Jesus followers had 3 enemies

By Charl Human

Morning everyone!! Trust you all blessed!!!

In the beginning of this current series it was mentioned our fight is against 3 things!! The world ,the flesh and the deceiver!!!

We spoke about how to overcome the world.

Now we will look at jow to overcome the flesh!! I trust this will helo someone in Jesus name!!!

1 john 5;4

Joshua 7:1-2

Rom.8:13

Ps.17

Jesus followers have three enemies: the world, the flesh, and the deceiver.

In a previous study, we learned how Joshua overcame Jericho - the world. This week we will read God’s battle plan to overcome Ai - the flesh. 

We cannot overcome the world by fighting. We overcome the world by loving as Jesus loved - by laying down our lives and worshiping God in faith. Our faith is the victory that overcomes the world.

The world is a difficult foe. It is a fortified wall around us. The flesh is even more dangerous because it is entrenched inside of us. As we gain victory over the foe outside, we begin to understand the enemy within. The battle at Ai shows us God’s method for defeating the flesh.

Many Jesus followers rejoice at Jericho. They celebrate that the world is overcome, then they are defeated at Ai - they are frustrated by the flesh within.

Challenge:

Memorize Romans 8:13

What victories have you experienced over the world?

Find an accountability partner and join each other on the battlefield through prayer.

God defeated Jericho before Israel crossed the Jordan

By Charl Human

Joshua 6:24-27

Prov.6:11

2Peter 2:20-22

John 16:33

Israel was not to raise a sword to take Jericho, nor were they to plunder it. They were to worship God in faith and to destroy everything and everyone that was not set apart for God.

Once destroyed, God – through Joshua – cursed the rebuilding of Jericho. Whoever returned to Jericho to rebuild it would do so at the cost of their offspring. This terrible curse came to pass in 1 Kings chapter 16. Modern archaeologists discovered the bones of children placed in jars and inserted into Jericho’s rebuilt foundations.

God defeated the world for us. If we reinhabit the sin of this world, we do so at the peril of those closest to us. Like the curse of Jericho, our children often pay the highest price for our rebellion.

Challenge:

Memorize John 16:33

Describe a time when you wanted to return to the sins of the world.

How do we overcome the world?

By Charl Human

1 John 4

Rom.12:1-2

John 16:33

You cannot save the world.

You cannot change the world.

You cannot overcome the world.

It’s easy to have faith in God and worship Him in the safety of a church, surrounded by other Jesus followers. We are called to be more than warriors – to go out into a world that is hostile towards God, to show it the same love that Jesus taught us, to lay down our lives in an obedient act of love for a world that hates us because it hates Jesus our King.

How do we overcome the world? We don’t - Jesus did that for us.

We worship God.

We lay down our lives as a living sacrifice.

We let Jesus love the world through us.

We allow Jesus to love the world through us when we offer ourselves as living sacrifices to worship our Holy God.

Challenge:

Memorize John 16:33

Find a way to worship God in public, outside the walls of the church.

Faith and Worship

By Charl Human

*God’s strategy for defeating Jericho was two-fold: Faith and worship.* 

Jodhua 6:15-23

2Chron.20;14-30

Heb.11:1-2,30-31

John 16;33

Alone, Israel could not defeat Jericho. If Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, he would lose. This was God’s battle, not man’s. This was God’s victory, not man’s. 

Joshua knew that the battle belongs to the Lord - Israel’s duty was to worship and trust God.

When Joshua and Caleb first entered the land as spies for Moses, Israel’s faith was in the might and power of man. When the spies discovered that the land’s inhabitants were stronger than Israel, they became afraid. Under Joshua's leadership, their faith was now in the real source of strength and power - the Spirit of God.

Their faith allowed them to do what they were incapable of 40 years earlier: to trust God’s strategy and worship Him amidst their enemies. Throughout the years, Israel’s Kings learned to do the same.

Challenge:

Memorize John 16:33

Describe a time when you worshiped God in the presence of your enemies.

Have you ever seen love defeat an enemy?

By Charl Human

Gen.1:1

John 1:1-18

John 3:10-21

1 john 3:10-21

1john 2:15-17

When the Bible talks about the world, it implies more than just the created planet we call Earth. There is a human, physical, moral, temporal, and future world. When we discuss the world as an enemy, we are primarily alluding to the parts that are hostile towards God.

God created the physical world through the Word, and He invites us to join Him in creation by worshiping Him. But this world is now hostile territory occupied against God. Not only is it a sworn enemy of Jesus followers, but the paradise God created is the battlefield into which King Jesus calls us.  

