And thank You, Lord Jesus, that in Your mercy, You did not reject us, but in love You embraced us, Lord, and provided a way for each one of us that we might know God, that we might have a relationship with His marvelous, wonderful Son, who was willing to lay down His life on Calvary’s cross, Lord; who was willing to give up the riches of heaven, to become a man, to become our kinsman-redeemer.
Lord, truly, we can say, “Who do we have in heaven and earth but Thee, Lord Jesus?” We humble ourselves before Thee today, Lord Jesus. We would ask that, Lord, indeed, You would anoint us, for it is the Holy Spirit that makes the difference in words that are shared and thoughts that are conceived.
Lord, we look to Thee this morning. We would ask Your blessing upon us, and Lord, enlighten us to Your heart, to Your ways. We ask in Jesus’ name, amen.
You know, it is very difficult to come out of a time of worship and talk about this matter of spiritual warfare and our adversary because, hey, our heart is to focus on the Lord Jesus Christ. Yet we know from the Word of God that we do have an adversary, and that the Lord has encouraged us, as a matter of fact, to beware of him, to beware of his wiles, and to resist him, that he might flee.
The Lord, in His wisdom, has chosen, even though He defeated him at Calvary’s cross, overcame sin and death, and rose from the grave—the power of death could not hold Him—He has chosen to leave our enemy here. And He actually uses him.
I am so grateful that our Lord Jesus Christ has far more wisdom and intelligence than our adversary, who has much more than we do. Because we are under Him ultimately. His hand is upon our lives individually; His hand is upon our lives corporately. And praise God, His will will be done regardless of the resistance of our adversary.
But we are encouraged, of course, to enter into this spiritual warfare. We are called to be warriors of Jesus Christ. In Ephesians 6:10-18, we are encouraged, as we have been reading, to put on the whole armor of God and to stand and withstand.
Brothers and sisters, we have obviously been under tremendous attack. We have been involved in a very deceitful chess game with our adversary, perhaps unknowingly, in the past couple of years, both corporately and individually.
And that is one of the great tactics of our adversary, because he always chooses to remain hidden as much as possible until he is exposed by the light of God. He remains hidden in a way, and he comes in unknowingly, making his insidious attacks on the people of God. Often we are taken by surprise, and we need to be aware. That is part of my burden.
You know, brothers and sisters, often as we come under these attacks, like we have in recent years, we can come into what I call the wall-eyed pike syndrome.
Now, there are many syndromes around today. We have been able to find most of our ailments in terms of a syndrome of some kind. And there is this thing called the wall-eyed pike syndrome.
I do not know if you are familiar with wall-eyed pikes, but it is a long fish. It is actually of the perch family, but it is long and has a long snout on it. It is an unusual-looking fish, and it is in the northern waters. I do not know; some of you may have fished for these pikes over the years. John may have. I do not know—he is from Chicago.
He caught one once. But the interesting thing about a wall-eyed pike is that they have a ferocious appetite for minnows. I mean, they apparently are very ferocious about going after minnows.
It is interesting: they have run some tests with a wall-eyed pike, some experiments. What they did was put a wall-eyed pike in a tank with minnows, and he would just eat them up.
But then they did something. They put a glass plate halfway in the tank, with the minnows on one side and the wall-eyed pike on the other. Of course, with this ferocious appetite, he started after these minnows, and he kept running into that glass plate.
What happens to a wall-eyed pike under this kind of circumstance and situation? He keeps going after them. He has such great expectations, high expectations, of being able to take these minnows and eat them, and of having that expectation fulfilled. But he keeps running into this glass plate, which is invisible to him. He does not know what is going on, and he becomes very confused and disoriented. Eventually, he stops trying.
And you know what is even more interesting? Once the wall-eyed pike has faced this for so long, becomes totally discouraged, and becomes disoriented with all the confusion—he does not understand because he cannot see this invisible plate—he accepts his condition that he cannot get to these minnows.
Once that happens, they can pull the glass plate out. The minnows can swim all around the wall-eyed pike, and he will not eat them. They can swim all around him, and he has become so convinced in his mind that he cannot have these minnows any longer that he no longer tries.
Some have actually been known to starve to death in a whole tank full of minnows. Because, in the wall-eyed pike’s mind, he has lost all hope. He has lost any concept of being able to eat the minnows anymore.
