Are you resisting the devil or are you assisting the devil thats our subject for the first three meetings and then I've got a little bit of a different direction with the last one but it will all tie in I'm going to talk with you this week about the devil because I feel like God wants me to and you know for some people that may be an unpleasant subject and you may think I don't want to talk about the devil well let me tell you something he is very interested in you and so maybe you should be a little more interested in him because he has all these strategies and well thought out plans and the worst thing we can do is be uninformed or ignore him I went to church for many many years probably at least 10 years on a regular basis Dave and I were pretty involved in church and I had a really good foundation about salvation but I have to tell you that after ten years of being in that church I never had a message preached about how we can have authority over the devil that we need to resist the enemy we need to rebuke the enemy as far as I was concerned I knew there was a devil but I didn't really know that he was the author of my problems I didn't know that he was the one who worked through my father as he sexually abused me when I was growing up I didn't know that he was the one that made my mother so pathetically afraid that she wouldn't confront the situation and it ended up costing her her mental health I would blame things on people sadly sometimes even on God but never really got to the real source and the Bible says that we war not against flesh and blood but I know we think people are all our problems but people certainly can be a problem but its the enemy working through people and so when we deal with just the people and we never get to the source of the problem the enemy loves that we war not with flesh and blood but with principalities and powers and wickedness in high places we need to learn how to deal with the enemy I don't think that we should go around with the devil on our mind all the time but I think that we also have to get stirred up every once and a while to realise that we have to have seasons in our life that come against him and that we really have to recognise when the enemy works and to do the thing that Jesus did and say get behind me satan I rebuke you satan your a liar heres the word if we are passive it will not stop the devil from being aggressive you have an enemy and he is not happy that you are making any attempt to delve God any time that you are ready to come up higher and be promoted to a new level in anything spiritually financially anything else I always say new level new devil you always get a different kind a of confrontation on every level that you come up to and I can be honest and tell you that its really not very possible for people to experience very much success as a believer if you don't know how to deal with your enemy amen and so some of you are like I was when I went to church all those years back I heard about the goodness of God but I didn't even really know that the devil was real I mean I just saw the devil as red pyjamas long pitch fork halloween character you know they sold halloween costumes dress up like the devil if you wanted to and I didn't get it I didn't really know you he was and you know when you are uninformed and you don't know what you are dealing with its easy to be defeated and so we can resist the devil but if we don't know who we are dealing with we can assist the devil and I want to make sure that I am not doing that and the people that I have the privilege of teaching are not doing that so first of all lets talk for a moment about why does trouble come in our lives I think we have always got that why question that is a question that will never stop being asked so I will talk to you about three reasons why trouble comes first of all we will in a fallen would and we often experience the fruit of the general curse that is in the world resulting from sin when we have trouble because we are in the world and its just out there there will be tribulation Jesus said first of all let me just say those are times when you don't need to bother trying to figure anything out we waste way to much of out time with the why God why...

• published: 24 Apr 2015
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