Where do we start? How can we begin to change a world whose very existence defines opposition to God? The answer lies in a very familiar verse…

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” – John 3:16

Challenge:

Memorize John 16:33

Have you ever seen love defeat an enemy?

You were once an enemy of God, how did God defeat you?

Jericho must be destroyed

By Charl Human

Joshua 6:6-14

Gen.15:13-21

John 16;33

Ps.75

Jericho-the-fortress was a defensive marvel. Its walls were impenetrable, yet the city was small enough to be marched around seven times in a single day (about 8.5 acres, according to archaeologists). Left standing, it could send marauders out to harass invading armies at will. 

Jericho must be destroyed, God decreed it, and Joshua knew it.

Jericho-the-people were Canaanites: a people whose sin took 400 years to reach its full measure. At any time before or during the 7-day siege, they could have repented and trusted in the God of Israel. Rahab did. Instead, the inhabitants of Jericho chose to continue their sin and trust in their walls and military might.

God is patient with us, but there is a sin that leads to death, and when man’s sin reaches its full measure, there will be no doubt that our patient God is righteous and just in His wrath. 

Challenge:

Memorize John 16:33

Think of a time when you trusted in your own strength.  How did that go?

What battles seem bigger than you?

By Charl Human

Joshua 6:1-5

John 16:33

Ps 35

Jesus followers have three enemies on the battlefield: the world, the flesh, and the deceiver. 

Often, the most immediate threat we face is the world. It is big, in your face, and seems impenetrable. The world is entrenched around our lives. We are set apart from it – yet we are still in it. In a spiritual sense, the world is the battlefield. For Joshua, Jericho represented the world. 

God trained Israel in the Wilderness, baptized them in the Jordan, and circumcised them as they camped before the locked gates of Jericho.  

How would they overcome Jericho?  

How do we overcome the world?

Challenge:

Memorize John 16:33

What battles are you facing that seem bigger than you?

Not Afraid

By Charl Human

 

Exodus 5:10

Heb.11:23

“By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw he was a beautiful child; and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.” (Hebrews 11:23) 

Those two words sum up how Moses grew to express such greatness. The parents who gave him life were “not afraid.” They lived with faith over fear. The DNA passed down to their son through this genetic transfer was that of belief.

But even more than that, Moses’ parents’ lack of fear in the face of an evil culture and evil king spared his life. They chose to hide him so he would not be killed, as the king of Egypt had mandated for all male Hebrew newborns. Then, when Moses had grown too old to hide, they came up with an elaborate scheme to position him in a safe and secure place. 

The strategy involved placing Moses in a basket in the Nile River near the place where Pharaoh’s daughter bathed, accompanied by her maids. Knowing he was a beautiful baby, they assumed the best of her feminine instincts. And they were right. With one look at this crying infant, she “had pity on him and said, ‘This is one of the Hebrews’ children’ ” (Exodus 2:6).

Moses’ parents knew Pharaoh’s daughter would not be in a position to raise a child on her own. Those types of roles were for servants in that cultural time period. So they’d also placed Moses’ sister, Miriam, where she could keep an eye on the basket and present herself when it was retrieved. 

The plan went according to their hopes, and when Miriam offered to find someone to help nurse the boy and care for him in the palace, Pharaoh’s daughter agreed. Miriam was more than willing to offer her mother to do just that.

As we near the end of the murals on the hallway walls, we see the baby being drawn from the basket, we hear the water dropping off the basket as it’s lifted from the river, and from a loudspeaker, we hear the Bible passage that describes the rest of the scene:

Pharaoh’s daughter said to [Moses’ mother], “Take this child away and nurse him for me and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed him. The child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. And she named him Moses, and said, “Because I drew him out of the water” (Exodus 2:5-10).

Not only was Moses’ life spared from certain death in the violent culture he’d been born into, but his mother was paid to nurse him and raise him in the palace. This truth reminds us that we will never discover what God can do until we trust Him to do it. He can do things that blow our minds. Moses’ parents had decided they would not be controlled by the culture, so their decisions reflected alignment under the one, true God.

Living by faith means choosing God’s plan over the culture’s plan, then watching Him work it out for your good and others’ benefit.

The third thing that Jesus said

By Charl Human

John 19:26-27

When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,”  and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.

