Somebody asked me recently, how do you know when the enemy is the one speaking to you? And here's the biblical answer. Here it is. Jesus said in John 10, my sheep recognize my voice and they know the difference between my voice and the voice of a fake shepherd. When the Holy Spirit, your real shepherd speaks, it's in the context of hope.
Welcome to the Summit Life podcast with JD Greer. I'm Molly Vitovich. Do you have a story of how this podcast and the ministry of Pastor JD has impacted your life? Can I boldly ask you, would you share it with us? You can call us at 866-335-5220 and follow the prompts to leave us a voice message or visit jdgreer.com to record a message right from your phone or computer.
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Now, today Pastor JD begins a short but powerful series on what scripture teaches about the realm of the demonic. We'll be in Luke chapter 11 today where Jesus unmasks the reality of Satan's attacks and accusations. And while that may sound heavy, here's the good news. As followers of Christ, we don't have to live in fear. There is real hope and real freedom when we surrender fully.
to the one who has already conquered this unseen enemy.
So let's join Pastor JD for today's message titled, The Demonic is Closer Than You Think. This weekend, if you got your Bibles, I want you to open them to Luke chapter. 11. Luke chapter 11. Actually, I'm going to read a few different passages here to begin.
And I got to start in Luke 11. I'm going to end there. If you are fast with your fingers, You can try to keep up with me. Just out of curiosity, by the way, how many of you grew up doing sword drills? Raise your hand.
You know what I'm talking about. How many of you have no idea what a sword drill is? Raise your hand. And that's about half and half when our youth pastor didn't know what else to do. Do you have any other games planned for youth nights?
We couldn't afford video games and pool tables like we have in our student areas now. No, we played games with toilet paper rolls or competed to see who could stuff the most marshmallows in our mouths and say, Chubby Bunny. Anybody remember that game? But when the youth pastor had forgotten the marshmallows and the toilet paper rolls, we did sword drills where he would basically call out a reference and everybody would try to find the reference. And if you found it first, you'd stand up and start reading it as loud as you could.
I don't like to brag, y'all, but I was the champ, okay? The other boys envied me, and the girls admired me. At least that's how I remember it. But, bottom line, If you were a sword drill champ, or a sword drill champ, you can probably keep up with me. Otherwise, just turn to Luke 11, hold your place there, and let me catch up to you in a minute, okay?
I want you to listen for a theme. in these verses ephesians 6 11, 12, 16. Put on the whole armor of God. that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
Above all, Take up the shield of faith by which you can extinguish all the flaming darts. of the evil one. Genesis 3:1.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God actually say? You shall not eat of any tree in the garden. Acts chapter 5, verse 1, but a member of the church. An involved member, a practicing member named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property.
And with his wife's knowledge, he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostles' feet, but claimed that he was giving the full sell of it. Verse 3, so Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself. part of the proceeds of the land. Ephesians 4, 26, be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger because if you do.
You're going to give a place. You're going to give an opportunity to the devil. Luke chapter 11, verse 14, where you are.
Now Jesus was casting out a demon that had made the man mute. When the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke. And the people marvel. Here is my point in reading all of those passages. There is simply no way.
For you to take the Bible seriously at all. and not see that the demonic is an active part. Of life. The Bible presents certain temptations for both believers and non-believers as demonically charged. Eve's deception in the Garden of Eden was led by that chief of all the demons, Satan.
Ananias and Sapphira lying to Peter. That is attributed to Satan's influence on them. Paul even identifies unforgiveness and bitterness as something that demons induce in your life to establish a presence there. We see from Luke chapter 11 that Jesus even attributed some physical maladies to demonic activity, not all of them. by any means, but some of them Jesus would go so far as to summarize his ministry.
Luke 4, quoting from the prophet Isaiah: My ministry, he says, is being sent to proclaim liberty to captives. And when Jesus says that, he's primarily talking about delivering spiritual captives from demonic stringholds. I mean, Jesus never picked up a sword or let a jail break. But he did routinely free people from spiritual captivity. Satan and his demons are called the gods of this age, the princes of the power of the air, the spirit that is at work, and the sons and daughters of disobedience, the authors of Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 to 2 Timothy, Hebrews, and Jude, all of them call the Christian life a struggle, warfare against evil forces.
