How You Win
I.
The faith fight is a real
fight-1 Timothy 6:12
A. The spiritual fight and
the faith fight has not been real to many people, but it is a real fight; We
are in a war
1.
The good faith fight is a
real fight, not imaginary and your faith is going to be challenged and tried
a. There is a real adversary that is doing everything
he can to get you to let go of your faith and you are going to experience real pressure in the form of thoughts
and feelings and through those your adversary is trying to move you off of your
faith
2.
If
nobody is going to get your faith, then you’re going to have to fight to keep
that from happening
a. You try to get the faith
out of us and you’re going to run into a fight; You try to get me to doubt God
and not trust God and I’m going into fight mode and I bristle and I take a
stand and turn into a wall
B. True spiritual warfare is
all about beliefs and your opponent is trying to get you to believe wrong
1.
Every attack the enemy
makes against us is to negatively affect your faith so that he can have an open
door to affect your life-1John5:4
2.
Every war is over control
and when the war is over the winner is the one who has control; The enemy controls
people through the mind; the mind is the door way to the heart and with the
heart man believes and if he can get down in there where you believe he’s got
you
a. Proverbs 23:7, 4:23,
Romans 8:5-6-If the enemy can get a man thinking wrong and believing wrong he
can influence that man; What if he can’t get him thinking wrong and believing
wrong? He’ll have no influence over that man
b. True spiritual warfare is a battle of beliefs and because
it’s a battle of beliefs it has to do with thoughts because that’s how you come
to believe something and the thought was revealed to you through words and
ideas
3.
Your beliefs govern
everything and that’s why the war is over what you believe
a. What we believe is the
biggest part of what we are and it governs every aspect of our lives and that’s
what the struggle in the Earth is over and that’s what the enemy and his evil
spirits are working night and day to do, is to prevent people from seeing the
light and believing the truth or get people who have seen the light and believe
it to turn loose of it – THAT IS TRUE SPIRITUAL WARFARE
b. The devil can’t make
people do anything, but when people come to believe these things, their beliefs
begin to govern every aspect of their lives and he can influence them through
that avenue
II.
Fighting the good fight
of faith is connected to laying hold of or possessing eternal life and anything
that falls under the scope of zoe-1Tim6:12
A. To take possession of
what God has given to you you’re going to have to fight the good fight of faith
and you don’t fight the good fight of faith you won’t possess what’s yours (Lay Hold-Take possession of)
1.
You
are called to fight the good fight of faith and you are called to possess what
God wants you to have; The children of Israel were called to possess that land
2.
There’s
some stuff you’re called to and some stuff calling you that to posses you have
to fight the good fight of faith
a. You’re not called to be
sick any more than you were called to be dead spiritually; you are called to
healing and healing is calling you, but to lay hold of it you’re going to have
to fight the good fight of faith
B. How do you fight of
faith-2 Corinthians 10:3-5, 1 Timothy 4:1
1.
1Tim4:1-If you give heed to wrong thoughts and don’t cast them
down, you will lose your faith and not possess what God promised to you
2.
2
Corinthians 10:3-5-The way you fight the good fight of faith is you cast down
every thought, feeling, suggestion that contradicts the truth and you don’t
ponder it, think on it, talk about it, but you resist it and if you do that you
won’t lose your faith and you’ll win the faith fight
3.
This is 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 is connected to you possessing
what God has promised you because if you ponder and think about and yield to
these wrong thoughts and feelings you will end up believing wrong, losing your
faith and you won’t possess what God promised to you
C. What God gives to you and
does for you is by grace and it is received through your faith (right believing, believing the truth)
1.
Romans
4:16, Ephesians 2:8, Romans 5:2-Faith
is what gives you access to God’s grace and to what God wants to give you by
grace
a. You don’t earn
it with your faith, you access it with your faith – No faith = No access
2.
2 Peter 1:4, Numbers 13:2-There
are things that God has give to you that are yours but you don’t see them or
have them naturally and yet they are yours and you couldn’t’ say they are not
yours because God has given them to you
a. God gave it to you when he said it, not when it showed up
1)
Genesis 1-God said it and it was
so and then He saw; it’s so the moment God said it
2)
When did Abraham become the Father of many nations? When God said it; He was the father of many nations long
before he was the father of many nations; When Abraham went to possess that
promise there was a fight waiting for him
3.
