Mike Bickle emphasizes the importance of pulling down strongholds of the mind, explaining that spiritual warfare is not fought with human power but through the Word of God. He highlights that strongholds are built on lies and wrong beliefs that keep us from experiencing God's truth and presence. Bickle encourages believers to identify, expose, and renounce these lies, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. He stresses that our identity in Christ is rooted in being betrothed to Him and being seen as pure, which empowers us to resist the enemy's accusations. Ultimately, the sermon calls for a transformation of the mind to align with God's truth, enabling believers to live in freedom and victory.

The goal of this class is not only to help equip you in prayer, but equip you to equip other people in the future. Those that that you might be pastoring in the future, those that are you are discipling, those that you are training. And so I'm encouraging you to pay attention to these sessions as something that you will actually communicate to other people in your, of course, through your own personality, through your own lens, but using some of these truths. Well, we're going to begin in Roman numeral one. We're looking at the subject of pulling down spiritual strongholds. Paul gave us understanding of how to pull down spiritual strongholds in our spiritual life. Let's look at 2 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 3 to 5. Paul said, though we walk in the flesh, though we walk in our physical bodies, what he's saying, we don't war according to human power. That's what he means by we don't war according to the flesh. We're not limited to human power, even though we're walking in a physical body. Verse 4, for the weapons of our warfare against Satan is the idea. They're not carnal. They're not purely human. Well, I mean, they aren't human. They're beyond flesh and blood, our weapons, because our enemy is not flesh and blood, is the idea. But our weapons are mighty in God. Now, there's no real mystery to this. What Paul's going to outline very clearly is our weapon, our primary weapon is speaking the Word of God in unity with the Spirit, and the Spirit moves when we do that. That's the ultimate weapon that's mighty in God. Just so that you're not mystified by what Paul is going to say and really make clear in the verses ahead. Verse 4, for the weapons of our warfare, they're not carnal, they aren't human, they're not flesh and blood, but they're mighty for the pulling down of strongholds. He's talking about spiritual strongholds. He says the same thing in a different way in verse 5 by casting down arguments. Now, that's interesting that pulling down strongholds and casting down arguments are two sides of one coin, and we'll develop that in a minute. And casting down, not just arguments, they're arguments that the enemy puts in our heart against God and God's truth. But we also cast down every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. The idea is to bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. The goal is that believers would walk with their minds in captivity to the Word of God. That's where we put our energy. You know, that's where we exert energy in our spiritual life, to bring our mind into unity with the Holy Spirit, into unity with the Word of God. When we exert energy and effort in our spiritual life, we're not trying to change God's mind. We're not trying to earn something from God. We're trying to change our mind. That's where the effort and the energy is exerted, to bring our mind into captivity, into slavery. Paul uses this in the most positive way, to the Word of God. To where we're living, we agree with what God says. That's where we put the effort in our spiritual life. That's where prayer and fasting and spiritual disciplines come in, because some people get confused. They think spiritual disciplines means they're trying to earn something to change God's mind. No, they're positioning their life to change their mind. So they're brought into captivity. I mean, what an extravagant way to say it. Captivity, our thinking to the obedience to the Word of God, where we believe the Word, we say the Word, we live by the Word in our heart. So Paul introduces this idea of spiritual strongholds, paragraph B. In the ancient world, a stronghold was a fort, a fortified city. It was often included like a city had a big stone wall built around the city. Often that's what a stronghold was. It was the wall built around the city. Now just picture a fort, or bigger than a fort, a fortified city with 50 foot walls. I mean, big tall walls. Some of them had big fortresses like that, or fortified defenses. Think of that wall 10 feet thick. Now those walls were typically made of stone. So when the enemy came to attack the city, those big stone walls would keep the enemy out, would keep the invading army from entering into the city. That's the purpose of a fortress, of a stronghold, is to keep the presence of the enemy out. That's the goal, that's the idea, that's the thought that Paul is, the picture that Paul wants you to have in your mind as you're reading this passage. Paragraph C. Paul used the analogy of an ancient stronghold, a fort, to teach a spiritual truth. And the reason he used that analogy was because it was so common, everybody understood it in the Roman world. Now the truth he was talking about was describing how Satan attacks us and how we overcome the attack. He was using a positive word