FEB 26 2017 | Rooted S1E5

Sea Change Church · Rooted S1E5 · Adam Stadtmiller · February 26, 2017
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Awesome. Thank you, Drea. Having fun today. How about you? I was looking forward to church. I prepared all week for church. I want to encourage you to do that. Like, use your week to prepare to come here. A lot of times we get beat up all week, and then we come here just trying to get a breath, you know? But preparing our week that you can come in on occasion on the front foot, you know?

And this week I really, as I spoke about spiritual, excuse me, studied for this message on spiritual warfare, I really began to see, God began to give me revelation on different things. Like, you know, what tools am I using to take victory? Am I using tools of the flesh, tools or weapons of the world? Or am I using the weapons that God has given us that are eternal for the demolishing of what?

Strongholds. And so we're going to be talking today about strongholds, but more importantly, we're going to be talking about freedom versus bondage. The book, the Bible, is a book that talks about, that is all about freedom. Christ has come to give you life, that he's come to give you freedom, and to give it to you in abundance. The enemy's entire job is to bind you up, and we know that the ultimate binding is death.

And the scripture talks about the cords of death. And so, if you want to have my definition, a simple definition of spiritual warfare, assuming that there is a God, and that there is a devil, because we don't have the time today to unpack that, but just assuming that there is, from the faith-based biblical perspective, my definition of spiritual warfare would say the struggle between being bound and versus being free.

And freedom offers so much to our lives where we can step in. And so the difference between being bound, like the people of Israel, when they were in Egypt, were in bondage under slavery. And I will say that the enemy wants to take whatever area of your life, the more he can get, the better, and to put it into bondage. And you can have certain areas of your life that are free, but you can have other areas of your life that you are in bondage.

And what he is always trying to do is to get a foothold on the wall of your life. And the scripture says that do not give the enemy a foothold, because you know, if you know anything about ancient warfare, if they could climb the wall, they could get into the city. And the idea is to pummel and pillage the city, eventually getting into the keep of your heart.

And so that is the idea. I'm not talking about possession or anything like that. I'm talking about the enemy's plan to run amok in your life. I want you to circle a few things in the verse, if you can put the verses up there. The first thing, then Jesus entered a house. I think the scripture says that on purpose. We have a beautiful, wonderful, artistic scripture.

And we see that Jesus later on talks about going into a house. In his parable, whose house is he going into? You know? Yeah, the strong man. And who is the strong man in this passage? It's the devil. The strong man is the devil. But I think it's interesting that it says that Jesus went into a house. So he is showing someone who was welcoming Jesus into their home.

And Jesus says about our lives, I stand at the door and what? Knock. And if you open the door, I will come in and I will sup with you. Or I will have fellowship with you. So I don't think it's by accident that that is there. And we'll be talking in a moment about how good are you at not only letting Jesus into the front door of your house, but into all the little closets.

Like when we have home group at night, we kind of just throw everything in the closet. You know what I mean? And we clean it. You know, that kind of thing. What does it look like to let Jesus have dominion in all those areas? So Jesus entered a house. The crowd gathered there. The other thing too, especially in this modern world we live in, the western world, believing in the devil, believing in the enemy, people will call you a fool.

And they will say that you are either a foolish or that you are insane or crazy. C.S. Lewis says that the enemy likes two things, either a complete denial of him or a fascination with him. And so a lot of times you will see people who deny the enemy completely or they have a fascination with the enemy. And we have certain churches I've seen where there's a constant fascination with spiritual warfare, constant fascination with bringing down, you know, strongholds and these things.

And what I have found for myself is I think the enemy, the devil, loves a spotlight. He loves a stage. He loves power encounters. Jesus so often was so gentle in the way that he just said something and moved on about his business. So we're not going to give the enemy a whole bunch of platform here at this church, but we're going to be very aware and we want to go into the strong man's house.

We want to bind the strong man and we want to then, it says, pillage his house. And a lot of believers don't see that they have the ability to not just live in defense. We often live on our heels with the devil. We look at him like he's this all-powerful, god-like figure. And we put him and give him the same permissions and faith as we put in God.

But he is not God. He's a created being. He is an angel gone awry. And he does not have the power. He can make mistakes. He can be bound. And his territory can be pillaged. So here's my question. When was the last time you pillaged some of Satan's territory in your life? Or is it always just, oh, I've got a protection. I've got to put a hedge of protection around me.

