had it all together. I died for you because you needed a savior. I died for you because you needed a friend. I died for you because you needed new life. I didn't come and die for you to go back to heaven and condemn you.
I died for you to give you life everlasting and more abundant. And don't let the devil, Jesus would say, take that from you any longer. It belongs to me.
We sing that song here sometimes Tuesday night. I'm going in the devil's camp and I'm taking back what he stole from me because it belongs to me. It belongs to my home.
It belongs to my family. No more, no more. Say it out loud, no more. No more thoughts of the devil in my head. Satan, I resist you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I resist your thoughts. Praise be to God, praise be to God, praise be to God. I believe the report of the Lord. His report says I'm healed. His report says I'm filled. His report says I'm free. His report says victory.
That's the report that I believe. My little girl Kate, well she's not a little girl anymore but when she was a little girl some people were visiting us. There was an overseer actually of a denomination and his wife and they were staying overnight with us and the overseer's wife, she said, can I tuck your little girl into bed?
And Pastor Teresa and I said, yeah, by all means go ahead. Kate at that time was about four or five years old, just a little curly haired thing. And so she was tucking her into bed and she said, Kate, has the devil ever come to you at night and tried to lie to you? Kate says, oh yeah, he does, he does. She said, well, when he does that, what do you do? Kate looked her in the eye and says, I tell him to go back to hell where he belongs. It's time to tell him to go back to hell where he belongs. Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. Glory to God, glory to God. Sometimes we just need to get where children are. We need to understand the things that they already understand.
Sometimes it's just no deeper than that. Devil, you got no place in my mind. You don't belong there, so I'm telling you to get out of my head and go back to hell where you belong because that's your eternal home.
So you might as well go now and get used to it because that's where you're going to be for eternity. You have no right to my thinking. You have no right to my heart.
You've got no right to my speech. I am a child of God. By the grace of almighty God, I am more than a conqueror through Christ who loves me.
I believe there's no height, there's no depth, there's no power, no principality, no wall, no valley, no angel, no mountain can separate me from the love of God. Praise be to God. Oh, give him a shout of glory in this house. Hallelujah, hallelujah. Glory, glory, glory, glory. Glory to God, glory to God, glory to God, glory to God. Thank you, Lord, thank you, my God. Thank you, Jesus.