picture. I mean, a fort that kept the invading army out is a positive word picture, but what he's really saying is, he's using it in a negative way. He says it's like the devil, Satan, is working to build a fort around you to keep the presence of God from liberating you. It's a fortress withstanding and resisting the presence and the blessing of God in a person's life. So those walls, those demonic walls, have to be torn down stone by stone so that the invading army, in this sense, is the presence of God, would touch our inward life in a powerful way. So he's using a positive word picture, but he's using it in a negative way, because in this case, it's the enemy building the stronghold in agreement with our wrong thinking and our wrong choices. And that stronghold is keeping the invading army, the presence of God, so to speak, from touching our lives. Paragraph D. Now Jesus described Satan as a strong man who seeks to guard his house from being plundered. Jesus was the one that says, I'm going to bind the strong man and plunder his house. And the way that Jesus binds the strong man and plunders his house, the idea is that the blessing of God would enter into people's lives. They would be liberated, plundered, set free from Satan's bondage, Satan the strong man. So that's the kind of the word picture that Paul is working with. Paragraph E, here's the principle. Satan seeks to establish strongholds in our mind. Again, a stronghold, remember it's a fort, picture 50 feet high, that's an arbitrary number, 10 feet thick, built of stone. Satan wants to have this fortress built in our mind to keep the presence of God out, to keep the bondage in, to keep us in bondage, to keep blessing out of our life. But this stone wall, this big wall made of these large stones, they're actually, what Paul makes clear here, they're stones that are accusing the truth about God. It's not physical stones in this fortress or this stronghold in our mind. They're spiritual stones, so to speak. It's accusations, arguments against the truth of God. For instance, the word of God says, God loves you. In our mind we go, I know he does technically, but I don't really feel it, it doesn't really feel. That's the power of a stronghold in a believer's life, keeping the word of God, accusing the word of God. We don't mean to, it's not a malintention, but still we're saying, well, you know, I don't really know, you know, it doesn't really seem like it's, I mean, I know it's true, but it doesn't really feel that true. That's how people that have strongholds in their minds talk, because the word of God is not penetrating their heart and their mind and their emotions is the idea. Roman numeral two. Now there's different types of strongholds. There's a personal strongholds. Those are strongholds of the mind, and that's what we're focused on in this session. B, there's cultural strongholds, strongholds in specific regions or cities or areas. And C, there are cosmic strongholds or strongholds in the spirit realm. There's large demonic powers in the spirit realm over cities. They're often referred to as territorial spirits. Well, we're not going to look at the cultural strongholds or the cosmic strongholds tonight. We're going to look at them a little bit next week, actually. Tonight we're going to look at paragraph A. Let's go back to their strongholds in the mind, personal strongholds. Paragraph A, Roman numeral two. A stronghold in the mind is a, it's simple. It's a collection of ideas that are in agreement with Satan. They're not in agreement with God. They're in agreement with Satan. That's what a stronghold is. Again, picture that wall, that 50-foot wall built of big stones. Those stones are like ideas. They're spiritual ideas. It's a spiritual wall. They're lies that accuse Jesus. They accuse His leadership. They accuse our standing before Him. They're arguments about His character, His power, His wisdom. They're arguments in us about our relationship with Him. Lord, it doesn't, I know you're good, but it doesn't really seem like you're good right now. I know the kingdom's real, but it doesn't seem that real. I know that I'm lived forever, but that doesn't really feel like it's true, though I technically know it is true. I know that I have the gift of righteousness and I'm righteous at your side, but I don't really feel like it. It doesn't really seem true. Those are arguments that rise up in us against God. When we believe lies, I'm at the end of paragraph A about God, we're actually believing lies about who we are in Christ. Okay, let's go top of page two. Now, we're going to look at personal strongholds tonight, not the cultural or cosmic. Again, we'll look a little bit at those next week. Top of page two. We all are in this battle, so this is a very, very, very relevant subject to every believer. A, spiritual strongholds. Again, they're a collection of ideas. They're thoughts. They're not only thoughts, but that's the basic element of a stronghold. Strongholds are established by opening doors to Satan through sinful actions and sin and wrong belief systems. Again, we're born with a wrong belief system, though even though we're raised in the church, our natural mind plus the work of the enemy plus the culture is always resisting what the Bible says is true about us and true about God. Now, Satan's sphere of activity is the domain of darkness. He's the God of darkness, but here's the issue. Wherever there's darkness, he has access to it, and if that darkness is in our heart, he