“Pulling Down of Strongholds” One Part Only

Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 885 -- taken from Closed Captioning Text

-- Brother Don Johnson: Praise the Lord! Wonderful worship service this morning. I had one thought and I just pray the Lord will help me get it out. I was thinking of our weapons. “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds”--strong holds.

I was thinking, in all of our lives the enemy has had strong holds, and in areas of our life he has strong holds now. But God wants us to be victorious over the enemy and he wants us to pull down these strong holds. And in connection with that I thought of the statement of Paul, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” If they’re strong holds then we need the strength of the Lord to pull them down, and our Lord is faithful. He’s present.

You know they’re a trouble to us--any weakness we have, and our Lord is an ever present help in time of trouble. He wants us to be victorious more than we do, and He wants us to receive and to be benefited by the blessings that He has for us. And the strong holds of the enemy... “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” There is strength in Christ to pull them down and I bless Him this morning. I’m thankful for what He’s doing.

You can look back in your life and you can see where the enemy has had a strong hold on your life and he doesn’t have it anymore. Why? The Lord has given you His word and the truth has dislodged the devil’s lie and taken it out and you’re freer now. And we’re gonna be more free as we keep looking to Him. Acknowledge the Lord. He is our strength and His joy that He’s given us, what He’s put before us, that’s our strength. Praise the Lord.

( congregational amens ).

-- Brother Phil Enlow: Well, praise God! While everyone else is looking to the Lord and finding their scriptures and thoughts let me just add a couple here. I appreciate this. I appreciate the Lord’s faithfulness to us. Let me just share a couple of scriptures that did come to me.

James, chapter 5 and beginning in verse 7, the Lord through James says this to us, “Be patient, then, brothers until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near. “ (NIV). And the thought I had is simply this--how patient the Lord is with us.

I think part of my problem, part of your problem perhaps is this--is that we get very impatient with ourselves. We get very impatient with our situation. We see needs and we say, oh my God. And it tends, instead of it causing us to hunker down and say, oh, God, your Word says this and I’m gonna stand fast and believe for the result. Instead we sort of throw up our hands. We give up in the face of the enemy.

And yet we need to understand that God’s way is not the way that often religion, some religion, promotes and that is the quick fix. You come down to the altar and man we’ll take it out, we’ll put it in. Now God can do unusual things. I’m not limiting what He can and will do in a given situation. But I think for the most part this is a pretty good picture of what the Lord is doing in us. We are a crop. He’s the farmer. He’s the one who has done the planting and He is the one who is absolutely in charge of the process and He has guaranteed the result.

( congregational amens ).

And you know we need to remember that. In the midst of our battles and in the midst of things that we face, in the midst of things that we confront in ourselves we need to remember that God is over all, that He is patient. He’s not upset when you and I are. When we’re ready to throw up our hands He doesn’t say, oh my God! What am I going to do?

( laughter ).

How am I going to get this done? Oh Lord here’s one over here. They’ve got a problem too and there’s millions of Christians and I...whoa... just throw up His hands. God can handle it.

( congregational amens ).

God can handle it. He’s the one who is in charge of this entire process. You know we need to be patient with ourselves. We need to be patient with one another. And we need to realize that a strong component of patience is endurance because we’re not living in a vacuum. We’re living with opposition that comes against us and with devils, like has been said, that have a hold and don’t want to give it up.

And we think if we can’t just make something just go away, well, oh my God, we’re just hopeless. You know the thing we need to do is to patiently take hold of the Word of God every single day and stand on it and be just as patient as the Lord is. Because He is the one who has said, we will get to the other side as has been said so many times.

( congregational amens ).

And so I believe with all my heart we need to be patient with ourselves and patient with one another and just keep our eyes fixed on what God has promised and realize that no matter what it is in your life or mine that has a hold on us we can overcome it. We absolutely can. God is the one who has told us this.

And I want to look at a scripture that we have quoted a number of times recently in different contexts in 1st Thessalonians chapter 4. And Paul is instructing the disciples or his... I’m sorry, the people to whom he was writing--the Thessalonicans. And in verse 3 he says this, “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified....”