Peter urges us to be on guard against the one who wages war against us and who seeks to devour our souls and the souls of our children and our families. The book of Revelation depicts all of history as a cosmic war between Satan and his demons and Jesus and the people of God. With the climatic scene of that final book being a decisive battle in which Jesus finally vanquishes them forever.
So here is the question. If they are this dominant a theme in your Bible. How much do you consider these kinds of spiritual forces in your life? When is the last time you actually seriously thought about it? You parents, when you thought about it in the lives of your kids.
What if this weekend, as I stood up here with the word of God open, more is happening in your heart and around you and in the heart of your child than what you brought in here? When was the last time you actually thought about his influence in your life? And I know, I know that when I start talking like this, I lose some of you right there. You're like, come on, man. I mean, in ancient times, they thought of demons as responsible for physical and psychological problems, but now we know that diseases have viral causes.
And emotional problems are often connected to trauma or physiological things. Believing in the demonic realm is superstitious, and archaic, and naive. And let me be clear. I am not disputing. That our problems have physical and environmental causes.
And Jesus would not dispute that claim either. The Bible does not pit the physical and the spiritual realms against each other. But here is what I'm asking you. When you consider the depth of evil in the world. Does it really make sense to think of it in exclusively physical terms?
I mean, how plausible is it, really? When you look at some of the worst genocides in world history, Cambodia. under Pol Pot, the viciousness of the French Revolution, what happened in China under Mao's a tongue or in Russia under Stalin, how much sense does it make to write all of that off as just ideology gone wrong? Or to think that at the root of the Holocaust was just a man with chemical imbalances and an inflated sense of national pride. or to consider that the savage attacks that Hamas went on a few weeks ago targeting children and babies.
Or to look at the brutishness and savage cruelty of the slave trade in an otherwise educated and enlightened country and say it was merely greed. In the face of enormous, heinous, senseless evil, most of us since. There's something dark and powerful going on here. And that is probably why the vast majority of people throughout history and the vast majority of people in the world today recognize the reality of supernatural spiritual forces at work. I mean, if you think, if you think that all the evil in the world can be explained away by merely physical factors, no offense, but maybe you're the naive one.
You're certainly in a very small subset of people in world history who actually thought that way. At the very least, it is clear that Jesus and the apostles saw the world this way. It's your choice whether or not you believe them. I'm just telling you, that's how they saw it. C.S.
Lewis famously said, You've probably heard this: humanity falls into two equal and opposite errors concerning the devil. Either they take him altogether too seriously. Or they do not take him seriously enough. Fair enough. But for us at the Summit Church, I think we are clearly in that latter category of not taking him seriously enough.
And I want to suggest. That that is due in part To a subtly wrong view of how we believe the demonic realm works. You see, when it comes to Christians in churches like ours, We think that when it comes to demons and their interaction in our lives, that there are only two categories. The first is what we typically call demon oppression. Which is demons working externally around us.
They can put temptations in front of you. Maybe they plant ideas in your heart. Occasionally, they can be behind some string of bad luck in your life. The only other category is possession for us, where a demon totally takes over somebody's body. He becomes in total control.
And we say, you say, yeah, but that can't happen to a Christian because A, Jesus owns the Christian, and B, the Holy Spirit lives in there, so no demon could ever totally possess a believer, and that is true. If you belong to Jesus, no demon could ever totally possess you. But I want to suggest that limiting our viewpoint to those two categories doesn't account for all that the Bible says about demonic forces in the life of the believer, much less the unbeliever. Did you know, for example, that the Bible never one time uses the word demon possession? Never uses that word.
That is a term that we have developed, but it's not in the Bible. The biblical word is demonized. And here's why I draw the distinction. Demonized is not nearly as all or nothing as possession implies. Possession means you belong to somebody.
And that's never going to be true of a Christian. But demonized is a little different.
So let me suggest a different paradigm besides just oppression or possession. That I think does a better job of depicting the activity of the demonic in our lives. I borrowed this from a great little book by Carl Payne called Spiritual Warfare that my dad asked me to read over the break. Here it is. Imagine you leased a large house from somebody.
They still own the house, but you lease it in its entirety. And because it's such a large house, there's a bunch of rooms that you're never going to be able to use, so you sublet them. And so you rent out several of those rooms to other tenants, but some of them turn out to be really bad tenants. They play music way too loud in their rooms. They have barking dogs.
They host heavy metal parties. There's even really awful. smells coming from their rooms and that makes you wonder what's going on in there. Like some of y'all, I watched that really disturbing special on Jeffrey Dahmer on Netflix, where the whole housing complex could smell what was going on in his room.
Now here was the thing. He did not own that room at all. He leased it. At any point, the owner could tell him to leave or the landlord could tell him to leave. And if that landlord said, hey, you got to get out, your lease is canceled.
And Jeffrey Dahmer said, by what authority are you telling me to leave? The landowner, the landlord would say, by the owner's authority, he doesn't want you here, and he owns the place. The Bible presents the demonic like that. If you are a believer, Jesus is the owner of your house. Owner of the house of your life.
But you, as the manager, follow this, you have the ability to sublet rooms. And when you entertain a sin or you believe a lie. You are allowing demons to inhabit that part of your house. They move into that part of your life and they can bring all kinds of destruction with them and destruction that affects not only that part of the house, but the whole thing. That is why Paul in Ephesians 4, that passage I read there, speaks of holding on to bitterness as giving a place to the devil.
You're subletting a room. You're actually giving the demonic a place, and he's using that place. Place to bring other destruction. He uses that room to introduce other lives, to introduce darkness and confusion, sometimes psychological problems, other times, even physical sickness. But here's the thing.
That demon does not own the room, and you can say at any time in the name of the master, you can tell them to leave. But to do that, you got to take back whatever ground you have given them through unconfessed sin or believing a lie.
So let's call that third category not oppression or possession, but occupation. Oppression, that happens all the time. Total possession, that cannot happen to the believer. Partial occupation, that happens whenever you, believer, allow sin or lies into a part of your life.
So there's two questions I want to answer this morning. Number one, what does demonic activity in your life feel like? There's no Geiger counter. You can run over you and be like, is there something going on in here? We don't have those.
What's it feel like? And then number two, how do you rid yourself of it? How do you know if it's happening to you? And then how do you rid yourself of it if you think it might be going on? You ready?
Number one, what is demonic activity in your life? Feel like. First, let me be clear. It's almost never. Like what you see in the Exorcist kind of movies.
Where demons knock stuff over in your room. Why in the world they would be interested in doing that? I have no idea. Or you suddenly catch their mean, reddish eyes glaring at you in the mirror when you're home alone, and you turn on a light real fast, and boom, they're there, and they're gone because they didn't realize the light was coming on. No, no, no.
You're going to experience his activity in your life primarily through lies he gets you to believe, or temptations that become incredibly powerful and captivating in your life. At first, they do not feel evil, they feel pleasant. These things can lead to psychosis and physical maladies. I mean, we see some of that stuff in the Bible. But those are only the further stages of demonization.
It's not where it starts. Demonization starts with oppressive lies and invading temptations. Paul refers to those in Ephesians 6:16 as flaming darts.
Now that's very vivid imagery, isn't it? One of Rome's most feared weapons was the flaming dart. It was basically a long hollow javelin that was filled with fuel. and set ablaze before they launched it. Satan launches these fiery darts into your consciousness.
John Mark Comer says that a flaming dart is a thought with a will behind it. Not just a thought. But a thought that seems to have a driving will behind it. Have you ever had a sense of that happening to you? I mean, we all have stray, sinful, absurd thoughts.
Because we've got a sin nature. But has there ever been a thought that just seems to press its way into your consciousness that feels almost like you cannot control it? I pick up on it. When somebody believes something that just seems so absurd. It's really wrecking their life.
There's a voice that they just can't seem to shake. No matter how crazy it seems, no matter how many other people tell them it's not true, that voice says something like, you're ugly. You are so unattractive. And they're clearly not. Or you will never have any friends.
You're a failure. Maybe it's just growing sense of frustration. Nobody sees you. God's forgotten you. Everybody's forgotten you.
Nobody's concerned whether you live or die. Maybe that voice focuses on your relationship with God. My wife experienced it when she was in college as a voice that often whispered in her soul: you aren't one of the elect. You are not predestined, and that's why you always struggle in Christianity. You can pray and try to receive Christ all you want, but it's never going to work because you're not one of the elect.
Some of you experience it when you're a small group. And you can't shake that thought, you don't belong here. Whenever you speak, everybody else in the room thinks you're so dumb. You should just stay quiet. Better yet, don't come.
