Mike Bickle emphasizes the necessity of understanding and overcoming temptation, highlighting the internal and external battles Christians face. He explains that while God provides grace, believers must actively participate in their spiritual growth by making quality decisions and seeking divine help. Bickle stresses the importance of prayer, particularly in asking God to lead us away from temptation and deliver us from evil, as well as the need to confront the lusts that war within us. He outlines the deceptive process of temptation, illustrating how it escalates from desire to sin, and ultimately to death if left unchecked. The sermon calls for a proactive approach to spiritual warfare, urging believers to engage in prayer and resist temptation to experience true freedom in Christ.

I'm going to continue, excuse me, I'm going to continue on the theme I've been on the last several sessions, that of overcoming temptation and our war against lust. And if, for those that are here with us just for the first time, I'm going to take the first page of the notes and give a little bit of review. Paragraph A, the Christian life is a cooperation with the grace of God. God will not do our part, we can't do his part. That's just real clear. If we don't do our part, then God withholds some of his blessing that he was going to give us. The next couple sentences I describe some of the areas that involve our part. We make quality decisions. We feed our spirit on the word. We ask the Lord for help. There's godly activities, there's relational dimensions. We have to do our part. Then God will do his part. He's going to release supernatural influences on our heart, our body, our circumstances, our relationships. We can't release the supernatural influence, but God is not going to do our part for us. And if we won't do it, then he will wait, longing to give, but he will withhold his hand. It's important that we understand that. Paragraph B, we are in a spiritual conflict that has two battle fronts, which includes both a war on the inside of our heart and a war on the outside. And at IHOP, most of our prayers on the microphone are focused, well, and they should be, but they're focused on the war on the outside for revival, for the changing of the laws that are related to abortion, for God to appoint the right people in office, for healing and for revival and people to get saved. And that's what we do. But what happens, I believe, is that a lot of people, when they pray their prayer life, besides their devotional part where they say, Lord, I love you and thank you that you love me and I love you and I want to be yours, which is a very, very important part of our prayer life. But then when they pray, in terms of asking God to break in with his power, it's almost always on the battlefront outside of their own personal life. They're praying for things out there, the revival, the change in society. And my burden is that we need to be praying also and asking for God to intervene related to the war on the inside of us. It's biblical to do this, and we actually come up short in the grace of God if we don't do this. We are to ask the Lord concerning the issues of our own heart to help us, to lead us not into temptation, to deliver our hearts from the power of the evil one. Because there's a real war, and in this war, we have to get on the offensive and we have to attack it. Now we are attacking the war on the outside of us, and we have, again, our devotional life where we love the Lord, but this issue of the war on the inside of us normally is neglected even by the people at IHOP, who, and the reason I say even, because our whole mandate is to pray, and you would think, with the mandate to pray, we would be praying about that. But I believe that it's mostly neglected. It's a real war. James chapter 4, verse 1. Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? The desire for pleasure, there's many categories. It's because the word is in the plural, desires. They war within our members. Our members is our mind, emotions, our physical appetites, the members of our personhood, our thinking, our emotions, our feeling, our, and again, our physical appetites. There are sinful pleasures that are warring against our members. Romans chapter 7, Paul the Apostle speaking, he said, now I find a law, or he means a principle. A principle is operating, and here it is, that evil is present inside of me. There is a principle of sin that's operating on the inside of me. The one who wishes to do good, he's talking about himself, he goes, here I am, I want to do good, but there's a principle of evil operating on the inside of my members. For I delight in the law of God, but I see another principle, because I love God's word. However, there's another principle, it's warring against my mind. It's bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members. So Paul agrees with James. He agrees with this war. He agrees there's a principle of sinful pleasure that's warring on the inside, and Paul, he went on the aggressive and attacked this thing with focus. Peter says the same thing. He says, I beg you, abstain from the fleshly lust. They are warring against your soul. Paragraph C, lust has many expressions, and I have a list here, which most of it is right from the words of Jesus and the words of Paul. Lust has many expressions, including pride. Pride is the most prominent form of lust. The reason I'm saying this is that when we think of lust warring against our members, most people limit lust to physical appetites, and the most powerful lust that's operating in us is pride, anger, covetousness. That's one of the most prominent lusts operating in the body of Christ. It's a lust that's warring in our members, and the reason we don't war back against it because we don't identify the war over the lust of covetousness, the lust of money. It's a very normal, common thing in all of us, unless overcome, assume these things are operating at some level in your heart, unless you've gone to war against them. Thefts, bitterness, immorality, pornography, hatred, slander, jealousies, drunkenness, overindulgence with entertainment or food, legal or illegal addictions. These are expressions of lusts in our members. Again, our members are our mind, our emotions, and our physical appetites, and they're warring against us, bringing darkness into our lives. Paragraph D, our war with lust is difficult as we discard the sinful baggage so we can enter the narrow gate. It's the only way to experience God's kingdom. Jesus said this, narrow is the gate, and difficult is the way, and few find it. Now, the gate is not just the gate to salvation. Some people would read this and think it's difficult to get through the gate and to become born again. Well, Jesus has offered the kingdom of God to us. He paid the price for us, and this means more than that. There's obviously, there's truth to that, but this means more to that. The gate, it's this doorway we're trying to get through is to life in the spirit, which obviously includes our eternal salvation, but it's not limited to that. It's not like this passage is real before you get saved, and now that you get saved, you've gone through the gate, you've gone through the door, you're in the kingdom, and now this verse is no longer applicable to us. The path that we're trying to walk on is called life in the spirit. The gateway to life in the spirit is narrow. I want that to really become clear in your heart. It's narrow and it's difficult. Life in the