I think that is an amazing picture of how our adversary works, brothers and sisters.
We seek the life of Christ, and yet the enemy can work in such ways in our life to disorient us, to confuse us, to bring all sorts of circumstances into our lives, and we are just kind of like we are hitting this glass plate, is that not right?
Finally, we get to the point where, in our minds, even though outwardly we might not think this, we accept the fact that it is basically hopeless, as if we are in a hopeless state: the wall-eyed pike syndrome.
Well, brothers and sisters, we need to realize that what we are a part of is a tremendous battle that has been going on down through the ages. When we get into such personal situations, particularly when they are applied to our personal life or even corporate life, may God enlighten us.
May He somehow bring out that spiritual grit in our lives—that spiritual gut, I call it—that somehow recognizes that we are in a great fight. The way through is not to stay in despair, but to respond to what is given to us in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In other words, we can get into a place that, no matter how much encouragement we might receive, we still cannot respond. But thank God, He is a God of mercy and grace, and somehow in our lives He gives us that little spark of grace. It reignites that fire in our gut, in our spiritual gut.
Pardon me—I hope you do not think that is gross—but that is the way I see it. There is spiritual grit that is developed in all of us through our experiences with the Lord. At some point in our life, He gets us down to that place of spiritual grit. Thank you, brother.
And somehow we are able to move and respond. Brothers and sisters, we have all been called to be warriors in Jesus Christ, but sometimes we find that we have been wounded and taken out of the warfare. We need to get back into the battle.
That is my heart: that we not just allow the enemy to stomp on us, trample on us, and lie there in hopelessness. Because the victory has already been won. There is hope. There is victory in Jesus Christ.
But I know that in that condition it is hard to lay hold of that. Brothers and sisters, we have to ask God for grace, for His mercy and grace, that we can do that.
Because of the shortness of time, I will not reread Ephesians 6:10-18, but it talks about this battle and this warfare. We need to have spiritual armor. God gives us all spiritual armor, and we have already discovered that it is Christ Jesus. It is the life of Christ that we take on.
So in this spiritual warfare, the armor becomes critical because it is Christ. We cannot take him on in our own strength—guaranteed. We will become like the wall-eyed pike.
So far, we have talked about our loins being girded about with truth. We talked about how that has to be practical. All these truths that we know about—the doctrines, the principles that we learn—have to become practical in our life.
The breastplate of righteousness covers the heart. It is always a heart issue with God. We have always got to have our heart right with Him. We have got to get it right with Him, and that in turn works out a righteousness, a practical righteousness, in our lives.
Our feet are shod with the gospel of peace. I think it is very interesting: it says that the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly, in the book of Romans. In other words, brothers and sisters, in the midst of the battle, it is the God of peace.
Often we find ourselves in tremendous turmoil in our own souls, but it says the God of peace is the Victor. In the midst of that, we can touch the God of peace and walk in victory in Christ Jesus.
We talked about the shield of faith. Faith is basically an entire trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. That is where our fundamental trust is: not in ourselves, not in our own accomplishments, not in our past history with the Lord, but in the present, immediate situation. Our trust in Him must be active. It must be an active faith.
We have talked about this matter of being passive, which is one of the greatest dangers to the Christian life. It is kind of this passive attitude: the Lord is going to do things. And He will, but He waits for us with that little bit of faith to activate the power of God in our lives and in our midst, or to look off unto Jesus, which we talked about.
Well, today we come to this helmet of salvation. The helmet covers the head. It is the mind.
Probably one area in our lives where the enemy has the greatest access is our mind. We know that he can put thoughts there, and he will put thoughts there. Our mind is critical, and it has to be covered with this helmet of salvation in order to be protected from the wiles of the enemy.
Let me just read something here. You do not need to turn to it. I want to share something because this battle is immense. It is not just the immediate situation that you are in. We often see the immediate situation, and we are taken up with it, brothers and sisters.
But often the immediate blinds us to the eternal. The immediate often blinds us to the eternal. Often we miss what God is after and what God is doing because we get so wrapped up in the immediate that we do not see past it, see what is behind it, or try to see what God is trying to gain out of this situation.
