Dr. Rogers told the story of a pastor who left the pastorate after twenty years, and decided to become a funeral director.  Somebody asked him, “Why did you do that?”

He said, “Well, I spent about twelve years trying to straighten out John.  He never did get straightened out.  I spent fourteen months trying to straighten out the marriage of the Smiths, and it never did get straightened out.  I spent three years trying to straighten out Susan, and she never did get straightened out.”

“But, now that I’m a funeral director…when I straighten them out, they stay straight.”

Well, contrary to what we may sometimes believe…it is not the job of the preacher to straighten anybody out.  The honest truth is that I cannot straighten out anyone.

That is the role of the Holy Spirit. 

I can preach the truth and get it into your head, and perhaps even be very persuasive…but only the Holy Spirit can impart the truth and get it into your heart where it matters the most.

John 16:7–11 (NKJV) — 7 Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you. 8 And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: 9 of sin, because they do not believe in Me; 10 of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; 11 of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

 On my own, I cannot even convince you of the truth of what you just read.  That isn’t really my job.  In my own power I cannot convince someone to believe in a spiritual truth.

A preacher once said, “The truth of the matter is, anything that I could talk you into, eventually somebody else can come along and talk you out of.”

A natural man cannot receive spiritual truth without supernatural help.

If you share your faith with others, (and I hope you do—every Christian should!) you need to understand that it is not your job to get people to accept the gospel, nor even to fully understand the gospel.

It is your job to get people to hear the gospel and leave the rest to the Holy Spirit.

Whenever Charles Haddon Spurgeon would approach his pulpit to preach the gospel, he would be muttering under his breath: “I believe in the ministry of the Holy Spirit.”   

Spurgeon understood a concept that we all need to apply to our lives: Everything we do for the Lord Jesus Christ is totally dependent upon the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

As the old song goes: “All is vain unless the Spirit of the Holy One come down.” 

Francis Chan authored a book titled, “Forgotten God.”  He deals with the role and ministry of the Holy Spirit…and how many times believers live as if He doesn’t exist and they have completely forgotten about Him.  That is the perfect title for a book on that subject because many believers have simply “forgotten” about the Holy Spirit.

For the next few weeks we will be looking at the role of the Holy Spirit in the conversion process of a new believer… and how these steps can only be accomplished by the Holy Spirit.

The war that Christians find themselves in is not like any other war that you can read about in history books.  It isn’t like anything that is studied at West Point or taught in the military…because it is a spiritual war.

Ephesians 6:12 (NKJV) — 12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

 The war that I am talking about you are engaged it at this very moment.  Sure, you cannot see the bullets or hear the bombs necessarily…but, that doesn’t make this war any less real.

It’s being fought in your home.  That’s why Christian marriages are falling apart at a record rate, and why Christian children are rebelling against the authority of their parents.

It’s going on in your mind.  That’s why even ministers and leaders are falling prey to the trap of pornography and adultery.

It’s being fought in your heart.  That is why all of us have to wade into combat each day to do the right thing rather than the wrong thing.

If you don’t believe there’s a war going on, just check your news feed on social media and you’ll see the results of this war in things such as murder, rape, prostitution, abortion, terrorism, drug addiction, and child molestation.

These are the rotten eggs that are hatched by this terrible war.

Notice that Paul says in v.12: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood…”

Every Christian has been drafted.  Every Christian has to fight.  There are no deferments, no exemptions, and no conscientious objectors in Christ’s army.

If you are a Christian you better get ready to rumble; you’re in the army now.

Let me tell you something.  When you give your heart to Jesus you don’t necessarily get into a life of fun–you get into a fight.  God not only puts salvation in your heart, He puts a sword in your hand.

When Paul came to the end of his life he said in:

2 Timothy 4:7 (NKJV) — 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

He exhorted Timothy, who he was discipling:

1 Timothy 6:12 (NKJV) — 12 Fight the good fight of faith…

I say again, the problem is we’ve got too many soldiers that have gone AWOL and too many Christians have waved the white flag of surrender without firing a shot.

And honestly, some of you reading this perhaps have no idea what I am talking about because you have never become engaged in this spiritual war.

Could it be that you have gone the way of the world?

The devil isn’t going to cause any problems with you…The reason why you haven’t run into the devil is you’re both traveling in the same direction.  The moment you turn around and go the direction God has called you to, I promise…you will run into him.

You cannot straddle the fence in this war. You cannot be like Switzerland; you cannot be neutral.  You’re either on one side or the other.

C.S. Lewis once said, “There is no neutral ground in the universe: every square inch, every split second is claimed by God, and counterclaimed by Satan.”

So at every waking moment you had better be on your guard, because there is a war that’s going on and the stakes are high!

In the next blog post we will talk about how to identify your enemy!

James Merritt once told that during one of the darkest periods of World War II, after the collapse of France and before America got involved, Winston Churchill wrote that the question in the minds of both friends and foes and it was this:  “Will Britain surrender too?”

At the time he made a speech that contained this sentence: “What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over.  I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin.  Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization.”