spirit is difficult in regards to our own war and fleshly desires. It's difficult. And few people sustain a life in the spirit. Few do. Now, when we invite people or call them to come into the kingdom of God, we need to tell them this. Mostly, we tell people, come and ask Jesus to forgive you, and we don't talk about repentance, we don't talk about a king that wants to marry them and then to come into agreement with his heart. Now, we don't have to say, you know, all of that, every detail of it when we're talking to somebody, but it's more than asking for forgiveness. Who doesn't want forgiveness? It's the issue of repentance. And somewhere in the message, we have to make it clear to them, it's a narrow doorway and it's a difficult walk. That's not the gospel that's typically preached in our nation, but it is the gospel that Jesus preached. But now, after they've said yes, and they've come into the kingdom of God and they're born again, as believers, and that's why I want to be a faithful witness to you, I want to tell you, it is difficult the path you are on. It is a difficult path. I hear it all the time over the years, and it's a normal thing to hear as a pastor. People say, it's just too hard. And they go, this is hard, and I don't know, and, you know, and all that. And I go, yes. I go, you know what? You probably didn't know this, but that's biblical. What you've said is biblical. It is difficult. It is hard. You're right. Of course, they were making a complaint. They were not trying to, you know, give a Bible verse. But I tell them, I go, absolutely, it's hard. I've heard this over the years. And I go, it's too hard. I'm going to quit. I go, no, your options are really bad. You only have two options. Stay with it or just slide into the abyss of darkness. There is no third option. It's too hard. I don't think I can go. It's like we're here in a battle, and the enemy is shooting at us. They have all these guns, you know, machine guns, and they're shooting. It's too intense. And so the option is they just lay down their gun and stand there. That's not a good option if you're in battle. There is not a third option. There is not a lay down your guns, and then, therefore, the devil lays down his. He says, well, you know, he laid down his guns. He's quitting. You know what? He's had a tough day. I'm going to quit. He is going, he seeks to devour and destroy us. He is, there's no ceasefire if we quit. We just get swept away into a river of filthiness and darkness. That's the only other, that's the only other option with quitting. So I've heard this over the years. It's hard. I go, that's absolutely right. The thing that makes me sad is that it's hard, and that's a new idea to you. Somewhere, when you were born into the kingdom, you were not told the entire truth, because you were supposed to sign up for something that was narrow, the gate, and it was hard. Now, picture this gate. It's very, very narrow. We have all this luggage. We have all this extra baggage on our back. We can barely fit through the gate, and it's this luggage, this baggage, is our lusts. And the lusts are pride, anger, our defensiveness, our envy, our bitterness, our hatred, our covetousness, our thefts, our immorality, drunkenness, all these things. And we can't get through this narrow gate, because it's hindering us. And again, that gate is to a life in the spirit. And Jesus says, I'm telling you right now, the gate's narrow. And I'm not going to broaden the gate for anybody, because it's important that you unload the baggage to get through that narrow gate. A lot of folks are kind of just, they get stalled out. They're not going to unload the baggage. And they're hoping one day the gate will just become big suddenly. It's not going to. And what they do is they spend their whole Christian life not living in the spirit. It's a difficult role, and few will find it. Paragraph E, denying our lustful desires is the theater that God has chosen for us to express our love for Him. Each one of us have a different struggle according to our personality. And in this struggle, we have a different assignment from the Lord from which we offer our love back to God. Each one of you are in a different season of your life than another person, your personality, what excites you, what bothers you, what tempts you, what you're gifted at. Every one of us are, you know, the package is unique with every single human being. That's your assignment from the Lord to show your love to Him in the way you're built in this position of life that you're in. And the Lord counts this as love when we obey Him under the pressures of temptation. That is our assignment, to love Him in that station, in that particular situation in life. Jesus said in John 14, 21, he that has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me. The person that has my commandments and keeps them, this is the one that loves me. You know, I've mentioned this before, but I encourage everyone to get five or 10, what I'll call warfare verses. And they're Bible verses that you use continually, you use the same ones, I mean, change them, of course. And you use these to speak to God and to speak to the devil when you're in a place of temptation. Because Jesus spoke the word to the devil when the devil was tempting him. And the word is what we speak to the enemy when he comes to assault us. Now, there are a thousand good verses you could pick, but if you have a thousand of them, you're not going to probably use any of them. Narrow it down to five or 10 of them. As you're reading the word of God, there's a few verses that strike your soul, these are the ones that have your name on it, so to speak. And you're going to use them in your time of temptation. Now, again, don't limit temptation to sexual or drunkenness or those kinds of things. Temptation is about defensiveness, it's about envy, it's about bitterness, it's about anger, it's about pride. Our temptation is in all of those arenas. And when we're feeling the weight of our temptation, one of the verses, I have about less than 10 of them, nearly 10 of them, verses that I use in my private life with the Lord, this is one of my favorite ones. He that has God's commandments and keeps him, this is the one. This is the one. It is he who loves the Lord. This is the one who loves the Lord. And I speak this, I speak this back to the Lord. It is he who loves you who will obey you right now. And I speak this to the enemy. I love the Lord and the one that keeps his commandments. It is he who loves the Lord. And I tell you, I shoot that arrow back at the enemy as he's shooting his arrows at me. Now, the Holy Spirit moves wherever the word of God is spoken. The chariot that the Holy Spirit rides best in is called the word of God. The Holy Spirit moves where the word is spoken. It's like in Genesis 1, the Holy Spirit was hovering over the earth. And when Jesus spoke the word, the Spirit moved. And the Spirit of God is hovering over, so to speak, and all over the body of Christ. He dwells in us, of course. But when we speak the word, the Holy Spirit releases power. But what the problem is, is so often we don't speak the word. We feel the temptation, and we bear the temptation, and we try to grit our teeth, speak the word, and it causes your own soul to be engaged in a whole another level. This is one I recommend, John 14, 21. It's a good one. When it's time to humble yourself, when it's time to say yes to a servant's spirit, this is a verse you can speak in your soul. And this is a