So we always have to be aware in all our circumstances that we not be consumed, but rather that the Lord would give us understanding, wisdom, and vision to see beyond the immediate, to see what is behind it, and not only that, to see what God’s purpose is in it—to see what He is doing. May He give us that kind of wisdom.
The battle has been going on for ages. Isaiah 14:12 says:
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!
How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven,
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;
I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will be like the Most High.
And in Ezekiel 28:14-17:
Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so:
thou wast upon the holy mountain of God;
thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.
Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created,
till iniquity was found in thee.
By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned:
therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God:
and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.
Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty,
thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness:
I will cast thee to the ground,
I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee.
Brothers and sisters, in ages past, even before time began, something happened in the heavens that affects us even today. That is the angel, the covering angel, one who guarded close to the face of Jesus Christ, apparently. He was the covering angel.
He was apparently one of the most beautiful creatures that God had ever made, and full of wisdom. As he was there in that place, as he beheld Christ, as he beheld the position that Christ held in the Father’s eyes, he began to consider himself.
He began to think that he was somehow being shortchanged, that he should be in that position that Christ was in. Something happened: self, self-consideration. The self-life was activated in this covering angel called Lucifer, and he became Satan.
He is called the lord of darkness, the ruler of this world. It says the whole world lies in the wicked one. Brothers and sisters, he, along with a third of the angels who had followed him, was cast out from before God.
Apparently Satan took up his domain over what region had been accounted to him in this universe, which is the world. The universe, probably as we know it today, was under his domain at that time, and he retreated back onto this earth.
If we read the history from Genesis—and I know some may disagree with this, but this is the way I see it—as a result of that, whatever was here on the earth, whatever may have been here at that time, fell into darkness and chaos. Now darkness and chaos are never a part of God’s creation.
But once the enemy had this thought of exalting himself above Christ, a ripple went through this universe that we feel the effects of even to this day, even though it occurred before the ages began, before time was marked.
It says that the earth was in darkness and in chaos, and there was darkness upon the face of the deep. And the Lord moved, and the Lord restored this earth.
If you remember, in verse 1 He says He created, but in verses 2 and on, you begin to see that what He is doing is restoring what is already there. The Lord works to restore. Finally, He brings in something new: man.
He creates man in His own image. Brothers and sisters, I do not know what impact that has on you, but it should have a tremendous impact on us that man was in the heart of God. He was going to use man in His great plan of restoration.
He created man in His own image, and what did He tell man? “Have dominion over the earth.” Man was to have dominion over the earth. He was to partake of this tree of life, and in having the life of God, be able to have dominion over all the animals of the earth, including Satan, and to be able to put Satan out.
He was going to use man to destroy His enemy. Amazing work and plan of God that He has brought us into.
We do not know how long it was before Satan appeared in the garden where God had placed Adam and Eve. But through his subtlety, through his deceitfulness, through the thoughts that he planted in the mind of Eve, he perverted God’s will.
Eve fell under the deceitfulness of Satan, and actually fell in the same way that Satan did: self. We will talk about that in a minute.
But the whole creation, in that fall—I want you to know this—the whole creation came under a curse. The power and authority were given back into the enemy’s hands over man. What a tragedy.
Brothers and sisters, it was all because of self-life. Oh, our adversary has such great ground.
He said, “I will be like the Most High.” He injected the same poisonous thought into Eve: “My will, my way, my purpose. I can live. I can handle this. I can do this. I do not need God.”
Now, I know she was not quite thinking in that way, but that is the poisonous thought of the enemy—how he works. The Lord has told us to deny self, take up the cross, and follow Him. But instead of denying herself, she wanted this power and authority for herself, and she fell into sin and convinced Adam to do the same.
Through that, the whole creation has fallen under the curse and into disruption, chaos, and darkness. The Lord has asked us to deny ourselves, take up the cross, and follow Him. Do we know what that means?
Very simply, it means, “Not my will, but Thine be done. Not my will, Lord, but Thine.” Eve’s response to the enemy was wrong. She considered herself instead of the Lord in that situation, and in considering herself, she fell.
But you know, the Lord, thank God, in His mercy, had a plan called redemption: to redeem man. I have always been amazed—I have said this many times before, and you will probably hear it many times from me again—that God did not just do away with man at that point.
The extent to which God went to redeem man is totally amazing to me. He sent His only Son to take on flesh and blood like we are, to be what is called our kinsman-redeemer, and to offer Himself.