Put a hedge of protection. Hey, hedge of protections are great. But on occasion, can we get a sword and go into his house, tie him up and take his stuff and have it back for our own and reclaim it? See, that's what the scripture talks about. Not living in this constant, well, what was me? The devil's outside, okay? He might be outside, but he's also, he is on his heels because Christ has taken victory.

And so in this world, people are going to say that you are out of your mind or you are a fool. You're in good company. They said the same thing about Jesus there, as you will see in the scripture. Then they said Jesus was possessed. Yes, they couldn't figure out what he was. Go down to the final verse there in 27. In fact, no one can enter. That is assuming that you can enter.

Let me just show that there. There is an assumption that here with this verse in Mark 3, 27, that you can enter Satan's territory. And I don't pick fights with the devil. I'm not here to pick fights with the devil. I learned my lesson a long time ago about that. But I am going to go do what God told me to do. And if that happens to be in his territory, well, then I'm going to let God go before me.

Even the archangel, when he was dealing with Satan, did not say, I rebuke you. He said, the Lord rebuke you. And I think it's interesting. Sometimes when I see Christians starting to do things like, I rebuke you. I'm like, hey, you know, I'd probably take a little lesson from Michael there. Was it Gabriel? I forgot which one. And say, by the way, let the Lord rebuke you.

Let the Lord do your battle. And so we see that in this scripture. It says, in fact, no one can enter the strong man's house without first tying him up. And then he can plunder the strong man's house. You might have seen yesterday, or was it, no, two nights ago on Friday night, you might have heard this in the news that America's witches gathered at the White House and around the world.

Maybe you saw that to cast a binding spell on the president. And so there was a big thing, and it was in the newspaper, and there was even a how to do it. And there was, like, all the little feathers you need and all the things, and I'm reading it. What do the witches have against the presidency? Like, I just thought, you know, what is making, why are the witches upset?

You know, if, and this is not a political statement. But from what I'm seeing and reading, it's the worst thing that's ever happened. Don't you think witches would be happy about that? But I just don't know what they have against the president. I just don't know. Why are we binding the president if he's making, you know, it's not a, I didn't, not make a political statement.

I just want to know what's up with the witches. So, protesting witches. So they're protesting. So on the crescent moon every, they're going to do it every month. They're going to, they're going to do this. Interesting that the word that they use, because this is what I was preaching on this week. It's a binding spell. That's the spell that they're using, a binding spell.

A spell to make you, perhaps, ineffective. And so we see this binding spell. But it is also, I thought it was interesting that the scripture that I was preaching on today said that the enemy can be bound. As we see in the end of time in Revelations 20, the enemy will be bound for eternity. There will be a binding up. And so what does it mean to be bound or unbound?

And today, what does this mean to you? Because we want to speak to the corner of your heart. Where are you bound? Where do you need to have freedom in your life? That we can, perhaps, take freedom. We can get our own house in order. And you can't go to someone else's house until your house is in order. So we get our heart in order. And then we can start working on these other three corners.

So we're going to talk about that today. This idea of binding. You know, like I said, Jesus was bound. And it is the devil's intention to bind up as much of your life as possible. He wants to bind you into control. He wants to get you bound into fear. He wants to paralyze you and bind you with addiction. He wants to bind you with upsetness. He wants to bind you with all these things that take away freedom.

And there is power in freedom. Christ has come to set us free. Not to bind us under the law. And so Jesus, while he did not in any way take apart from the law, he gave us freedom apart from the law. And Kai spoke about this today. He said that giving is no longer under compulsion. And the Old Testament was under compulsion. You have to think how happy Jesus was that a tithe now can be given just because you love God for his sake.

Isn't that amazing now? That we can just give generosity just because we love God? And it isn't because you have to. And if you don't, there's going to be a punishment. We've been freed from that law. And so the whole spiritual battle that is happening in the four corners of the earth right now is a battle for bondage versus freedom. This is my opinion.

Psalm 18.4. You can write these down. They're not in your notes. It talks about the cords of death. The ultimate binding. The ultimate being bound is being bound in death. And binding, all sin leads to death. The purpose of binding is to lead you to death. So if there is a place in your life where you are bound, the point is to bind you like Jesus was bound because he was also bound up for a time and to be led to your death.