As Jesus hung on the cross, his sayings, thus far, have been others’ focused. He asked for forgiveness for his crucifiers. He welcomed the thief into the kingdom. And in today’s reading, he takes care of his mother, Mary, and his disciple John.

Even in the torture and humiliation, Jesus did not focus on himself. He wanted to make sure his mother would be taken care of. (It’s a well-established fact that Mary’s husband, Joseph, had died by then). Jesus wanted to give his beloved disciple John the important role of caring for Mary. 

Even from the cross, Jesus let go of that which was close to his heart: his mother and his close friend.

Bringing It Home

What or whom I am holding on to too tightly? Is God convicting me of letting go of someone or something and trusting Him for that submission?

Lean In

Father, I know I cling too much to certain people and certain ideas of how life should be. Yes, it’s sometimes scary to let go but help me remember that I’m releasing those things or people to the God who sent his one and only Son to Calvary for my sake. Amen

Faith #02

By Charl Human

Heb. 11:11

Gen.17;15-16

John 10:10

“And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise.” (Hebrews 11:11)

“And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise.” (Hebrews 11:11)

Our next exhibit in the Hall of Heroes illustrates this truth in a dramatic fashion. This hero’s name is Sarah. She started life as Sarai, and she married Abraham, who, again, began life as Abram. 

God promised both Sarah and Abraham a son. God did this the same time he changed Sarah’s name:

As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and indeed I will give you a son by her (Genesis 17:15-16).

Not only was Sarah 90, but she’d been barren her entire life. She’d never conceived or given birth to a child. Her physical capacity to do so was absent, and time was no longer on her side. So this promise from God simply didn’t fit the facts of her life. It wasn’t practical.

It’s possible that Sarah’s story resembles your own but in a different way. You could be barren in other forms. Your capacity to experience what God has for you just doesn’t seem to be there. You’re not producing what you thought you would be at this stage in your life. You’re not delivering on the destiny you believed to be yours. You’ve heard Jesus’ promise in John 10:10, when He declared, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” But you don’t see the results of that promise in your everyday life.

If that describes your current state of mind, know that Sarah was right where you are. Five times God had told her she was going to have a son. Not only that, but He’d gone on to tell Abraham and her that, through this son, a whole nation would be birthed. Sarah had a vision for a great future. Yet the clock kept taunting her, tempting her to give up and doubt God. If we were to look closely, we’d see that many of our lives look like this—like our ability to be what God wants us to be, to do what God wants us to do, and to achieve what God wants us to achieve no longer exists. 

Whatever the case, if you feel like too much time has passed to get to experience the fulfillment of Christ’s promise of an abundant and fulfilling life, I encourage you to *never let the facts get in the way of your faith.* *Don’t deny the facts—facts are facts—but just know that faith is never limited to facts alone. Facts always involve what you see. Faith involves what you don’t see.*

Forgiveness

By Charl Human

Luke 23:24

Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Even as the nails were being driven into his hands and feet, Jesus was saying these words. With every blow of the hammer pounding into his fists.

Were the Roman soldiers sorry? Did the Pharisees express any remorse? Did they offer an apology?

No.

Yet, Jesus offers forgiveness. Unilateral forgiveness or one-sided forgiveness. He didn’t need them to be sorry or ask for forgiveness. 

He showed us what it means to give up your rights. Even your right for retaliation. 

In doing so, he dies free from resentment. He said the words aloud to show us what it means to release people from a hold of anger and, in turn, release ourselves from the pressure cooker of bitterness.

Bringing It Home

Whom do I need to release in forgiveness just as Christ has forgiven me? Am I willing to let go of my right to retaliation? Am I trusting God to vindicate me and my cause?

Lean In

Father God, I don’t deserve the forgiveness that you offer so freely through your Son. I pray that you will help me give up my right of being right, and my right to retaliation. Help me know that when I release people in forgiveness, I am, in fact, releasing myself to live a fuller, freer life. Amen

Faith

By Charl Human

“By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” (Hebrews 11:8)

1Peter 2:11-12

Your life of faith as a kingdom hero will also involve how you choose to live. We read in Hebrews 11:9 that “by faith [Abraham] lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise.” Abraham made it to the area promised to him, but it was not yet his.

Perhaps no discipline in the kingdom hero’s toolbox of faith is greater than the discipline of waiting well. While you’re waiting, God is doing two things related to your life at once. First, He’s preparing the promise for you, and second, He’s preparing you for the promise. Most people delay the promise they’re waiting for because they choose not to cooperate with the learning of the lessons and the spiritual growth God has for them in the interim.

