Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 670 -- taken from Closed Captioning Text

-- Brother Phil Enlow: Good morning, everyone. I don't know that what I have is necessarily going to take a long time. You know, there's a part of me that would love to get up here and preach about all kinds of interesting subjects. And I think there's a part of us that would like to just hear all kinds of interesting subjects and almost turn this into a lecture. And I believe there's times for that sort of thing, but I believe most of the time that what the Lord is needing and desiring, rather, is something that will meet us where we're at--at our point of need in our daily walk.

And, I don't know about you...this has been one of my more embattled weeks in a long time. It seems like there's just been an assault--an onslaught of the enemy just oppressing and just making weak physically, first of all, and then just hammering away at my mind. I've had periods where a spirit of fear has tried to just really take hold and I've had to battle. And one or two of you probably experienced the same thing.

And, you know, I believe many times what we need is simply a word of encouragement and instruction and that's where I kind of feel like I am. So, I didn't have a thing. I was real tired last night. I just can't remember when I was so tired so I just finally gave up and went to bed. 'Tried to read my Bible and it was just like reading a Sears and Roebuck catalogue almost.

( laughter ).

Sometimes the Lord just doesn't open it up or doesn't really shine the light on anything. But, you know, we just have to wait on God and trust Him. He's still in control. We don't push buttons and make God jump to our...dance to our little tune. So anyway, I woke up this morning, though--I had a word come to my mind. It was 'season.' And I thought about places in the scriptures where that occurs, and it just seemed like it fit what the Lord was doing, I believe certainly in my life, but I believe in many of our lives.

There are...not all of life is the same, is it? It's foolish for us to expect it to be the same. If we were the ones designing the Christian life, I think our inclination would be to make it always spring, or whatever it is that we particularly like. If you happen to be a summer fan, you'd want it always be...you'd always want it to be a certain...just the right temperature.

You'd want there to be no conflict. We certainly would want to erect a barrier so that no storm could ever get in. We would always have plenty. We would always be comfortable and always be happy and singing and cheerful and joyful. That would be our concept of what the Christian life ought to be.

And you know, there's a lot of folks that try to present it that way. And, frankly, it's a false gospel. You hear people, "come to Jesus, He'll fill your life with peace and joy and happiness and singing all the time." Well, you know that's a half of the truth. Praise God! We can have all of those things, but most of the time, they exist in the middle of the storm and they exist without our having overwhelming emotions about it.

In fact, a lot of times--most of the time, I would say, our emotions are trying to go the other way and we're having to say, now wait a minute, come back here, Mr. Emotion. Settle down here. God's on the throne. We're gonna have to stand still. We're gonna have to praise God and look to Him in the face of all of this that is pulling us in the other direction, trying to make us feel a certain way.

And, if we're gonna preach the whole Gospel, we're gonna have to tell it all. Yeah, there's peace and there's joy and there' rest and there's hope in the Lord, and there's tribulation and there's pain and there's suffering and all kinds of things that are in the Lord.

( congregational amens ).

And it's all part of it. And that's what we need to be inviting people to come. It's not that...the Christian life is not about fixing up things in this life and smoothing 'em out and making 'em pleasant for us. The Christian life is about transforming us and fitting us for a life that's yet to come, that we have a hope because of what Christ has imparted to us. It's an ability to see. It's an ability to understand that is deep in our spirits. It's deeper than all of these other things that try to control us.

But I'll tell you when God opens up the reality of His kingdom, it enables us to give allegiance to that and to serve Him in spite of everything else that happens to come across our pathway. The Christian life is about giving up our life. It's about turning our allegiance over to Jesus Christ and serving Him. It's turning our back upon the world and its ways and its people. And we can expect that we're going to have a challenge to every step that we take toward the kingdom of God if we're gonna serve Him.

( congregational amens ).

And so we might just as well get out minds geared up to that fact. That's the way it's going to be. I'll tell you, I'm more and more persuaded, the more I observe what's going on and experience it, and the more I hear about things that are going on overseas, I'm here to tell you, we are badly spoiled in America--badly spoiled. We have no idea what it means to live for God. If you could just have some clue as to what some of our brothers and sisters are going through right now today, this morning in places in the world, you and I'd be ashamed--almost ashamed to call ourselves Christians.

( congregational amens ).

And yet, God has allowed us to live right here and right now. But I believe that God is answering the prayers of His people and there's two prayers that I believe that have gone up from this place. Lord, make us what You want us to be as a people. Is that right?

( congregational amens ).

Are there others who share that burden and that desire? Lord, do whatever it takes to make us into a testimony for Christ in this place, where we won't just come here and go through our little form and give out our little doctrines and our little traditions...but we're going to have life. We're going to have something that has the power to change people's hearts. Only God can do that. I don't have it.