If you are reading this and you are a Christian…you are at war, too.  You are in a battle.

In this battle the peace in your heart, the joy in your marriage, the wellbeing of your children, the influence you have in your community are all at stake.

You are involved in spiritual warfare. 

Don’t yawn.  Don’t brush this off.  Don’t act like this isn’t some big deal.  It is.

One of the biggest problems is that many Christians, perhaps most, do not even realize it.  They have gone AWOL from the front lines and are asleep in the barracks.

The reason why many Christians are losing their battle with the devil, day-by-day, is because they’re not even showing up for the war.  In fact, I believe that most Christians try to fool themselves into believing that a war isn’t being fought.

And far too often Christians are going to war against each other and not the real enemy!

Someone has said, “Much of the church’s warfare today is fought by blindfolded soldiers who cannot see the forces ranged against them; who are buffeted by invisible opponents and respond by striking one another.”

Douglas MacArthur, one of our greatest generals, once said, “In war there is no substitute for victory.”

That statement is true in physical war, but doubly true for spiritual warfare.

Make no mistake about this: If you are a Christian: In your war, God wants you to be victorious. 

The people of God need to stop retreating and begin attacking.

To illustrate this, let me share a story that has been used in many sermons as an illustration, but is valuable for our discussion:

The story of a football player who graduated from college, and the coach asked him if he would like to come on staff and be a scout and try to find other good football players. 

He said, “Sure coach, what kind of a player are you looking for?” 

He said, “Well, there’s a kind of guy that when you knock him down he just stays down.” 

He said, “We don’t want him do we, coach?” 

The coach said, “No, we don’t want him.  But then there’s the kind of guy that when you knock him down, he gets up.  But if you knock him down the second time he just stays down.” 

The man said, “We don’t want him either do we coach?” 

The coach said, “No, we don’t want him either.”

He said, “But there’s the kind of guy that when you knock him down he gets up; you knock him down and he gets up; you knock him down again and he just keeps getting up.” 

The man said, “Now that’s the guy we want, right coach?” 

The coach said, “No, we don’t want him either.  What I want you to do is find the guy who’s knocking all these other guys down, that’s the guy I want.”

Well, I believe it’s high time that many Christians begin to knock down some of these strongholds that they have allowed Satan to place in their lives.

“Too many Christians are limping into heaven as defeated saints, when they need to be leaping into heaven as victorious soldiers.”

The next few blog posts I will be sharing with you how you can have victory for yourself daily in your spiritual war.

Charge!

As we continue to look at Elijah taking a stand against his culture in his day, (which is very much like ours in America today) I want to remind us of what has happened so far:

Israel at this point was drowning in sin, the leaders were self-serving and wicked and integrity was nowhere to be found.  Sound familiar?

And in that time when right was wrong and wrong was right, Elijah, a man who stood for righteousness and the one true God was considered not only politically incorrect but also an enemy of the state!

Elijah has confronted the false prophets and the people in their worship of a pagan god.  He challenged them to a duel–they set up an altar with a sacrifice and they would see who the true god was by who answered by fire.

The false prophets and worshipers of Baal could not get a response from their god no matter how hard they tried.

Elijah then had the sacrifice and altar absolutely soaked in water.

Remember: These false prophets had worked all day for hours and hours trying to get their god to answer and they were absolutely exhausted.

The prayer that Elijah prayed took, giver or take, less than 15 seconds.  Here is what he said:

1 Kings 18:36–37 (NKJV) — 36 And it came to pass, at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near and said, “Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that You are God in Israel and I am Your servant, and that I have done all these things at Your word. 37 Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that You are the Lord God, and that You have turned their hearts back to You again.”

All he was asking for was for God to be glorified and that is exactly what God did.

Here are the results:

1 Kings 18:38–40 (NKJV) — 38 Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood and the stones and the dust, and it licked up the water that was in the trench. 39 Now when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces; and they said, “The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!” 40 And Elijah said to them, “Seize the prophets of Baal! Do not let one of them escape!” So they seized them; and Elijah brought them down to the Brook Kishon and executed them there.

Don’t miss what happened.  When the people saw the true God go into action they did what they should have done.  They fell at His feet and worshiped Him and surrendered their lives to Him!

Do you notice that the false prophets still did not?  They had so hardened their hearts to the true God that even with this “proof’ before them, they would not accept it.  They died in their stubborn rejection of the true God.

Here is what I want you to take away from this:

In this day and age that we are living in, God is still looking for His people to face the culture of our day with the truth about who He is.

There is nothing that will move an unsaved person who has no relationship to God into taking the steps he or she needs to take to have a right relationship with God…

Like seeing those of us who do have a relationship with God,

• Showing it in the way we live
• Showing it in the way we trust
• Showing it in the way we obey God…

And that could be the biggest difference that we can make in the lives of lost people and in the culture today for our country.

May God’s people in this age, trust and obey God like never before.

Thanks to Dr. Ronnie Floyd and his church Cross Church for putting this recap together: