R321 How to Handle the Enemy, Pt.3

There have been so many great resources in How to Handle the Enemy on this week's discussion with Dr. Wilton. Today we bring the final message. Yes, this is The Encouraging Word featuring the Bible-based preaching of Dr. Don Wilton. Discover more on our website at www.tewonline.org. But let's open God's Word together today to the book of Nehemiah on How to Handle the Enemy, Part 3.

Here's Dr. Don Wilton. But the Bible says, my friend, public enemy number one is ourselves, the war that goes on within us. Paul put it like this. He said, The good that I would, that I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do. And there was a proverbial struggle, a tug of war going on within himself. Why? Because the devil is alive and well. You and I need to identify the enemy.

Here it is. What is it in your life that is causing you to stumble? What is it? Where is your Achilles heel? Identify the enemy.

There's a process by which we can go. Five points. Number one, name them. Name them.

That's what Nehemiah did. He named them. When there was an enemy in the camp, he named them.

He said, remember Tobiah and Sanballat and Noah and the other prophets. He named them. He identified them. He pointed them out. He said, you're the one. He named them.

There was no apology in him whatsoever. Name the enemy. Number two, claim them.

Claim them. You'll notice here in verse 14 that the prophet directed his whole prayer concerning this named enemy toward God. He claimed them for God.

You know why? Because I believe this man understood that vengeance is mine, said the Lord. And what Nehemiah did together with those people, when these people began to oppose the work of God, even in their subtle, undercurrent kinds of ways, he named them and then he claimed them for the cause of God Jehovah.

He presented them before the throne of grace. But there's a third thing. Challenge them. Not only name them and claim them, you need to challenge them. You say to me today, pastor, why do I need to challenge the enemy? You see, friend, only a criminal is afraid of a policeman. If you are living according to God's standards and you are moving in the direction that God has placed you and all of a sudden Satan begins to use people to trip you up and to drag you out, you must not only name them and claim them, you need to challenge them.

You need to get up eyeball to eyeball, one on one, look them in the eye and say, what you're doing is not of the Lord. You need to challenge that weak point in your own life. It may be lust. It may be something you're looking at. It may be something you're saying. It may be someplace you're going. It may be the manner with which you conduct yourself.

It may be the company you keep. You not only need to name it and claim it, you need to challenge it. Otherwise, you will never identify the enemy. But there's a fourth thing that you need to do. You need to push on despite them.

Name them, claim them, challenge them and then push on despite them. You see, what Satan wants us to do as a church, my friends, is to stop doing what we're doing. You know what would give him great joy?

Is if God's church all over America just stopped. You know how he's going to try and get God's work to stop? He's going to raise up the enemy. He's going to use people and he's going to use circumstances and he's going to use government and he's going to use education and he's going to use children. He's going to use husbands and wives and preachers and pastors and priests and deacons and elders and Sunday school teachers. He's going to use whoever he can get his hands on and he's going to get those people to do his dirty work. And he wants the Church of God to stop dead in its tracks. You can identify these people.

Usually they will tell you that they've been sent with a special mission from God. It is their most earnest job description to set the record straight, to do whatever needs to be done. We need to name them and claim them. We need to challenge them, move on despite them.

But there's a fifth process in the identification process. We need to win them. How do you win the enemy? You won't win Satan, my friend.

You win Satan by virtue of the victory that Jesus has already claimed upon the cross. You're listening to Dr. Don Wilton, our teacher here on The Encouraging Word. Please don't go away.

He'll be back with the completion of today's message, How to Handle the Enemy, Part 3, in just a moment. But Dr. Don also wants me to let you know we're here for you. We'd be happy to pray with you and for you at the other end of 866-899-WORD. Jot the number down.

Store it in your cell. It's 866-899-9673. We would love to connect with you, connect you with great resources as well. Speaking of resources, if you haven't heard about it, there's a brand new book Dr. Wilton just released about his time with Billy Graham.

It's called Saturdays with Billy. Hello, everybody. You know, my friends know me as Don Wilton, pastor, friend, neighbor, dad, husband, grandpa. But I'm going to tell you people all around the world just like you know and identify Dr. Billy Graham as that man that God used to reach so many people around the world for the Lord Jesus Christ. I had the privilege of knowing Mr. Graham in a very personal and intimate way, both as his friend and as his pastor. In fact, for many years, I drove up to his home in Montreat, North Carolina, and visited with him every Saturday. Just like friends do everywhere, we sat together and ate together, walked, talked. We discussed politics, friends, places, people. We laughed our heads off.