Now he particularly points to sexual immorality here but the point is it says God’s will that you be sanctified, you be set apart. God has called us out of this world in order to change us and make us fit for another world to which we are not without that work. And he’s saying this is God’s will.

You know we could sort of come to feel like it’s all on me. I’ve somehow got to muster up the ability to do this. Oh my God...and we begin to focus so much on our part that we forget God’s part. And there’s gotta be a perfect balance there. We cannot sit back and say, well, God’s gonna do it all, nor can we say, oh God, I’m up against something I can’t possibly do. We’re gonna have to say God is working and because He’s working I can work.

( congregational amens ).

What does it say, “for it is God who works in you to will and to....” (NKJV). “...work out your salvation...” That’s work it out not for it, work it out--that what God has put within, “...work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you...”--What?--”...both to will and to do....”

You have a problem willing sometimes? Yeah, sometimes that’s our problem. We know we ought to do something we ought to change in a certain area and God has to work on our will before we can even get started. We’re not so sure we want to change. But God has promised to do that work in us. Praise God! What He wants to do is lift up our eyes from the problem and say, oh God I can, and Lord if I’m not willing right now I ask you to make me willing.

( congregational amens ).

Fulfill this promise Lord to me. I want to be what you want and I just feel so powerless against those things that have held me captive. Lord, help me. But he says, “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified....” (NIV). That should make a difference. It’s God’s will that you should be sanctified and you and you and you and me. It’s God’s will.

( congregational amens ).

Now if Satan says, well I’ve got a will too. It’s my will that they be unsanctified. Now whose will is stronger? If we have committed our lives and our hearts into the hands of a God who wills that we be sanctified folks, we have all that we need on our side.

( congregational amens ).

Everything that we need is on our side... “that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each one of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God.” See that’s the issue.

Now think about the Lord Jesus and the way in which God used Him in the world. He came into the world as a man. He was the Son of God before the foundation of the world. He was there. He was our creator, but here He came. He entered into His own creation as a man. He didn’t come in here with His divine power. That’s bad theology. He came as a man. He emptied Himself.

( congregational amens ).

But what He did was to yield His vessel to the Father, sanctified, holy. He said, Father I’m not here to live my own life. I’m not here to do my own thing. I’m here to yield my vessel so you can live in me. And that’s why in John 14 He was able to say to those who said, show us the Father. He said, the works that I do, “...the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.” (KJV).

And so the whole purpose of His vessel was for God to actually live in Him and speak and work and act in the world. Well our purpose for being here is exactly the same except that we are here to be vessels of the Lord Jesus Christ. We do not have the measure of the Spirit that He had nor the role that He had. He is the head. We are members of the body. But I tell you every Christian has Christ on the inside. Every one of us has a vessel that we could either yield to sin, we can either yield to the devil, we can either yield to our own will and our own way, or we can yield it to God.

( congregational amens ).

And the holds that Don was talking about are the things that are in our lives that prevent God from having the use of us. Jesus came to a point at the end of His life where He said the devil comes and he has nothing in me--no hold. There’s nothing that he can get a hold of in my life to compromise what it is that I’ve been called to do. I’m free to serve God because I’ve said no to the devil, I’ve said no to the power of sin.

That’s what God is wanting and working to accomplish in you and to accomplish in me. And I’ll tell you there is a light that exists in every one of our hearts that God is going to bring forth in a greater way. And my prayer often in our prayer meetings is, oh God, I see, in a measure at least, what lies ahead. I know from your Word and I know from what I see this world is getting darker and darker.

Men have had light in many cases--especially in this country. Men have had light and they’ve said, no we want to find another way to rule God out of our lives just like Peter said, they’re willfully ignorant that God once destroyed the world by a flood. They’re deliberately rejecting that knowledge. Why? Because of the implications that God judges sin.

( congregational amens ).

And if that’s true then what He says about the future is true then He is going to come and destroy this world by fire and we better live in the light of that. This world is rejecting that knowledge and it is turning to darkness in greater and greater measure. And God is wanting there to be a light in the earth. I want to be part of that. I want this church to be part of it. I want us to be full of the light of God and the life of God.

( congregational amens ).

