“Overcoming Satan's Strategies” Conclusion

Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 916 -- taken from Closed Captioning Text

-- Brother Phil Enlow: Every one of us has areas of our lives where it’s easy for us to be dismayed. We’ve been there too many times, and God is wanting us to rise above that and take courage. But you know something? There was a reason why God told Joshua to have courage. He wasn’t just telling him to have bravado. Do you know what bravado is? That’s when you pretend to have courage that you don’t really have. You’re just acting real big and tough. Like if you’re cornered in an alley and a bully’s there and you know that he can beat you up. You’re gonna act real tough like somebody’s about to arrive or you know Judo or you know something. But you’re acting real tough.

There’s animals in nature that do that. You’ve got certain kinds of fish that when they sense danger they just blow up and they expand like a balloon and make themselves look bigger and tougher than they really are. Well, that’s not what the Lord’s wanting us to have. This is not a false kind of bravado where we pretend that we’re strong. The fact is you and I are weak. Every spiritual battle we ever face we are insufficient. Part of winning the victory is recognizing that simple truth. You and I do not have what it takes to stand in this battle and that’s okay because God has the answer.

God had the answer for the Israelites. Joshua, don’t you be dismayed, you can take courage. Why? Because I’m going to be with you. You’re not going in there on your own strength, you’re going in there because I am going before you and with you and I’ll tell you--I will take what you do and it will do the job. Don’t you react with this dismay, this give-up kind of an attitude.

And I tell you the Lord used the first battle, didn’t He, to really set the tone and encourage him. What did they do in the first battle? They marched around the city. Isn’t that a great military strategy? You get the choir and you get all the people and you march around and you sing hymns or whatever all they did. They just marched and marched and marched and — there they go again.

The people of the city were just terrified. You know they’d heard what had happened in Egypt. They’d heard about the Lord opening the sea…opening the river before them. Boy, wouldn’t that put you in a mood to face a battle. You’re sitting in the city of Jerico, you’d heard what happened in Egypt--the greatest empire of its day, and all of a sudden there they are. They’re camped right over the other side of the river. And you say, at least this is flood time. Maybe that’ll hold ‘em off awhile. This is the time when all the rivers overflow their banks. How are they gonna get across? And all of a sudden God opens the way and they march through on dry ground. That would kind of take your courage away, wouldn’t it?

So there they are sitting there just waiting for the next thing to drop and instead of them rushing the walls and doing all this great stuff, and somehow with great military strategy winning the battle, God just knocks their walls down. I tell you we serve a mighty God and we need to never forget it. We need to never forget who our God is. When we allow ourselves to be dismayed at the face of anything that’s what we’re doing--we’re listening to the psychological warfare that the enemy mounts against us. We have no reason to be discouraged. We have no reason to be dismayed and to think that all is lost and our cause is hopeless.

What are we trusting in when we react that way? We’re thinking about us. We’re measuring the enemy and his strategy, his power, his ability to stick with what he’s doing, and our weakness. How many times has the devil pulled this one on you? Maybe he’s tempting you in some area and just pressing you with some weakness and you’re mounting a defense and you’re resisting--no, Satan, I won’t give in. I won’t give in. So he starts to work on your mind. You might as well give in. You know sooner or later you will. Now has anybody here not been through that--not heard that particular line? Sure, just go on and get it over with. What are you wasting all this energy for? You know sooner or later you’re gonna give in. You might just as well go ahead and get it over with then you can repent and go on. You think God maybe has better for us than that? You think He wants us to get beyond that?

( congregational amens ).

I know He does. I’m including myself in all of this. We are subject to the same things. We need to understand Satan’s strategies. We need to understand what we have in Christ that enables us to overcome and to begin to do what Peter is saying--how to resist him and all of that. ‘Course, he’s describing the imagery here of a lion--a roaring lion. What’s the effect…if an unsuspecting animal that the lion has his eyes on, suddenly…he’s just peaceful and everything’s great and the lion sort of creeps up a little bit and all of a sudden he roars. What’s the effect of the animal?

-- Congregation: Paralysis.

-- Brother Phil Enlow: Paralysis is a good word. Yes. Does the devil ever just sort of paralyze you by suddenly sneaking up? You thought everything was great then, wham, you’re gripped with fear. That is a common strategy of the enemy. You know the reaction of the animal oughta be, boom, I’m out of here, but there’s an instinctual reaction--I don’t know where that came from. I don’t know what to do. Oh my God. And in that moment of hesitation he’s a goner.