verse you can speak to the enemy as well. I speak it to my heart, I speak it to God, and I speak it to the enemy, all three directions. Paragraph F, the positive side of our struggle is that saying no provides an opportunity to express love to Jesus and receive his reward in making a righteous decision in the midst of temptation. When you and I have temptations that hit us in all of these areas, when we say no, we express love to God, and God actually rewards us. He remembers us, and he rewards us because it cost us. It was valuable to us to do this. It's because we loved him that we resisted this. He writes it in his book, and he remembers it. And when we stand before him, he will recall this and reward us for this. Revelation 3, verse 18, in the last line there, Jesus told us to buy gold from him. One of the ways that we buy gold from Jesus, and this gold we'll have forever, is it's in this...this gold lasts forever, and there's this very limited time frame in our life right now on the earth. This is where we get gold that we have forever, and when temptation comes on us, when we resist it, we are buying gold that is really in our possession forever and ever by resisting the temptation and expressing love through obedience when the storm of temptation is bearing down on our hearts. Top of page 2, Roman numeral 2, Jesus told them to pray they would not enter into temptation. We talked a little bit about this on the last session, but to enter temptation, paragraph A, speaks of something far more than the general temptations we face in a sinful culture. To enter in temptation, remember when Jesus told them to pray they would not enter into temptation, they were not in temptation at that moment. Temptation is not something we have all day, every day, just in the natural, you know, pulls of a sinful culture. Temptation is a very specific thing that happens. It might happen, you know, a time or two in a week or a month. It's a specific time, it's a short time, where a storm touches our soul and we're stirred, we are now in temptation. It's not just a general pull to sinful things. That's a temptation in one way, but what Jesus was talking about was something at a much higher level than that. There's three things that come together when we enter into this, what I call the storm of temptation. Number one, our natural lusts are aroused. Our lusts, our natural ones are aroused. Our pride, our covetousness, immorality, drunkenness, our fear, our anxiety, our natural lusts are aroused, because they're always there, but they get stirred up more sometimes than other times. So they're stirred, that's number one. Number two, there's this demonic activity is heightened. We talked about this last week, where demonic energy is more than normal and it's coming against us. And number three, it's when the circumstances are optimum. They're just set for us to yield to this temptation. So, somebody says something, it hurts our heart, our pride is stirred, our feelings are hurt, our sense of rejection has been touched, and we're unusually stirred up. Because even people that walk around with a lot of rejection, there's some times where it really gets stirred up. So here it is, it's stirred up. They heard that guy said what to me, and it's aroused. And then demons come in and energize. I think of it, as I said last week, as the devil like a dragon breathing fire on our spirit. And all of a sudden, it's got a hold of us, and like, that guy said that? And I don't like that. And all of a sudden, we're captured by it, and there's a demonic energy. And here's the optimum circumstance that happens. Somebody walks by, and you have a time with them, and they say, you know, brother so and so, he really bothers me. And that's all you needed for the door was open, to open. And then you just vent, and you've yielded to your lusts. Slander is a very powerful expression of lust, and we yield to it, and it grieves the spirit, and the enemy is one. It's not just, you know, an act of immorality or drunkenness. Our lusts are vented and expressed in all these ways, covetousness. You know, we get a spirit of greed, and desire, and an inappropriate emotion related to money. We've all had those, and they rise sometimes, and they fall sometimes. Then a demon breathes on it, and a situation happens to where nobody's going to know. I don't even mean it's about stealing. Nobody knows, and you do something with money that's out of the will of God because the situation was perfect. When all of those three things line up, your lust arouse, the demon is breathing on you, and the circumstance is just right, that's when we're in a storm of temptation. So we make decisions about finances that are out of the will of God. And I don't mean that they just lack wisdom, but I'm talking about they're fueled by covetousness instead of obedience to the Lord. And of course, the ways this would work in the realm of immorality or drunkenness and in other things are obvious, but I want us to think of this in the whole arena of lust. Paragraph B, there are opportune times. It says that Satan departed from Jesus till an opportune time. He was tempting Jesus. He was tempting Jesus. He was coming with demonic energy and pressing in on the situation. He offered him all these things. It was an opportune time, and Jesus was weakened by fasting and strengthened by fasting. It's a bit of a paradox. And Jesus spoke the word of God, and the devil says, I'll come back at an opportune time. There are opportune times in our lives where all of these things line up together and we're more vulnerable than we are at other times. Paragraph C, still in the review part. I love the review. Paragraph C, Jesus is at the Last Supper. He prays, keep them from the evil one. Keep them, oh God, from the enemy, this extra energy that's going to touch their spirit. Save them from this. Protect them. When it says keep them, it means protect them. Help them to prevail in obedience when the demons come and begin to breathe on their spirit, so to speak. Demons don't breathe. I realize that. It's just a word picture. Paragraph D, Jesus tells us to pray two different prayers here in the Lord's prayer. Lead us not into temptation, that's one, and deliver us from evil. Those are two complete different prayers. To lead us not into temptation means, Lord, that's about circumstances. Lord, direct our steps or direct the steps of the guy that's going to come our way that's going to open a door for it to make sin easier in our life here. Lord, order the steps of the righteous, but also order the steps of the wicked that are going to come my way and create that circumstance where I'm just going to be in that weird space and I'm going to say yes to it. Lord, lead me away from those situations. And I tell you, if you pray that, the Lord will direct your steps and the steps of others that would open doors of opportunity that are negative, he will direct them supernaturally in a way that helps you walk in righteousness. Now, don't answer this, but apart from praying the Lord's prayer, just, you know, it wrote, just saying the whole thing, you know, through with a group of people, my guess is, and I'm saying this, I'm being nice when I'm saying this, I'm not being mean to you, my guess is the majority of us in this room never pray this prayer. In a particular way, specifically for our heart to be...our life to be redirected in circumstances. And the Lord would say, I will do more for you if you ask me. I would do more for you. I will lead you. I