Some of you experienced it in your marriage as a voice whispering to you right now: your wife does not appreciate you, she never will. You're wrongly matched. Your husband doesn't understand you. I was listening to an interview with a Christian comedian John Chris recently, one of the funniest people out there. But a couple of years ago, you may know this, he had this big crash where it came out that he was living this double life involving substance abuse and engaging in all these destructive and hurtful behaviors.
Eventually that led him to depressive and suicidal thoughts. Got checked into rehab. He's out of rehab now and seemingly doing a lot better. And then in this interview, He was explaining what led him to that dark place. Not excusing what led him there, but explaining it.
And he talked about how at the Christian rehab facility, they helped him identify all these lies that he had started to believe in childhood that just consumed his life. And what was most interesting to me was when he said, I don't know why these things became so convincing to me, because I can see now that they weren't accurate. It all seems crazy now. What my parents were communicating was not what I was receiving. I was taking these random events and comments and weaving a narrative that said I was forgotten and I had no value unless I could make people like me through humor.
And that fear drove me to despair that led me to alcoholism and abuse and serious depression.
Now, I am not the referee of what is demonic and what is not, but that is what our enemy does. He drives destructive lies into our consciousness like fiery darts that just consume. Y'all the worst part of a flaming dart they say was what happened after it landed All this fuel would spread out, all this combustible stuff spreads out, and it starts a bunch of other new fires. until eventually everything in the whole house is burning. A demon gets you to believe this lie, which leads to other lies and other sins and other darkness that leads to more and more destruction.
Here's another one. I was listening to the testimony of a South Korean guy. Who recounted how he was living this rebellious. wandering state and he fell into a depression. He said one night I'm sitting here, one of my great-grandfathers appeared to me in a dream.
been dead many years. He appeared to me in a dream and told me that everybody would be better off if I was gone. And that God would reduce my time in hell by 50,000 years if I would just kill myself because of how much pain I would save everybody. That's my grandfather. He says, my great-grandfather.
I trusted him, and so I took a knife and I. tried to kill myself and he showed these scars that he had on his neck and all over his abdomen. Regis was doing what he thought was he was being told. He said, I know now. That that was a demon.
But it did not seem that way at the moment. It seemed right. It seemed compelling. It seemed like the only way out. Our enemy whispers lies in your life that give birth to other lies that drive you to despair.
And some of you are hearing those things right now. All week long, sometimes day and night, you hear things deep in your heart like: you're ugly, you're unattractive, nobody could love you, you don't have any friends, or you're a bad mom. You got no future? You'll never be saved. You're not savable.
You don't belong to this church. Everybody here at this church is looking at you. Get out of here now. All Christians are hypocrites. God's not real.
Jesus is a hoax. By the way, one of the things that makes demonic lies so difficult is that they usually have some truth in them. The best lies always do. But it's the narrative that the enemy spins around those things that is wrong.
Somebody asked me recently, how do you know when the enemy is the one speaking to you? For example, and I'll change the details of this, obviously, but I was talking with one lady. One time. And she said, I just can't escape the thought that I'm not a very good spouse, and that's why my husband. Is going to leave me and I'm going to end up alone.
And by the way, I knew this was untrue. I mean, she wasn't perfect, of course, but she was faithful and she was kind and she was supportive and she had a good husband. But that fear. That inability, her inability to escape from that oppressive thought led her to these deep insecurities and all these unhealthy choices. And I told her, you've got to recognize that those thoughts that you can't shake are, I believe, the fiery darts of the demonic.
She said, But how do I know that this feeling I have is not the Holy Spirit convicting me of being a bad spouse so that I'll become a better one? Maybe that's just the reality. Maybe I'm a bad spouse. And here's the biblical answer. Here it is.
Jesus said in John 10, my sheep recognize my voice, and they know the difference between my voice and the voice of a fake shepherd. When the Holy Spirit, your real shepherd, speaks, it's in the context of hope. Yes, he will convict you of sin, but when he does, it is redemptive. He identifies what he wants you to change. He gives you a plan to do it, and he assures you of his ability to accomplish it through your life.
His voice leads to clarity, love, and life. When one of the demonic realms speaks to you with a fiery dart, it is in the context of condemnation and despair. It is never clear what they want you to change. There is certainly no hope or no redemption in it. The voice just screams hopelessness and despair.
Think of it like a scene in a movie. Where things are happening on the screen. But the way you know what's really going down. Is by what the soundtrack is doing in the background. Man walks up to the door.
They put ominous music behind that scene. You're like, oh, this is going to be bad.