Well, I’ll tell you, God has not given us the spirit of fear. There is nothing the devil can throw at us that should cause us to be dismayed or to be filled with fear. We serve a mighty God and that God is for us. The devil’s strategy is to so capture your mind and to so separate you from Christ and His power and what He can do. He will do everything in his power to separate you. That’s what an animal does. You look at the nature films and you’ll see maybe a pack of lions--actually the lionesses are the ones who does the hunting here. But you’ll see them. They’ll be stalking a herd and you know they couldn’t just attack the herd. What they try to do is…maybe there’ll be a straggler or maybe they’ll just try to steer one off by itself. Well, once they’ve got it separated, you know it’s pretty easy. They’ve got a tremendous advantage.

The devil will…he’ll do that in so many ways. He will get you separated from the fellowship of others. You’d better beware if something is suddenly taking you in another direction when you’re away from the strength of being with the body of Christ. God has builded us together for a habitation of God by the Spirit--emphasis is together. But you know, you can be sitting right here and be all alone. I guarantee there’s people here this morning that feel that. You’re sitting right here, there’s people all around you, but you feel like you’re all alone. “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.”

( laughter ).

You know it isn’t funny if you’re the one in the trouble. You’re just feeling all alone. Oh my God, what am I gonna do? Nobody knows. Nobody understands and God’s mad at me. Something’s wrong, I just can’t find my way. I can’t feel it. I can’t… you know just can’t get out of this darkness that I feel like I’m in. Oh God, help us--help us to find the way back to believing in the One that we were singing about this morning, to understand how we stand and how we resist. Because whatever the form of psychological warfare--whether it’s the spirit of fear, or whether it’s the spirit of condemnation, whether it just the dismay at the overwhelming odds, we need to understand that we have a God with us.

You know there was an occasion when Hezekiah was doing all kinds of wonderful things and without him doing anything particular wrong, all of a sudden Sennacherib, a great king of Assyria, decided he was gonna attack. Well Sennacherib didn’t understand this and the Lord revealed this through Hezekiah…through Isaiah actually, the prophet. But the reason Sennacherib was so successful in his conquest of all the nations around there was because God had raised him up for that purpose at that time. There was some judgment. There was some straightening out that needed to happen and even though this man was a heathen, wicked man and didn’t understand what was going on, God was the one who raised him up.

He didn’t understand that and so he comes and stands outside the wall or his people and they start ridiculing the Jews and start all this psychological warfare. What are you trusting in Hezekiah for? Hasn’t he done away with the high places for this God? You’re trusting in this God. Don’t you know what I’ve done everywhere? All these nations one after another, they’ve trusted in their Gods and I came in and destroyed them. What in the world do you think you’re doing, you crazy people? You’re trusting in…you’re going to sit here and I’m gonna hem you in until you sit here and die. Quit all your trusting.

He even sent a letter, didn’t he? What did they do? They did the right thing--they took the letter and they came in and spread it out before the Lord. They said, Lord we know that you’re the one true God. They don’t understand that. You’re the one true God but Lord, here’s what they said. Wouldn’t that be a good thing if we took everything the devil said to the Lord and say, Lord, what about this? What does your Word say? So they took that to the Lord and they said Lord, give us wisdom here. Show us.

And Isaiah came up with a prophecy. The Lord said, don’t you worry about this. They’ve come against me and I’m going to take care of business. The Lord sent an angel and 185,000 men were killed during the night. They woke up and all of a sudden…well, nothing to do but to go home. Not only that, when he got there he went into the temple of his own gods there and one of his sons killed him. That was the end of him. I tell you we’ve got a God who can take care of business.

( congregational amens ).

We’ve got a God who can do what needs to be done. He can raise up. He can allow the devil to attack every one of us, but we don’t ever need to be dismayed or to give in to this stupid psychological warfare that is waged against us. We need to always go back to the foundation and recognize did Jesus conquer the devil or not?

( congregational amens ).

Do we believe that? But you know one of our problems is we can sit here where we can sort of feel safe. We’ve got our walls around us. We feel a little bit safe here and so we can assert, yes, I believe all these wonderful things. We’re sort of like David--when everything’s going right and we feel good and oh, isn’t God good, I’m full of confidence. But then tomorrow comes and the Lord sort of hides his face. Not that He’s gone anywhere mind you. He said he’d never leave us, but you can’t sense that. In your circumstances, in your feelings, it’s like He’s gone somewhere. He’s hiding his face.