But as we know, Satan can make mistakes. Satan made a mistake by crucifying Christ. That was the most foolish, idiotic, stupid thing he could do. And he thought he won. We tend to think the devil can't make mistakes. He has limited knowledge. God is not letting him know everything that he's doing. And killing Jesus, or excuse me, no one can kill Jesus, but allowing Christ to be crucified on the cross was one of the most foolish things that he could do.

And he actually sealed his defeat with that. In Ecclesiastes 4.12, it talks about being bound in good ways. It says a cord of three strands. It talks about a cord. It talks about marriage. This is a good verse for marriage. When you bind together in prayer, there are certain things we do want to bind together as believers. We want to bind together in prayer.

We want our families to be bound together with cords of what? And robes of what? Righteousness. So God is leading us. That's Ecclesiastes 4.12 that we see that. And then as I said, Revelations 20, we see that Satan is bound. If you want to go do a word study this week, Google search verses on binding. Just Google search. You can always do that. Put verses, biblical verses on whatever subject and you'll get a whole bunch of things.

That's what I often use when I'm preparing. Satan's intention, as you'll see in your notes, is to bind you. And spiritual warfare ultimately is a battle for bondage versus freedom. That might not be in your notes actually. That might be after. I will say this. This is in your notes. Humankind, that is you, is created to live with God in dominion over all creation.

Let me say that again because the word dominion is not, like I said earlier, control. Control is way different than dominion. Dominion is a far more expansive word. And dominion can only happen when you co-labor, co-partner, collaborate with God to have faith that he can do things beyond what you can control. If we are called to live in control over, not society, but over the earth, which we are given dominion, not control, then we can only do as much as our limited abilities allow.

But if we are using the spiritual weapons of our warfare, of faith and hope and praise and thanksgiving when things are going wrong, then in the midst of that, we begin to say, God, I'm a part of this, but I'm believing that you can do more than I can control and I can rest and relax and let you have dominion over something. I want to say one of the biggest mistakes you can make is in the name of Jesus, try to control your life.

I did that for years. Control. I got to get everything. You know, an email comes in, I got to go fix it immediately. I immediately have to use the weapons of my warfare to go make sure everything is sorted so I can have peace of mind. But the scripture again says that Jesus, God, gives us a peace that what? Transcends what? Understanding. You don't have to understand how it's going to get fixed, but you can still have peace.

Boom. That's dominion. You see, peace of mind comes when I get the email back where, oh, it wasn't that big of a deal. Oh, okay, I got peace now. They're not upset with me anymore. But peace that comes in dominion says, they might still be upset. I believe that I did what was righteous and godly and in a loving way, they're going to have to be upset.

I'm sorry that they are, but I believe this is what God calls me to do. That is living in dominion. Scripture says, and you'll see this in a moment, that he did not give us control within creation when he called mankind, which I'll read in a moment. He gave us dominion over. How often do you want to be in the midst of everything, controlling everything from within?

Again, the powerful thing of spiritual warfare is not having to control everything. And instead of being in all the minutiae, and you get that during, you ever get overwhelmed where there's a million things to do? Anybody else get that? I think it's common to our culture. When I feel that, I am immediately beginning to stop and move into a rest mode and a faith mode and a prayer mode.

God, what really needs to happen? Because right now, I'm in the midst of all this. Because it is so overwhelming, my heart starts beating, starts sweating, whatever the thing is, your thing, get depressed, whatever your deal is, and to stop and say, that's a trigger. When that trigger shows up in my life, that trigger of feeling out of control and overwhelmed, I can trigger that into trying to have control within creation, or I can step back and say, God, I'm going to spend some time in prayer.

I'm going to go walk the block. I'm going to trust you on this. I'm going to see what you're going to have to do. And I'm not going to have control in creation. I'm going to have dominion over creation. And we can only do that when we harvest the weapons of God. Does that make sense? That's a good thing. Trust me. That was a good piece of nugget. A good nugget I just gave you right there.

Because I feasted on it all week. Seriously, you can feast on that all week. Look in your life and stop trying to control it, but live in a dominion above it. That is a, that, you're going to walk in power when you do that. You're going to allow God to start fixing stuff and not having to fix it yourself. That is powerful. If you just get, what's, we're done.

Call the worship team up. No, I'm just kidding. We see this dominion given. And this is where it happens. This is where this struggle for dominion and control happens. Dominion is given. In the creation, God gave men and women complete dominion over all of creation. Let's read this. Genesis 126. It should be on the board. Then God said, Let us make man in our image, the imagination of God, in our image, according to our likeness, and let them rule over, or have dominion over, the word I had in my other text was dominion over, the fish of the sea, and over, what?

Over, not in, over the birds of the air and of the sky, and over the cattle, and over all the earth. The difference from over and within. Big difference. It says, over and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that man was meant to live beyond the creation. Man was meant mankind. Because you also see that it wasn't just men who were called to rule, to have dominion over creation.

It says, Let's give them. That's man and woman. Man and woman were created together to work as equal partners, to have dominion over all creation. This verse says it here. The definition of dominion I have in your notes says this, that is dominance, and this is what I looked up. This wasn't a biblical definition, but this is what I found. The difference between control, that dominion is dominance.

It is power. Once again, where are you harvesting your power? Are you going to just use your own power? Because God will let you use it, but it's going to be very limited. Or in dominion, you have power beyond your own control. That's where you want to be. That's the sweet spot. And then the final one is legal authority. Now, we don't have time to go in this in depth today, but God is a just God, and he works with legal authority.

One of the best places to see this, and Satan's always claiming his rights. He's claiming his rights to your life. He's telling Jesus what he can do, what he can't do. He's telling God what he can do, and what he can't do. One of the best places to see the outworkings of this legal authority is in the book of Job. In the book of Job, and I just love this, because God, it says Satan shows up before God's throne, because Satan can only be in one place at once.

He's not everywhere. We have to stop giving him so much credit. The devils attacked me today. Well, he probably didn't, because you're probably not the highest person on his list. Not that there's not a demon or two that would give you a hard time, but there's only one place at one time, and so he shows up to God's throne, and the God says, where have you been?

Basically, he says, roaming around the world, creating mischief. I mean, that's just what he does, just running around the world, and it says that he is like a roaring lion, and who is he seeking? Someone he can destroy. See, he can't destroy everyone. He can't destroy everyone. He couldn't destroy Jesus. He couldn't destroy Paul. He's seeking someone who will open themselves up in a way to destruction, and now that Jesus has given you victory on the cross, we can find ways to close our life down, to no longer give him legal authority in our life, because Christ has taken back the legal authority.

There are so many scriptures on that. I will share some of those in a minute, but he has given us the legal authority, and now the way that Satan can attack you is either through things that are not under our control, other people, things that aren't under our control, or you can give him access to your life, because you are now covered, like we see in Job, where he was covered, and Satan is arguing, can I attack him?

And God says, why don't you attack him? He says, because he's too righteous. There's no open doors in his life. You see, he had closed all the doors in his life, but Satan will come, and if, let's say that Job was cheating his, you know, his shepherds, Satan could come and say, well, he's been dishonest in his finances, so I'm going to attack his finances.

Now, sometimes God in his grace will say no, but other times he'll just say, you know what, there's an open door there, and so we've given Satan what? As I said earlier, a foothold in our life. You see, the key is to walk in holiness, and to be before God every single day, and saying, God, where can I, where can I close off any access to the kingdom of darkness, that he cannot go before God?

He's going to accuse you anyways, because the scripture also says that he is the accuser of what? The brethren. He's constantly accusing. He is going to come, and he's going to accuse you, but he will oftentimes have no legal authority to attack you. Now, on occasion, God will allow Satan to do things as a trial in our lives. I don't want to get too deep in the woods here, but read the book of Job, the very beginning, and you're going to see this legal battle play out.

Jesus, the whole Bible, you have the law, and then Jesus taking control through the cross, and taking dominion back, but in the beginning, we see that Satan was underneath the creeping, crawling things. He was underneath the dominion of men and women. He did not like that, and so he wanted to steal control, which he did, and so we know that because of the fall, that he took control back of the world, and that he had the cords of death in his hand at that point, and once again, we can't go deep into that, but know that dominion was lost because of disobedience, that dominion was lost, and now mankind did no longer have the ability to rule in dominion.

The whole point of Jesus coming on dying on the cross was to give dominion back to mankind. Ultimately, that is from God, and dominion has to have the God component. Let me read you a few verses about dominion, and saying that Satan, I don't know if this is in your notes, but Satan wants to do a few things. He wants to limit your domain. He wants to limit your dominion.

He wants you to live in confined, dark, waterless places, barely getting up with enough emotional strength to get a breath. He wants to continue to have areas in your life where he is stealing your dominion, but the Psalms say that the boundary lines have fallen where for me? In pleasant places, expanded boundary lines. You see that Solomon, one of the blessings of Solomon was an expanded kingdom, kingdom, an expanded kingdom.