Somebody gonna die. Same scene. Same characters, same lighting. You put in triumphant, happy, bouncy music behind it. You know, something good or something funny is about to happen.
When our enemy speaks, it has the soundtrack of death and defeat and confusion and despair. When Jesus speaks, it is filled with invitation and clarity and love and hope. Any voice leading you to confusion and despair is your enemy's voice. Even if Even if it's using valid questions or pointing out true facts. For years, I had what I now recognize to be demonic forces whispering in my ear: you're not really saved.
I actually wrote a book about it. Stop asking Jesus into your heart. But the demon wasn't planning that one, right? But he kept telling me. You're not saved.
And I always thought it was the Holy Spirit warning me: you need to get saved, you're going to be lost. First time it was, by the way. Because that conviction led me to true repentance and faith. But after that, that voice in me did not deal with specific sins or move me to specific actions. It led me to confusion and despair.
I felt hopeless. I wanted to give up. I recognize now those were the flaming darts of the enemy. That is not the voice of my shepherd. My shepherd never leads to confusion and darkness.
He leads only to life. Even if Satan is pointing out true things in your life, if it's leading you to despair, recognize that as his voice and resist it. One of Satan's primary titles in the scriptures is accuser of the brethren. Which means he loves to remind you of your sin. or where people hurt you.
But he always does it in the context of despair. That's not your shepherd's voice. Friend, Satan's goal for you unequivocally is destruction. Jesus said his purpose was to kill, to steal, and to destroy. Any voice moving you that direction, I can assure you, is not Jesus'.
It is. Write this down. In your life, the voice of despair. is the voice of Satan. and never the voice of the Holy Spirit.
Which leads me to question two. How do we rid ourselves of the control of the demonic? Y'all, I love this next part of the message because it's. It's so simple, and it's really good news. What I'm about to say could set some of you free.
Forever. As disturbing as it is to think about the demonic. The demonic is the one thing that you don't have to be concerned about if you're ready to be serious about Jesus. Let's go back to Luke 11, where you should have been the whole time, where Jesus gives the clearest instructions in the Bible of how to fight against the demonic. He says verse 21 When a strong man fully arms Guards his own palace.
His goods are safe. But when one stronger than him Attacks him and overcomes him. He takes away his armor in which he trusted and divides his spoil. Makes sense, right? A strong man can only be overcome by a stronger man.
So you read this and you assume that you're the strong man. And the demon is the stronger man who attacks you and takes away your armor, right? Not exactly. Keep reading. Verse 24.
Jump there. When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, It passes through waterless places seeking rest, and finding none, it says, I will return to my house from which I came. And when it comes, it finds the house swept and put in order.
So here, the man is tired of all the mess, the uncleanness, the feelings of depression, the chaos, the addictions. That this unclean spirit is bringing into their lives, and so they drive them out. They read a bunch of books, they get rid of some bad habits, they get in some accountability relationships, they cut off bad influences, they turn over a new leaf, however, you want to think about it. Verse twenty-six.
Well then that unclean spirit goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself Now they enter. And now they all dwell there. And the last state of that person is worse than the first. Though you limit the effect of the demon for a while. Eventually, it comes back with seven of his friends, and you are powerless to resist them.
You could barely manage one, much less eight of them. And that seems kind of depressing, like it's saying that we'll never fully be able to withstand the demonic. But that's when you realize that we read the first part of the parable wrong. We're not the strong man who guards our house until another stronger than us attacks us and divides our spoil. No, the demon is the strong man, and Jesus is the stronger man.
So let me read that again, okay? Same verses.
Now, I want you to put the right characters in the right places. When a strong man fully armed, Guards his own palace, you. Whatever you've given to him. His goods are safe. But when one stronger than he Jesus attacks him and overcomes him.
He takes away his armor in which he trusted and divides his spoil. In this verse, and this is key: the demon's the strong man, he's the one taking up residence and holding somebody captive. The stronger man is Jesus, he overpowers Satan and drives him out. Who were you in that parable? You're the property they're fighting over.
So now put those stories together. When you drive a demon away, what is the only way to keep him out for good? Answer, you gotta let that room be occupied by the stronger man. That's why Jesus That's why Jesus said in the middle of this passage, verse 23: whoever is not with me is against me. In other words, if you haven't put that room under the authority of Jesus yet, it's just a cleaned-up room waiting on seven more demons to come back anytime they want.
