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Oct. 22, 2019 - Jim Bakker Show
05:13
5 Ways the Devil Turns Christianity Upside Down - Larry Sparks on The Jim Bakker Show
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Time Text
Resisting Twisted Faith 00:03:41
Larry, you recently, you were asked by a key leader, what is the Lord speaking to you right now?
Do you remember that?
I do.
I do.
I want you to tell us what you said.
What is God speaking to you right now?
And I wrote it down here.
He said this.
There's five ways that the devil is actually trying to turn Christianity upside down.
And these are things societally, but also in Christianity we need to be aware of.
And these are the five things.
And I want to encourage you, just be aware of this.
Like, aware of it so we can resist it, fight against it.
Number one is a doctrine called universalism.
This is the belief that you don't need to do anything.
Jesus died on the cross, which he did.
His blood was shed for the sins of the world, which it was.
But you don't need to actually receive or accept the Lord.
By default of what he has done, you're in.
So we don't need to preach to anybody.
I mean, and to me, as a result, that's producing this kind of watered down, false Christianity where I'm just in.
I can live however I want because Jesus already paid the price.
So I see that.
Number two, I'm seeing this language is called, I'm reconstructing my faith.
We're seeing that, we're seeing, sadly, a lot of people my age.
I mean, I'm 36.
I'm seeing a lot of young leaders renouncing their faith and turning away from the faith.
That's right.
And it's scary.
But what I'm seeing that's troubling me even more, like, there is a healthy version of reconstructing our faith when we have a lot of religion in our past and a lot of false views about God.
And we need to adjust what we believe to agree with the Bible.
That's good.
What I'm seeing is people want to adjust the Bible to agree with how culture is doing things.
They want to adjust the Bible because, well, this is acceptable now.
Culture says this is okay.
Politicians say this is okay.
Hollywood says this is okay.
So we've got to change the Bible to say that that which is sin is actually acceptable.
And that's how we are reconstructing our faith.
And that's dangerous.
Yeah, God has been dealing with that same subject in my heart that we have just twisted the Bible.
And God won't tolerate.
His word is, he is the word.
Did you know that?
When you're twisting the word, you're twisting Jesus.
You are.
He is the word.
And that's where we are.
Our country's doing it.
We're saying, oh, grace gives you abortion.
You can kill your baby because it's a nice thing to do because it's so hard for a woman to have a baby and all that.
You know, it's just twisting what God has said.
It is.
It is.
And you know what?
That goes to the third thing is there is a lack of holy fear.
Back in the day, they would call Christians, what, God-fearing people.
And I was mentioning earlier about the fear of the Lord.
John Bevere wrote this amazing book, The Fear of the Lord.
I'm like, God, this is something I need to go back to because we've gotten too comfortable with God.
He is our Father.
He is our friend.
He is the lover of our soul, 100%.
He's also the King of glory.
He is also God that I know many people who say, yes, sir, to him.
So it's one of those things where we tremble before God.
And actually in Isaiah 66, there's a blessing for those who tremble at the word of God, which means when he says something, I do it out of holy fear.
And then the last two things were this.
A different gospel and a disunified church.
A different gospel like this is what it kind of sounds like.
Talking Greater Glory 00:01:46
Jesus died to kind of improve your life.
Jesus died to give you the biggest and best version of you.
Now, listen, we can talk maturely.
He did come to give us abundant life.
He came to bless us.
He came to prosper us.
He came to heal us.
100% true.
But when I'm having a bad day and when the enemy comes against me and I'm struggling and fighting, at the end of the day, I need to remember, it's healthy to remember where I was before Jesus.
Because then there's a weightiness to my faith.
He didn't just, you know, bring me out of like, well, I was kind of living a bad life, and now it's kind of good and it's better.
I was dead in my sin.
The Bible says dead in my sin.
I was a dead person incapable of doing anything.
God reached in, turned my life around, and it says in Romans 12, 1, in view of his mercy, we offer up our lives as a living sacrifice.
People try to preach, well, just give your life to God.
It says, in view. of his mercy.
We respond to his mercy.
And then the last thing is a disunified church.
We're all angry at each other.
I mean, listen, we believe about 90 to 95% of the same thing.
You know, all of us.
I understand.
We do.
Presbyterian, Methodist, but sometimes it's that 5%.
And there's such little things.
But we don't just disagree over them.
And there's healthy disagreement.
There's healthy debate.
We're a family.
We should be able to disagree as a healthy family does.
We don't.
We demonize one another.
And as a result, the world looks in and it's like, what's going on in the church?
And what did Jesus say in John 17?
We're talking about greater glory.
One of the key things that will release the greater glory of God is a unified church.
Even when we disagree on certain things, we agree that Jesus is Lord.
We agree that he died for our sins, shed his blood for us.
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