We did everything one could possibly imagine. That's why I wrote this wonderful book, Saturdays with Billy. It's all about a personal relationship, and I hope and pray that Saturdays with Billy will be a blessing to you, will inspire you, and will encourage your heart, just as Mr. Graham encouraged my heart and changed my life.

God bless you, my friends. Now the number to get your copy is 866-899-WORD. 866-899-9673 will connect with one of us, not just to pray for you, but also to help you get resources that will help you grow in your faith. And this is one of those great resources, the new book from Dr. Don Wilton called Saturdays with Billy. You'll find all of our resources available on our website at www.tewonline.org. It's also a great place to not only hear, but see all these messages from Dr. Wilton. So jot it down as well, tewonline.org is the website. We'd love to connect with you this week.

Now back to today's great teaching with Dr. Don Wilton. Friend, if there is an individual or a situation in your life and you are a Christian person, what I mean by winning the enemy through the identification process, I mean gaining the victory over that situation. If it is something that you are looking at, stop looking at it. If it is something that you are saying, stop saying it.

If it is someplace you're going to, stop going there. I was counselling with a couple. And this man said, I know what's wrong. This is wrong and that's wrong and that's wrong with me. And I looked at him and I said, brother, do I love you? He said, yes, sir. I said, well, what have you done about it?

You can sit there until you're blue in the face and tell me or tell your wife that you're this and that. And the next thing, the issue is this, know who God is. Number two, identify the enemy. Number three, pray for God's protection.

Pray for God's protection. Look at chapter four and verse nine. Marvellous passage. Chapter four and verse nine. But we prayed to our God. Go back to verse eight. Let's go back to verse seven.

Just look at this. But when, here they are identifying the enemy again, remember point number two. But when Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabs, the Ammonites and the men of Ashdod heard that the repairs to Jerusalem's walls had gone ahead and that the gaps were being closed, they were what? What were they? They were angry. They were very angry. Now, folks, these were not people outside. These were people inside.

They were part of the status quo. They sang in the choir. Excuse me.

I shouldn't have said that while I was facing that way. They sang in the choir. They sat in the pews. They preached from the pulpit. Do you know that some of the greatest opposition to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ comes from preachers, from ministers of the gospel, from churches?

That's right. Look what happened. Look at verse eight. And so what happened? They all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem.

Here it is. Watch it coming. And to stir up trouble. Isn't that just like Satan? I'm just going to go there and I'm going to just stir that old pot up.

Man, I'm God's personal gift to mankind. I'm just going to go and stir it up. I'm going to stand in the corridors and I'm going to start rumours and I'm going to begin innuendo and I'm going to attack and I'm going to question and I'm going to do this. I'm just going to stir up the pot. That's what Satan does. He's doing it in our education system, folks. He's doing it for the mass murder of children all across America. Freedom of choice, they call it. When it comes to sexual matters, it's called safe sex. I'm just going to stir up the pot.

I'm going to give it a nice name. I'm going to talk about the rights of people. Everybody's got a right. Today it's a matter of sexual preference. Who cares what God's Word says? Here it is. They stirred up trouble against it. Verse 9, but we prayed to our God.

Isn't that incredible? There it is. Pray for God's protection. You say, pastor, how simplistic could they be?

Pray for God's protection. Peter put it like this in 1 Peter 1. He said, we must not only guard the gospel, but we are shielded by God's power. There is a garrison that is placed around about us. We are completely overtaken by God's armaments, by God's battlements.

God has drawn the battle station. And he says, if you want to handle the enemy in your life, pray for God's protection. Do we really pray for our children? Do we really pray for one another? Number four, take practical action.

Take practical action. The fourth principle on how to handle the enemy. I want to look at the second part of verse 9. You see, they didn't just stop at prayer. I call that the God bless you, my brother syndrome. I picked that up when I was at seminary in New Orleans.

We were all so good. We used to walk around those hallowed halls and we would hear about needs and we would say, well, God bless you, my brother. Now folks, I believe in the power of prayer. I believe we should pray.

I believe we need to be in the forefront of prayer, but sometimes we've got to put our prayer into action. You see, it's no good just for the church to talk about moral decay. We've got to do something about moral decay. It's no good for us to just get up, my friend and say, God's word says that abortion is an abomination in the nostril of God. We've got to do something about it. It's no good getting up and saying that the world is in such trouble and that we need to give to our people a haven of rest and a fellowship of encouragement. We've got to do something about it. You see, they took practical action.

