OCT 20 2024 | Job: Hearing God in the Whirlwind S1E2 | From Everywhere and All at Once

Sea Change Church · OCT 20 2024 | Job: Hearing God in the Whirlwind - S1E2: From Everywhere and All at Once
Job 1:13-22
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them, and I alone have escaped to tell you. While he was yet speaking, there came another, and said, The Chaldeans formed three groups and made a raid on the camels and took them and struck down the servants with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you.

While he was yet speaking, there came another, and said, Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house, and behold, a great wind came across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young people, and they are dead, and I alone have escaped to tell you. Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshipped, and he said, Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.

Blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrong. This is the word of the Lord. Well, good morning. If you have your Bibles, open up to Job 1, 13 through 22. It's also obviously in your notes, and we're going to be looking at another element of the book of Job. It's easy to look at the book of Job and see it only as a book that talks about suffering, trying to answer the question, why is there human beings who suffer? Why do good people suffer? And obviously, that's perhaps the main takeaway. I'm not even sure it's the main takeaway. I actually think it's about God's sovereignty, especially when you get to the end. The answer from God is all about who he is and how he's in charge, and I really see it as a book about God's sovereignty. But you could easily just spend weeks upon weeks, I mean, it's a big book, discussing this idea of why and suffering and how to get through it.

But if you do, you're going to miss some of the most important things that the book of Job has to offer. One of those things, like I said a moment ago, is God's sovereignty. God's answer at the end is, I'm God. I'm in charge. I do what I want to do when I want to do it. It's not for you to question. I'm God, and I've got this. Now, you can look at that as a flippant answer from God, or you can actually just rest in peace and say, God is good. God has this. One of the other things that the scripture does and the book of Job does is it allows us to see how Satan operates. It allows us to see a template for spiritual attack. It allows us to see a template for spiritual victory. We see in Job's response there that Job can easily just be seen as, wow, that's amazing. He worshiped God, and that's awesome, and he, you know, most people wouldn't have that response to all this suffering he just went through. Or you could see it as a plan or actually a lifestyle that leads to spiritual victory. Job worships, as you'll see in a moment. Job prays. Job has this life that leads to victory.

His response to suffering is probably more important than figuring out the why, and I said that last week. The what is so important in this response that we see. So, we see spiritual warfare. I want to frame this around, and this is not in your notes. We can write down this verse, 2 Corinthians 10, 4. It says, the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh. Circle flesh. But have divine, well, you can't circle it because it's not your notes, but write down this. But have divine power to destroy strongholds.

Divine power to destroy strongholds. That's a powerful verse. And what it is saying is that the enemy is constantly wanting to create strongholds in your life. He wants to take a foothold, and he wants to turn a foothold into a stronghold. A stronghold is a place where 10,000 can fight against 100,000, where 10 can fight against 10,000, where one can fight against 10. It is a place that gives you a strategic advantage and is really difficult to root out. One of the ways he does this, and probably the key of this message talks about Satan's purpose. You will see this in your notes. Satan's goal is simple, to drive a wedge between you and God. Satan doesn't care what that wedge is. He just wants to create space. He just wants to create distance. If he can do that through attacking you or being allowed to attack you, because once again, we give the devil too much credit. The devil cannot attack you unless God allows it or you allow it. You have free will, and there's two ways in which he can attack you.

Job was not allowing it, and God had put a hedge around him. But if he can create that wedge by attacking you, he will. Recently, I had a knot in my shoelace, okay? And I had kind of just let it just, it was beyond hope. But I got to the point where I needed to take the shoelaces out, and it was so tight, there was no way. And I don't know if you've ever done this. So you have to go find your eyeglass, repair kit, right? Because in your eye, you've probably done this, in your eyeglass repair kit are the smallest little, like just the best little, you know, screwdrivers ever. And I have one that just has a point on it. It's really small. And so I got in there with a shoelace, and oh man, you ever seen a shoelace when it's, I mean, it's been months, you know, you've walked on trails with it. And I just couldn't get it fixed. Eventually, I had to put it on the ground, and I took a little hammer, and I got it in there, and I got it in, I just tapped, tapped, tapped, and I finally got enough, and I got a little bit of a wedge. And I was like, oh. Before I knew it, I gave a little bit more, wedged it out. Before I knew it, I got it all the way through. And you know, once you get that amount of space, you can create that separation. The analogy is clear. Satan wants to do the same thing. If he can create a wedge between having you blame God for the things that are happening in the world like Job wasn't willing to do, or that happened in his life, then he'll do that. If he can get a wedge by having you, you know, be involved in some addiction or something that you, whether doom scrolling on your phone, or as they call it, dopamine scrolling, if he can just get you to do that more, anything to separate you from God, anything to get into the knot that is tied between you and God for that relationship, he will actually do it. He doesn't care what that wedge is.