May God set us free from the things that prevent that, that hinder that--that testimony that He would bring forth in us. I just praise God for His faithfulness and the vision that He would set before us. Down in verse 7 it says, “For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.” (NIV).

I’ll read a verse over in chapter 5 where Paul is giving all these instructions, many of which we read last week. But in verse 22 he says, “Avoid every kind of evil.” Then he says this, “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Now if we stopped it there we’d just say, oh my God, I can’t do that. Well you don’t stop there. Praise God! What does it say right after that? It says, “The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.”

( congregational amens ).

Do you have a problem being consistent in your life? Do you have a problem being absolutely faithful, never wavering, never varying from your purpose and from what you know is right or do we just kind of go like this so much of the time? God is wanting to bring us more into conformity where we’re able to be more faithful. But I tell you there is One who is faithful.

( congregational amens ).

He absolutely never varies from His purpose and from the stated plan that He has to bring us out of darkness into the light of His kingdom. He will do it.

( congregational amens ).

Boy you sign on for that and He will bring you through and sometimes we have to come through the hard way. Sometimes we get hard headed. We get stubborn but God’s just as stubborn.

( laughter ).

He’s a lot more stubborn. He’s stubborn in the best way. He is stubbornly adhering to the purpose that He declared in His Word and He will perform it. Folks, we can trust Him. When you feel overwhelmed by the things that have got a hold of you have the right to stand up and say, oh God, you promised, and I’m looking to you to give me a measure of victory today that I did not have yesterday.

( congregational amens ).

If I fall down to get up and say, it’s not hopeless. I can stand against this thing. You have given me the victory and I can walk in it. But I’m gonna come back to what I said in the beginning about God’s patience. God understands--God understands that these things many times take time and you go back to the way the Israelites conquered the land.

God did not give them the promised land all at once, did He? In fact, in one place He specifically said I don’t want you to conquer--I’m not gonna give it to you all at once lest the animals multiply and bad things happen. Basically you’re gonna have to conquer it little by little.

And that’s the way we’re going to be doing it in our lives. God wants to put the sword in our hands and teach us to raise that sword and to use it every single day just with consistency of faith, with a persevering spirit, and trusting God with the results. And when the results don’t come like that, like we want to see--great and mighty things happen, not to give up and say, oh well, God must not be gonna do this for me. There must be something wrong. You know a 1001 negative thoughts go through our heads. God is faithful to your soul and to your soul and to mine.

( congregational amens ).

What He has said He will do and I praise Him for it. “The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.” That’s my hope this morning. I’ll tell you, there’s many a time I look in the mirror and the devil would just whisper in my ear all these negative thoughts: “You’ll never change. This thing is...you’ve been like this all your life. Nothing is ever gonna change.” And I have to learn to look back at that ugly fellow in the mirror and say, devil, you are a liar.

( congregational amens ).

My God has promised and He’s patient with me. Look at how He puts up with me. He knows all these bad things and He loves me anyway.

( congregational amens ).

What right have I to get discouraged with the process? What right have I to look at the corn when it’s three inches and say, oh my God, we’re gonna starve.

( laughter ).

The farmer knows. He understands that the corn has to get past the point where it’s three inches high where it gets a little bit higher and a little bit higher. But he knows, he understands the whole picture and he says, soon there’s gonna be a field of corn, tassels waving in the wind, corn as high as an elephant’s eye as the old song goes. Praise God! I tell you God is on His throne this morning and I just praise Him. Let us be patient and persevering and look to God and trust Him to tear down these idols in our hearts.

( congregational amens ).

We can do it by God’s strength. We can’t by ourselves, but we can. Let’s not let the devil discourage us and get us way down where our chins drag on the curb. And we don’t have to be way up here in Never-Never Land either just awash with emotion. It’s not about that. The farmer doesn’t go out and just dance and live in a state of exhilaration over his crop either. He just knows the process. He says it’s coming. There it is. I see it. It’s just right on schedule. You know God has us on schedule too.

( congregational amens ).

Let’s just lift up our eyes unto Heaven and cooperate with the process and believe the promise of God. He is faithful who promised. He’s gonna do it. Praise God!

( congregational amens ).

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