What was the antidote to this poison? It is Christ. The only antidote to the self-life is Christ, because He is selfless.
I think it is amazing. On the cross of Calvary—actually, before that, when He was in Gethsemane—He was praying, “Not My will, but Thine, Lord, be done.” What was He dealing with there?
The Lord Jesus Christ was the Holy One. He never sinned. He never committed any sin. Even in His three years as He walked as a man, He did not violate anything of God. He did what God wanted Him to do. He heard the Lord; He responded to the Lord.
He did not even act out of His own self. He says, “I can do nothing unless the Father tells Me.” He totally set aside His self-life. But I want you to know one thing: His self-life, as a man, was perfectly pure and undefiled.
But that life would become defiled, because it said that He would become sin. Brothers and sisters, that holy life became sin. I do not know how we can really describe that—what it would be like for One who had never seen sin, never known sin, to take on sin and to become sin, that God’s judgment might fall on Him instead of us.
His holy self had to be offered up. He had to deny Himself, even to the death of the cross, brothers and sisters, where He became sin. This holy life—we cannot really understand the depths of that, can we?
But that is what He gave up to redeem man, to bring us back to the place where we could be under His authority, where we could have His life, where we could begin to take dominion over this earth once again, and to deal with our adversary, the enemy.
But the self-life became the key, because it was the self-life, this poison of self, that brought about man’s fall.
The enemy wants you. He is after you, particularly because you are the Lord’s. You carry the testimony of Jesus in your life, and he is out to destroy Jesus. “I will put myself above Him.”
Any testimony of Christ he is out to destroy, individually and corporately. Wherever there is to be some testimony to the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, he is out to destroy it with all vigor and without mercy.
I want you to know that, brothers and sisters: our enemy is merciless. I think some of us have felt that in our lives personally. He is merciless. He will go to any extent to bring God’s chosen ones under, to cause us to fall like he did Adam and Eve.
That is where our battle is, brothers and sisters. He is out to control you. He wants your will.
In our lives, the Lord Jesus has so designed us—boy, I am not getting anywhere, so long in so short a time—but we have been given the power of choice. Even after you become a Christian, you still have the power to choose.
The two choices are very simple: Christ’s will or our self-will. It always boils down to that, does it not? If you think about it, it boils down to one thing: “Well, is this Christ’s will or my will?” Self-will—who is on the throne here?
The seat of choice, I call it, resides in every man’s soul, and it is your will. So he is after your will.
Now, with your mind, he can inject thoughts, but he cannot directly assault the will. So how does he get to our will, brothers and sisters? The ground that he uses is the self-life. That is his ground. He is comfortable there.
Can we understand why he is so comfortable there? Because that is what he is. That is what he represents. His whole being is given to this thought of exaltation of self—of himself, of course—and the destruction of everything else.
What he is after is to try to activate the self-life in us. Once he does that, he has a highway into the will.
Think about it. What was the temptation in the wilderness with our Lord Jesus Christ? He said, “Look. Prove Yourself. Prove You are the Son of God. Make bread. You are able to do that. You are the Son of God.”
“Take bread. Jump off this pinnacle here. Just jump off the pinnacle and prove Yourself. The angels will come and take care of You.”
“I will give You the whole world if You just worship me.” Brothers and sisters, do not think that this is a promise the enemy has just made to Christ. He makes it to you and me again and again, every day: “You can have this world if you will just worship me. I will give it to you. You can have all of its pleasures.”
That is the danger of the world. The whole tactic of the enemy with our Lord in the wilderness was to get Him to act out of His own self.
But the Lord was always faithful to God. He never acted out of Himself, and He always challenged the enemy. Finally, He says, “Be gone.” Once he got to this matter of worship, the spiritual matter, the Lord dealt with him.
You remember our Lord Jesus said that the enemy came but found nothing in Him. When the enemy came, he wanted to attack our Lord Jesus, and the ground he was trying to use was His self-life, which in our Lord was perfect. I want us to understand that.
But the Lord never used it. He was never drawn out of Himself to act out of Himself. “Nothing he found in Me.”
Well, I hope we understand a little bit how the enemy works. He is after your will. He wants to control your will. He wants to control the choices you make. He wants to control your soul. If he has your will, he has your soul.