He doesn't care. As a matter of fact, he wants to get to the place where you have created so much space, he doesn't have to think about you. Once again, we overestimate Satan. Satan can only be in one place at one time. He has limited resources, unlike God. He's not omnipotent, not all-knowing. He's not omnipresent. He can't be in every place at once. When God asks Satan, and this is how we learn about spiritual warfare in this passage of Job, why it's so important, he says, Job, where have you been?

And Job says, I've been on the earth, going up and down and sideways and just creating mischief. Now, if Satan had rolled up to God and said, God, where have you been? What would God answer be? Where haven't I been, bro? I'm everywhere at once, all at once, all together, all the time, and I see everything, know everything. I am completely there. I am completely everywhere.

And so we see these limitations of Satan. Satan does have limitations, but Satan is persistent. We don't want to give Satan too much credit, but we don't want to underestimate Satan. Because I'll tell you one thing about Satan, he's relentless. He will work that knot in your life. If you are close to God, he will work. If that tool doesn't work, he's going to find something else. He'll work it.

He will just continue to come back over and over again until he can create that space. Somebody said to me today, came to me after the service this morning, I had been having a really difficult time in my life, and I thought, you know what? I just need some time to myself. I'm going to go mountain bike today. I love, actually, I don't love mountain biking, but fine, if you want to go mountain bike, surf, whatever you do, play golf. He said, I thought I needed that.

And something in my head told me, I actually need to go to church. And he goes, so he said, I put that off to do it later today, and I came and I found that thing I needed. Satan will love to take something as innocuous as mountain biking, as seeing a movie, as going out for coffee. And granted, sometimes you need to do that, and I'm saying just come to church.

But he will do anything he can to create space. And so what Job had done was to create a life with so much tension in the knot that it was really difficult, almost impossible for Satan to attack him. Here's the three things we're going to talk about today that Satan uses. And I want you just to line this up with your life. There are many other things he uses, but I'm going to speak about what is most prevalent to American culture, Western culture. Because I was just in Africa, and I didn't see these things as much. One is timing. Obviously, in timing, he does that all over the world.

The other is in chaos. And the third is lies. Satan's timing, chaos, and lies. You can write those down in your notes. Timing, chaos, and lies. Let's go to Satan's timing, verse 13. Now, there was a day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house. What does this have to do with timing? Well, there's a few things. Earlier in chapter 1, in some of the text I was reading, they would say the brothers, there were seven brothers, and he had seven sons and three daughters. But it said, on their day, they would throw a party in their house. Remember that from last week? It would be on their day. Now, it doesn't say that in the new international version, but it would say on their day. And what this would mean in that culture was it was on their birthday.

And so, if you want to go with that translation, you're going to see that Satan attacks his children, which God allows, and he does this on probably one of the most special days in Job's life. Why? Because back in that culture, and it's still true in those cultures there today, that your first son is really important. Because it is through your first son that the lion, the lineage would go through.

They would have a, and they would have a birthday. And it's a day that you would really celebrate. And so, he found a day that was a really special day, and he began, and he attacked on that day. He's attacking from all places, we'll talk about this in a moment, and all sides. But one of the things that you could easily do if you were Satan, was after this happened, he could say to Job, to start to contemplate, why did this happen on my son's birthday, the most important day?