There is no neutral when it comes to the lordship of Jesus. The room of your life that he's attacking is either a room fully submitted to Jesus, you've declared it to be for Jesus, or it is open to the occupation of the demonic. You see that? But the moment the stronger man takes possession of that room, demons cannot touch it. They got to flee.
That's why James says, resist the devil and he will flee from you. That verse always confused me. Because it sounded like I was saying, we could resist the demonic in our own strength. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Jesus' whole point in Luke 11 is that you can't do that.
After you resist him, he's just going to come back. But when you look at the verse in context, it says James 4:7, submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. That's exactly what Jesus is saying in Luke 11. Resist by surrendering fully to Jesus.
Give this room over to the lordship of Jesus, replacing the devil's lies with Jesus' truth. Because once you do that, the demon has to leave because the stronger man is now in control of that room. When I was a kid. When I was a kid, several of the boys in my neighborhood were older than me. And we used to all meet out to hang out together, but a couple of them were real.
They were real bullies, they were jerks. One of them was like about 16 when I was like 10. One day we had our BB guns. We're out, you know, hunting birds in the woods or whatever. Don't send me a note on that.
Rules were different back then. We're out with our BB guns, and this 16-year-old told me, convinced me, that you could shoot your foot with your BB gun, and you couldn't feel it through your shoe. He said, watch, and he shot his toes right where his toes were, shoes right where his toes were. And it didn't seem to hurt him at all. What I didn't know is that he'd curl his toes back.
When he did that, so I did it. And it sent me into convulsions of pain. Which is kind of funny now, and you could draw some conclusions about my general lack of intelligence back then, but. But that's just the kind of guys they were.
Well, one day we were all playing football in my yard, tackle football, and a few of the older boys were getting all pushy and mouthy and really taking advantage of. The younger kids. And I remember my dad just walked out on the porch. He didn't have to say A word. But at that moment, their terrorizing of me was done.
His presence there said, This is my house, and this is my yard, and that's my son, and you will not afflict him. That is what Jesus does when you surrender to Him. This is my child. This is my son. This is my daughter.
You resist him. By just letting the stronger man take over. And he flees. That's what James meant. Satan only has whatever power you give him.
He only occupies whatever ground you give him when you succumb to the temptation or you believe the lie. Listen, if you're a believer and you suspect demonic oppression or occupation in your life, you don't need an exorcist. Jesus has placed the power to drive the demonic away. He has put that into your hands through simple surrender and gospel faith. You just pray something like that in that moment where you feel oppressed or occupied.
You say, Jesus, I recognize, I recognize by the despair this creates in my heart that that flaming dart is from my enemy. Because if it was from you, it wouldn't be creating this kind of confusion in my heart, this kind of despair. And I don't even know how to answer his accusations. He says things that are true. He says things that make sense.
But I recognize in the despair and the doubt growing in my heart that this voice is not your voice. That's his voice.
So I counter his lies with your truth. That though my sins are as scarlet, you made them as white as snow. You put them as far away as the east is from the west. I am now fully loved and accepted by you. And there's nothing I could do that would make you love me and accept me more, and nothing I have done that makes you love me any less.
And boom, Jesus slams the door on Satan's face in that room. Then you say, I'm seated with you in the heavenly places. Every promise of God is for me is yes in Christ Jesus. You've given me a future and a hope before you, for me in the womb, you knew me and I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I've been created for good works.
And boom, Jesus slams the door on Satan's face in that room. And then you're like And then you're like, nothing can ever separate me from your love, neither height nor death, nor principality or power nor anything in all creation can separate me from your love. And as high as the heavens or above the earth, that's how great his love is for those who fear him. And boom, Jesus slams the door on Satan's face in that room. And then you're like, and my God shall supply all my need according to his riches in Christ Jesus.
So what am I worried about?
So I should be anxious for nothing, but in everything with prayer and thanksgiving, let my request be made known to God. And then the peace that passes all understanding will stand like a little sentry in front of my heart in Christ Jesus. I have nothing to do but stand and be still, for the Lord my God will fight for me. And boom, Jesus slams the door on Satan's face in that room. Or, whatever truth you need to believe, our God is a door-slamming God.
Praise God. If you are a believer, you have the authority to drive out Satan through surrender and faith. You don't need an exorcist. What you might need, however, is somebody to pray with you or counsel with you or help you identify the temptation or the lie. That's where prayer comes in.