has access to influence our heart. Wherever we're in agreement with darkness, we give legal access to, it's his domain. So, we want to renounce darkness, darkness agreeing with wrong ideas about God. He is the God of love. We are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. We are the bride of Christ. We are sons of God. We will reign forever. Every small little thing we do, even giving some in obedience to Jesus, even giving a cup of cold water, it's remembered forever and rewarded. Those are true about us, though in our five senses, they don't feel true. Notice in John 14, Jesus says that Satan has nothing in me. What he was saying, he goes, there's no access point in me for the God of darkness. I don't have dark thoughts. I don't have dark decisions. I give him no access points in my life. Paragraph B, now sometimes we're attacked, and we all know this experience, we're attacked by what Paul called these flaming missiles, these darts that like, they're like, they have fire, they sting us. And it's what these flaming missiles, these fiery darts are, they're like these heightened irrational moments where we feel fear, or we feel lost, or oppression or anxiety. I mean, just in our humanity, we feel those things in everyday life, but there's those times where it's really heightened, and it's irrational. Like, why am I just so, you know, fixated for a few moments or a few hours? Like, what's going on? Beloved, that's a demonic attack against you. When it's heightened, and a lot of believers, they don't have enough knowledge of who they are in Christ, so when that happens, they just ride the storm out. And they give themselves to those thoughts, and they many times yield to the activity associated with those thoughts. When they need to understand that they're being assaulted by darkness. Paul said in Ephesians 6, we can quench those missiles, those flaming missiles. We can quench them. We can resist them, and they'll go away. They'll lift. We don't have to ride the storm out for a few hours, or even a few days of this heightened intensity of oppression, or anxiety, or fear, or lost, or anger, or bitterness. We can actually address those things. Paragraph C. I won't spend time developing this, but James 1's a really powerful passage, which describes how lust operates in our life. It starts off by a desire. But look at verse 15, when it's conceived, then there's actions of sin. And that desire takes root, meaning it's a passing desire, but then it lodges, it turns into an action. But he goes, what happens is that seed becomes full grown. What a horrible word. Full grown. That lustful heightened thought becomes an action, but the devil's point, his goal, is that our weaknesses would escalate to a life of wickedness. That's what he's after. He's after sinful, lustful thoughts becoming deeds, and the deeds eventually growing, becoming full grown, it's called an addiction, and bringing our life into bondage. Now Augustine was one of the great teachers in the church about the fourth century A.D. Here's a famous statement he made. Lust yielded to becomes a habit. A habit not resisted becomes a necessity, which is the word is bondage, an addiction. I mean what a powerful statement. So lust comes, we yield to it, eventually it becomes a habit. That habit. It's a little bit harder to resist the habit if not resisted. That habit becomes an addiction in our life. And nobody is bigger than this power. Meaning there's nobody whose mind is so fortified and strong they can overcome, because it's a spiritual power. That's why some of the most powerful minds in private live in deep perversion and darkness. Their minds are powerful, but they got a spiritual battle going on they don't understand. Roman numeral four, pulling down strongholds of the mind. Let's just read this again, but I want you to now this time pay attention to the the phrases that point to knowledge or information. I mean this whole thing is about the information that you buy into, that you fill your mind with. Let's read this again. The weapons of our warfare, they're mighty in God, and again we're going to find out it's agreement with the word of God. I mean back in Genesis 1, when the word was spoken, the spirit moved in power. When the earth was created. When the word was spoken, that's when the spirit moved. I mean the spirit was present, but the world was still in darkness. And then Jesus spoke, let there be light. And when the word was spoken, the spirit moves. And that's the principle of the kingdom. The Holy Spirit follows the declaration of the word in the mouth of a believer. If we say more, more happens. You pray for somebody, you pray for more people, you could be in a bad mood, feel terrible. You pray for more people, more things are going to happen. I mean even though you just got to mutter the words out. You encourage a few people, you do that more, those encouragements more times than not will have a touch of a prophetic dimension. And that person goes, that's the very thing I was asking the Lord to confirm in my heart. You say, all I said was God loves you. I know, but today I said, Lord tell me through somebody that God loves me. I mean the simplest things. You speak, the word follows the declaration of the word of God. I mean the Holy Spirit follows the declaration of the word. It touches your heart, it touches your body, it touches your circumstance, it touches the people that you're praying for, talking to, fellowshipping with. The Holy Spirit follows the