Look what happened. Verse nine, but we prayed to our God and posted a God how often? Day and night to meet this threat. Many times in my own life, I've kicked back in my proverbial lazy boy chair and I've said, phew, I've done it. I've arrived, it's over. I'm everywhere that God wants me to be, doing everything God wants me to do.

There's nothing else that I need to do. And God sits there and says, mm-hmm. You see friends, we're engaged in warfare. The enemy is all around us.

He's trying to break us down. Take practical action. Let me give you five points to consider in practical action. Number one, be expectant.

It's going to happen. Number two, be alert. Open your eyes. Peter put it like this. He said, be sober and be vigilant. Now that word vigilant there again in typical Peter metaphoric expression is a military metaphor. He's talking about standing on God. He is talking about guarding the garrison of God. He's talking about being a watchman, if you please. Be sober and be vigilant.

Why? Because the devil is as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour and the emphasis shatters upon the seeking part. In other words, he's on the prowl. He's everywhere all the time, looking, waiting, wanting. His stomach is groaning and growling. He wants you.

He wants you. Be expectant, be alert, be prepared in the third place. I love the Boy Scouts. Proud of all the Scouts in our congregation, Boy Cubs.

It's unbelievable. One of the things that the Scouts believe in is being prepared. Be on the front line, get ready for action. Number four, be bold and unapologetic. If you're going to take practical action, you need to be bold and unapologetic. You see friends, what the world is looking for today are men and women of conviction.

Conviction is contagious. And if God has come upon your life and God has filled you with His Spirit, God has empowered you by His grace and through His Spirit to stand tall against the enemy that lurks around about and is within you. Be bold.

When that old enemy rears his head in your life, decapitate him. Do not tolerate unspiritual activity in your life. In your church, in your community, in anything that you're involved in.

Be bold and unapologetic about it. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. You know dads, maybe that's the biggest challenge for us dads, isn't it? There are not too many dads today who are willing to be bold and unapologetic about their conviction, about what God calls a father and a husband to be. I'm going to say this folks, without any apology, I believe that one of the reasons why everything's got so mixed up in our world today is because men have opted out of their God-called and God-given responsibilities.

Where are the men? I don't mind telling you this, that is one of the reasons why I thank God every day for our church. We've got a real problem in our church folks. When it comes to deacon election in this church, we've got 64 men who could easily be elected deacon. Our problem is not to find someone who is spiritually qualified, it's to know how in the world we could ever leave somebody off. What a wonderful problem in the church. What a wonderful problem. Everywhere I go, I'm preaching tomorrow at the South Carolina State Evangelism Conference here at Taylor's First Baptist.

Everywhere I go, I talk about the men of this church and that is not to the exclusion of the godly women, the incredible women that we have in this church who serve the Lord Jesus Christ with their whole heart. But I'm going to say to you, my friend, that the Bible says if we're ever going to handle the enemy, we must be prepared to take practical action. Be expectant, be alert, be prepared, be bold. And then finally, be prayerful. We looked at that in the third principle, be prayerful. It comes back to that point, be prayerful. What is it that you're looking at?

Where is it that you're going? What is causing your marriage to take such strain? Be prayerful about it.

One of the things that my wife and I do from time to time, and we don't do this nearly often enough, every now and again, we call our family in for a family conference. You know why? Because I need it.

We all need it. Sometimes I find myself coming and going. I get so busy, I'm not at home, I'm away. I'm in meetings, I get back late at night and I don't see my children for days on end and I don't spend time with them. And eventually we start speaking to one another without respect and you can feel the tension and there's strain and everybody's tired and there's a rat race and you just wish the spring break would arrive so you could stop and you could get off the world just for one day and catch your breath. Call a family conference and take practical action.

You know what practical action is? We need to talk to each other with love. We need to spend more time together.

Dad needs to turn down some of those invitations and not feel that he's got to be at everything that ever goes on everywhere. We need to play more, Dad. Won't you come and play the ball with us? We need to love one another more. We need to be on the carpet playing with those crayons and making pictures with our sons and daughters. We need to be jumping on the trampoline and throwing a ball and throwing a Frisbee. We need to be barbecuing chicken in our backyards together and drinking coffee in our favorite cup of Diet Coke. We need to be doing everything that you could ever imagine but friend, it'll never happen.

You will never handle the enemy if you're not prepared to take practical action. Practical action. You need to put those things up.

Write out a list. Get your family together and say, what is it? What are we doing? What do we need to do?

How do we need to eliminate? We do that in our finances. All America's overdue.

We've all overpaid ourselves. Get your finances in hand. Find out what's going out, what's coming in, what you can cut out, how you can get the books balanced again. We do it as churches and God blesses us.