will lead others away from you. If you would ask me, I would release my hand. But there's a second request, deliver us from the evil one. That's that heightened activity of Satan. We need to pray both of those prayers for our life. Paragraph E, we know about praying after we fall, but what about praying before we enter the storm of temptation? There is a humility that's praying. Here we are, you know, it's after the meeting, had good worship, so-so preaching. That was supposed to be a joke, okay. Thank you. You go out, you got good fellowship, and you feel great, you know, just whatever. You know, it's an hour after the meeting, you're just talking to people, and you're thinking, I'm not feeling particularly vulnerable to sinning. Chances are that a number of you are going to hit a storm of temptation sometime this week and maybe not this week. I mean, something that's higher level than just the daily course of just, again, a sinful culture. Maybe it's in a week or two, and maybe it's this week. Might happen once or twice, may not happen this week, maybe later. But you're in a good mood, and you're just kind of going your way. Humility says, Lord, I know my propensity for sin. I am going to ask you in my prayer time, I'm going to ask you, lead me not into temptation and cut off the power of the evil one, moving on my spirit. And if somebody, if you're praying that with somebody, they may say to you, well, what are you, kind of in a funny space right now? No, no, actually, I feel great right now. Well, why are you praying that? Because I know me, and I know in a week or two or three, I'm going to be facing temptation face-to-face, and I'm praying now to cut that off later. Beloved, that is humility when you do that, and God honors that humility. But I venture to say, most believers never think to do this. They think if they feel good, you know, here they are, they're feeling pretty good today, and what's the big problem? And they don't get serious until they're already in the storm of the temptation, and then they just find themselves just hoping for a way of deliverance, and more times than not, they yield to it. They vent with the slander. They make the wrong decisions on the money. They give in to the immorality at the lower levels or the higher levels, you know, from there's many different versions of it. They yield to it, and the Lord would say, I really would have helped you if you would have taken this issue serious before the storm hit you. Now, I would still, in the storm, start speaking the word, and, oh, Lord, here, help, rescue, rescue, and the Lord, and that's, you know, mostly folks get the storm, and they just go with it. And then they feel real bad later, and it's so much of this is unnecessary. If we had the humility that when we were in a good mood, we remembered the true condition of our heart, and we prayed for help because we know we're going to be in another mood before the week or before the month is over. Jesus urged his disciples to pray those two prayers. Let's go to top of page 3, or Roman numeral 3, understanding the process of temptation. It says here, blessed is the man who endures temptation, for when he has been approved, it's a key word, approved, he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised for those who love him. Verse 13, let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he himself tempt anyone. But each one, verse 14 and 15 gives us the six steps that I alluded to in the last message, but each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his desires, that's number one. Then when he's enticed, that's number two. Then when lustful desire has conceived, that's stage three. It gives birth to sin, that's stage four. And then when that sin is full-grown, that's stage five. It brings forth death, that's stage six. Paragraph A, Jesus, James, I mean, who is the Lord's half-brother, James spoke of receiving the crown of life as the reward of enduring our war with lust. Now, notice the passage. It says, blessed is the man who endures temptation. I mean, that's heavy language. There is an endurance. There is a war. There is a heaviness. There is a...we don't like it. It's something that must be endured instead of yielded to. Our emotions are stirred with lust. Our mind is stirred with lust. Again, it can be covetousness, bitterness, envy, hatred, rejection, anger, all these things are just kind of a hold of us and we're stirred. And the enemy comes and he stirs us up even more. There's a supernatural dimension to it. And then the door opens and the circumstances, and the Lord's saying, if you will endure this, if you will pray to avoid it, and then to the degree that you are touched by it, and again, we can certainly reduce it by prayer, but still we will be touched in occasions. Even praying, we're gonna touch some of this. But the Lord will minimize it. If we endure it instead of yielding, that's what endure means. It's the opposite of yielding. There is a time when that person will be approved before the Lord. And what it means to be approved, I have it there in paragraph A. We are approved when we consistently respond in obedience under the pressure of temptation. There's a time, being approved doesn't mean just approved to pass one test one afternoon or one evening or one morning, whatever. Being approved means there are people, as we're living in this age, and through the months and through the years of consistently, I'm gonna talk about 100% success, but the rule of our life is to resist and to endure temptation, to yield to the Spirit, and to bear this burden, and we do this continually. When we consistently say yes to obedience under this pressure of temptation, the Lord says, he looks at us, says, you are approved. You have shown yourself faithful consistently under this pressure, and for those that are approved, this is more than being saved. This is talking about faithfulness as a believer in a significant measure of maturity and faithfulness. I wanna walk approved of the Lord, not in the general sense where I enter into the eternal kingdom when I die, but more than that. I want the Lord to look at me when it's over and say, you consistently endured temptation. I watched you, I saw the fires of it and the storm of it. I saw it come against you, and you, by the word of God, you warred against it, you fast, you prayed, you fought the fight, you endured this hassle that came to your soul, and he goes on to say this, that that man or woman will receive the crown of life, but here's the part that's even more dear, which the Lord has promised to those who love him. The Lord gives these people that are approved, those that he esteems, that he recognizes as having been faithful. That's what it means to be approved. God esteems them, or he recognized them as having been faithful in a consistent way. Not one temptation they avoided. They have been consistently faithful, and the Lord recognizes that. Those people will receive a special reward called the crown of life. This isn't, the crown of life is not synonymous with being born again and nearing the kingdom. Everyone in the eternal city will not have this crown of life, this is a crown of government. This is a crown, this is a position of authority in his kingdom. It's a, God will entrust us responsibilities that are near to him and dear to him in his eternal government. Not everybody, matter of fact, my opinion is is that most believers don't have this crown. Some have reduced this crown to what every believer gets