utterance of the word. And we can broken people like us. So the weapons of our warfare, they're mighty in God. It's the simply speaking, the rainbow word of God for the pulling down of strongholds. Now he goes on, now notice, verse 5, strongholds, to pull down a stronghold, the way you do it is by casting down an argument. It's information you're casting down. He goes on and says it again, you're casting down everything that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. You're casting down everything that exalts itself about the true information about God. And then he says the response is to bring every thought into captivity. Fill your mind with the right information. This whole thing is based on information. Resisting the wrong information, filling your mind with the right information. That's really, it's so simple. It's so simple. There's no mystery to how this operates. But a lot of believers, they still find themselves just kind of negligent on this subject. They don't fill their mind with the word. They don't speak the word and they feel tempted. They don't take time to speak the word over other people. I mean just simple fellowship and prayer times, just speaking those little phrases, that's where the Spirit moves. Liberates our own heart, liberates others. Paragraph D, Paul says pull down the stronghold. He says cast down the argument. Again it's, I'm going to repeat it, it's like this stone wall, the enemy with our cooperation has erected this stone wall, this fortress around our heart and our life. And we've been cooperating with it many times unconsciously, but we're cooperating with it. We're agreeing with what he says that's against God and against the gospel. I don't mean it statements like we don't love Jesus. I don't mean bold, blatant statements like that, but simple statements like again, God loves you. You are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. The simple things you do like giving someone a cup of cold water in his name are remembered forever and your life is rewarded forever. It's meaningful now even though nobody sees it, though it's small and unnoticed by anybody else. Your life is crowned with power and importance. It's assault against things like that tells us that if we violate the will of God in relationships, we violate the will of God in our interaction, in our purity, in our sexuality, that somehow we'll have more fun, more liberty, experience more. Those are lies that will bring us into bondage. Those things will hurt us. We, we open our door and even the door of a relationship to darkness. And when we open the door to darkness, the God of whose domain is darkness, we give him legal access. It's not about God not loving us. We need to say no to darkness and say yes to truth. And so the word of God is like a hammer. It's like this fortress built around our lives. The word of God is like a knocking stones down one by one. The word of God is like a hammer shattering these, these lies that are like strongholds in our spiritual life. And they're shattered by simply speaking the word and agreeing with it. Paragraph F, there's three ways that we cast down these arguments. They are so simple. Number one way we expose, we identify the lie that's lodged in us. We identify the lie. We say, okay, I don't feel forgiven. That's a lie. I mean, I mean, it's, it's true. You don't feel forgiven, but it's a lie that I'm not forgiven. That is a lie. That's the devil's accusation. I'm going to line up with the word of God. I'm going to say, devil, you're a liar. I am fully forgiven. I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. That's who I am. So we identify the lie. We expose it very, very simple. I mean, there's, it doesn't take a, a degree in theology to figure out what the lies are. God's leadership is not good. But we expose that as a lie. He's not paying attention to our life. Our life doesn't mean anything because it's not being what we do isn't celebrated and applauded by men. Therefore, our life doesn't mean anything. That's a total lie. Are you kidding? The God of the universe has called you to be his bride and said that even if you give a cup of cold water, I'll remember it forever reward you. And you're building my kingdom. Well, my life means nothing. What a total lie. Well, if the cool people recognize me, then my life is important. That's not what makes your life important. What makes your life important is the most cool man that ever walked the earth recognizes you and wants you to be his eternal companion forever. Really? This is real. Well, we expose the lie I have here in paragraph one, when we renew our mind. In other words, our mind agrees with the Bible. We speak the word. Eventually our emotions change. When our emotions change, our behavior is transformed. I mean, we can resist wrong behavior, even when our emotions are totally out of whack. But I tell you, we can, our life is really transformed as our emotions are transformed when our mind is renewed. That's the process. Number two, well, we expose the lie. We say, ah, that's a lie. I am forgiven. It's a lie. God does love me. It's a lie that says his leadership. Is it good? It's a lie that says my life doesn't matter. It's a lie that says, I don't have any hope. It's a lie. I have nothing to live for. Those are all lies. We expose them. That's not enough to expose them. Paragraph two, we have to renounce them. I want to encourage you. And we're going to do this in ministry time, not after this session, but after the