| Time | Text |
|---|---|
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Enjoying God's Presence
00:03:39
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| Does God really want us to enjoy his fellowship with us? | |
| Yes, and you know, again, this is a book about spiritual warfare, about slaying dragons. | |
| Maybe you say, What does enjoying God have to do with slaying dragons, with defeating the principalities and powers of the air? | |
| And you know, we talked about it last time that this book is supposed to be practical. | |
| So, my goal here is not just to scare you or something, or just to just to paint some picture like a Harry Potter novel. | |
| This is real, practical, daily wisdom that a person can use. | |
| And so, you know, temptation is one of the tools that the enemy uses to access our lives. | |
| Temptation comes in all kinds of forms, and the Bible tells us in the book of James how temptation works. | |
| It talks about how people are drawn away by their lusts and they're enticed through those things. | |
| And so, it's our desires, it's our lusts that give the enemy the access to be able to bring temptation into our lives. | |
| Well, think about this for a moment. | |
| I don't know if you've ever been on an extended fast. | |
| You know, I've done a few very long fasts, and there comes a point in a long fast where you lose your hunger altogether. | |
| But in the beginning, you really get to the place where you feel like you could eat this table. | |
| You just eat anything. | |
| If you walk through the food court in the mall after you haven't ate for three or four days, you know, you'll feel like jumping over the counter and just devouring it because everything will be crying out to you, eat me, eat me, eat me. | |
| But if you have just gone to the golden corral buffet and you stuffed yourself somewhere you couldn't take another bite, and then you walk through the food court at the mall, not only will all of those things being offered be repulsive to you, but you won't want anything to do with it. | |
| And this is what I believe is the key to overcoming temptation for the believer. | |
| It's not just trying to resist more and more and more. | |
| This is the way a lot of Christians do it. | |
| They just try to resist, try to resist. | |
| They try to push back, and they find themselves not only being ineffective at pushing back against the temptations, but the more they push back, the more they actually desire the very things that they're pushing against. | |
| And so, the Bible gives us a totally different idea, a totally different strategy. | |
| And the Bible teaches us to be satisfied with Jesus. | |
| In the book of Psalms, David writes about these things. | |
| The Lord says, I will give him to drink of the river of my delights. | |
| The Lord is talking about a life that is full of abundant blessings and pleasures. | |
| The Bible says that at his right hand are pleasures forevermore. | |
| Some Christians think that God doesn't want any of us to have any fun in this world. | |
| Did you know God invented pleasure and God invented you? | |
| God designed the human soul. | |
| All of the cravings, all the desires that we have as human beings, they are designed to be filled and to be satisfied by the presence of God. | |
| And in fact, all of these other desires that we have are actually counterfeits. | |
| You know, when people fill that hole with drugs and with pornography and with, you know, just running after money or fame or success, whatever it is, they're actually trying to fill that void in their lives with something that actually doesn't satisfy. | |
| The only thing that really satisfies is Jesus. | |
| So that's a very long way of saying that the key to overcoming temptation, in my opinion, is to become so satisfied with Jesus, so full of his presence, enjoying him and drinking from that river of his delights so much that the lower temptations and offerings of this world have very little to give us. | |
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Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus
00:00:10
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| It's like that old song says, Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. | |