Month: April 2015

Can the devil stop your God given gifts?

As we know all the devil can do is lie.  He did it to the first woman and continues to do it to all of us today to try to block the plan of God for our lives.  He’s been at it for thousands of years so he’s got a lot of experience tricking us humans!  He’s very good at what he does which is why we need the Word of God embedded deeply into our hearts so we can combat the lies of the enemy with the truth of what God says.

For example I was talking to a friend recently that was telling me how they used to be heavily involved in ministry a long time ago and I honestly had no idea as they never talked about it.  And I mean traveling around to minister even not just in the local church building.  Baffled I asked why doesn’t he use his talents now at the church we both go to.  He said he didn’t feel that his life was “right” at the moment and didn’t want to be a hypocrite.

While I understood where he was coming from I immediately thought, wow the devil has blocked him from using his gifts with just a simple lie.  Who among us if we really examine our lives lives perfectly holy?  Only one Man accomplished that and His name is Jesus.  As for the rest of us…we’re all screw ups if we look at our flesh but the good news is that once you’ve surrendered your life to the Lord God doesn’t see your flesh anymore.  All He sees is the Blood of His Son which cries out forgiven, clean, healed, etc!  Hallelujah!

None of us in and of ourselves is worthy to serve God or stand up in front of people in His name but through the Blood He makes us worthy.  And it’s because of the Blood that Holy Spirit is able to live within every believer to help us live and do what God would have us to do.  The Blood gives us access to Holy Spirit and Holy Spirit empowers us to live supernaturally.  We can’t live right on our own and that’s why we need Him to help us.  Among His many names He is called the “Paraclete” which means One called to your side to help you.  He’s ready and willing!  Are you?

The Bible says that we are to “reckon ourselves dead to sin” and also that we were crucified with Christ!  Wow!  Did you know you already had a funeral?  It was 2000 years ago when Jesus died because when He died the “old you” died with Him!  You are now a NEW CREATURE and this creature doesn’t even know how to sin let alone want to sin!  But our bodies are used to sinning so we have this battle between the part of us that wants to do the will of God and the part called the “flesh” that just wants to do it’s own thing and live in pleasure all the time.  (See Romans 7 & 8)

The devil doesn’t really know how to deal with us as the “new creature” that we are but oh boy is he familiar with our “flesh!”  He tries to appeal to the flesh and makes sin seem so fun and the Bible even admits that sin gives pleasure “for a season” but in the end comes destruction.  And let’s face it whatever particular sin you battle with is something that you have fun doing.  Come on let’s be real!  If it wasn’t fun you wouldn’t be doing it!  On some level you enjoy it!  This is why we must strive to strengthen our spirit-man, that “new creature” so that the flesh won’t be able to take over so easily.  And you can only do that by doing things that are spiritual such as praying, reading the Bible, worshiping God, ministering to others around you etc…

So what’s stopping you from doing mighty things for God?  A lie.  A stupid little lie that the devil told you that you have to meet such a high unattainable standard before you can represent God.  A standard none of humans can ever meet.  If we had to meet it then NO ONE would be able to minster and the whole world would be going to Hell!  Do you see how sneaky the devil is?  Think of all the things you could have been doing for the Lord all this time but one little lie stopped you.  Shouldn’t you be mad about that?  I hope so!  No one likes being taken advantage of but our enemy has done just that.  Taken advantage of our ignorance because we didn’t really know who we were.  But are your eyes open now!  Do you see that he has made a fool out of you?  SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?!?!?

You and Holy Spirit need to get in sync and do what God wants you to do from now on!  No more lies are gonna stop me anymore!  How about you?