( congregational amens ).

I don't' know the answers, do you? The only answer I know is to look to Him and to believe in His presence and His willingness to do what He has promised to do in our midst. Well, I believe it and I believe that God is likewise getting His people in America slowly and surely ready for the future that's going to be very different than we have ever known it.

And I don't want to just be an alarmist, but I believe it's the truth. I hear this not just from here. I hear in other places, people having the same sense and the same burden. And I believe it's a burden of God that God's people wake up and realize what kind of a world it is that we live in and be ready in our minds to serve Christ because it may well cost us our life to do it before it's over. But I'll tell you, we have a God who's going to be with us.

( congregational amens ).

Well, Praise God! I was thinking about a principle of science. How many of you know what equilibrium is? You know what that's talking about. What happens, for example, if you put an ice cube in a cup of coffee and you go away and you leave it there for a while? What happens?

-- Congregation: It melts.

-- Brother Phil Enlow: You're gonna get cold coffee. There's no more ice cube and there's no more hot coffee. What's done is everything has kind of tended toward the middle--it's tended toward an equilibrium point there and a stasis. And that's what all of our lives tend to be if God doesn't do something to intervene in them. We all would become lukewarm Christians.

What is a lukewarm Christian? A lukewarm Christian is somebody who has been affected by conditions round about, instead of having a furnace burning on the inside, instead of having a light and a lamp that does not...is not affected by what's round about, they've just kind of gone cold...you know the comforts of life and the luxuries.

It's interesting that the church that the Lord Jesus in the vision of John actually spoke to about that problem was a church that lived in a place that was very prosperous. It wasn't like many of the other churches where they were undergoing terrible persecution. Life was kind of easy. It sounds familiar, doesn't it? Relatively. I mean, you say, oh, you don't know what my life is like. Well, yeah, I do.

( laughing ).

Mine's like that too. We've got pressures of all kinds. But I'll tell you what, in terms of the difficulty--the earthly difficult circumstances of serving God, we don't know anything about that for the most part.

( congregational amens ).

But, you know I thought about that word 'season' and I thought about a passage that I know we've heard and heard read in Ecclesiastes, I believe it is, chapter 3. And we know that the Lord gave Solomon a great deal of wisdom. He was able to not only rule and have great power and wealth and privilege, but God gave him a mind to be able to observe what was going on around him in the earth and to kind of understand it. He just didn't sort of take it as, well that's the way it is. He began to think about it. He said, why is it this way? What's going on here? What's the pattern of life?

And so he said, "There is a time..."--chapter 3--"...for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent..." (NIV). Boy, some of could use that.

( laughter ).

"...And a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace." Has it been kind of a time for war in your life lately? But you know, I believe that God gave Solomon the wisdom to understand that there were in God's economy times and seasons, that there was a time when God allowed great blessings perhaps to flourish, but there was another time when the enemy was at the gates. And it wasn't a time to sit back. It was a time when they had to take up arms and fight that enemy.

And it wasn't always a time to harvest. It was a time to plant and work hard and understood that if it was the time to plant, you better get out there and plant. You couldn't just expect something to happen of itself.

God...and I see a greater sense, and I think you do too, in this in how it applies to our spiritual lives. Life is not always the same. And it's God who has fixed it that way. There are times and seasons in our spiritual lives and if we understand that, we can trust God more and understand and be better able to cooperate with Him in His purposes.

Now, I see many things in this, but particularly I see that God is a God of purpose. Whereas, by nature, we like things to sort of settle in to a comfortable place of equilibrium where everything is sort of the way we like it, and we're comfortable, God's saying, I don't want it that way. There are things here that need to change. We didn't make ourselves. Life does not revolve around you. Life does not revolve around me, and what I want.

God is the One who has made us and He has made us for a reason. He's made us for a purpose and particularly in the kind of a world that we live in that has basically turned its back upon God and rebelled against its Maker, God is in the process of calling a people out of that kind of a world, to be willing to serve Him and to give up their lives so that He can make us over into the image of His Son, because He has a plan for a different kind of a world that is yet to come. Well, praise God! That's what I'm looking for. That's what I desire.

But, oh, isn't it our nature to say, Lord, that's wonderful, now just make me comfortable and when it's time for that, that's great? But God's saying, no that's not the way it is. There's a purpose and there's a process in the reasons for the things that you live in this world to do, the things that you experience here...everything I have got is designed to prepare you for that.

Now nothing I'm saying this morning is new, but I believe it needs to be said and said clearly and freshly this morning. I believe I need it. I've had to remind myself time and time again this week, when the devil would come and I'd say, Lord, what's going on here? Why are you allowing the devil to attack me like this? Something is wrong if you're allowing the devil to attack. But you know, that's the thought that came to me this morning. There are times and seasons.