Why would this happen? Maybe I'm not a good dad. Maybe if I was a better dad, my children wouldn't have, wouldn't do have so much possible debauchery. Now, we didn't say exactly what they do, but they're getting up to something. And I believe the timing is pre-Noah, right? And I want to say, like, pre-Noah, they could do some partying back in the day, pre-Noah, right?

The book of Genesis says that there was actual angels that were still walking on the earth then, that were actually partying with. Not only that, sleeping with the women who were there, having these children with the women. There's all this in Genesis. It was debaucherous. You could see the setup happening. By Satan's timing, he's setting up Job to start asking questions about perhaps Job's integrity.

Questions like, if you were such a good father, why would your children fall away? And I've had believers ask me this as well. They've said to me, I feel like I raised my children in righteousness, but yet they fell away. I must have done something wrong. And what I remind them is, God raised his children, Adam and Eve, in righteousness. They fell away too, right?

He was a perfect father, and they still walked away. Because we're dealing with individuals. That doesn't mean we don't make mistakes. But you can see this setup. He's setting them up with this timing. The other thing that is really interesting about the timing is that we see that Satan actually waited to attack him. If you were to go back a little bit earlier in the passage in Job, if you actually do have your Bible on you, and you were to go back to Job 1.12, it says in 1.12 that Satan, after he has this conversation with God, it says he takes off.

Remember the conversation is Satan says, hey, I want to attack him, but you won't allow me. And I'll tell you what, God. God, if you take your hand and you reach out and touch him and everything that he has, he'll curse you to your face. And so God says, okay, I'll reach out and touch him. That's not what God says. God says, okay, Satan, he's in your hands.

You can reach out and touch him. And so God actually never touches Job. Satan tries to get him to touch Job. He won't. He says he's in your hands. And then it says that Satan leaves the presence of God. Now, if you're Satan, I'm not saying we want to compare ourselves to Satan, but wouldn't you immediately take off and go get to business? You would think, right, that if you've been waiting to attack Job, the most righteous man in all of the East that said this, this is one guy, you can't touch him.

You haven't been allowed to touch him. You've actually just given up because of the righteousness that God has put around him and the righteousness that he has put around himself because it's twofold. You think he would immediately go out and attack, but he doesn't. Go to verse 13 again. Look what it says. In verse 13 at the beginning, it says, Now there was a day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house.

You see, Satan waited. He didn't immediately go do what he had authority to go do now. He waited until the opportune time. He waited until a time that was the best time to attack. I want to assure you that as limited as Satan is, his timing is usually diabolically accurate. And he looks to get you into a position, a position where you're weak, a position where you've been struggling, or where he's done all this attack.

And it is in that moment that he usually steps up his attack in order to create that wedge between you and God. I said in the notes that Satan then is seeking to overwhelm Job and then attacks him on a multiplicity of fronts. This multiplicity of fronts, he attacks his family. He attacks his work. So his servants are taken away. He attacks his wealth.

He attacks it all at the same time. And he tries to take him off guard. I'll say later on in the practical tips that one of the best things that you can do spiritually is to be aware. Now, as I'll say in a moment, he tries to create chaos to break down your awareness. He doesn't want you aware. He doesn't want you to think that maybe Satan is up to something.

I'm not saying Satan is up to everything that happens in your life. But a lot of it, he is up to. And we see that Satan comes in, and he tries to overwhelm him. I recently went to Africa. Before I left to Africa a few weeks ago, all of a sudden, on the Wednesday before I left, I got this really negative thought. It was an anxious thought. It was a negative thought.

It was like, whoo! And it just came like that, like I'm in a moment. Maybe you've had a thought come like that. And I'm to the point now when I can usually tell the difference, because I've tried to be aware of, this is from me. This feels like an attack. So I got on the plane, went away, and this was still on me. And I'm like two weeks into the trip, and this is still on me.

And all of a sudden, I start getting reports about my staff, your pastors, people that are on staff. And I began to find out that things were kind of going sideways in their lives. And things have come around and gotten better. But all of a sudden, it was like, bam, bam, bam, really heavy things all at once. And all of a sudden, I could have gone into the things of the flesh and begin to say, hey, how can I fix that?