In the book of Joel, the scripture says that God will come and restore the years that the locusts have eaten away, and once those lands are restored, he begins to bring those crops and expand your kingdom. There was an entire book back in the 2000s. It was called the prayer of Jabez, where he prayed, and he asked what? For an expanded what? Anybody know what the word was?

Territory. Territory. I want more territory. To whom as little was given, and they steward it well, more will what? Be what? Given. And so in my marriage, in the relationship I have with my wife, I want more territory. I want more of our heart connection. I want more forgiveness. I want more sanctuary in my home. I want more peace. I want wider boundaries.

I want to go as far into that I can because it goes to eternity, and as much as you're going to get in today's earth in this temporal time is up to, oftentimes, up to us. Do we want to open and explore the rooms of peace? Or do we want to use the tools, the weapons of our warfare, of, you know what? My father really ticked me off, and I'm just going to live in that the rest of my life.

I'm not going to give forgiveness there, and I'm just going to live in that, and that domain will never be fixed. Where are you living in a dry and waterless place where God says, I want to give you dominion. I want to expand it. The thief, it says in John 10.10, when speaking about the enemy, says the thief comes only to steal, to kill, and to destroy.

But I have come that you may have life and have it what? To the full or abundantly. The Greek word there talks about a super abundance, more than you could ever create on your own because Ephesians 3.20 says that he will give you more than you could ever hope, dream, or imagine. One of the reasons I don't set a lot of goals is because I know that if I live according to my values and according to God's word, he will exceed any goal than I ever could have set.

We are smashing through goals that we have never set at this church that we never would have set. We have seen kingdom growth here in this church. I never would have set the goal as high as God has shown the reward. Does that make sense? I would have been too terrified. I never would have said, let's go for this. It'll never happen. Not living in my limited understanding of what God has for kingdom expansion.

And the question is, how much more? You see, I want dominion. I want dominion over La Jolla. I want dominion over San Diego. First of all, I want to start with dominion over my own life. I got to start with the corner of my heart because so oftentimes the cracks get in that sidewalk and the weeds grow up and no one swept it for a while, you know? And that whole thing, I got to get that clean if God is going to call me to expand my kingdom.

Excuse me, expand his kingdom. But he lets us rule as children of the king within that. Not that we can be prideful, not that we can be dominant, but that we might have the dominion to release the light and love of God into the world. How much do you want? How much do you want? And do you want it enough to give Jesus that dark closet of your heart?

Is dominion and walking in dominion over an expanded territory worth more than that little dark corner that you just won't show Jesus and won't let him into? Or is it enough? I used to tell my youth group, you know, I got a whole donut shop behind me. Jesus, he's got a whole donut shop behind him, but you've got this donut hole in your hand and you're like looking at it like, I love donut holes.

It's a greasy little donut hole. And Jesus is like, but look, I got a, look, there's a custard one there and I got the, you know, the old fashioned. I love the old fashioned. I got the chocolate glazed and they're like, no, I got this little donut hole. You missed the whole thing of what God has. Expand your kingdom. Let him into every area. We'll look at that in just a second.

He said, I come to give in 2 Corinthians 10, 4 and 5. For though we live in the world, you got to know this scripture. Those two scriptures right here. I have about 20 scriptures I've memorized. I know it looks like I know a lot of scripture because I keep throwing them out there. I've got about 20 and I just keep repeating them. So that's a little trick.

And by the way, Billy Graham has made, has made a living out of just saying the Bible says, okay. He's never quoted a verse ever. The Bible says, no one questions him. I'm not there yet. The Bible says, for though we live in this world, we do not wage world as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.

Say that again. To what? Demolish strongholds. Demolish. More than conquer. You're not a conqueror. You're more than a conqueror. You demolish strongholds to oblivion where they don't exist anymore. It's like on those history channels. We think a city used to be here, but we can't find any proof of it, but we're pretty sure it did. That's what you're called to do with the strongholds that Satan has tried to bind in your life.

To not make you a conqueror. To make you more than a conqueror. To come and expand the territory of your life. We demolish arguments, and there's a lot of those going on in our culture today. And every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. Let me show you how this works.