next session, we're going to have a ministry time on this. We're going to renounce our agreement with lies. And it's not a one-time thing. It's something we do over and over because it's using the analogy of a spiritual stronghold, a fortress. There's thousands and thousands of those stones in a, in a fort around the city. And it's an imperfect analogy, but the idea there's more, it's more than just renouncing at one time. It's a sticking with it. The goal is that our, we bring every thought into captivity. When I bring my mind into captivity, I mean, 10 minutes later, the enemy's bringing a thought opposite of my mind being captivity to obey Jesus. Number three, we resist Satan. Now we don't just resist Satan by saying no to sinful things. We actually use the authority of Jesus. You know, a lot of folks don't resist Satan. When Satan attacks them with these flaming missiles, strike them. They have this heightened sense of fear, anxiety, lust, it hits them. Again, they ride the storm out. We need to say in the name of Jesus, I rebuke you. I resist you. It's not just a resisting of temptation. It's actually, it's the, the, the, the devil attacks us. And if he is unchallenged, he will keep attacking. And many believers don't know their authority in Christ. So they ride the storm out and they live in all kinds of unnecessary torment in their life. Torment that could be driven away where to resist the devil. He will flee Roman numeral four. I mean, a Roman numeral five arguments to cast down. There's two essential truths that I want to really focus on here. Two essential truths. We're in second Corinthians 10. Now we're going to move over to second Corinthians 11. And the point I want you to understand here is second Corinthians 10 and 11 is one passage. He's in one conversation here. You can't separate chapter 10 from chapter 11. If you do, you won't, you won't catch the fullness of what Paul's saying. Because here in chapter 11, Paul identifies two truths that the devil is constantly challenging in our lives. He's identifying two truths for which the enemy wants to hold us in bondage to the opposite of those truths of the lie corresponding to those two truths. So second Corinthians 10, the passage we looked at, that's the call to spiritual warfare. Second Corinthians 11 is the application. It gives us the how-to. I mean, chapter 10 tells us what to do. Cast down the argument. Chapter 11 gives us the arguments that we're supposed to cast down. Very important you put the two together. I want you to highlight, notice two very important foundational truths that we are to use as we cast down spiritual strongholds in our life. And again, it's a thing that we do over and over and over. It's not a one-time deal. Let's read second Corinthians chapter 11, verse 2 and 3. He says, for I'm jealous for you with godly jealousy, because I betrothed you. That's the word engaged. You know, we talk about somebody to young people being engaged. I guess some old people could be engaged too. Help Lord. But Paul says, I betrothed you. Again, the word betrothed and engaged, the word we use is engaged to one husband. That I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. Chaste means pure. So Paul says, here I'm zealous. He's talking to the church in the first century that was known as the most carnal church. They had more compromise than any other church, rivaled only by the church of Laodicea. Paul says no to you. He goes, I realize that you're broken. I realize you got a lot of issues in your life. The church of Corinth is again famous for its brokenness and its compromise. He goes, but do you know you're betrothed? You're legally married to the king of kings. Did you know that? And they're like, well, I don't feel like I am. It doesn't really seem that real. He goes, do you know that the end of this is that you are presented as a chaste, a pure virgin before God, because of what Jesus did for you. He sees you as pure, not in your brokenness and fallenness. He says, but verse three, he goes, there's a problem. He's going to go back to the spiritual stronghold idea. He goes, I'm afraid less somehow as the devil deceived Eve by craftiness. So the devil is corrupting your thinking to where you don't get what I just said. Paul was saying, he goes, the devil wants to in craftiness twist these doctrines. So you don't get them. So he can bring you back into bondage. They're graph B truth, essential truth. Number one, Paul says, I betrothed you to one husband. And again, the husband is the king of Kings. Now the, the spiritual truth is he desires you. I mean, he enjoys deep fellowship and partnership with you forever. Starting now. I mean, starting with the day you were born again, he actually enjoys and desires the partnership with you. It doesn't look at you and say, well, that's a really hard case. That's going to take a lot of blood to cover that one. No, some people, they, they get irrational. They, they think they're a hard case as though the blood of Jesus or the heart of Jesus, both dimensions of the same truth, aren't sufficient to cover them. Well, I'm really messed up beloved. You're the one he wants or you're one of the ones that he wants. He wants you. He loves you more than you love you. It's a fact. He wants you as he, as his eternal partner, not just after the resurrection, you're in partnership with him now. He wants cooperation. He wants involvement in your life now in a deeper way. He has deep emotions for us. He's committed to share his