( congregational amens ).

What does that mean? That means that it's not always the time for peace. It's not always the time for things to go great in your life, the way you'd like them according to your flesh. Sometimes it's the season of war.

( congregational amens ).

God allows there to be warfare. God allows satanic spirits to attack our lives for a reason. And you know, we know from the scriptures that it has to be God who allows all of these things. We know the story of Job. Now, when the book of Job opens, we find a very rich man. He was called the greatest man in the east, his region of the world at the time. This was way, way back. This probably predates Abraham--sometime between the flood and Abraham.

But there's this great man who lived in the east. He was wealthy. He had seven sons and three daughters and they spent all their time having feasts in each other's houses. But his whole being was to serve God and to please Him and to do what's right and just to live for God.

And one day, Satan came before God and the Lord is the one who brought up Job to him. Satan didn't bring this up! The Lord did! He said, have you looked at my servant Job? Nobody like him in the earth. He does...he loves what's right. He hates what's evil. And the devil, of course, immediately says, yeah, you've put a hedge about him. I mean, get real, God. You put a hedge about him. He's serving You out of self-interest. You've blessed him. Why wouldn't he serve You?

And so, the Lord said, all right you can take everything that he has, but don't touch him. And we know what happened. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom! One by one, servants came running up to tell about some fresh disaster. Every type of flock he has was carried away. His sons and daughters were all together in a house, great windstorm came up...you know, the devil has a lot of power in this world. Do you understand that?

( congregational amens ).

Right here, we see an instance where the devil caused a violent windstorm. You know, the devil has a lot of power in the physical world. But he doesn't have more power than God does.

( congregational amens ).

If the devil's wind is allowed to blow, God has a reason and a purpose in it...to do us good and to help us. But in this instance, it was a tremendous trial to Job. And Job's reaction to suddenly losing everything, he said, "...Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return..." Blessed be...the Lord gives, the Lord takes away, "...blessed be the name of the LORD." (KJV). And he sinned not with his mouth. I'll tell you, I don't know if there's any one of us here right now, as much as we know, that has that kind of faith. Are you gonna stand up and say, wow, that's exactly how I'd react, no big deal. That was a big deal.

( congregational amens ).

This is a man who had a lot of faith in God and he didn't have the scriptures. He didn't have the Bible. He had a relationship with God and a faith toward Him. I'll tell you, it was something. And of course, the devil came back and the Lord drew his attention again. And He said, yeah, maybe you moved Me to let you take everything that he had and now look at him. He still hasn't sinned. He said, yeah, that's true, but every man--everybody will be willing to give everything else up as long as you don't touch them. Let me touch them--let me touch him and he'll curse you. And so the Lord said to the devil, yeah you can go ahead, but just don't take his life.

And so we know how the devil moved on him to create boils from the top of his--crown of his head to the sole of his feet. Have you ever had one? How about all over, all at the same time? I mean, this is not a small thing. And, of course, Job went through an awful lot as a result of this. He did some bitter complaining. He did some...went through a dark night of the soul. But I don't believe there was ever a time when he just absolutely turned--there was never a time when he turned his back on God.

And when God brought him through it...you know, that's the thing. We see the hand of God...the fact that there was a hedge about him. Do you understand that if you are a servant of God, if you're a child of God, there is a hedge about you?

( congregational amens ).

Do you think we could live in this kind of a world if God's hand was not around us? With the kind of spirits that are in control of this world and the way they feel about Jesus Christ. They hate Him with every ounce of their being. They hate you with every ounce of their being. That's the kind of world we live in, folks. We'd better get used to it. We better understand. But we have a God who has a hedge about us. There's nothing that can get through that hedge without His permission.

( congregational amens ).

How did the devil get to Peter when he denied the Lord? The Lord said "...Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat," didn't he? The devil had to get permission. But the Lord gave the devil permission to take Peter through a dark and a deep experience. But He prayed for him, didn't he?

( congregational amens ).

He said, "...I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not." Praise God! Praise God! Do you see how perfectly controlled everything is? If we could just see the other side of it, if we could see the hand of God in the seasons of our lives, we would understand that it doesn't matter whether we have money in the bank and everything is going great, or whether we're suffering in pain at any given point of our lives, God is in charge of the seasons of our lives.

I praise Him today because I just see His hand of mercy in me and in you and I know that there are things that I would never do if God did not put an enemy in my path facing me that I could not go on and serve God without dealing with that enemy. Is God putting things in your pathway that you just don't want to face? Is He touching things in your heart and your spirit and you say, oh God, I'm scared to death? Don't ever...I mean just get me to heaven, but don't ever make me face this. I just can't.