Last, yesterday, driving around, got this thing I'm dealing with during the week, and all of a sudden, Satan gives me his 20-year view of what that's going to look like. You ever get that? 20, here's what it's going to look like. And I'm like, yeah. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to do this. And I found, and then I started using the weapons of my warfare.

How am I going to fix that? How am I going to respond? How am I going to do this? And I start getting into that thinking. And then I started remembering, that's living in control. I want to live over and in dominion. And I said, you know what, God? I'm going to thank you. First of all, that's not going to happen. The plans that you have for me, you want to prosper me, God.

You want to move me deeper into eternity. You want to move. So I don't believe that. Matter of fact, I'm going to thank you for this difficult situation. I'm going to give you praise for it. I'm going to pray for this person. I'm going to pray for that. I'm going to do this. I'm going to give thanksgiving. I turned on worship. I started reading the word.

And by the end of the day, God not only worked out the situation, where I was like, oh, I guess it's not going to go off a cliff in 20 years like I thought. But God brought me peace. And I thought, I can't wait to get to church on Sunday, because God prepared my heart. But I had probably 10 to 15 times yesterday to say, no, I'm not going right. I'm not working in my control.

I'm working in God's dominion. The spirit of witchcraft is control. The spirit of witchcraft is control. And whenever we want to be in control, we align ourselves with Satan's purpose to make man in control, to make women and mankind in control. Here's the history of spiritual bondage. And we're coming in for a landing. I'm circling the tower. The conflict begins.

We read that already in Genesis. But here it is in Genesis. What happens? They lose their dominion. And here's just one scripture to showing the loss of dominion. We could spend five weeks on this, but I'll just give one scripture. The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky and on everything that creeps on the ground and all of the fish of the sea and into your hands they are given.

And so it shows that man now, that creation has been put in bondage. Talks about weeds and thorns growing up to put the crops into bondage. Women are put into bondage under men. It says that you will be under submission to men and your heart will basically long to be into submission to men. That was part of the curse upon women. The question is, is as God is moving towards creation, does God have a desire that men and women get back to ruling together in dominion?

What does that look like? And how do we do it in still a biblical context for a different day? So we look at that. And so the conflict loses dominion. Satan makes a claim, which is actually true at the moment, but only partially true in Luke 4, 6. Look at your notes. He's standing there with Jesus, takes him to the top of the hill. And the devil said to him, I'll give you all this domain.

Look at the word he used, domain, this dominion, and all of its glory, for it has been handed over to me. That is the truth. God did not hand it over to him. Who did? Mankind. God did not hand it over to him. The question is, are you handing over the domain of your life to the enemy, who is a willing taker? Because it was Beth Moore said, if there is a spot that you are not occupying, the enemy will.

Sometimes just having a barren place where we need to go in and say, I need to fill my home with prayer. Or we're allowing, like television is another great example. The TV was created to get, one of the reasons, one of the main reasons was to get a voice within the home because they knew that the marketing and message could not get in the four walls at that point, unless it was brought there by the person.

But TV now has another voice, internet has another voice, has another culture that is allowed into your home. What do you allow into your home? And so we see this here in the scripture that Satan makes a claim and he says, for it has been handed over to me. What are you handing over to me? And I will give it to whom I wish. It's actually partially true.

We won't get into all that. But we know that Jesus restores dominion. Let me just give you one scripture because we can't unpack all of this. Jesus dies on the cross and now we look at Hebrews. Let's jump quickly to Hebrews. Hebrews. Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook in the same, that through death he might render powerless him who had the power of death or the cords of death, the binding of death.

That is the devil. And might, what's the word there? Free, free, free. The opposite of spiritual bondage is spiritual freedom. Free those who through what? Fear of death were subjected to what? Slavery. Pornography is slavery. Alcoholism is slavery. All these things. This isn't to make guilt to you, but what day will you eventually say enough is enough and I'm tired of being a slave?

To be put into bondage that leads to death. I read an article this week. It showed the brain on pornography. Look it up. What happens to the brain? They take images of the brain. What happens? How it destroys. I believe that is one of the things that's happening in our culture today is the instant access because the digital revolution has changed the world.

Different topic, different day. And so as we see, we see that Jesus restores dominion. Now, for you to take dominion is up to you. Let's see how we do it. And we're done in about four minutes. Number one, here's three things in your notes. How do we then live in dominion? How do you now live in dominion? Now, this is assuming that you've decided to become a Christ follower and allowed Jesus to invade your heart and your soul.