heart, his throne, his secrets, his beauty. Beloved, the very beauty that he possesses is the beauty he imparts to you forever. You're part of the aristocracy of the eternal city. Honestly, you're part of the ruling class, the Royal family of the eternal city forever. You go, well, I know, but I'm, I'm doing like horrible in 20 areas that that's nice. But no, that's talk yourself right back into a spiritual stronghold. The ancient world, when a couple was engaged the day they were engaged, so they typically waited a year before their marriage, the consummation of their marriage, but for the year of engagement, they were legally married. So if they broke the engagement, they had to get a legal divorce. They had to go through a legal process of divorce. That's not, we don't do it that way in the Western world. So the idea is the day you were born again, you're betrothed, you're actually legally married to the Lord and the consummation. Meaning when we see the full glory of God is the idea there, there, there's not a sexual connotation to this at all, but it's that face to face in the glory of God with the resurrected body. That fullness of our marriage begins in the resurrection, but beloved you're married now to him, meaning he desires you. He wants to partner with you. He's already sharing his resources. He's already unfolding a plan of your involvement with him and his kingdom forever. Right now, it's already begun in your life. The enemy does not want you to grasp this. You grasp this, your life will enter into a liberty and a freedom. You'll cause trouble to his kingdom. Paragraph C, the second foundational truth. You're a chaste virgin right now before him. It's not based on your track record. It's based not on what you have done, but what he did. We're talking about the full power of the cross, the gospel of grace in its glory. You were made a chaste, again that's the word of the word chaste is pure. You are a virgin in his sight because of the power of the gift of righteousness that was given to you. This is radical, but our mind and emotions, we don't feel the power of it. So the devil comes as the accuser and tells us the opposite. So we live in the feeling of accusation instead in the confidence of the gift of righteousness. Look what it says here in 2nd Corinthians 5. You can't read this too many times. If anyone is in Christ, no matter what bondage you've ever been in, that man or woman, he is a new creation. Your born again spirit is made new the moment you're born again. Your mind and emotions aren't renewed yet, but your spirit man is made new instantly and you've received the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. You've received the indwelling spirit. You're in the family of God. You're betrothed to Jesus. Your born again spirit actually is fully blameless or God the Holy Spirit couldn't dwell in you. Your mind and emotions and your body is not renewed, but the process of spiritual life is bringing our mind into agreement. Again, the effort we put in in our spiritual life isn't to change God's mind, not to earn something from God. It's to bring our mind into agreement with God. We're not earning anything. When we see the truth of this, it produces gratitude and this gratitude makes us want to give all of our strength to the relationship. Not to earn anything, but the overflow of gratitude. A lot of folks get all confused. If they put any effort in, they go, I'm trying to earn it. No, you're not trying to change God's mind. You're trying to change your mind. God's mind has already changed. It's a free gift, but he wants you to experience more of it now in this age and the key to that is your mind coming into agreement with his and that takes effort. There's disciplines involved in bringing our cold mind before the bonfire of God's presence so that we're warmed and tenderized and by the word of God, it takes effort to do that. We're not earning anything though and that's one of the great lies of the enemy. Lots of young people hear the lies around. If they put any effort in, somebody goes, legalism. That's only if you're trying to earn. If you're trying to change God's mind and earn something, no. Say, I'm not earning anything. I'm in gratitude. I want to feel the fullness of it. I want to, I want a total unity of my inner man because he already loves me fully. I want to enter into the experience of it, not just in the resurrection. I want to experience it more. Now we're declared clean before God. Do you know you're as clean before God as Jesus is? I mean, that's just almost our religious thinking goes, huh? What you received a righteousness so great, even God can't improve the righteousness that you receive because it's his. It's perfect. It's a hundred percent. God can't improve the righteousness that you received the day you were born again. Beloved a billion years from now in the resurrection, you won't have a superior righteousness than the day you were born again. Many mistake paragraph D. They mistake our spiritual immaturity for being a hypocrite. So they, in their mind and emotions, they're not lined up the truth of who they are. So they, I mean, they love Jesus and they keep signing up to go a hundred percent. They come up short and they go, I'm just a hypocrite. And the devil goes, you're a liar. You're a hypocrite. You're a fake. Your love is false. You're, you're just an absolute fake. That truth enters in our brain and our heart. And we go, I might as well just give up that. The word of God