Lessons from the Battlefield, Part 2

You've got to understand that in Christ I have power and authority over everything the devil wants to do in my life. And God has given us that power and that authority. Now power and authority are the dynamic duo that every believer has to learn to walk in. Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world. Hello and welcome to Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Shepherd.

Always glad to have you with us. The devil is a powerful adversary, the prince of this world, an angel of darkness clothed in light. But because of Christ you have power and authority over Satan and the God-given assurance that no weapon formed against you will stand. How can you tap into that power? How can you like David defeat the giants in your land?

Answers come your way next. Stay with us now or visit PastorPaul.net to listen on demand. That's PastorPaul.net or subscribe to the podcast at Spotify, at Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's Pastor Paul now with today's Destined for Victory message, Lessons from the Battlefield. 1 Samuel chapter 17 where I want to continue a part of our study here on the early life of David and I want to continue looking at lessons from the battlefield.

When we began our study of the early life of David we were looking at lessons from the pasture. And now as we move into 1 Samuel 17 we come to the episode in his life where the Philistines have gathered their forces for war. And in the last message I talked about the fact that when we are determined to do the will of God in our lives, when we make up in our minds that we are going to serve the Lord and do the things that please Him, what happens is we must understand that we invite warfare into our lives. And I talked in the earlier message about how important it is for us to make up in our minds if you are going to please God, do His will in your lifetime, get ready because the forces that are arrayed against the will of God for you are going to gather themselves. You invite conflict and challenge into your life when you say I am going to do the will of God. And it doesn't matter whether you are naturally predisposed to be a fighter or not, now that you are in Christ, now that you have accepted the call of God upon your life, now that you are determined to please Him, to live right, to do His will, you are going to experience warfare. But we talked in that message about the fact that you don't have to sweat it because we already have the victory in Christ Jesus. I talked about extremes that we need to avoid in our theology. Some people think that there is an epic struggle in the heavenlies and God is really working hard against the devil and you are not quite sure who is going to win.

And a lot of people are insecure in their spirituality because you have a misunderstanding, you think there is this epic struggle. I talked about the Star Wars dilemma, how some folk take Star Wars as truth. Star Wars you have the force, the good side of the force and the evil side and you are not quite sure who is going to win. That's good Star Wars but that's bad Bible. The Bible makes it clear God wins hands down in Christ we have the victory. So there is no epic struggle. But I also talked about the other extreme in theology that you have to avoid which is the extreme that well since Jesus won the victory for me on the cross I really shouldn't have any trouble.

My friend I don't want you to be deceived. Don't think because Jesus won a great victory you won't have any trouble. And I talked about the fact that there is a difference between positional victory and possessional victory. And you and I have positionally we are victors already but you have to learn to take that victory and apply it to your life.

And guess what? You're going to find that there are some enemies standing in your way saying I don't want you to ever come into the victory that you have in Christ and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure you live a defeated life. But the good news is if we walk with God and I ended by talking about if we know who we are in Christ we'll have the victory.

And that's where I want to pick it up. You've got to know you've got to understand who you are in Christ. You've got to understand that in Christ I have power and authority over everything the devil wants to do in my life. And God has given us that power and that authority. Now power and authority are the dynamic duo that every believer has to learn to walk in because it's just like I often use the analogy of a law enforcement officer. When you go through whatever academy it is and you are deputized as a law enforcement officer they send you out with two things. They send you out with authority and with power. The authority is represented by your badge. And so when you pull someone over say you're on the state police force when you pull someone over and you ask for their license and registration you're not doing that on the basis of who you are as a person.

You are representing an entire agency and your badge says that the authority I walk in is bigger than who I am as an individual. The authority is important because you know you could have a little puny cop and a great big driver. And if it's just a one on one situation then the driver would look at this puny cop and say I don't have to do anything you say. But how many know it wouldn't be a good idea for the driver to start picking a fight with that patrol officer.