because they're born again. Now beloved, a crown is for kings that are ruling in government. That's what this is about. But the part that's dear is the Lord will give this crown of authority to the people who love him because when you and I endure temptation, Jesus takes it personal. He takes it personal. He looks down and he says, that was heavy. You did that for one reason, you love me. You go, yeah, Lord, that's why I was doing it. I didn't do it perfectly, but I was fighting, I was praying against it, I was resisting, I didn't want to yield to these different things because I love you, and the Lord says, I saw it. And I took it personal and I remembered it. And I want to give you a crown of authority right now because you've been approved. I have recognized you were faithful in a consistent way through the years. And the reason I say faithful in a consistent way, not perfectly, because if I said perfectly, well, number one, that's not what it's talking about, then we would all say, well, I've already blown it so I might as well give up. If the record's got to be 100%, the Lord's not, the Lord, there's nobody, let's say it this way, there's nobody who has walked perfectly in that sense. Everybody who has loved God has blown it in many areas of these internal lusts. But the Lord takes this personal. And I want to give you the good news. You can spend your 70 years on the earth and you can receive a crown of glory. You may never, ever make a big impact. You may never be noticed by anybody. You may never have any kind of distinguished ministry or achievements in your life, but the Lord is watching the way you've endured temptation and he will give you a crown of authority because he will esteem it is the fact that you loved him, and though men couldn't see it and measure it, but God did. And it moved the heart of God. Beloved, it really matters when we're in this storm of temptation, whether it's bitterness or strife or thefts or envy or jealousies, we hold our tongue and we bless and we don't slander. We don't curse. We hold our tongue. We offer to God that they struck us and they spoke against us. We bless our enemies and we hold the line and we go, I do it because I love you. I'm doing this to show my love to you. And the Lord says, I know I'm watching and I'm taking it personal. And I will remember it forever. And I promise you this. Look at the word promise. I promise you, I promise you that you will receive the crown of life. That's a divine promise. The Lord goes, this is so dear to me. I make an oath to you that I will give you this crown because you've loved me under that pressure. That's amazing. This is another one of my warfare verses. I love to use this verse. I love to use this verse when I'm not wanting to walk in humility, when my pride, my defensiveness is stirred up and I just wanna set the record straight and get things right and show they were wrong and I was right and I yielded that many times and then repent afterwards. I did the humility on the backside. Oh God, I did it again. But there are times when I take the word of God and I speak it. I speak it back to the Lord. Blessed is the man that endures this temptation. Blessed is the man who endures it. And when I've been approved, when you've esteemed or recognized that I've been consistent, you will give me a crown because you have seen that I did it out of love. You will see it as my love to you. Beloved, this is a powerful verse. If you're looking for a few warfare verses to work on in your privacy of your heart, I offer that one to you. But there's a thousand good ones in the Bible, so pick the one that registers in your heart. Isn't it interesting that here in this next verse, in Revelation 20, that I'm not gonna even read the whole thing, that Jezebel, which speaks about the spirit of immorality, Jesus is talking. He goes, if you resist Jezebel, you resist immorality, I will give you a crown. You will rule with me in the millennial kingdom. If you resist immorality, you will rule with me. He links ruling in the millennium to resisting the spirit of immorality. And beloved, in the hour that we're living in now, immorality is going to reach all-time heights. And our place in government in the age to come is linked to this, because it's such a powerful spirit. And the point of it is, because it's such a powerful spirit, our love for Jesus, expressed under the weight of this temptation, really is dear to God's heart. It's dear to God's heart when we resist it. So dear, Jesus is talking here. He says, I will give you a throne in eternity, which is the same thing as the crown of life. Paragraph B. David asks to understand the process that led to his own stumbling and sin. What David was so smart or cool, or I like David. David blew it just enough to totally encourage me. But he made enough right decisions to give me direction. And David wants to understand this, this process. And James comes along and answers David's prayer for us. David says, Lord, who can understand his errors? Who can understand? And what David's really saying, he goes, he's not saying who can understand when I make an error. That's not all that he's asking. He goes, who can understand the process, the subtle movements of the heart that result in me erring and sinning and getting off the path? He goes, I can't even, I'm halfway in the middle of it before I figure out what's happened. Who could really understand this? Then he goes on and he asks his prayer here. He says, cleanse me from my secret faults. Now, a secret fault, he's not talking about a sin that he knows that nobody else knows yet. Like, oh, I did this the other day. I hope nobody finds out. Lord, cleanse me from that. That's not what he's praying. That's still a good prayer. Lord, cleanse me from that one, you know, that one. That's still a good prayer, but that's not really what he's praying here. What he's praying here is, cleanse me from these secret faults or these faults that I can't perceive. They were secret to David. He goes, I can't, I'm in the middle of them before I even realize I'm doing them. They're unperceived. They're not on my radar until I'm already halfway in the middle of doing them. He goes, I wanna get free from this kind of movement, this kind of, this subtle movement of lust in my being. Then he goes on, verse 13, he says, keep me back from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me. Then I will be blameless. David wants to walk pure. He wants, truly wants to live blameless. See, and that's where you wanna live. You wanna walk blameless. So if you wanna walk blameless, you're gonna pray this very same prayer of Psalm 19, verse 12 to 14. Lord, I wanna walk blameless. You could put the word pure in heart. But Lord, here's the problem. I'm already sinning with my speech. I've already got the juicy bad stuff already spoken before I'm even convicted. I get convicted after I sin. Lord, would you like give me insight on the front end? Beloved, the Lord will give you insight on the front end, not just on the back end after the sin is already accomplished. Now, here's the interesting thing. When David prays to be blameless, verse 13, he goes, I wanna be blameless. Very, very significant. The first area of sin that David asked to be helped in when he wants to be blameless is the area of his speech. He said, I wanna be blameless. Let the words of my mouth be acceptable in your sight. Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight. Now, I'm gonna give you kind of a strange idea. Might be a strange idea to some of you. That it is more difficult, the way to get the meditations of your mind, the way to get your mind clean is by getting your speech clean. When the words of our mouth are under the government of God, our mind begins to line up. Our mind is actually following our speech much more than we know. David had the order exactly right, and it's amazing. You would think, he would say, Lord, I wanna be blameless. So get all of my appetites under control. He said, no, I'm gonna go to the very fountain, the fountainhead of my problem, that's my speech. If I can get my speech under control, Lord, then I know, oh God, that you will help me and you will deliver me. Let's look at stage one here. Paragraph C, the stage one of lust. Stage one of lust is being drawn away by lustful desires. This is the early stage. We are drawn away by lust, impatience, anger, envy, jealousy, covetousness, drunkenness, immorality, pornography, thefts, all of these things, jealousies. We're drawn away before we enter into the storm. We begin to feel the drawing, and here's how I describe this. Our imagination is stirred up as we begin to casually think about the possibility of walking out our pride or our anger or our immorality. We begin, our imagination begins to get stirred as we imagine walking this thing out, and here's how, in our pride and our anger, we're caught in this mindset and we're really letting them have it back. We begin to be drawn away by our lust, but being drawn away by the lust is only the very, very beginning of it. We haven't entered the storm yet. Paragraph D, Satan wants our fleeting thoughts to become sustained ones. He wants our fleeting thoughts of lust to become sustained. In other words, he wants us to move from fleeting thoughts drawn away. He wants us to be entrenched in fantasy. He wants us to be enticed. He wants us to go to stage two. There's a big difference between a momentary wrong thought and being captured by it. There's a big difference between imagining what we're gonna do with the money out of the will of God or how we're going to get back to the person that's slandering or hurting us, how we're gonna get a payback. It's one thing imagining it for a moment. It's another thing getting entrenched in it, and that's where the trouble comes. There's a difference, this difference has been likened to the difference between a bird flying over someone's head and building a nest on the top of it. That bird flies over our head, that's just our sinfulness, our fallenness. We get entrenched in it, we go to another level. What we say or look at are the primary sources that feed lust until it captures us. I wanna say this real clear. What we say and what we look at are the two main gates to our inner man. What we look at and what we say, that is what releases greater lust or brings lust to the place where it captures us. This is a very, very important point. Paragraph E, David understood this. Of course, we just looked at the verse a minute ago when he said, Lord, I wanna be blameless, so let the words of my mouth be acceptable, which is so strange at a casual look. Why would he wanna be pure, and the first thing he talks about is his speech being acceptable because David had a revelation that his speech opened the door to the lust in his inner man going to the next level. That is a revelation, it's a very important revelation. It's in the Scripture. He prayed this, set a guard over my mouth, keep watch. He was so serious, he goes, God, you help me. There's no way I'm gonna be able to guard my speech. I'm gonna be yielding to complaints, slander, defensiveness. I'm gonna speak out of my pride. I'm gonna be exalting myself, drawing attention to myself. Oh, God, I have so many wrong things. If you will guard me, this is the same prayer as lead me not into temptation. It's synonymous, it's an Old Testament version of the prayer, lead me not into temptation. Help me on the front end. It says the same prayer, he goes, I will guard my ways lest I sin with my tongue. He knew that David knew that sinning with his tongue without restraining his mouth is the way that his ways would go wrong. Now, James, he really hits it straight on. James says, if anyone does not stumble in his word, in his speech, put the word speech there. If he doesn't stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, he's fully mature. Our speech is the last area to be completely under the government of the Holy Spirit. You'll conquer drunkenness and lust and outbursts of anger long before you will fully conquer your speech. That is the great giant in our members that opposes us is our tongue. Here's what James goes on to say. He says if we don't stumble in our speech, that guy's a perfect man, he is able, here's the key, to bridle his whole body. If you can bridle your speech, you can bridle the passions in your body. This is a powerful revelation that James is giving the body of Christ. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body. Look at that. The tongue is so set in our members, the tongue is what defiles our whole body, which means this is what a lot of folks have never connected. Take a person that's addicted to pornography, and undoubtedly there's a number of them in the room right now that are addicted to pornography. When people are addicted to pornography, they think that the battle of pornography is only about sexual, impure things, and if they can pull away from their computer, they can beat it, but the real open door to the pornography is the way they talk and slander and speak with pride and disrespect and complaint. That's the door that's even helping their pornography go to the next level, and they're putting all their energy on pulling away from the screen and not going there, and they ought to be putting a lot more energy on bridling their tongue. That, because our tongue looses the fires, the negative ones, and the passions for all of the members of our body. You get your tongue under control. I could tell a believer who's addicted to alcohol, still loves the Lord, and drinking, they said, man, I was just kind of playing around with it. A few years later, I'm stuck on it. I gotta go to AA. I said, that's good, too. Go do that, go do this and that, but I can guarantee you one thing. You focus on getting your speech right, and your problem with drunkenness will not necessarily go away immediately, but it will be significantly helped, and they go, you're kidding, my speech. I go, you open, what we open the door to, in our inner man, through complaining, defensiveness, pride, putting people down, is lets a storm of darkness enter into our passions, and James tells us, this is what is said among our members that defiles our entire body. It sets aflame the other passions in our body. You get your tongue under the government of the Holy Spirit, you will bring the other areas under the Holy Spirit's leadership far easier. Put your attention on your speech. This will bring your whole being into another order. I have a long way to go in the area of my speech, but I've made a lot of progress in the 30, 35 years I've been walking with the Lord, whatever. And this is an area I've worked hard on for 30 years, and I certainly am not, when I look back, and I go, oh man, I haven't gone very far on it, but I've gained a lot of ground, and there's many times where I wanna say this and that and the other, and I just know, it's not like I have to, I have a Holy Spirit visitation that moment, but I know if I give in to