Faith is what gives you access to the things that are
yours
a. You’re not
earning it with your faith because you can’t earn something that already
belongs to you; You can’t earn what God already gave to you by grace; You can’t
earn something that’s yours – It already belongs to you
b. Romans 5:18, Titus 2:11-Salvation and righteousness has
been given to the sinner and they can’t earn it because God already gave it to
them and yet if they don’t access it with their faith they will die and go to
hell – Faith gives them access to it
1)
Healing, prosperity, peace, joy,
good relationships, money, protection is yours and you can’t earn it because
Jesus already earned it and gave it to you and it’s yours and it’s by grace,
but without faith you WILL NEVER access it – Faith gives you access
c. Faith doesn’t give you a right to it, Jesus gave you the
right to it when he gave it to you, faith gives you access to it
D. Anything that affects your faith will affect your access
to God’s grace and to what is already yours by grace
1.
If He can affect your faith he can hinder your access to
grace
a. If he can affect
your faith and get you believing lies he can keep you from possessing what’s
yours b/c faith is what gives you access
2.
One of the main ways our faith is affected is if we sit
there and ponder the lies of the wicked one, when we should cast them down
E. When you go to possess with your faith what God has given
to you by grace the enemy is going to try to affect your faith so you can’t
possess it and that’s where the fight comes in-1 Timothy 6:12
1.
Your fight is with the enemy who’s trying to deny you
access by affecting your faith by giving you thoughts and feelings contrary to
the truth
a. If you give heed to lies and don’t cast them down it’s
going to affect your faith and that’s how he defeats you-1 John 5:4
b. It’s not that God doesn’t
want to give you the victory, but if something affects your faith (like
yielding to these wrong thoughts) then it’s going to affect what God is able to
do for you by His grace
c. Jesus did the
work and it’s finished and it’s yours but that doesn’t mean the enemy is just
going let you possess what’s yours uncontested; he’s going to do everything he
can to affect your faith so that you can’t possess what’s yours
2.
God’s people aren’t possessing what’s there’s because
they are losing this fight, the faith fight
a. Whether or not you have victory is not just determined by
how you prayed, but how did you fight after your prayer was finished (“I did
believe I received when I prayed” – Yes but you’re losing the fight)
b. Some don’t know there is a fight, some don’t think you
have to fight, some don’t know how to fight, some are confused about what the
fight is, some don’t want to fight
III.
If you don’t win the faith fight by casting down and
resisting these wrong thoughts and feelings it is a certainty you will lose
your faith and you will not be able to access what God wants to give you by
grace-Numbers 13
A. Numbers 13-B/C they pondered the wrong thoughts they lost
their faith and lost the fight and never possessed what God promised to them
1.
2-God gave them the land by grace
– This is the truth; 28-The strong people, the walled cities, and the
giants told them it wasn’t their land – This is a lie; The issue now is what will you ponder, what
will you entertain, what will you focus on and yield to and what will you
resist?
a. This issue right
here is bigger than we’ve known and bigger than we’ve made it out to be; What
will you heed?-Romans 8:5-6
2.
They knew what God said before
they left to spy out the land and they
choose to think on, attend to, and focus on something other than what
God said – They knew what God said
and they chose to think on something else and this was the beginning of
their destruction
a. Your mind is your mind and you can think on whatever you
choose to think on
b. They fixated on something other than the truth and this
is one of the main tactics of the enemy
3.
Somebody said unbelief kept them from possessing? True,
but why did they get into unbelief and lose their faith? Because they didn’t do
2 Corinthians 10:3-5, Hebrews 3:19
a. They were
heeding the wrong things, they were listening to and communing with a wrong
spirit, they were expressing thoughts and feelings when they should have been
resisting them and that is why they got off and into unbelief and lost their
faith-Num13:28-14:4
b. What they are seeing is real, what they are feeling is
real, the thoughts they are having are real, but all those thoughts and
feelings are exalting themselves against the truth of God so they need to be
cast down and not expressed
4.
They believe they can’t go in and they believe it’s
because of the giants and the walls and they believe they’d be better off in
Egypt and all this that they are believing is lies and they are deceived and in
the dark
a. This is how you
end up deceived and in the dark and believing wrong and thinking wrong because
you yielded to a thought you should have resisted, you considered something you
shouldn’t have considered, you paid attention to something you should have paid
no attention to at all
B. The way that you win is you stick with the truth and cast
down every falsehood
1.
Joshua and Caleb certainly had
similar thoughts and feelings, but they cast them down and that’s why they
didn’t lose their faith and that’s why they didn’t lose the faith fight and
that’s why they possessed what God promised them
2.
They are not deceived, they are
not in the dark, they believe the truth, they have light and it made them
mighty
a. The enemy can’t deceive and get them to believe they
can’t possess it because they won’t listen to one thing he says
b. The way that you win is you see a negative report, you
have a negative thought or feeling and you don’t pay any attention to it, you
just cast it down and fight the good fight of faith-2 Corinthians 4:18
3.