We need to do it in our homes. Take practical action. Number five, accept your God-given assignment. Accept your God-given assignment. Chapter six and verse 11, a remarkable passage. In verse 10, the Bible says in the middle, He said, let us meet in the house of God inside the temple. Let us close the temple doors because men are coming to kill you.

By night, they are coming to kill you. But I said in verse 11, should a man like me run away or should one like me go into the temple to save his life, I will not go. Here's a man who is willing to accept his God-given assignment.

What is your God-given assignment? Do you know the spiritual dropout rate in America is alarming. Do you know how many people walk the aisles of God's church and from Sunday afternoon, God never smells them for dust? Do you know how many people there are that come to church on a Sunday morning and for the rest of the week, God doesn't smell them for dust? Do you know how many people make resolutions in marriage retreats and renewals?

Do you know how many people turn over a new leaf at the beginning of the new year, but they are not willing to accept their God-given assignments? Marriage is one of those. Marriage is not an option. You don't just opt out of it whenever you feel like it. You don't just break your God-given covenant whenever you feel like it.

You don't just announce one day I don't love you anymore just whenever you feel like it. It is a commitment of vows before God. Are you willing to accept your God-given assignment? That's why there's so many children distraught today because Dad just upped and left.

We're living in a world today, folks, where nobody wants to talk about it. Are you willing to accept your God-given assignment? Number six, face the enemy head on. Chapter four and verse 23, we read about it.

Each had his weapon even when he went for water. Face the enemy head on. Call a spade a spade. Say, this is what is happening. This is why it's happening. This is what I'm going to do with God's help. I am resolved today. This is what God is telling me to do.

I'm going to do it. And watch what God will do with your life. And then finally, advance in victory. Chapter four and verse 20, my favorite part, the seventh principle, advance in victory. Our God will fight for us. Oh, I love that part as a minister.

You know why? Because every time, every time I see a struggle with the enemy, I'm able to say before I even know what the struggle is, you can advance in victory. The victory is yours. The battle has been won.

Yes, Jesus Christ has conquered even death. There is hope for your marriage. There's hope for your family. There's hope for your church. There's hope for you. You don't have to fight.

You can advance in victory. Would you pray with me this morning? What a wonderful wrap up to these three days of knowing how to handle the enemy. Please know that though our broadcasts are coming to a close, we're still available to pray with you and for you anytime at 866-899-9673. And before we get away, closing thoughts from Dr. Don Wilton. Are you ready to give your heart and life to the Lord Jesus Christ?

I'm so happy to hear that. Why don't you pray this prayer with me today? Dear God, I know that you love me very, very much. And I know that the Lord Jesus Christ came and died on a cross so that I might be forgiven of my sin. Today, I repent of my sin.

I confess my sin to you. And I invite you to come into my heart and into my life, I pray. In Jesus' name I pray. If you prayed that prayer, let me be the first one to welcome you to the family of God. This is wonderful. I hope that you know how much I'm going to be praying for you and how very important this is for me.

Call us so that we can talk to you and connect you in the right place so you can begin this wonderful journey. You know, before we go today, what a day of worship we've had. You know, you and I have in the middle of our hearts our beloved nation, don't we, how much I love America.

I'm so proud to be an American. You know, this broadcast is seen by so many of our armed forces across the world. And we hear from many, many of them, and we love them, we admire them, we respect them. They are our real heroes. And I want you to join with me as we are praying for them, that God would protect them and their families and loved ones. Let's do that right now, shall we, just before we go? Why don't you join with me? Lord Jesus, I'm joining with thousands of people right now and praying for our members, our brave, brave members of our community and our world who are in uniform.

Many are overseas in strange and difficult places, families left behind. Lord Jesus, bless them, keep your hand upon them in every way, in Jesus' name, Amen. I'm convinced that all of us have been changed by the teaching of God's Word, especially with regard to facing the enemy, the devil, and knowing that Jesus is the victor.

But some of you, moments ago, were praying along with Dr. Wilton to give your life to Christ or rededicate your life. And if so, Dr. Wilton has resources he wants to put in your hands for free if you'll call us at 866-899-WORD. The number again is 866-899-9673, or you can meet us online at tewonline.org. That's tewonline.org. And while you're there, be sure to sign up for the daily Encouraging Word email from Dr. Don and take a look at all the great resources, including the new book called Saturdays with Billy with Dr. Billy Graham and Dr. Don Wilton. Again, it's all online at tewonline.org. The Encouraging Word