There is a growing emphasis in the church for pastors to "preach the Word," and I join wholeheartedly with them. I want preachers of fire and anointing to be filling the pulpits of His church. I'm hoping you do as well. Yet, I'm greatly intrigued by what Paul Tripp has said in the above passage. No one preaches more to us than we do ourselves. Just what is it that we're "preaching?" Are our thoughts towards ourselves in line with the Word of God? Do they fall in line with what it is we say we believe?
12 men were sent into the new land promised to the Israelites by God. They saw wonders. They saw a beautiful and rich land. Truly a promised land. They also saw great obstacles to possessing it. Walled cities. Warriors of huge stature. Trained armies and a hostile population. Two of them, Joshua and Caleb, didn't see that. They saw the promises of their God. They saw themselves carrying and living out those promises. The ten others, whose names we don't know, saw the overwhelming hopelessness of what they'd face, and they saw how insignificant they were in the face of it all. The thoughts of Joshua and Caleb "preached" to them the faithfulness of their God and all of His promises. The ten had thoughts that "preached" to them the utter futility of trying to go into the land. Joshua and Caleb were grounded in His truth. The ten in the lies of the enemy and the fear he put upon them in it. For those of us who call ourselves His, we fall into not just the two groups shown here, but into a third. One that I think the majority of us end up walking in. The one that bounces back and forth between them.
That the true spiritual battlefield is our mind is nothing new. We've heard that many times over, but we keep getting overcome by the enemy there time and again. The Holy Spirit seeks to lead us ever deeper into His Life, His Truth, and the knowledge of who He is. Our enemy, Satan, keeps showing us "pictures" of why none of it can be true for us. We believe in victory in Christ, but not for ourselves. We believe that He does have plans to prosper us, but "us" doesn't really include us. We do believe He provides for His people, but somehow we doubt that He'll really do so for us. The enemy provides a false gospel by way of his fiery darts aimed at our minds, and we too often accept it and preach that false gospel, which is based on lies, fear, and self-loathing, to ourselves each day. So we stay on the other side of the realization of His promises, held in captivity because we struggle to believe we can really be free, can really have victory.
In essence, we preach a "sermon" to ourselves throughout the day and days. What's the effect of our preaching? Do we speak chaos or peace? Defeat or victory? Despair or hope? Does our message cause us to take heart or take flight? What's the "sermon series" that you'll be presenting to yourself this week? Where will it lead you? Into His fullness or into the wilderness? We choose the message. What will the message be?
Blessings,
Blessings,
Pastor O
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