Joshua 14:10-12-As the Lord has said-40 years later and
he’s still stuck on what the Lord said to him
a. This is how you get in, this is how you lay hold, you
fight the good fight of faith
C. Romans 4:16-21-It’s
impossible to win the fight of faith and not let go of your faith when think
on, ponder and listen to the lies of the devil all day
1.
Why is he not staggering?
Why is he not wavering? Why is he not in unbelief? He staggered not because he
consider not, he was strong in faith because he considered not
a. The enemy is trying to
get him to believe wrong by getting him to consider something contrary to the
truth, but Abraham just won’t do it and that’s why he didn’t let go of his
faith and possessed what God promised him
b. Considering things contrary to the truth is going to eat away
at your faith until you no longer have any and that means you lose the faith
fight and don’t possess what God promised you
2.
If you are considering
stuff you shouldn’t be considering it shows you that your faith is weak
a. So the measure for your faith is not what you can quote like
a parrot or the face you can put on in front of your Christian friends, but
rather how much stuff did you consider and think about today that you shouldn’t
have
b. Strong faith won’t consider anything that contradicts the
Word
1)
2 Corinthians 4:18-Faith
doesn’t consider or pay attention to what it sees, how it feels, or anything
that contradicts the truth
3.
You get to this fully
persuaded faith place of total trust and total rest by considering not; You
consider not long enough and you’re going to get fully persuaded and that’s the
place where nothing moves you, no report, no thought, no feeling, no
circumstance, no devil
D. Numbers 13:31-33- They are looking at the giants and the
walls and the indwelt cities and they are making the fight natural, but it’s
not natural it’s spiritual and they are losing the faith fight and that’s the
only fight that matters – IT’S ABOUT FAITH-1 Timothy 6:12, 2 Corinthians
10:3-5
1.
The fight is not natural, it’s
spiritual and it’s a faith fight and the fight is all about you staying in
faith and believing right when the enemy is trying to get you to let go of your
faith and believe wrong
a. It’s not a circumstance fight, you’re not fighting
sickness, you’re not fighting lack Jesus gave you victory over those things and
your fight is not natural and your weapons are not carnal; the fight you’re in
is the fight to hold onto your faith and retain your faith and believe right
and believe the truth no matter what happens and if you’re doing that you’re
winning the fight no matter what the circumstances say
b. People have gotten the idea that they are responsible for
taking their faith and making their healing come to pass or making the money
show up, but that would make the fight natural and not spiritual
2.
It’s about your faith so
don’t make it about circumstances (that would be warring after the flesh)
a. The pressure and the
opposition you experience is not about circumstances and negative situations, it’s
about your faith and the question is what affect did those natural things have
on your faith?
b. It’s easy to be fixate on
what’s going on in this natural realm and think you’re fighting a bunch of
stuff that’s natural and if you’re doing that you’re not fighting a faith fight
c. You don’t need to be
fixated on the results, the circumstances, the situation but instead you need
to be fixated on your faith; Your faith is the only thing that matters
3.
The most important thing is not the result, the most
important thing is “are you winning the fight?” and many aren’t getting the
results they believe they should because they are not winning the fight and
they’ve allowed things to affect their faith and get their faith
E. 14:1-They have no peace, no joy, their complaining, they
are angry and all these are signs that they are off and not believing the truth
1.
Some are lying to the themselves
about their own faith and they are saying, “I am in faith, I am believing,” all
the while they sit there and sulk in despair and toil in torment and have no
peace and no joy and the truth is they are not in faith and because you can’t
be in faith and hold onto your faith while you listen to the lies of the devil
all day-Psalm 16:11-It’s evident who you’ve been spending your time with
a. There’s joy and
peace in believing right and if you’ll pay attention to the warning signs
you’ll sense when you’re getting off and believing wrong; in situations where
you’ve lost your joy and have no peace and you’re frustrated and angry and
sorrowful, those are warning signs and they are letting you know you’re off,
you’re believing wrong, you’re thinking wrong, you’re losing the fight and you
need some light and truth and you need to begin to deal in light and truth-(Romans 15:13)
b. This is why you
have no access to what you know is yours and to what you know you should have
F. The ones who didn’t want to fight never possessed what
God promised – Everybody wants the promise land, but few want to fight
1.
Many Christians don’t want to fight; they want to possess
what’s theirs uncontested; They want to pray and they want it to manifest
instantly and when it doesn’t they go off the rails and get in fear and
unbelief and they don’t want to fight these thoughts, feelings and lies