this, I will have a problem over here later. I've gotta shut the door right here. I cannot go there with my speech, because that will give me problems in other areas of my beings. My members will be drawn into other temptations. Beloved, I tell you the truth. David understood this, James understood it, and I tell you the truth about this, it is right. Look at paragraph F. Solomon emphasized the place of speech and eyes too. Look what he says in Proverbs 4, top of page four. Solomon, he emphasizes the place of speech and eyes, and establishing our life in purity, or establishing our heart in purity. He says this, keep your heart with all diligence. Beloved, in all of your doing, keep your heart with diligence. Don't let your heart get defiled, because when your heart gets defiled, you can't control all the body appetites when your heart is in bitterness, and your speech is defiled. The body appetites are much lower in power when our heart, our heart has far more power. Our heart and our speech get in line. We can control the bodily appetites. Most people are focused on the bodily appetites, and they ought to be focusing on their heart and their speech and their eyes. Solomon, under the anointing of the Spirit, he says keep your heart with all diligence. Out of it flow, all the issues of life flow out of it. Look at this. The first thing he says, put away deceitful speech. Put perverse lips. Perverse lips is not, you know, one guy says, well, I don't cost. No, perverse lips is pride, defensiveness. Instead of blessing your enemy, you pay them back and you expose them. It's evening the score. It's all that, that's perverse lips. That's deceitful speech. Deceitful speech doesn't mean you're just lying about an event. Deceitful speech is we're lying about truth. The guy hurt me and I was innocent. The Lord whispers, no, you had a lot of pride and defensiveness involved in the equation. You're not telling the truth. You contributed to the problem. Well, Lord, I don't want to go there. The guy just said it for no reason. Lord says that's called deceitful speech. It lacks the spirit of truth. We bring so much of the issues because we press our agendas and we talk out of our pride and our defensiveness. And then we get mad and slander the guy who's opposing us, who's wrong, but our own contribution was involved in it, but we never see it. And we tell the story in less than a truthful way, not because we're doing it on purpose, because we don't see truth. It's called deceitful speech. He goes on in the next verse and Solomon goes, let your eyes look straight ahead. Your eyelids look before you. In other words, keeping your eyes on the right things. And he goes on, he goes, and then your ways will all be established. Solomon understood the relationship of the eye gate and the gate of speech to all of our life being established in purity. It's amazing. Paragraph G, David understood another gate was the eyes. He said, nothing, I'm not gonna set anything wicked before my eyes. Job talks about making a covenant with his eyes. Peter talks about eyes of adultery. And eyes of adultery are not just one person looks at another person with eyes of adultery. Eyes of adultery is the whole spirit of immorality, just casting our eyes on that which incites impurity in our being. And Peter talked about that these false leaders were an example we were to avoid. We didn't wanna be like them. And one of the characteristics, they had eyes of adultery. Let's go ahead and go to paragraph I, stage two. Just gonna wind this up in just a few moments here. I won't finish all the notes, but I'll leave you with some to read afterwards. Stage two, well, we were drawn away in stage one and our eyes and our speech were contributing to drawing us into lust. But now stage two, it goes up a notch. Now we're enticed. Being enticed with lust happens when we become set or entrenched. We were drawn away, we were considering, we were imagining, but now we're set, we're entrenched in it, now we're enticed. We're captured in the fantasy of our bitterness, the fantasy of the payback, the fantasy of our covetousness, the fantasy of our envy, the fantasy of our immorality. We're stuck in the fantasy now. That's level two, it's more serious. We are now in the storm of temptation. It's now on us, we're entrenched. We can still get out of it. I tell you, stage two is harder to get out of than stage one, but stage two's a lot easier than stage three. We can bail out at any time we want, but beloved, I'll tell you this from experience. Each stage that we go, it gets harder to get out of it. It's far easier to get out of it in stage one, and that's why the Lord gives us this understanding of the operation of lust in our soul so we know the inevitability of stage one becoming stage two if we don't attack it. If we don't attack it, it goes to stage two, to three, to four. It must, we must actively engage in the war that's warring against our members. We have to be aggressive in this war. Let's go down to J, stage three. Lustful desire is now conceived. It says that desire is conceived. What James is doing is he's using the analogy. He's using it in a positive analogy, but in a negative way, and the positive analogy is the conception of a child in a mother's womb, and the conception, here's the point he's trying to make. When a baby is conceived in the mother's womb in the very early stages, nobody can tell. Even the mother can't tell on the early stages. She doesn't know, but there is a real living, moving entity, I mean, very minimal movement, but there is movement in life, but it's hidden from the eye. You can't see it, but it is alive and well. That's a positive reality with a baby, and this idea that it's unseen, but it's alive and moving is the part that James is gonna now apply in a negative way. He goes, when sin is conceived, it's alive, and this is the decision to act on it. We've gone from being entrenched. I mean, we've been in a fantasy of it. I'm gonna pay that lady back. I'm gonna give her a piece of my mind. I'm gonna set the record straight. We're entrenched. Now we decide we're going to act. We pick the phone up. We go to the meeting. We write the email. We start to act on our bitterness now or on our other types of lusts. The reason I'm constantly using the bitterness one, that's the most prevalent one, and that's the one we mostly don't think about is lust. When lust is conceived, it becomes a living reality inside of us, and that's a bad thing. The decision to act on it is now in place. We are going to do it. We're gonna go to the party, and we're gonna see what happens when we get there. We're gonna try not to sin, but we've decided we're going. Sin is now conceived. Nobody else can see it. The decision's hidden in the heart, but it is alive, and it is dangerous. It is not just enticed. It is living now. It is a lie, a real reality. The decision to act has been there. K, paragraph K, stage four. Now we've gone past the decision. Lust now gives birth to sin. Now we've gone past the decision stage. We decided we're going to. Now we actually act it out. But beloved, let me tell you, there's a big difference between the decision and the acting. If in that decision, by the grace of God, we turn and go the other way. We say, I'm not gonna act that thing out. I'm not going to. I'm gonna repent right now. Stage four, it goes to a whole nother level. The acting of it out. Say, well, I'm gonna do it one more time. This is the last time I'm telling you to act it out brings the