Being a Christ follower means I believe he died on the cross. I believe that I am a sinner, that Christ sins, excuse me, Christ did not sin, that Christ dying on the cross freed me from my sins and I will live in eternity with him and he is coming back for us again. That's the basic gospel. Once we say I believe that and even if you don't understand it, you have faith in it, then you are a Christ follower and from that point you can begin to claim the dominion that's already there because much of the world is not living in God's dominion and there still is a battle for that dominion between the children of light and the children of darkness.

The first thing is this. Here's the first step. Let Jesus into every room in your house. Let him into the room. Don't just let him into the house. Let him into every single room. Let him in there and have no foothold for the enemy. Not saying we don't make mistakes. Not saying we don't if you're an impatient person that you're not going to still struggle with it but where you no longer have it as a pet thing in your life.

To give Satan no. You can start living in dominion at that point because when you start seeing attack or you feel like you're having spiritual attack or Satan's trying to bond you you can actually say in the name of Jesus you have no right here and he actually can't look at you and go yes I do you're into porn. I definitely have a right here. I definitely have a right and you've opened the door for me and I will stay here and attack you in other ways or you're a liar.

You love to lie. And so you know what? You're going to be deceived yourself because liars have a hard time understanding the truth and they get caught up in their own deception and remember that as a kid they start losing sense of what reality is. Where does that place where you can look at the enemy and say in the name of Jesus be gone because there is no place that I know of that I have a clean slate now you have a clean slate anyways in heaven but you can still have an open door.

It's a whole different day. So the next thing let Jesus send every room into your house. Jesus hands Revelation 3.20 look I stand at the door and knock. Number two I love this one once you're unbound take those cords and bind the strong man. This assumes have you ever thought that you could bind Satan? That Satan can be bound in the name of Jesus not you let me say that again says in verse 27 of this text in fact no one can enter a strong man's house without first tying him up then he can plunder the strong man's house.

I love that. I love that. So how do we how do we what are the weapons that we use to tie the enemy? Well let me tell you what they are. Scripture. In fact I don't even think like you have to if you have an issue that you have to find a scripture that actually works. Just go to your Bible program and turn on the book of Proverbs or John and just binge listen. Like just let scripture run rampant.

Let it have its it'll find you. A lot of times we feel like we have to find the perfect memory verse to throw it in we will just cover it with this verse. Just expose yourself to the scripture and I'll tell you what the Holy Spirit the scripture will find you. The scripture is one. Prayer. You know how to learn to pray? Pray. There you go. Pretty easy. Worship. I really wanted to listen to the Smiths yesterday because I like the Smiths and instead I felt like the Lord saying I want you to put worship on in the house but God I don't want I want to listen to the Smiths.

I'm feeling like a trip to England right now. I want to listen to the Smiths. He said put worship on so I put Chris Quilala on. It was amazing and God began to open up new areas of my life. It'll bind the enemy. Solitude. Thanksgiving when things are going bad as opposed to grumbling about your partner or grumbling about the thing you're upset about. God thank you for this suffering.

Thank you for this. You're so good. I love you. Even if you're lying about it tell him that. You know what I mean? It's just faith. That's what faith is too. I don't feel it. It's not a lie. It's called faith. Thanksgiving. How about forgiveness? How about generosity? All of these things are weapons that destroy that plummet that bind the enemy. Begin to release multiple of these at once.

This week I tried like five or six of these. I just released them onto my life. More word. More worship. More generosity. More thanksgiving. More forgiveness. You start just release like six or seven of those at once and see what happens. You are going to feel margin. Things are going to open up. The person who you're upset with is going to give you a call and say hey let's work this out.

Things are going to happen. That's just how God works. I can't promise you what's going to happen but it's going to happen. Or do you want to keep using the weapons of your warfare? I'm really good at being ticked off. I'm not going to talk to them for a week. I'm going to talk to them for a week. They'll see what happens when you mess with me. You know?

Or something. Some weak little pitiful weapon of your warfare. Pitiful. That leads you to death. You might as well just tie your hands up. Or go after it with God. Was that too strong there? Okay. Finally, plunder his house. And we do this by expanding the kingdom and bringing light into formerly dark places. That's how we do it. We expand the kingdom of God by going in and just living your life free.

Go live your life. Do those first two things and then go wherever you go wherever God calls you to do and give forgiveness. Give peace. Bring light into dark places. That's how you expand the kingdom. Amen? Amen. Amen. Amen.