says, well, that's not what God thinks. That's the accuser. That's a stronghold paragraph E your core spiritual identity. Paragraph E here's what I want to know. Are you a slave of sin who struggles to love God? The answer is no, or how do you want someone to go? Amen. No, no, no. Every now and then you got to slip the answer in ahead of time. Are you a slave of sin who struggles to love God or at the core? Are you a love of lover of God who still struggles with sin? Beloved you're a, you're one that loves God. That's who you are. That's what you do. That's what you're about. You struggle with sin. You're a lover of God who struggles with sin, not a slave of sin who's struggling to love God. It's a very, very different core identity. When your love is weak, does it mean it's false? Weak love is still real. It's just growing paragraph F. Do we define ourselves by our struggles? Man, I'm just so in bondage. Oh, I just feel so left out. I just feel so lethargic. I mean, nothing's happening in my life. Or do we define our life by the work of the cross and his desire and what he says about us? Here's what I have found over the years in my own life and in the lives of people pastoring for 40 years. When people feel shame, they live in shame. They, they live shamefully. When people feel dirty, they live dirty. When they feel clean in God's sight, even in their weakness, they live far more clean and they feel desired by God. They live very differently than when they feel God saying, you know what? I'm going to give you one more chance. This is really the last time. Paragraph G, these two truths, being betrothed, he desires us. Being as a virgin in his sight, we're pure. When we see these two truths, our image of God is related to those two truths and the image of our self is related to those two truths. When we see those two truths, the way we view God and the way we view ourself changes dramatically. Roman numeral six, exposing, Paul goes on in verse three and four to expose. He wants us to refuse the false teachings. He says, let's read verse three again. He goes, I fear less somehow as the devil deceived Eve by craftiness, by spinning the truth is the idea, spinning it craftiness, not blatant, but just putting a, having, getting people to believe things that have truth in them, but it's not the whole truth. Part of the truth with a negative spin to it. He says, as the devil deceived Eve by craftiness, he wants your minds corrupted. One translation said the new American standard, he wants to lead us astray from the simplicity of the cross, the simplicity of the God who is love. Verse four, he says, for somebody comes because in Corinth, it's, it's, it's what was happening there. There are these false teachers that were preaching Jesus actually. But he says, when somebody that preaches, they're preaching another Jesus, they're using the name Jesus, but it's not the Jesus of the Bible. You receive a different spirit. You're receiving a different gospel and Paul rebukes him. He goes, and you put up with it. He goes, why would you take a step aside from the true Jesus, the right spirit and the right gospel? Why do you put up with a distortion? Paragraph one, he says, you both hear another Jesus. These men, they're called Judaizers. They preach Jesus. They claim salvation. They claim to love Jesus. They said he was Messiah, but they didn't like this gift of righteousness idea, this free gift of righteousness. They didn't like the bridegroom God. They didn't like the God of desire. They had another Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, but not the one described by the Bible. Number two, they had another gospel. Beloved were the false gospel. We can't earn the favor of God. We can't earn the love of God. We can't change God's mind by earning it. Again, the effort is we do to change our mind. Paul says in Hebrews 4, 11, he goes, we labor to enter rest. What he means is we labor to renew our mind. Hebrews 4, 11 and 12. We labor to enter rest. That seems like a contradiction. No, you put effort to bring your mind into agreement and then you enter into the rest of which the word of God is freely made available to us. The gospel they heard kept them in the identity of a slave of sin. When they heard the gospel that they heard, they didn't feel like they were lovers of God who still struggled. They thought they were slaves of sin that were giving a failed attempt at loving God. Number three, paragraph three, he says they have a different spirit. He goes, the fruit of what they preach leaves people in condemnation, fear, bondage. The spirit of bondage never empowers people to be wholehearted in love. The spirit of bondage, the spirit of accusation never empowers you with gratitude to say, I'm going to give all of my energy into the relationship not to earn but because I'm so grateful in love. I get who I am. I get who he is. But this wrong spirit never produces that response. Amen. Amen. Let's just stand before the Lord for a moment. Again, we're going to have the ministry time on this after the next session. We're going to take some time and just wait in the presence of the Lord, but we're going to do this for a minute. I'm just going to spend a moment to pray and then I want you for five minutes, we'll put it on the clock just to get in groups of three to five and just say one truth that challenged you or one truth that exhorted you to do something. Just one truth that encouraged you to say it with your mouth. It will matter. But father, I ask.