What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Lord, forgive me for loving this world so much. Losing our soul—that is what the enemy is after.
The citadel of your life, that castle where all the power is, is in our soul. Our will is there, and the enemy is after it. The way he gets to it, brothers and sisters, is to activate our self-life.
But how does he activate the self-life? Usually through our mind and emotions. I have already said he can plant thoughts there.
Remember, in one place—I cannot remember the whole story; maybe I should not use it since I cannot remember—but the Lord was having a conference, and He said, “This king needs to do certain things.” Finally, one of the spirits stood up and said, “I will go and be a lying spirit in this king’s mind.”
In other words, the enemy can inject his thoughts into our mind, and that is the way he gets to us.
Our perfect illustration is Eve, the way he worked on our dear sister. I call her our dear sister because she is just like we are. We too have fallen.
But how did he approach her? He approached Eve and said, “Has God said? Has God said you cannot eat of the trees in the garden? Has God said?”
A little bit of doubt. A little poison here, coming—just a little bit. “Has God said?” In other words, his approach to Eve’s mind was to plant a seed of doubt there.
Eventually, it was followed by the lie: “You will not die if you partake of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You will not die.” That was a lie. The doubt was followed by a lie.
Unfortunately, she bought into this. Finally, the enemy appealed to her self-life: “You will be like God. You will be like God. You are smart. You are intelligent. You are capable of controlling your own life. You are a smart woman.”
“But you do lack one thing. You lack one thing: the knowledge of good and evil. If you just have the knowledge of good and evil, then you will be like God. You will be able to judge like God judges. You will be like Him.”
“Your whole life will change and will alter, because now, whatever the circumstances, whatever the situations, if you just have the knowledge of what is good in it and what is evil in it, you can resolve it, and you will be just like God. You just lack that one thing.”
“All you have to do is partake of this fruit. Is it not a luscious-looking fruit? Let me stir your emotions a little bit here. Is it not luscious-looking? How can it be bad?”
“You just need to know what is good and what is evil, and you can resolve the issues of life. You can then live this life, and you can live it independently.”
Brothers and sisters, unfortunately, the knowledge of good and evil has only brought a curse on us because we are fallen. Even when we have some knowledge of good and evil, we do not have the entire knowledge. We usually judge good and evil based on our own experiences.
We become the measuring stick, not Christ. It has become our curse.
The way God had provided was the tree of life. Brothers and sisters, which tree do we live by? Is it the tree of life, or the knowledge of good and evil?
I cannot tell you how many times in my own life personally the Lord has brought me back to this thought in the very beginning of His Book: there are only two paths for man. One is the tree of life, and the other is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Often we, as Christians, mix the two. Life, brothers and sisters—when we are in touch with the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, the matter of good and evil is touched by the Holy Spirit in our heart. We begin to have that sensing in our heart.
We do not need a bunch of rules anymore to understand what is good for us and what is not good for us. The Spirit from within speaks to us. The way of life.
But, “You just need one thing: the knowledge of good and evil.” Brothers and sisters, what a snare. What a trap. It appealed to her self-life. That was the ground he had, and she fell.
The enemy was so sly. He said, “Now, you lack this one thing, the knowledge of good and evil. And you know what? God is holding that back from you, is He not?”
“Can you really trust God? Can you really depend on Him and put your full trust in Him? He is holding this back from you. This is your problem, Eve.”
Oh, brothers and sisters, may the Lord, in all of our own personal situations, reveal by His light how this applies to us, that we not fall into the snare of the enemy. Because, brothers and sisters, it is the difference, obviously, between life and death.
Man is in the middle. By God’s sovereign grace and mercy, we have a choice. “One thing you lack. God is holding this back from you. He is the problem. Think for yourself. Go ahead and act on your own power.”
“Take this very delicious-looking fruit. Go ahead. You have a choice. Even God has given you that choice. That choice is God-given. Take it. Use it. Choose for yourself. Choose you.”
He worked in Eve until self-desire became a passion in her heart, and she fell. She chose self-will instead of God’s will, because God had told her not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because it would bring death.
Brothers and sisters, do you see why our mind needs this helmet of salvation? We are to deny ourselves, but the enemy is constantly working on us every day through our mind and emotions, not to deny self, but to utilize self.
