Betrayed by a friend & Make me a crisis man
Today's Gleanings from Medellin, Colombia
To be delivered from the foe you must know and face the foe. You must claim the efficacy of the blood of Christ and the power of His name. You must face the foe in the light of what you are in Christ and what He has done for you.
Merrill Frederick Unger,
What Demons Can Do to Saints (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 1991), 188.
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Believing the gospel and receiving salvation is the starting point of all deliverance. Being taken “out of Adam” and being placed “in Christ” is the only ground of rescue (Romans 6:1–11).
Merrill Frederick Unger,
What Demons Can Do to Saints (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 1991), 190.
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Serious and persistent unconfessed sin gives them the opportunity of digging in and fortifying themselves in the life of the sinning saint.
Merrill Frederick Unger,
What Demons Can Do to Saints (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 1991), 192.
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while there are many ways to pray, we ultimately must learn to pray intimately, as a little child talking to his or her father. We may begin with an outward petition, much as any person might when requesting something from a person of authority, but then we can move to the prayer of intimacy. Remember, by its very definition, prayer means to have intimate, face-to-face conversation with God.
Elmer L. Towns,
How to Pray: When You Don’t Know What to Say (Ventura, CA: Regal; Gospel Light, 2006), 32–33.
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the Bible clearly teaches that evil is neither an illusion nor natural. God’s original creation was holy and perfect and devoid of evil. Perfect God can create only perfection. Evil in the universe is the direct consequence of the sin of the angelic creature Lucifer; thus, evil and suffering are not normal but abnormal, introduced by the rebellious decision of the creature.
Robert Dean Jr. and Thomas Ice,
What the Bible Teaches about Spiritual Warfare (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2000), 40.
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Sin began not with an external act but with the internal decision of his soul. Five times Satan said, “I will.…” These statements reveal the essence of sin: the assertion of the creature’s right to self-determination, independence from God, or personal autonomy. This fact explains why the autonomous or independent use of reason, experience, or anything else is an expression of rebellion against God.
Robert Dean Jr. and Thomas Ice,
What the Bible Teaches about Spiritual Warfare (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2000), 46–47.
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Satan opposes God’s people in two ways. First, he brings charges against believers before God (Zech. 3:1; Rom. 8:33). Second, Satan accuses believers to their own conscience. His goal is to make us focus on our sin and failures and to get us wrapped up in our attempts to deal with it on our own. Self-absorption is the first step on the slippery slope of arrogance. By focusing on our failures, we forget that sin is no longer the issue for the believer.
Robert Dean Jr. and Thomas Ice,
What the Bible Teaches about Spiritual Warfare (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2000), 49.
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When we become absorbed with past failures in guilt and remorse, we are rejecting the grace of God and His promised forgiveness. By focusing on self, we follow Satan in his sin. Such self-absorption is the starting point for arrogance. We forget that for the Christian sin is no longer the issue; it is paid for by Christ. The issue is spiritual growth, advancing toward spiritual maturity, not self-flagellation over past failures (Phil. 3:13). No matter how heinous our offense, we still possess the imputed, perfect righteousness of Christ. God looks upon us as righteous because of the righteousness of Christ that has been given to us. To realize our forgiveness sets us free from debilitating guilt feelings and frees us to advance in our spiritual life.
Robert Dean Jr. and Thomas Ice,
What the Bible Teaches about Spiritual Warfare (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2000), 49.
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If you are a Christian, this passage means that when Satan seeks to accuse you, planting doubts in your mind because you have sinned or rebelled against God, you can stand firm on God’s promise that you have been clothed with the righteousness of Christ and that for His sake God has forgiven you. There is then no need to cave in to guilt or to a defeatist mentality; to do so is a denial of God’s promise that He cleanses us and forgives us of all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).
Robert Dean Jr. and Thomas Ice,
What the Bible Teaches about Spiritual Warfare (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2000), 50.
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The only way by which Christians can avoid the subtle deception of Satan is through a detailed knowledge of God’s Word.
Robert Dean Jr. and Thomas Ice,
What the Bible Teaches about Spiritual Warfare (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2000), 53.
