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2 Corinthians 10:3-5; this is what Paul said and this is what we have to get, God's Power;
"For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons that
we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, our weapons," what are they?
Prayer and fasting, the Word of God, the shield of faith, praying in the spirit, whatever,
these are spiritual weapons. "On the contrary," our weapons, "they have divine power," the
Greek word is ‘dunamis' (doo'-nam-is); we get our word ‘dynamite' from this,
they have explosive power. "The weapons of God, they have divine power to demolish" what?
"To demolish strongholds." Again, the Greek word is the word ‘ochuroma' (okh-oo'-ro-mah).
It means a prisoner locked by deception. The weapons of God, they have the explosive, miraculous
power to demolish, or to tear down the false beliefs that hold us in bondage. We are a
slave to whatever has ‘mastered' us. In our minds, we believe this is the answer,
when this is a lie. God's weapons have the power to explode those lies. Verse 5, so what
do we do? "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the
knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." Whenever
the voice says, "Don't admit that you have a problem," no, no, no, instead we admit;
"I am weak, I am vulnerable, and when I am weak, scripture says, "Christ's strength is
made perfect in my weakness." We grab the lie, we replace it with truth. Whenever our
body says, "Gratify me, gratify the flesh!" We say, "No, no, no, no; I have crucified
the flesh, I am crucified with Christ I no longer live, it is Christ who lives in me.
By faith I put to death all the desires of my earthly nature." Whenever the excuse monster
comes up, "Well, that is just the way you are, you can't ever overcome that, you can
never change." "No, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength; I am an overcomer
by the blood of the lamb and by the words of his testimony." We will keep it a secret;
don't tell anybody that, no, no, no, no! Whoever confesses their sins and renounces them finds
mercy; whoever hides them does not prosper. James; "If I confess my sins one-to-another
and pray for each other, I may be healed." I take the lie and make it obedient to the
truth of Christ. You can overcome this. The sad thing is, the reality is, based on my
experience, most of you won't; because you'll continue to do the Five Easy Steps.
I want to tell you just up front about what's mastered me. What I am about to tell you,
it will be real easy for you to write this off and go, "okay yeah Groeschel," it's kind
of like the guy in the interview; you say, "What's your weakness?" He says, "Well my
weakness is that I just care too much about my job," so, it's going to sound like that
to you. But, I want you to know that what I am about to tell you has ‘mastered'
me and this is to me as dangerous as ***, it's as dangerous as ***, it's as
dangerous as being a kleptomaniac, I mean this is what's ‘mastered' me. Although
it's socially acceptable, and often even applauded by society, I want you to know its cost me
so much that I have been through two significant rounds of counseling, I've visited medical
doctors, and I am fighting even to this day to stay clean from this foreign master. That
is, I am a classic die-hard workaholic. My addiction, what I have found through lots
of work, is that truly I am addicted to adrenalin. What I do, I preach often, I create, produce,
conquer and take over, blah, blah, blah. So, the church world is the perfect place to just
punch, go, not stop; and my body has a very difficult time coming down and relaxing, extremely
difficult time. Now, I have had what I call seasons of sobriety, where I've done well;
and I have had about an 18 month fairly healthy season. Then, like an alcoholic binge is,
sometimes I just binge and lose control and I will tell you how bad this is and how vulnerable
I am. In the summer time, my family takes two weeks off; it's the most important time
to our family all year long. I look forward to it like nothing else and we go to the mountains.
This time, I decided for some reason to start on a book project that I have been wanting
to do on the series, Practical Atheist; when you believe in God, but you live as if He
doesn't exist. I've felt very passionate that God wants me to write that book. So, I just
started. A normal book is 45,000 to 50,000 words; it takes most people two years to write.
The first six days of my vacation, I wrote about 30,000 words. Okay? On my vacation,
I didn't totally neglect the family, what happened is I'd put the kids to bed at 9:00,
I'd crack open the laptop, I'd work until 2:00 in the morning, I'd get in bed until
4:00 a.m., I'd get up at 4:00 and I would work until 8:00 a.m. When they are napping,
I'm working and it just overtook me, just overtook me. Okay, on the sixth day, Amy came
in and she said, "You are in your sickness again and you have got a choice, you can either
put your laptop down and you can come and have the vacation with your family, or we
are going to do it without you; and it's your choice." When she said it, it's like the lights
came on. That is how much I've been ‘mastered' by something. Now, here's the difficult part
for me to tell you and here's what you are going to have to do to overcome this. You
have got to get to the root of it. We are trying to find something besides God to validate
and help us live. Here's my very open confession: What I have been trying to do, the root of
the problem is; I have been trying to prove my worth by how I perform and what I produce,
rather than having my worth validated in Christ alone in my life. That is really hard for
me to admit, but when I can admit that then, Christ's grace is enough to help me through.
His grace is enough. For me, let me tell you, that is my master and it is very dangerous.
I am very aware, right now I am on a three week stretch with no days off, it's planned,
but it's there and it feeds me and it starts to bring me in. So, for me the grace of God
is not some pill that I took and now it made me okay. It's more like a daily ointment that
is enough for today. His grace is enough for today and you can have that as well, if you
will find what you are looking for in Christ and not in something else.
Do what I call the David and Goliath. David looked up at this giant, everybody else said;
"He's too big to beat!" David looked up and said, "No, I think he's too big to miss!"
He looked at the giant, he looked at God; giant, God, giant God. Looked at God, looked
at the giant; said, "Who are you to come against the armies of the Living God? Who are you?"
And he took him down. Here's what you need to do: You need to look at what has ‘mastered'
you and look at God. Look at what has ‘mastered' you and look at God. Look at what has ‘mastered'
you and say, "What are you to come against my God? What do you have that my God doesn't
have?" Look at the bottle, look at the pill, look at the food, look at the lustful image,
look at the money, look at the computer, the facebook, the Twitter; look at it and say,
"What do you have that my God can't give me? Who are you to come against the armies of
the living God? No more! I will not settle for a cheap pathetic imitation of the real
thing; God and God alone will be my master! Whatever I need I get from Him, and I will
not let an imitation promise me something that is not real. Who are you to come against
the armies of the Living God?" So, here's your deal, you've got a choice; you can continue
in your dysfunctional and sinful and idolatrous behavior, which is what many of you will do.
Or, you can take the next, very difficult step. I don't know what that's going to be
for you. Your campus pastor will tell you some different things now, it could be going
public, confessing, confessing to your Life Group, confessing to your campus pastor, it
could be getting counseling, could be therapy; I don't know what it is. But, you are going
to know what it is, it's going to be the thing you don't want to do. And you do it, and you
look at that giant and you say, "What are you to control my life? I will not be controlled
by anything but God; He alone meets every need that I have."
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