How can I come alongside and do these things? But all of a sudden, I realized something's up. Something spiritual is happening, and we are being attacked. And I began to ask people to pray, to switch over into a mode to realize that there was a spiritual awareness that something was happening. And I began to ask God out of James 1.5 for wisdom.

So James 1.5 is a great verse where it says, ask me what's happening in your life. Ask me for wisdom, and I'll tell you what's happening. And so I began to ask God, and God began to share the different things that were happening here in my life. And I felt like the thing the Lord said is, you're going to a new continent. I have opened up this continent, and God has made it very clear that God has opened up Africa for us, which is weird, right?

In the last year, four contacts, Harry going to Tanzania, South African groups asking us to partner with them, Nigeria, why Malawi? I mean, all of a sudden, boom. Here's what I've learned when you take territory. New level, new devil. There are strongholds, and there's authority in those places that we have never taken before. And oftentimes, when God wants to increase your territory, there's going to be pushback, and you're going to see that.

So be very aware when all of a sudden an onslaught of things happen at once. Take a step back and to say, is something actually happening here? I want to say another thing, too, besides just new level, new devil. New place, new grace. As Pastor Joshua said in his somewhat viral Instagram clip that goes way more viral than my Instagram clips, I'm very upset about.

He said, whenever God sends you to a new place, he's going to equip you for that place. But the armor of God, you need to put on the armor of God in order for it to take effect. I say that the thing that the enemy is trying to oftentimes do is to overwhelm you. He will overwhelm you on all fronts. Now, if he can overwhelm you with attack, he will do that.

But if he can get you to be the type of person that he doesn't even need to overwhelm with attack, because you have overwhelmed yourself with your decisions that constantly are creating chaos in your life, constantly creating emotional chaos or your time or your schedule, you've ended up putting yourself in a place of chaos, this is where he dwells.

The devil loves chaos. And the more chaos in your life, the more he can do. When I was, my kids, when they were young, they would leave their room super dirty. They don't do it anymore. They don't do it anymore. They're beautiful, amazing children. And they had too many toys. And I would go in, I would go in with a bag, and I would begin to take the toys and put them in the bag.

And then I would take the toy bag, because I didn't need that many toys in their room, and I would put the bag for six months in the garage to see if they noticed any of the toys were gone. Now, there were certain special toys. You can't take Blue Bear, right? You can't touch Blue Bear, few toys. And this is a good parenting tool for you as well.

And then I would take these things, and I would just hide them, and then once I found out that they didn't miss those toys, they'd go to the Goodwill. And I mean, I got to tell you, bags and bags and bags and bags of toys. You guys are looking at me like I'm just the devil himself. Nonetheless, when you have chaos in your life, Satan can steal from you.

He wasn't stealing. I bought those toys. When your life is filled with chaos, Satan can steal from you, and you're not even going to know it. You won't even know what he took, because your life is so full of chaos, and it's good stuff. God has opened another door. He's opened another horizon, all these different things. He's created this, and some of us, we have to have that chaos in our life, or we can't have peace.

I was a person that couldn't have peace unless I had chaos. And so what Satan has done here is Satan has created chaos in his life. One of the best spiritual tools you can have to live in harmony with God and to live in peace is to remove chaos from your life, to live in a place of quiet. I want to give you a verse. I put this in there today, Isaiah 30, 15, in regard to spiritual peace and spiritual warfare.

For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, in returning and rest you shall be saved. In quietness and trust shall be your strength. But you were unwilling. For the Lord said in Isaiah 30, 15, the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, in returning and in rest you shall be saved. In quietness and trust shall be your strength. But you were unwilling.

The Oxford Dictionary defines overwhelmed as being buried or drowned beneath a huge mass of something. Sometimes God is going to allow that to happen. And in that, we want to get to that simplistic response of Job. We'll get to that in just a second. But sometimes we just do it ourselves. We need to be very wise what we say yes to. We had a rule with our kids, one thing at a time.

You can't be in drama and in soccer and in whatever else. One thing. I'm not a taxi cab. Find one thing. But I want to do nine things. One thing. We had this thing because the peace of our family is a hegemon. It is a hedge of protection against the enemy where he wants to come and steal and rob and destroy because of chaos. And so have you let chaos come in?

Because if you have chaos, he wants to bring chaos on top of that. The next thing we see is Satan lie. Satan's a liar. He's an absolute liar and he will lie to you. And if you missed it, in verse 16, there's a huge lie. I had never seen this until I started practicing. See, if you can, excuse me, I started preparing for this sermon is what I meant to say.

Verse 16, see if you can catch it. While he was still speaking, that's a servant, there came another servant that said, the fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them. I alone have escaped to tell you. If you don't understand the lie or see the lie, it's right there in what the servant says. The fire of God fell from heaven.

Well, we know because of the first part of this chapter, in the discussion with Satan, Satan says to God, strike out your hand and touch him. And God responds. He didn't respond and say, no, I'm not going to strike out my hand. You do it. But what he just says to him is, you strike, you can put your hand on him and everything he has is in your hand, Satan, but don't kill him.

Don't lay your hand on his body. So all of a sudden, there's overwhelm coming. There's this overwhelmed life, this life on the run. All of a sudden, all these things are happening at once. It's like bam, bam, bam, the timing. It's on his son's birthday. All of a sudden, his finances are taken out. His servants are taken out. His kids are taken out and probably judged because of the stuff that they were doing.

God does replace his children later in the story, but that still doesn't mean that it wasn't incredibly difficult for him to deal with that. And then this servant comes. And you have to realize that Job has trusted servants. He doesn't have fools running his business. If you read later on in the Proverbs, it says, anyone who sends a message by a fool is a fool himself, is more of a fool.

It talks about being in business with fools. Job does not have his servants that are fools. Joel has trusted people. And a trusted person comes to him in the middle of the chaos, and he says something that he thinks is true. He's not trying to deceive him. He doesn't have a context or anything different from this, but he says, the fire of God fell from heaven.

Satan's desire is not to take his children away or take his money. Satan doesn't need more money. He doesn't need his camels. He doesn't need any of that. But his desire is to cause a wedge between Job and his God. And he doesn't care about any of all the tools that he's using. That's not the plan. The plan is to come in and to cause a wedge. And so in the midst of all the chaos, he sends his trusted servant, and they're just half a sentence, half a sentence.

There it is. The fire of God fell from heaven. The fire of God did not fall from heaven. Fire might have fallen from the sky, but it was the fire of Satan and not of God. And do you see how easily, in the midst of all that chaos, you could have easily picked up that lie? We know that Job didn't pick up that lie because at the end, he falls on his face, and it says, some of the versions say, he did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.

In the ESV here, it says, in all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing. Some of the context I read in the Hebrew said, in all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrong. Wrong. That by charging God with doing wrong, that would actually be a sin. And that's something Job never does. Job never buys the lie. If your life is surrounded in chaos, it's gonna be really hard to see the lies.

If your culture is surrounded in chaos, it's going to be very difficult to see the lies. The Bible speaks so much about margin and peace being the greatest blessing. When you go to heaven, does it say, enter into my busyness? He says, no, enter into my rest. Jesus says, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, earth as it is in heaven, which means the culture of heaven is rest.

The culture of heaven is peace. And so if we are going to have a kingdom culture on earth, it's not a bunch of chaos and a bunch of craziness and doing all these amazing things for God. It is a culture of rest and peace and deliberate purpose, going after things. And so I've been in some church settings where the mark of our spirituality was based on the mark of our productivity.

Spirituality is not based on productivity. How will you know God? Be still and you will know that I am God. It says that the boundary lines fall in pleasant places among the righteous. Job had created a life, he had made decision after decision to give himself margin because in the margin, when you have space, you can see things coming. I was watching a lot of YouTube lion videos when I was in Africa.

My buddy and I, he's a big YouTube watcher, and as he's watching you, he goes, let's watch lion videos, attack, lion attack videos against different people. I got a fly attacking me right now. And so I'm watching this, and lions like to stay in the thicket, right? They love to stay in the thicket. And then it's in the thicket, then all of a sudden they can rush out on you and you'd see these.