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The point is that spiritual truth cannot be separated from physical truth. If we do not believe the Word of God when it speaks about history, geography, nature, and creation—things we can see and about which we can read—how can we trust it when it talks about things in the spiritual realm? The Bible is not true just when it speaks about matters of faith and practice, but it is true in everything it says. We must be careful not to fall into Satan’s trap of believing that God’s Word is only partially true.
Robert Dean Jr. and Thomas Ice,
What the Bible Teaches about Spiritual Warfare (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2000), 56.
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We must not overlook two critically important lessons. First, Satan’s skill at deception was so clever that people with no sin nature and who enjoyed an incredibly close relationship with God were deceived. They were tricked because they allowed Satan to direct their thinking away from God’s command and to entice them into dealing with him apart from the revealed Word of God. If we are to avoid the same snare, we who do have a sin nature must be even more armed with the Word of God and to ensure that we are using it accurately. Unfortunately, the superficial knowledge that most Christians have of God’s Word makes them easy marks for Satan’s deceptions.
Second, failure to rely solely on the sufficiency of God’s Word will always lead to disaster in spiritual warfare. God is a jealous God; He wants to be trusted alone. To rely on anything alongside the Word of God is to destroy its power in our lives. That is one reason why so many Christians today lead such ineffective Christian lives and struggle so much with sin. They are merging biblical teaching with self-help techniques, psychology, drugs, unbiblical teaching about demons and sin, etc. Only by understanding what God has revealed in His Word about the enemies facing us can we erect the defenses necessary to guard effectively against them.
Robert Dean Jr. and Thomas Ice,
What the Bible Teaches about Spiritual Warfare (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2000), 62.
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God will never cease to be what He is and who He is. Everything God says or does must be in accord with His faithfulness. He will always be true to Himself, to His works and to His creation.
God is His own standard.
A. W. Tozer and David E. Fessenden,
The Attributes of God: Deeper into the Father’s Heart, vol. 2 (Camp Hill, PA: WingSpread, 2001–), 164.
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Unbelief always says, “Somewhere else, but not here; some other time, but not now; some other people, but not us.” That’s unbelief.
A. W. Tozer and David E. Fessenden,
The Attributes of God: Deeper into the Father’s Heart, vol. 2 (Camp Hill, PA: WingSpread, 2001–), 172.
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It was a great day in my life when I believed God about this. I believe that though God may have to correct me and chasten me, He will never be angry with me again, for Jesus Christ’s sake, for His promises’ sake and for His faithfulness’ sake. He has sworn that He will not be wroth with me, nor rebuke me. “For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the LORD that hath mercy on thee” (54:10). That is His word to the anxious.
A. W. Tozer and David E. Fessenden,
The Attributes of God: Deeper into the Father’s Heart, vol. 2 (Camp Hill, PA: WingSpread, 2001–), 177–178.
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Meanwhile, behind the scenes, his old university friends, Palec and Stanislav, had betrayed Hus, writing accusations of heresy to the pope against him. Not long after Hus arrived in Constance, the trickery of the council was revealed. Hus was deceived into accompanying one cardinal to a special church meeting but instead was captured by Sigismund’s guards and imprisoned in a dungeon in the local abbey. For four months with little food or care, Hus waited for the promised opportunity to present his defense before the council—but it never came.
Roberts Liardon and Daniel Kolenda,
God’s Generals: The Martyrs (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 2016).
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Father, make of me a “crisis man.” Bring those I contact to decision. Let me not be a milepost on a single road. Make of me a fork, so that men must turn one way or another on facing Christ in me.
Elisabeth Elliot,
The Journals of Jim Elliot: Missionary, Martyr, Man of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Revell, 2021), 83.
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We must model Christ, not just present Christ. I’ve urged those who desire to be evangelistic speakers to take the Gospel of John and meditate on a chapter a day and to keep this question foremost in mind: “How do Christ’s conduct and conversations reflect grace and truth?”
R. Larry Moyer,
Show Me How to Preach Evangelistic Sermons, Show Me How Series (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic & Professional, 2012), 135.
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If we can’t be saved by our good works, then how can we be lost by our bad works?
Warren W. Wiersbe, Be What You Are: 12 Intriguing Pictures of the Christian from the New Testament (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1988), 32.
