Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 651 -- taken from Closed Captioning Text

-- Brother Phil Enlow: All we...what we need to do is to cast our care upon Him. He cares for us. Whatever the circumstances--whether we have a lot or whether we have a little. Sometimes it's a lot worse to have a lot. The temptations are so great to just sit back and relax and coast because we have what this world thinks gives happiness and security. I'll tell you what--God is going to put His people in every kind of situation, as I said, to see what we will do. Will we seek the kingdom of God first? Or will we go in some other direction?

But you know, what Paul said to Timothy here, he says, "Fight the good fight of the faith...." (NIV). It says "of faith" in the King James. That's the one thing that takes...that puts a whole different complexion on this. Because a lot of times--I think most of the time, when we hear something like "fight the good fight of faith..." what we think of is effort. Oh, I've got to try harder. Oh, I've got to...you know, as though in our strength we have somehow got to expend human energy, human resources, human strength of will and courage, and all those things. We've got to somehow find that within ourselves and try harder to serve God. That's what keeps people out of the kingdom of God, because they're trying to be saved instead of letting God do it.

( congregational amens ).

That's what holds us back from making progress in God. And, I'll tell you, if that's your approach to serving God, you will wear yourself out mighty quick. And you will not succeed, nor will I. God has not called us to fight a fight of human effort. The fight is a fight of faith. Now what does that mean? That means that every circumstance that we face, whether it has to do with personal overcoming, whether it has to do with contending with matters of relationship, matters of finance, every kind of thing that we face, there is a constant whisper of the enemy in our ear. And always, he will paint a picture of unbelief, of darkness, of negative, of distraction, of everything that he could think of that would cause everyone of us to turn away from simply believing what God has said about the thing that we're dealing with.

( congregational amens ).

That's why it's a fight of faith. The question is not, are we gonna do this? The question is, are we gonna keep believing God?

( congregational amens ).

What was the issue in Abraham's life, when he waited 25 years for a son? Yes, there was a point in time when he tried to help God out and God had to just bypass all of that. But you know he was human. He's like us. But there was one defining characteristic of Abraham's life, and that's simply this--when God said something, Abraham believed Him.

( congregational amens ).

Now think about this. The very moment that God promised that through his seed He would bless multitudes of nations and all of the peoples of the world would be blessed through his seed, the scripture says, "...Abraham believed God..."--It also says--"...and God accounted to him for righteousness." It was accounted unto him for righteousness. Right there he was a righteous man. Was that the end of the story?

-- Congregation: No.

-- Brother Phil Enlow: No, it wasn't, because in between the promise that he believed and the fulfillment of that promise was...even the beginning of the fulfillment of that promise was 25 years of waiting and watching and hoping and wondering and coming to the place where it was biologically impossible.

God allowed Abraham's faith to be challenged. It was a fight, not to somehow work and make it happen, but to continue to keep his eye on the goal, continue to keep his eye on God and to say, I don't care what the devil says. God, You said this, and that's what I'm going by.

( congregational amens ).

That is the point at which Satan will attack us. You'll start to try and to move in a certain area and say, I'm gonna overcome. I'm gonna trust God. And the first thing you know, we're off in self-effort. We're off in believing more in the weakness and the problem than we do in the power and the grace of God to help us.

And as soon as we begin to shift the focus of our faith in that direction, we are operating in the devil's territory and we are simply walking in defeat--we--me. God is wanting to have a people who are willing and understand that if we're gonna have something in God, we will have to stand in the day of battle and simply believe God.

( congregational amens ).

But that's the wonderful thing. This is not a fight of human resource. This is a fight of faith. God is more than willing to give us the faith that we need, if we will open our ears, and believe what He has said. That is the victory.

( congregational amens ).

What's going on in your life right now? What's going on? What has God set before you and what are you doing about it? What is the devil saying about it? Where do you stand with respect to all that? Those are the questions. Are you weary in well doing? Has the devil sort of beat you down to the point where you're just sort of...? Your fight has gotten down to just sort of pawing the air in the general direction of the devil.

( laughter ).