What lions don't do is get in an open space. They don't want to be in an open space because you can recognize them in the open space. If you want to see what Satan is up to, give yourself space. Give yourself margin. Give yourself time. And so we see that here. So we see that lie happening. Let's go to Job's response in verse 20 as we come in for a landing.

Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell to the ground and worshiped. And he said, naked I came from my mother's womb, naked shall I return. The Lord gave, he's taken away. Bless the name of the Lord. And all this, Job did not charge God in wrongdoing. You know what I love about Job? And I just love this as a model for spirituality and a model for spiritual warfare.

Job got small. He didn't burst out in, which he could have, crying, screaming, running around, running to this place, scene of the crime. He didn't yell at his servants. He didn't get crazy. He got really small. And he worshiped, and he spent time with the Lord, and he praised God. Matter of fact, even in the language, his language is small. He says, naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall return.

He immediately goes back to this simplicity, this nothingness. He goes back to this really small place in his mind. He just gets quiet. One of the best things you can do when the spiritual attack hits the fan, so to speak, is to slow down, get quiet, go back to the basics, go back to simplicity. Simplicity is a stronghold. Peace is a stronghold. I've tried to create a culture here at our church that when you walk in on a Wednesday, it's just not crazy.

We are not running our church by Fast Company, the magazine. We are not trying to expand to some massive thing. We're just trying to be deliberate one step at a time in simplicity and in peace so we can see the attacks of the enemy. And so in our culture, the enemy wants to rile us up. He wants to get you in a place where you are prone for an attack.

We see Job's response. He worships. Look at there at the end. He says in verse 21, naked I come, naked I'll return. The Lord gave him his takeaway. And then he says, one of the greatest scriptures, blessed be the name of the Lord. That is so, I mean, the spiritual maturity after what he has gone through in that statement, blessed be the name of the Lord.

He worships the Lord. But not only that, a little bit later, his friends, we're gonna get to his friends, I believe, next week. His friends come and they start, they sit Sheba with him. That's sitting seven days in silence. We'll talk about what that means next week. And then they start talking to him. They start speaking to him. It says that they come to comfort him, but he starts telling them, hey, I haven't done anything wrong.

And they don't have a context for that, right? So they start arguing with him. His friends come and they start speaking, talking theology with him. And then Elliot, who's one of our great Bible teachers at the church here, wrote me an email this week and he said one of the things about Job that is different than his friends is that when Job responds to his friends, he responds with prayer.

If you look at chapter seven, chapter nine, chapter 13, you're gonna see as he answers, he's actually weaving prayer. So he's talking and then all of a sudden he's praying. His friends are only speaking about theology. His friends are only bringing up, well, God wouldn't do this. And if you believe in the substitutionary atonement and understand this and we, you know, and if you use this text and this translation, if you understood this about God, that's all his friends do.

But Job actually, when he answers, prays. And that's what sets him apart. I'm just gonna read one of the verses. It's out of chapter 13, 20 through 22. I added this in today. He says this, only grant me. This is while he's speaking to his friends. And all of a sudden he's riffing between speaking to his friends and then all of a sudden just starting to pray to God.

And he's just like, he's living, you know, in this parallel, this dualistic universe of living and speaking but also praying. He says, only grant me these two things, God, and then I will not hide from you. Withdraw your hand from me. Stop frightening me with your terrors. Then summon me and I will answer or let me speak and reply to me. All of a sudden he's just praying.

And I thought, man, that is so good. Because so often I'm trying to explain what's happening. I'm trying to figure it out. You know what I mean? With thoughts and thinking as opposed to just going to God in prayer. And begin to say, God, you know, you have done this. Perhaps you've done this. Speak to me, God. And so we see him there in prayer. It's worship and prayer.

That'll shrink you down. Few things will shrink you down. I think we want to live small, quiet lives as best we can. Scripture says that. It says, do everything you can in your power to live a small, simple, and quiet life. But yet we want to do everything but that. We see Job immediately goes down to prayer. He goes down to worship and he lives quietly. Here's three spiritual takeaways that are going to help you this week.