The fact of the matter is there's things in every one of our lives that we cannot face in our own strength. But oh, God wants us to face them with Him. And He will, many times, put us in places where we just have no idea that we can make it through that--no clue that we can get through that season! Oh God, I don't understand! You know, that was the thing. God didn't explain all this to Job.

( congregational amens ).

He left Job there to figure it out and not only that, he allowed some "comforters" there to explain it all to him who didn't have a clue what was going on. I mean, their concept of everything was that if you do right, God will bless you. If you do wrong, God will curse you. I mean a real simple, legalistic view of life--didn't allow for God to do anything like He was doing in the life of Job.

But was God's design against Job? Was God punishing Job? No! There was none of that in it. All of these things that the devil would tend to bring to our minds to try to explain what's happening to us...I'll tell you what, folks, we need to learn to quit trying to explain everything.

( congregational amens ).

You know, if there's something you and I need to know about our circumstances and we bring them to God, don't you think that He's able to communicate with us.

( congregational amens ).

Is He that unable or are we that dumb and stupid that He can't communicate with us in some way, if there's something we need to know? And if He doesn't, we need to just say, Lord, I rest in Your hands. And Lord, I'm not gonna try to dictate how long this season is gonna last. 'Cause that's another thing, we sort of say, yeah, it's a great season. I understand that my seasons are in His hand, but Lord, I sure wish this one would hurry up and get over with. I want to get back to one of those nice ones.

( laughter ).

One of those comfortable ones...you know, God is in charge. There's a scripture somewhere that says our times are in his hands. Well that's where they need to be, because if my times were in my hands, I'd make a royal mess of my life, a lot worse than I have. But, I'll tell you, the more we realize that God has...God will take us through seasons that we would not want to face, would never imagine that we could face, but He's gonna put us right in the middle of it anyway and we're gonna have to deal with it.

And He does it because He loves us and wants to teach us of His faithfulness. He wants us to know we can trust Him. He wants us to know that He's gonna bring us through whatever circumstance of life, whatever season He designs for us, we're gonna get through. It isn't always gonna be winter, it isn't always gonna be spring or summer or fall. It isn't always gonna be stormy. It isn't always gonna be battle. It isn't always gonna be any of these things. But, I'll tell you, we're gonna have to go through every kind of experience in life to prove and to know and to understand the faithfulness of our God.

( congregational amens ).

And we're gonna be a people who know our God and we're gonna be able to do whatever it is He puts in our pathway. I appreciate it. You know that's another thing about seasons. A season isn't forever, is it? Praise God! Whatever season you're going through right now...if things are going great, Praise God, it isn't always gonna be that way.

( laughter ).

That's not the way we think about it, is it? But you know, if you're going through a tough time right now, it isn't always--it is not always going to be that way. This whole life that we live in is so short--it's so short. Now, I'm not anywhere near as old as some of you, but I'm a lot older than most of you, I think. And I've lived long enough to know that it goes by awful quick--it goes by awful quick. Oh, you're young and you've got ideas about how you're gonna lick the world and do this and do that and do the other and the years whiz by and you look back...my God, I haven't done anything. What's going on?

( laughing ).

Life is almost over. Hey, wait a minute! Stop the world! I want to get off here. That's the way...I know you all feel that way at times, don't you? Does life kind of come at you a little too fast? Well, I'll tell you what, God knows how to change our seasons, because we need them to be changed. We need the opportunities to fight battles that we would never want to face.

I'll just use a scripture real briefly. Let someone carry this forward as the Lord desires. I know in chapter 42 or Psalm 42, I don't want to go through this whole thing, but I know David was in a deep place as he often was. There was a hunger, there was a thirst for God. Things weren't going very good. He was...tears were his food day and night. Men were saying, where is your God?

That's a tough place to be. Here you are in a place of leadership and everybody's saying, where's your God? Things are going terrible and nothing's happening, and they still look terrible. And he's having to stand there and take it and trust God.

He's pouring out his soul. He's remembering how things used to be so great. You see how the season's changed. Verse 5, "Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?" (NIV). Oh my, anybody here 'not' experience that? That's how we react when the wind changes and the sun goes behind the clouds and the rain comes out and the wind begins to blow. We get downcast. Oh, we're distressed. We're...something's wrong, oh God, something's wrong!

"Why are you downcast..." But David had enough presence of mind to notice that. He said, "Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?" Then he gives himself some mighty good advice, He says, "Put your hope in God..."

( congregational amens ).

"Put your hope in God..." He didn't say, I feel the power! I'm putting my hope in...no, he didn't say anything. He didn't feel anything. He was just exhorting his spirit to stand. You know 99 percent of the time that's what we need to learn to do, is just to stand in faith and trust God and wait for the season to change. Wait for His purpose to be fulfilled in our lives. That's what we need to do. Put your hope in God!

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