And just saying, well I guess this is as far as God wants me to go. This is all right. I'll just settle right here. After all I'm saved. My sins have been forgiven. That's all there is to it. I'm just gonna...He doesn't expect me to do anything. I'll tell you what--every Christian in the pew is called to the same battle that Paul was talking about when he talked to Timothy. We, together, are called. This isn't just a job for the preacher. All of us together are called to fight the good fight of faith.

And I'll tell you this, most of the time we are so engaged in just trying to survive ourselves, that we hardly ever get to the point where we can fight for anybody else. You understand that God wants us to so rise above our own things, to so be able to commit our own needs and problems, and believe God with respect to our own needs, that we can actually begin to pray and to battle for somebody else. There are great battles being fought in lives right now. And God is wanting his people to rise up and say, we can win this battle, but we're gonna have to fight.

( congregational amens ).

We're gonna have to rise up and say, God, I don't know what your clock is. I don't know what your timetable is. But you are on the throne and I don't care what the devil says. Help me, Lord. Instead of, when I confront a battle, help me to escape the battle...that's what we say. That's what we want to do. Oh, Lord, make this awful battle go away. Why are you so mad at me?

Instead of saying that, we need to say, God, give me courage. Lord, I'm lacking here, but it's not that I want to run away and make this thing go away. You've called me to go this way. There's my objective right there, and here's the devil standing in my path trying to stop me from going that way. Am I going to keep my eye on that, or am I gonna get my eye on him and say, the heck with this, I'm quitting? Those are the battles that you and I fight every single day of our lives. And I'll tell you, God wants to encourage us this morning. I don't sense in my spirit any kind of rebuke on the part of the Lord. I sense a spirit of encouragement.

( congregational amens ).

I sense that He sees that many of us are battle weary. We see needs that seem to be so persistent. Just like Abraham saw the need, he didn't see the answers. He said, I heard the promises of God, but didn't see anything for 25 years. How many of you could hold onto God's promise for 25 years of absolute everything that's contrary to it? But you know, with God's help, we can.

( congregational amens ).

We can. It's not human strength. It's not anything. There's a power that is released as God's people will simply take God at His Word. That wonderful chorus the Lord gave Carolyn--"Take God At His Word." You believe God will honor a people who learn to do that, or do we just sing that? God wants us to have a confidence.

I'm gonna say it this way. God just doesn't want a people who believe "in" Him. I mean everybody here would profess to believe in Him. Yeah, I know God can do anything. God can do this. God can do that. God's a great God and all that. But we need to believe Him when He talks to us

( congregational amens ).

God, I believe with all my heart, will communicate with any heart that will listen. He has a way of bringing out of this Book a word that is relevant to your life, and your life, and my life when we need it if our ears are tuned. Then, we have something with which to fight. We can take God's Word and say, this is what God has said and I don't care what it looks like. Devil, I'm gonna stand here and I'm gonna trust God. I'm gonna be just foolish enough to believe what God said.

( congregational amens ).

Well that is foolish to the eyes of the world, but I'll tell you, God will honor that people. You look throughout all history-- you look through the history of this Book and you will see that God honors faith in His people. We are the ones on the stage. We are the ones who have to face the enemy every single day. Right now, we've got brothers and sisters who have been where we're at and a heck of a lot worse, who are on the other side shouting encouragements over the ramparts of Glory. And saying, oh, don't you give up on what God has set before you. It's worth everything.

( congregational amens ).

Don't you settle. Don't you just lay back and give in, in defeat and believe what the devil said. God has set before you wonderful things. Don't you camp on the east side of Jordan because crossing and fighting the giants is too hard. God has given you a glorious land and He wants you to possess it.

And I'll tell you like Caleb, who went at the age of whatever he was...great age anyway--120 years, was it? He was an old man anyway. Maybe it was 80. But whatever it was, Caleb was an old man when they went into the land. But there came a day when he went to Joshua and said, give me my mountain. You remember what Moses promised me way back when we went in as spies. He said the place that you put your foot on is yours. And so Joshua said, go for it. And that's in modern language obviously.

( laughter ).

But, of course the thing is, there were giants occupying that. I mean they just ignored the fact that there were giants living there, and as far as they were concerned, that was his. But it was his to take in battle, wasn't it?

( congregational amens ).

If we're going to have something worth sharing with others, if we're going to have enough of the Life of God in us to help somebody else, we're going to have to win that in the field of battle.