First, develop spiritual awareness. 2 Corinthians 2.11 is a great scripture. This is B, halfway through the scripture. We do not want to be or will not be outwitted by Satan for we are not ignorant of his designs. What this scripture also tells you is you can know what Satan is up to. We tend to give Satan all this credit. Oh, he can just always attack me and I never know what he's up to.

You can know what he's up to. We have a thing, a person called the Holy Spirit who is a counselor who will tell you what you need to know, when you need to know it, how you need to know it. He will give you wisdom. He will tell you. One of the great prayers you can pray is Jesus, Holy Spirit, show me what Satan is up to. Here's another thing about Satan. He makes mistakes.

Scripture says in the New Testament that if the spiritual forces to be had known what the result would have been when they crucified Jesus, they wouldn't have done it. It is true. Thank you very much. They wouldn't have done it. Satan made a mistake by crucifying Jesus and he realized it about .1 seconds after the resurrection. Satan makes mistakes. Satan cannot read your mind.

He doesn't have that ability. That's sometimes when God speaks to me I think to myself, I'm not going to say this audibly because I'm not going to let the enemy know what my plans are or what God has a plan. God used to tell me something I'd immediately go tell everybody. Now I just want to sit on those things. He has no ability to read your mind. Satan has no ability to stop prayer.

Show me one place in Scripture where when you pray all of a sudden Satan can jump on that prayer and hold it down. Prayer is spiritually nuclear. It cannot be stopped. The only thing that can stop prayer or the power of prayer is you. It says, husband, if you treat your wives in a way that you shouldn't treat your wives then your prayers will fall and they just won't be answered.

Or I will not listen to you if you have disobedience. So we see that over and over again. Develop a spiritual awareness. The next is banish chaos and pursue simplicity. Simplicity is God's agent of peace. Simplicity is God's agent of peace. It's just a lot of us struggle with just being at peace. A lot of us struggle with being at rest. We see it as laziness and there are people who can be lazy.

But banish chaos from your life. Do whatever it takes to bring peace. And then the final is cultivate a pattern of worship and prayer. Just weaving in those times, the terra firma of your calendar, the regularly speaking, regularly praying when you're having conversations. I've been trying with my wife recently to say let's stop, let's just pray together.

Let's just pray in this moment. Let's just take some time that we'll begin to live in that space. Amen? I'm gonna invite Danny and the worship team right up right now if they can. I invite you guys to stand as we kind of lean into this for a second and I invite the prayer team forward. If you feel you've been outwitted or you need prayer on any situation, if you have a prayer for help, if you've never made a decision to follow Jesus, come forward for prayer.

We wanna pray with you. Prayer is powerful. It's spiritually nuclear. Danny's gonna lead us through one chorus of this and then as we prepare, if you wanna come forward at the end of this, you can. I'll come back and bless you. With Danny, lead us away. Make me a vessel. Make me an offering. Make me whatever you want me to be. I came here with nothing. But all you have given me.

Jesus, bring new wine out of me. So make me a vessel. Make me an offering. Make me whatever you want me to be. I came here with nothing. But all you have given me. Jesus, bring new wine out of me. I wanna invite you to, once I said to pray, to come forward for prayer if you need it. Our elders and prayer team are up here to pray for you. If you extend your hands, I wanna bless you today.

I pray that God would give you peace. That right now, if you need wisdom on a situation, just before I do that, just take James 1.5 seriously and just say, God, I need wisdom. Show me, teach me what I need to know. Give me wisdom in this situation. I wanna turn our theology into practical prayer. I wanna turn our words into worship. God, we wanna have time with you and pray for open and margin.

Lord, I bless your people right now, Lord Jesus. From the top of their heads to the bottom of their feet, Lord God, would you bless them and let them know how much peace is a weapon, Lord God, to remove the chaos, to remove the lies that they would be impervious to the lies of the enemy, that they would see those lies, that you would speak to them, Lord God.

Show them your power. God, if there's a new level, there's a new devil, but a new place brings us new grace. And I pray for grace, God, as you enlarge their territory, as they take just quiet ground, Lord God, continue to give authority in people's lives and in the territory of their lives. Bless them. We send them out now in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen. Bless you guys. Come for prayer. If you could write us a letter, that would be great, but we're here for you to pray. Amen. Amen.