Prayer doesn't increase your ability to drive out the demon. For a believer, you just need to surrender for that. What prayer does is give you the ability to discern where the enemy is at work. Mark 9, a man. brought his son who was afflicted by a demon that caused convulsions to Jesus disciples.
But the disciples couldn't cast out the demon.
So they brought the father and his son to Jesus, and Jesus cast the demon out. And after the incident was over, The disciples were like, hey, Jesus, why couldn't we drive him out? And Jesus told them.
Well, this kind can only come out by nothing but prayer.
Some manuscripts say end fasting. Prayer gives you the ability to discern the demonic stronghold and speak the right truth into a situation. And that's why it's helpful to pray with other spirit-filled people. They can help you identify what lie you're believing or what sin you're entertaining that has given Satan that ground in your life. You see, the demon's entry point in your life was a sin.
that you wouldn't confess. Or it was a lie. That you wouldn't stop believing.
Someone, listen, if we only wrestled against flesh and blood. Then maybe a good sermon.
Some humor, some engaging illustrations, some emotionally charged music. Maybe that's all you would need every week. But if we really wrestle against authorities and powers, it's going to take a lot more than that. These kinds of things come not out except by prayer. Spiritual problems need spiritual solutions.
And so I want to open up these. Altars again at all of our campuses because I know that some of you are dealing. With stuff, and you need to realize that there's a supernatural enemy behind those things. And his intentions for you are much worse than you realize. And you need a supernatural response.
Some of you have thoughts this morning that are filled with despair. Maybe I've verbalized it already. You're forgotten. You're unattractive. You're hopeless.
You can't be saved. You don't belong here. You don't have any friends. Nobody likes you. Nobody's interested in you.
Or maybe it's something else I haven't even mentioned, but that oppressive. Conviction is leading you away from God. It's leading you toward despair. I just want to tell you that is not the voice of my shepherd and it's not the voice of my savior. It is the voice of an enemy and it is focused on your destruction.
For some of you, there's a voice telling you the world would be better off without you. You just need to end it. Do a favor for everybody else and you. I don't care what form that voice takes. I don't care what evidence or logic that voice uses.
That is the voice of your enemy. Because the words of Jesus speak redemption and healing and life into the darkest situations. He would speak into graves and life came out of them. He doesn't speak into lives and send them into graves. In one of Jesus' most famous parables, he talked about a wandering son who ended up in a pig's thigh, the story of the prodigal son.
Eating with the pigs, and one day in his heart, the son basically. Here's a voice that says, come home. That was the voice of his heavenly father. But I have to think I have to think y'all that that young man was also hearing other voices Which are basically saying your dad would never want to see you. You shanked it.
He doesn't care. You belong with the pigs now. He's so focused on his other good son, he doesn't even think about you. All lies because the father stood there day by day by day looking after the place where his son had wandered to. Thank God the young man listened to the voice of the true shepherd, his father, telling him to come home and not the ones that were trying to kill him.
You got a choice. You got a choice of which voice speaking to you this weekend you're going to believe. Jesus, who speaks with redemption and hope, or the demonic that leads to destruction and despair. I'm gonna say it plain and simple.
Some of you are captives this weekend. For years, you have entertained lies the enemy has told you, some of them from your childhood. It's led you to addictions. Bitterness, fear, anxiety, manipulative behavior, unhealthy behavior, abuse, despair. Things that Jesus died to free you from.
He died on a cross to put away every bit of sin and darkness and despair and confusion that you brought into your life. I can assure you that If some voice is bringing those things back up, it's not him. It's time for you to slam that door and say, not today, Satan. I don't have time for your foolishness today. I need to spend some time here with a stronger man who's built this nice cozy fire, prepared a meal for me that he invites me to eat with him.
in the presence of my enemies. We'll continue this teaching series on the unseen enemy next time. During September, our featured resource, the Whole Disciple Journey Map, is a six-week study designed to help you live as a worshipper. family member, a servant, a steward, and a witness. The study concludes with you creating your own discipleship journey map, a tool to guide your continued growth.
Whether you're just starting your walk with Jesus or you've walked with Jesus for years, This resource will help you live as a whole disciple. We're excited about this brand new discipleship study and we'd love to send it to you with your gift to this ministry at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vitovich. See you next time. Today's program was produced and sponsored by Jiddy Greer Ministries.