( congregational amens ).

That's the lesson of what Caleb learned. Because not only was he able to take for himself a wonderful place to live, he wound up being able to give springs of water to others who were in need. There was an ability because of the battles that he had fought. And I want every one of us, beginning with me, to remember that the battles we fought are not simply for us. We can never forget the simple fact that we have been made members one of another, and what we do affects everybody else.

( congregational amens ).

We have the privilege of fighting and winning battles in the spirit, in order that we might be able to be a channel of God's help for somebody else that's in need. You're not the only one in battle. Oh, the devil loves to make us feel like that. I'm being singled out. Oh, praise God. I'll tell you, God is just wanting to build in us the character.

I'm gonna read something that we just 'love' to hear--Romans chapter 5. We ought to love to hear it. Flesh doesn't love it much. "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace...." (NIV).

It certainly isn't by anything else, is it? We just came to the point where we abandoned every other hope and every other means of gaining access to God, and said, God, I'm just gonna have to believe You. I believe in what You did. I believe what You said about me as a sinner. I believe what You said about what Jesus did for me and I accept that that's enough...that I can have perfect peace with You, just simply by believing in your promise in the depths of my heart. Praise God!

Are you trying to be saved? Quit trying, and start trusting what God did through His Son. "...Through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God." So I tell you, the quality that God is wanting to build in us, is called hope. It's all summed up in that word. Hope is a confident expectation with regard to something that hasn't happened yet. It's about something that's yet to come.

And the hope is, that God is going to finish what He started, that one day we will stand with Him in a glorious new creation with perfect bodies, just like the one Jesus came forth from the tomb with. All the earthly things--all the terrible things about this world will be gone. We will not have the slightest impulse to sin or to be out of harmony with God or any of those things. All of that will be gone. Death, pain, suffering...all will be gone. Is that your hope this morning?

( congregational amens ).

Is that, you just sort of hope so, or do you have a confidence in God that will hold you in the time of storm? Because that's what we need. God is wanting to build that quality of hope, a confident expectation that cannot be deterred. No matter what the devil throws at it, I hope in God. I don't care what you say, devil. God is my rock. He's my refuge. He's my help and my hope.

( congregational amens ).

I believe He's gonna bring me through. Whatever I have to go through to get there, that's one thing. But I am going through! Praise God! Now here's the part that we all love. "Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings..."--Well, do we? May God help us. I believe we can do a whole lot more rejoicing than we do, if we see what God is accomplishing through it. Why?--"...Because we know that suffering produces perseverance...."

Do you need more perseverance in your life? You want to get rid of the quit? That's the problem. We all got so much quit in us, God is wanting to produce a quality that he calls perseverance...it's where we don't quit. You know we all admire the athlete, for example, who just somehow against all the odds, they come through because they never quit. They just know that they're gonna keep their eye on what they're trying to accomplish and they simply will not give up and quit. And we all stand back and cheer.

But God is wanting for you, and you, and you, and me to have that quality where we will not quit. Well there is no way that that quality can be formed in you and in me, except by facing things that, if we gave in to them, would cause us to quit. We're gonna have to go against the grain and against the tide, but in the process there is a spiritual quality that's formed in us that will enable us to stand the storm. And I'll tell you what, I'm so glad that when those times come, we don't have to stand in our own strength.

( congregational amens ).

God offers every resource, every grace that we need. But as long as we're believing in the storm more than we believe in the grace of God, we're gonna go down in defeat. If we will look upon--look at God and look at His promises and stand firm on that, God will hold us up. He'll bring you through things you thought you could never get through. Praise God. Is that true, Jack?

-- Brother Jack Bureau: Yes sir.

-- Brother Phil Enlow: Praise God. About a year ago right now, there was a real trial going on. Thank God. God is faithful!

( congregational amens ).

God is faithful. Praise the Lord. "...Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope." You see there's a progression here that leads right down to the thing that God wants to build in us most. There's no other way to get there. God just doesn't dump a bucket of hope in our hearts. Oh, we may start there. God certainly ministers a faith to get started and to commit our case into God's hands. But the practical hope that we need, that's able to stand in the storm, only comes from going through the storm, and learning from God.