demonic dimension to another level. So well, I've done it before. I didn't feel the demonic level. No, what happens is we get a propensity to do it again and again. It scars our soul. It hurts our soul. It really damages us to do it one more time. You know what? The internship starts next month. I'm gonna get drunk one more time. This is it. I'm swearing it off. I'm gonna do one more fling and then I'm gonna go to the internship and I'm gonna walk with God and I'm gonna really just really go hard. Let me tell you, that is folly because that one act brings another dimension of a propensity to walk in sin in that area of your life. The level goes up clearly when we act on it. And because we can't discern it because we don't have enough discernment to know how acting on it increases it, that doesn't mean it doesn't. And as an older guy, I'll tell you for a fact, every time we act out, whether we talk it and we give our way to slander, it's our covetousness, immorality, drunkenness, if we act it out, it is a bigger problem in our soul now. Our capacity for it has now enlarged. Don't act it out and say one more fling. You will carry the larger capacity and appetite for that particular sin. Why do you want a larger capacity? If it's bugging you now enough to where you wanna act it out, if you act out, you're just gonna have a bigger capacity and appetite for it after you do it. It won't just go away by itself. Stage five, sin now becomes full-grown. Oh, what a terrifying statement, full-grown. It's like, ah, what a horrible thing. This is when sin grows up in us. This is when we become addicted to it. This is when a person becomes a divisive person. This is when a person is full-grown in their defensiveness and their slander and their divisive speech, they're addicted to a dimension of immorality, addicted to a dimension of alcohol, addicted to a dimension of their money, of spending the money the way they want to without the leadership of the Holy Spirit. That area, that lust is now full-grown. Beloved, lust, I'm gonna read here in sentence two, lust never just stops with one act or one conversation. Sin grows unless we war against it. If we don't war against it, it doesn't just go away, it grows, it becomes full-grown. That lust, your skill and your capacity and appetite will increase for it, and your power over it will diminish, meaning you'll yield to it easier the next time, easier and easier each time. I have written at the bottom of that paragraph L that full-grown sin is less satisfying and it's more depressing. It is less satisfying. We have a bigger appetite for it, but it doesn't satisfy it and it leaves us more depressed. Plus, the consequences are always worse. Now, what happens here is that 1 Timothy 4, verse two, Paul the apostle talked about our conscience is being seared. Now, he's talking in this passage about a completely fallen away, completely unresponsive to the gospel, but here's the principle. Our conscience progressively gets hardened. As sin becomes full-grown, our conscience becomes harder and harder and less responsive. If we can do something today, it's easier to do it next week. Our conscience is progressively hardened, even as believers. Ephesians 4, Paul told him a principle. He goes, let me tell you something about your sinful nature, your old man. That's that sin principle working in us. It grows, it gets worse when you get older. Our capacity to sin when we're 20 is enlarged when we're 30, unless we've been warring. If we're not warring against it, we can sin more, our appetite for it, and our power over it is less. We are more enslaved to it when we're 30, and we're more enslaved to it when we're 40 than we are when we're 30. We have to war against it. A lot of young people, I've said this a number of times, they come into the kingdom, they're 20, and they're full of big visions for great things, and that's a wonderful thing, and they think that by virtue of just becoming hanging in the kingdom for 10 years, they're gonna automatically be closer to God and filled with revelation, and then when they're 40, it's gonna be better and better, and I have found over the 30 years that I've been a pastor that most people, when they get older, they get more sinful, even believers. They don't become more tender. They get more, a larger appetite and capacity and larger bondage to sin, because the old man, they don't understand this, it grows corrupt unless you war against it. If you war against it, then it goes the way that we imagine, but most people don't war against it, and they're surprised. I know so many people, I'm 50 years old now, that we were buddies, and we went to prayer meetings when we were 20. We preached on the streets. We had fasting days, and the vast majority of the people I was walking hard with when I was 20 to 25, the majority of them are addicted to sins and lust. Their lives are a wreck. A lot of them are in the ministry, but they don't have a freshness in the word of God. Their spirits are defiled, and we all thought when we'd be 50, we'd all be near and so near God, almost like John the Apostle. That's what we all dreamed when we were 20, and the vast majority of them are stuck and entrenched in sin. It is a shock to me if I'd have known that when I was 20 years old, because I didn't realize this principle. And then the last stage is that sin becomes, stage six, when it's full grown, it brings forth death, and I'm gonna end with this. The fruit of sin is always death, always death. It progressively destroys life in our soul as it quenches our spirit. No, it's in that I wanted to end with. Paragraph in, this is the point I wanted to make. Sin always leads to death. We have two choices when sin is involved. We either die voluntarily to it by refusing it, that's what we're calling people to right now, or we die involuntarily to it because we've yielded to sin and now we have the consequence of death working in us. Because there's sin in us, we will experience death. Either we die to it because we choose righteousness, or we die because of it because we don't choose righteousness. Wherever there is sin, there is death. That is the bad news about sin, always death is related to it. When Jesus was teaching, he said, a man must take up his cross and die. We might think, well, Jesus, you're being a little melodramatic, die? Why not just say, resist the sin? And Jesus might have answered, no, I mean, die to, it will hurt, it will cause, it will be trouble to die to this. No, die is the right word. And if you don't die to it by resisting it and warring against it, you will die because of it down the road. And doesn't mean that everyone ends up in hell, it means our spirit is quenched and dulled. And there's so many believers, like I said the other day, a moment ago, that they're 50 years old now, 30 years later, and so many of us that were praying and fasting when I was 20, their spirits are so defiled with unbelief and so many addictions. And I don't mean they're all drug addicts, but their spirits are filled with bitterness and lust and pornography. And it's just like, ah, how did this work? If we don't die to it, we die because of it. We will die one way or the other because of sin. Well, the Lord only reveals these things in the word because he wants to free us. The Lord wants to bring us into victory. Beloved, we're gonna war for this. We're gonna go after this thing. We want liberty and freedom in our soul. Amen, I'm gonna have you stand now. I'm gonna have the worship team come on up.