That’s what happened to Abraham. He ended up in the Hall of Heroes, but not every decision he made was heroic. He delayed his breakthrough to his first promise by some 25 years. Abraham wasn’t ready. He was still lying, cheating, and even sleeping with his wife’s handmaiden, resulting in a baby born outside God’s will. Before he got his inheritance, Abraham first needed to come to his senses, grow in his faith, and trust God fully—even when it didn’t look like anything was happening.

God never wants to give someone a destiny that will cause them to forget Him when they get it. When God delivers on those promises, we often praise Him and then just as quickly forget He did. We forget because we lack the kind of commitment that’s tied to more than what we see and what we get.

Like Abraham, we are also to live as foreigners in a strange land. 1 Peter 2:11-12 puts it like this:

Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.

God doesn’t want any of us to get too attached to the world we live in now. We aren’t to adopt the culture so much that our behavior begins to reflect the common behaviors of the culture. Not only that, but remaining mobile frees us to pursue His plan more fully. If you’re going to walk by faith, you better have on loafers or comfortable shoes, because God can take you on some long and winding paths. Staying tied too closely to your comfort zone will limit what God is able to do both in and through you.

Kingdom Heroes

By Charl Human 

Heb.11;7

Isiaha 2:14-17

Gen.6:9

“By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.” (Hebrews 11:7)

Many of us fail to live our lives as kingdom heroes simply because our faith has dried up. We go through the motions only to discover that our Christian walk has gone flat. We lack that which transforms the heart of faith to the next level of heroic fruition.

James explains this:

What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so, faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself (James 2:14-17).

James lets us know how to reactivate faith—by combining what we do with what we believe. The work of obedience ignites the reality of faith so we see the invisible spiritual power enter into the visible reality around us.

Noah arguably gives us the greatest illustration of faith at work in humanity. His story highlights a man of incredible conviction. He didn’t strive for popular acceptance. He knew God and chose to follow Him closely: “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God.” Genesis 6:9

Noah lived to please God. He walked with God, similar to the many others who also wound up in the Hall of Heroes. On top of that, Noah was a blameless man. He had integrity with both people and God. As a result, he found favor with God. And God’s favor can do more than bring blessing; it can bring peace.

Today, we’re facing an epidemic of indecisiveness in our culture. So many people are simply afraid to make a decision. And the concept of groupthink has become a chokehold. As a result, more often than ever, we as believers fail to move forward based on what God has directed us to do.

Just think about what would have happened if Noah had waited for consensus on building the ark. But thankfully, Noah’s faith had been activated. He had a living faith that showed up in what he did, not just in what he said. As a result, his legacy is on display in the Hall of Heroes. His impact has gone down in history as one of the bravest, most courageous to have ever been lived out.

Discover your passion

By Charl Human

Col.3:23

Ps.63:1

We’ve heard it said that passion is oxygen for the soul. It’s also fuel for a life well-lived! We believe that nothing great can be accomplished without passion and enthusiasm.

In Colossians 3:23, Paul encourages us to do everything with passion and enthusiasm—not for others but for God. Passion is simply what drives and energizes you! It’s what motivates you to take action. It’s the force that gets you out of bed in the morning and keeps you focused to do your best.

When passion is directed productively for the benefit of others, it can change the world for the better. It can give you the fuel you need to overcome obstacles and challenges, rebound from disappointment of failure, and fulfill your God-given purposes. Passion is pregnant with optimism and belief.

Remember, our ultimate passion should be for the Lord. We read in Psalm 63:1 that David pursued God with everything he had; he was a man of God who followed hard after God.

“Discovering your Passion” is the third and final part of uncovering your Life Word. When you tap into your passion, it gives you the energy you need to live on purpose and maximize your power. There are several key questions that we have found are helpful to reveal your motivation and energy. These are the top three to help you Discover your Passion:

Where do I invest most of my time, energy, and money?

What matters to me deeply?

What energizes me to take action and motivates me to make a difference?

Passion reminds you that what you’re doing is important. God plants seeds of greatness in each of us and waters them with passion.

You will find your Life Word when you define your power, determine your purpose, and discover your passion. When you have discovered your Life Word, don’t let fear keep you from your destiny. Don’t let apathy keep you from experiencing an exciting and meaningful journey.

Live your Life Word with faith and courage, and make a profound, positive difference in the lives of others and leave the world a better place. Can you imagine if we all lived out our Life Words? We would change the world for Christ and leave a legacy that truly matters—all for the glory of God!