I used this illustration in the past about those that have gone through things. I remember reading a military story one time. I don't know what it was, anyway it was just...there was an account of military commanders who noticed the difference in soldiers within their regiment. And as I recall, this was a particular time when there were some older men and some younger men. Now you would think the younger men are full of vim, vigor, and vitality, and they're the ones that are gonna rise up and go. But I'll tell you, what he discovered was, it was the older men who had been battle trained and battle scarred who had that quality of endurance. They were the ones you could count on in the storm. They were the ones who'd been there and done it. Praise God. I was going to say they had a t-shirt to prove it, but I won't say that.

( laughter ).

Praise God. God is wanting us to have been there and done that in our lives. So if you are facing a battle, God did not send you the battle to defeat you. He sent the battle because He wants to build hope in you.

( congregational amens ).

Do you want more hope? Do you want more strength? What if God calls on us to go through the difficulties that our brothers and sisters are experiencing in other parts of the world. My flesh doesn't want to go that way. I know yours doesn't either. I don't know what God has, but I know that God sees down the line. You know several times I found myself praying, I say, Lord You know what we're going to face. Individually, collectively, You know what we're going to face. Do in us what it takes to get us through that, Lord.

( congregational amens ).

Help us not to complain. Help us not to give up. Help us not to grow weary in well doing, but to continue to keep our eyes on You, continue to believe what You have said in Your Word, because Your Word will never fail.

( congregational amens ).

You will stand behind what You say. If we will stand on this ground and commit everything into the hands of the Lord and say, God help me in this thing to stand my ground, God will help us.

( congregational amens ).

Praise the Lord. I was just thinking a while ago about the words of an old hymn. I don't know how much of it I can quote. One verse was "Must I be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease, while others fought to win the prize and sailed thru bloody seas." And there's another verse that says, "Since I must fight, if I would win; increase my courage, Lord; I'll bear the toil, endure the pain, supported by Thy word."

That's the thing. That's what supports us. If we have to do it on our own, we are in a lot of trouble. But as long as we will take our stand like Abraham and like the heroes of faith of old, upon what God has said, God will bring us through, and He will accomplish in us what needs to be accomplished.

If you think coming to Christ is just a matter of believing in Jesus and sitting back and living your life and waiting for Jesus to come, you've got the wrong idea. God has called us to live for Him in this world. If that's all there was to it, then all you have to do is believe in Jesus and He'd take you on home. That'd be the end of it.

But God has left us here for a reason. He is wanting to form in us the character of His Son. How was the character of His Son formed? By the things that He suffered. Do you suppose it's gonna be different for us? Seems like we come back to this a lot, don't we? But I believe there's a need. I just sensed in my spirit last night in my own heart and in the hearts of others that there was a good deal of battle weariness going on.

And I believe God wants to encourage us to get our eyes refocused. Say, God, You are doing exactly what we have asked You to do. You say, I didn't ask for this? Have you ever asked God to help you to grow, to teach you the things you need to do, to work in your heart, to take you to higher ground? Yeah, you asked for it and so did I.

But God, in the face of that, give me the quality of spirit that will never back down, never change it's mind, never say, oops, I didn't count on this, I'm out of here, but rather will say, God, give me the courage to go ahead. Instead of backing off and running from a fight, give us what it takes to stand here and fight, because I don't have it, but I know that through your word, I can do all things. See, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." (KJV). Praise God!

And so it's in that spirit that Paul exhorted Timothy to fight the good fight. He knew he was in for a fight if he was going to serve God. So are you. But I'll tell you, it's a fight we can win because the Captain of our salvation is with us and will never forsake us. He's given us everything that we need to succeed as Christians. Not just to succeed in a sense of muddling through ourselves, but to actually be able, like Caleb, to conquer territory and have something for somebody else.

Don't you know that that's what God wants from His children? Isn't that what Jesus did? He accomplished everything that He did. All that He went through was not just so He could stand before his Father and say, I made it. It was so that He could give us life. He calls us to walk in the same way, to have that same kind of a love and a concern for each other and for others, that He has for us. May God help us to be willing to fight the good fight. Thank God it's of faith, and not of self-effort.

( congregational amens ).

And to be willing not to give up, but to trust God, to call out to Him for courage and strength when we need it, because He will give it. Praise God!

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