Why? Because the officer it's not about who he or she is it's about whose he or she is. They represent an entire force. You don't believe it start messing with them and see how many cars descend upon the scene.

Because they are backed up. They got back up. I came to tell somebody you got back up. I came to tell somebody who your enemy is saying to you you can't do anything with me. I'm bigger than you.

I'm stronger than you. I came to tell somebody God has given you back up. And when you take your stand in the name of Jesus and say I'm going to get everything Jesus promised me. I'm going to get my peace. I'm going to get my joy. I'm going to live a righteous life. I'm going to get over these hang ups. I'm going to get over these problems. I'm going to overcome my character deficiencies. I am going to say no to the devil. I'm going to draw a line in the sand.

I'm going to be the victorious person. When you say that the devil doesn't like it but the fact is you got back up. Oh I'm so glad that authority means you got back up. Now they don't just send you out with authority only if you're on the police force. They can't just send you out with a badge. Because after all you're dealing with criminals. You're dealing with people who break the law. And so you don't just walk up on somebody with nothing but a badge.

Because that's the very nature of a criminal. They despise law and order and they want to do what they want to do. And if they see that you only have authority you got a problem. But how many know they don't just send you out with authority.

They send you out with power. And in the Greek those two concepts are represented by two different words. Authority when Jesus talks about the authority we have in him he uses the word exousia. It's a Greek word that means authority or legal right. I have a legitimate legal right. A legitimate legal interest in taking authority over the enemy in my life.

But you can't just have legal right because people will try your rights. So what you got to have is the second concept. It's represented in the Greek word by the Greek word dunamis. Dunamis and dunamis is the word Jesus used for instance in Acts 1 and 8.

It says and ye shall receive power after the Holy Spirit comes in your life. That's the word dunamis. It means explosive ability. In fact dunamis the root of the word eventually as we migrated toward modern English developed the word dynamite.

It's the same concept. God said I will give you the power to blow up everything in your life that is not of God. I'll give you power over it and guess what when you send out a law enforcement officer you don't just send him out with a badge with exousia. You send him out with some dunamis. You ever looked on that holster? That's a holster full of dunamis.

Man they got all kind of dunamis. They'll work you over. They got that big old pistol. They've got stun guns. They'll stun you. Some of them have a club. They'll knock you upside your head.

Oh man they got a holster full of dunamis. You don't want to fool with that. And I'm here to tell you that in Christ you've got two things my brother my sister. You have authority to say no to the enemy and in case he balks you've got power. You've got power.

You've got power to back up the authority that's in your life. And so you and I have to learn that this fight has been fixed and in Christ we have the victory. Now I want to move on and look at some of the lessons. Look here at 1 Samuel chapter 17 and I want you to notice that we must become familiar with the enemy. If you're going to experience real victory in your life, possessional victory, you need to know who the enemy is in your life so you know how to come against him. In warfare it pays to know your enemy. And the Bible says, Paul said when he wrote 2 Corinthians chapter 2, he was talking about the devil and he said we are not ignorant. Verse 11, he said we are not ignorant of his devices. One of the worst things you could be is ignorant of what the enemy is trying to be up to in your life. You don't want to be clueless because in knowledge there is power to live the victorious life.

And so you need to become familiar with the enemy. Now it is wonderfully depicted in this story. Look at 1 Samuel 17 verse 4. Still ahead, the second half of today's Destined for Victory message with Pastor Paul Shepherd, Senior Pastor at Destiny Christian Fellowship in Fremont, California. We want to take a moment and thank all of you who sustained Destined for Victory with your prayers and financial support, gifts that helped Pastor Paul share the Gospel with a growing audience. Destined for Victory is a listener supportive ministry and right now as we enter the busy summer months when donations to the ministry tend to decline, your help is very much needed and appreciated. So as God leads, please prayerfully consider making a gift to Destined for Victory today. You can give securely at PastorPaul.net. That's PastorPaul.net. Well, make no mistake, your adversary the devil has been given some power.

Don't give him too much credit but don't give him too little credit either. Here's Pastor Paul with the rest of today's message, Lessons from the Battlefield. Goliath stepped out. Now you have the Philistines who have arrayed themselves against Israel but instead of them just picking the fight army against army, they send out one warrior, Goliath. Look at this guy's description, verse 4 of 1 Samuel 17. A champion named Goliath from Gath came out of the Philistine camp.

Check this out, y'all. He was over nine feet tall. That's a bad boy. He had a bronze helmet on his head, wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing 5,000 shekels.

Do you have any idea how much that is? That coat of scale armor he had on weighed approximately 100... H-U-N-I-D... 125 pounds. This is what he wore. 125 pounds worth of scale armor.

That's like walking around with a person draped on you. Not only that but on his legs he wore bronze greaves and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. His spear shaft was like a weaver's rod and its iron point weighed 600 shekels. His iron point of his spear alone weighed 15 pounds. That's a bowling ball formed in the shape of a spear.

A tip, 15 pounds. That's like hurling a bowling ball with a point on the end of a javelin. He had a shield bearer, verse 7 ends by saying he had a shield bearer that went ahead of him. This man is such a champion he doesn't even have to carry his own shield. He got a little dude, that's his only job, carry the shield.

Until Goliath is ready for it then he hands it to him and he runs away. Let me tell you something, you need to become familiar with the enemy in your life. Not so that you will be intimidated but just so that you will be aware.

And the Bible promotes this kind of understanding. 1 Peter 5 and 8 the Bible says be sober and vigilant. Be self controlled and alert NIV says. But King James says be sober, be vigilant.

Why? Because the adversary, your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion is seeking whom he may devour. And you need to be aware of who you are dealing with when it comes to the warfare in your life. Don't allow ignorance to saturate your life. I applaud you for sitting under the word of God. I applaud you for going to church or listening to religious Christian broadcasting, listening to the word of God.

Why? Because in that knowledge is the power to defeat your enemy. And so you've got to make a commitment and I thank God for you who have made the commitment to get into the word until you are aware of what God wants to do in your life as it relates to the enemies that you face. Because all of us face enemies. We face the enemy of the devil, but we also face enemies inside. We face the enemy of the flesh. Your flesh doesn't want you to do the will of God.

Your carnal nature doesn't want you to do the will of God. And you have to be aware of your own weaknesses. You have to learn to understand yourself. There are a lot of folk walking around today who are clueless about themselves. You ought to know what your weaknesses are. You ought to know, you ought to be able to describe your weaknesses just like this passage describes Goliath.

What are the giants that threaten to take you down that are inside of you? For some of us it would be a giant of pride. Some of us have too much pride for our own good. You can tell a person who has a giant of pride because you never heard them say I'm sorry in their whole life. Not you, somebody on your row.

Why are you looking at me like that? I didn't talk about you. I'm talking about somebody on your row who has never said I'm sorry in their life. They don't say it because they don't think it. They don't think they're wrong. Only people who acknowledge wrong say I'm sorry. Have you ever met people? Not you. But have you ever met people who don't think they're wrong?

You can have a list. You can have points, bullet points of why they are wrong. And when you get through, they still don't see where they're wrong.

That, my friend, is a giant of pride because everybody misses it sometimes. Everybody is wrong sometimes. The only person who's always right is at the right hand of the Father making intercession for all the rest of us. And when you are not aware of your imperfections or you have too much pride to admit your imperfections, you don't know it, but you are living way beneath your spiritual privilege. And your life will never truly characterize the glory of God because the only way you could do that is to live in authenticity. And to be authentic means to be human and to be aware of your weaknesses. Furthermore, how will you ever get strong in areas of weakness if you don't admit you're weak? How will you ever get built up in areas where your character is flawed if you have too much pride to admit you have character flaws?

And so for some of us, you need to become familiar with the giant of pride. There are others of us struggling with a giant called fear. You live in fear, constant fear, of the worst happening in your personal life, the worst happening in your professional life. You live in fear that you'll never overcome the issues of your past. You live in fear that people are going to let you down. You destroy good and godly relationships because you're always waiting for somebody to get you. And you live under that fear and it has a grip on your psyche, on your heart. It keeps you from enjoying your life.

It keeps you from knowing that God is up to something good in your life. And for some of us, fear has created bondage. And I'm here to tell you that you have to become familiar with that.

You have to get to know, you know what? I am living in a fear that has me living way beneath my spiritual privilege because when I look at my Bible, my Bible says God didn't give me a spirit of timidity. God didn't give me a spirit of wondering what's going to go wrong, wondering if people are going to like me or accept me, wondering if the worst is going to come to pass in my life. Do you know that fear is faith in reverse? Fear is counting on all the wrong things to happen. What you have to learn to do is to say, God, I realize, I see that in me lurks a nine foot tall giant of fear. And in the name of Jesus, in the same way that David learned that Goliath, however imposing he appeared to be, will not defeat me in the same way. You've got to say, Lord, I want to give this fear to you in such a way that you replace it with faith and with trust and with the ability to believe that God has me covered.

And I'm here to tell you, you've got to get in touch with that. You can't deal with fear. You cannot overcome what you will not confront. And sometimes we have to take a good inner look and see where the pride is, where the fear is, where the anger is, the out of control anger, the sinful anger. Now, not all anger is sinful.

The Bible makes a clear distinction. In Ephesians chapter 4, Paul talks about the fact that we can be angry without sin. In fact, he says, be angry, but don't sin. Don't let the sun go down on your wrath. He said, deal with it appropriately and deal with it quickly. Well, how many know that some of us have a giant of anger?

And you can't do the will of God while you are sinfully angry. And you won't deal with it until you acknowledge it. And for some of us, we need to stop making excuses, talking about you just have to understand me. You ever had a mad person, an angry person, an out of control person trying to get you to understand them?

Listen, we don't have time to constantly try to figure out when you're going to blow. What you have to do is confront your giant of anger and say, you know what? My anger is out of control.

I get too mad, too quick, over too little. Isn't that ringing somebody's doorbell? Didn't the Holy Spirit just tell you that's you? That point he just made, that's you. That's the Holy Spirit's job. I'm sitting there getting mad at me and I don't even know you. Just as David faced his giant and overthrew him, you too have the power and authority to strike down the Goliaths in your life.

Anger, fear, bitterness, addiction. No matter how imposing they may seem, they will melt away when exposed to the glorious light that is yours in Christ Jesus. Well, we have two great resources to share with you today and I believe each will be a blessing to you and your family. The first is Pastor Paul's book, Why God Created Dads, an insightful and inspirational look at the subject of fatherhood through the lens of scripture. The second is the audio CD, A Tribute to My Dad, a message delivered by Pastor Paul following the death of his father.

Men and women alike will be inspired by these timely resources. That's why God Created Dads and A Tribute to My Dad are gifts to you this month for your best donation of $25 or more to Destined for Victory. Call 855-339-5500 or visit pastorpaul.net to make a safe and secure donation online. You can also mail your gift to Destined for Victory, Post Office Box 1767, Fremont, CA 94538.

Again, that address is Destined for Victory, Box 1767, Fremont, CA 94538. Do you need prayer today? Visit pastorpaul.net.

Click contact us and share your request with us so that our ministry team can join you in prayer. While you're there at the website, be sure to ask for Pastor Paul's monthly letter of encouragement, yours at no cost or obligation. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy. Here's Pastor Paul. Some of y'all have thrown out everybody who ever told you anything you didn't like, you have dismissed them from your inner circle.

And the only folk in your inner circle now are a bunch of folk who flatter you and lie to you. That's tomorrow when Pastor Paul Shepherd shares his message, Lessons from the Battlefield. Until then remember, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are Destined for Victory.