Are we like David? Are we dismayed? Do we measure God’s faithfulness by the fluctuation in our emotions or do we say, God, you have not changed. Not only do I believe the facts of what you accomplished for me at the cross, here’s the missing step. Lord, I need to apprehend that for myself. I need to stand upon that, I need to reckon upon that. I need to act like it’s really true in my life so that we don’t come in here and say all kinds of brave things on Sunday and then go out into the…what we call the real world and suddenly it has no relevance to our lives. And we live as though it’s not true. In here we say it is. God wants us to get to the place where we learn step by step to reckon on the faithfulness of God and the truthfulness of what He did for us at the cross.

( congregational amens ).

I mentioned the situation of you being caught in a blind alley with a bully that can beat you up. You know we’d react all kinds of ways to that. Some would have the bravado, some would whine and beg and cry, and some might just light into him knowing it’s a hopeless battle but they’re going to put up a good front and good show. But wouldn’t it make a difference if you knew that standing right beside you was somebody a whole lot bigger than that bully. You can afford to do some brave talking then, couldn’t you?

( congregational amens ).

But you know we’ve got someone who’s promised never to leave us, never to forsake us. Does not the Word say, “…greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.” (KJV). I have to confess to being guilty here. I don’t always reckon on that. There’s times when I listen to the voice of the enemy and I act like it’s not true. Well, duh, that’s not a prescription for victory is it? Because what does Peter say? “Resist him…” doing what? “…standing firm in the faith...” (NIV).

Now faith is not just some sort of vague feeling that you conjure up—oh, I’m full of faith. I’m full of faith. I can move mountains. I can raise the dead. No, faith is not some kind of an exhilarating feeling. Faith is a dead reckoning that the Word of God is true. I tell you God watches over His Word, He says, to perform it. When you determine in your heart that you’re going to depend upon the truthfulness of something that God has said, God sees that. God is aware. You may not know it, but all heaven is aware when God’s children are in difficult circumstances and they are standing by faith and saying, God, I don’t see it. I don’t feel it. Nothing looks good, but I believe your Word is true. And if I go to my grave in this circumstance, your Word is still true and it’s gonna come out all right in the end. I cannot lose putting my trust in you. I will never be brought to shame because I have put my trust in you. Yeah, the world will ridicule that, but I’ll stand there before you one day and you’ll say, well done.

Does that mean well done that you’ve somehow mustered up great strength from your own resources? No, that’s the last thing. That’s the thing that trips us up. How many of our battles do we fight in our own strength or try to fight in our own strength? Is that working out good for anybody here? If you think it is, you haven’t got the picture yet. You haven’t seen any real battles. Folks, the biggest thing that I think God wants us to understand… one of the foundational things is not just that Christ is with us, that He has conquered the devil, but it’s the reality that we, without Him, can do nothing. The minute your natural response is--I’ll fight you to the end. Devil, I’ll resist you. The devil can wear you out, and me. But God is wanting to bring you and me to a place where we learn to reckon on the reality of Christ who lives inside.

( congregational amens ).

Does He? Is He there or not? Is He bigger than that bully? Oh yeah, He is. Can we do all things through the one who strengthens us? Yes, we can do it. You know it makes a whole lot of difference when the enemy comes and we’re able to stop and say, devil, I recognize what you’re trying to do here and you’re right--I’m weak. I can’t handle this. I’m not wise enough. I’m not strong enough. This temptation--I’m not strong enough. I know it. There’s no point in my pretending that I can somehow muster up the courage to do this. I can’t do it. It’s just not in me to do it.

But Lord, you have walked in my shoes and the shoes of every man that’s ever lived, and you’ve faced every temptation, and you’ve overcome everything, and you live in me. And so Lord, I yield. Instead of yielding to what the devil is telling me--instead of yielding to his lies and his psychological warfare, I yield myself to you in faith. Lord, help me. Help me with my will where my will is weak--and it’s weak in everyone of us in one area or another--every single one of us. Lord, I’m depending on you to strengthen my will, to help me here just to rely, to stand in faith. Lord, it’s not just me and a bunch of principles I’m trying to somehow bring to bear. It’s not a formula. It’s not anything. But it’s you, Lord. It’s you in me, Christ in me the hope of glory. Live in me Lord. The life I now live in the flesh I don’t live by… it’s not me anymore. “…I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

He lives in me. Do we really reckon on that as a fact or do we just assert that as a doctrine? God is wanting to teach us. Now maybe we’re way down here in kindergarten in this, but you know we can grow. We can learn. We can begin to take situations differently and say, Lord, you have shown me the way to victory. I need to yield myself in faith to the One who lives within me, and with Him who is my strength and my help. I can overcome this. I can stand. I can say no to the devil, and if I slip and I go back in the old pattern, I can get up again. I can look to you because you’ve paid it all.

( congregational amens ).

Boy, that’s a whole different way of victory. There’s no formulas to this. You know battles are different, situations are different, people are different. God has got an absolutely individualized program, if you wanna put it that way, for every single believer He brings out of sin and plants their feet in that place. On that day none of us can look at one another and say well, my experience should be like them or like them. They just prayed and it all went away. Well, Paul prayed and it didn’t all go away, did it? There’s a reason why that had to stay with him for a while. I don’t know how long that took place, but he had to contend with that on a daily basis and just look to God for strength.

Whatever the battle, whatever the season, God has given us what we need to stand and to be able to sing and to shout in the face of the enemy and say, devil, you have not won. You cannot win. I’m not trusting in what I am, or what I’ve done or what I can do. I have nothing. I declare bankruptcy in myself, but I declare that Jesus is Lord and He’s your Lord and He’s my Lord and I’m trusting and hoping in His strength today--this moment. Be in me Lord Jesus what I need to be this moment.

That’s a whole different way of facing battles but it’s the only one I know that works. I’ve fallen in the mud too many times trying it my way. It doesn’t work. But I tell you what we’ve got a Lord who is faithful and the Word says resist this devil “…standing firm in the faith....” Our job is to stand. If God’s given you ground, spiritually speaking, you have a right to it no matter what kind of psychological warfare the devil mounts. You have a right to stand there and say, this is mine, devil. I’m standing here and you’re the one who’s gonna quit the field.

Now whether he quits the field in five minutes or five years is not the issue. The issue is, this is mine. God has given this to me. Not only that, this might be new ground that God has given me the faith to reach out and He’s shown it to me in His Word. I have a right to this ground. Devil you have no right. That’s when you’ll fight the hottest battles many times is when you’re reaching for something new and the devil is upset enough that you’re even in Christ. He’s not going to give up, but if he can just kind of put you to sleep and say, well, this is good enough. Let’s just set up a little tent here and this is far enough spiritually. He’s made you ineffective--made us ineffective if he can accomplish that.

But oh, God, don’t you dare get up and wake up and rub your eyes and say, there’s new ground, and in God’s strength I’m gonna take that ground. Don’t you get dismayed when the devil fights you about that. He will. Expect that the devil… there are going to be seasons when you’re gonna have to do battle. What’s the point in saying I’m a soldier for Jesus, but I don’t ever expect to have a battle. That doesn’t make much sense does it? We are in a warfare. We’re gonna have battles until the day we turn up our toes or Jesus comes, but we have got someone on our side who has already won the victory.

( congregational amens ).

Praise God! Praise God for our Lord and for all He’s given us. So when He tells us to “…be self-controlled and alert…” we can be if we’re yielded to the Lord, if we’re looking to Him in faith--recognizing our inability but recognizing His perfect ability. Lord I can’t… help me to be alert. Show me when the devil’s doing something. Help me just to be in tune with you to the point where I can recognize what’s going on around me. Even if the devil does suddenly hit me up side the head with something I wasn’t expecting, help me not to react with dismay or with fear.

How many times were the children of Israel like we described in Hezekiah’s day? Certainly Jehoshaphat’s day was the same thing--an overwhelming army came up against them. They weren’t doing anything. They were just minding their own business and a great overwhelming force came against them. In both cases God gave a great victory because they put their trust in Him. Well, God is wanting to give us victories. How silly it is for us to sit here and say, I have the victory. I have the victory…without fighting battles. Victory doesn’t come except through battles. It’s the end result of a successful battle.

I tell you God is going to reveal things about Himself through our battles and our warfare that we couldn’t learn any other way. We’re going to discover that we have a God who’s faithful. We’re going to discover that His Word is true. That He…in fact we’re going to experience that He never leaves us nor forsakes us. Even when we don’t feel like it, God is going to prove Himself true to us and to the enemy and to the world.

Now it’s our nature to want to find the comfortable, easy, slip-and-slide-through way where we don’t ever have to deal with anything like that, but it isn’t that way. But God wants us to know that He will never leave us, never forsake us, that we have in Christ what we need. God help us to learn to lean upon Him--not just upon words, not upon ideas, not false bravado, but the reality that the Christ who lives in us is stronger and wiser and more powerful than anything the enemy can throw at us. As we reckon on His presence and yield ourselves to Him, we’re gonna find that we have power we didn’t have and we could never have in ourselves. And guess who’ll get the glory.

( congregational amens ).

The only one who deserves it--He will. God’s fixed it to where He’s gonna get the glory because He’s the only one that deserves it.

( congregational amens ).

Praise God! Praise God!

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