Once he does that, he has our will, and we will choose him every time. In fact, if it is done enough in our life, it becomes a habit. He has a tremendous locking power on our lives and our will at that time.
There is no strength in our will. Now, I do not mean willpower, but strength in our will that comes from God Himself. God can give us strength in our will: Christ.
I think that is why 2 Corinthians 10:5 speaks of bringing every thought into captivity. Remember that Scripture?
The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds;
casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God;
and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.
Now, we can go a little overboard with thinking, “Okay, every thought that I think, now I have got to think about it.” It can get you in a loop you will never get out of, believe me.
But we do, in our thought life, have to give it to the Lord: “Lord, make me aware when the enemy assaults my mind. Make me aware. Let me know that this thought is from him. Let me not just quickly and readily accept thoughts.”
Because I need to bring everything under You, Lord Jesus, and submit it to You. Oh, may the blood of Jesus be on our thought lives, brothers and sisters.
How much we let run through our minds grows up so much in our own hearts individually and personally, allowing the enemy to activate our self-life, causing us to lose our will to the enemy. It is because we have not put on this helmet of salvation—and it is twelve o’clock, and we have not got the helmet on yet.
I do not know what to do exactly. But, oh well.
Let me just say this at this point. I want us this morning to understand we are in a tremendous battle. That battle is over the testimony of Jesus.
Because our adversary wanted His place. When he was displaced, even from the authority and power and position that he had, his anger is unmatched, brothers and sisters. His fury is unmatched. His desire and will to destroy everything that is of Christ is unmatched.
He is coming after you. He is coming after me. He comes after any testimony of Jesus Christ, and the corporate testimony that is to be the bride of Christ he ultimately has to destroy, if there is any way possible.
But thank God, we do know that Christ says, “I am washing her with My blood, and one day she will be without spot or wrinkle. I am washing her with the Word, and she will be without spot or wrinkle.”
So we know, thank God, that His will will be done, and the adversary will eventually be cast into the lake of fire. For a thousand years he will be chained and turned loose and come back, and eventually, though, thank God, he will be thrown in the lake of fire.
Brothers and sisters, our thought life is not something that we should easily just let run freely to and fro. We have to have that inward spiritual check on our thought life because it is so dangerous.
I have talked about the wall-eyed pike syndrome, and I have not gotten back to it. It will probably be another week before I can do that. But there is another little story that illustrates this matter. It is called Henny Penny, and it is a children’s story.
When the story of Henny Penny was shared with me, I said, “Lord, a children’s book—how amazing.” But you all remember the story of Henny Penny?
Henny Penny is standing under, I think, an oak tree, and an acorn falls on her head. She considers this situation, and this thought enters Henny Penny’s mind: “The sky is falling.”
“The sky is falling. My conclusion to this situation is that the sky is falling. I am an intelligent hen, and I understand about gravity. I know if I flap my wings, I cannot stay up for so long because of gravity. Therefore, there is only one conclusion to draw to this thing falling on my head: it is the sky.”
Henny Penny becomes so convinced that she immediately goes to the rooster and says, “Cocky Locky.” Think of the metaphors you can use with Cocky Locky. I mean, he was supposed to be the fellow who knew everything and was to be her covering and everything.
She goes to Cocky Locky, and of course he is very smart and intelligent too. She is so convincing. It was just like Eve when she went to Adam: “The sky is falling.”
Of course, I am sure he looked around and said, “I do not see anything falling.” But she is so sure, so positive, it must be true. He becomes convinced as well, and they go off and meet Ducky Lucky.
I do not know much about Ducky Lucky, but I would think this is a fellow who thinks life just happens, and if I am lucky, I make it through. But Ducky Lucky is walking along, and they confront him. He says, “What is going on?” They say, “Well, the sky is falling.”
He looks around: “All right, well, life comes, life goes. The sky is falling. We need to do something about it, right?” “Yes.” “Okay. Well, we are going to see the king. We are going to see the king to tell him, because this is a disastrous situation here.”
Ducky Lucky and the other two run along, and they run into Turkey Lurkey. Well, we are all turkeys, are we not?
They run into Turkey Lurkey. Once again, now we have three or four, and they are all convinced that the sky is falling.
Eventually Foxy Loxy enters the picture. Now Foxy Loxy, of course, knows what is going on. “Hey, what is going on here?” “Well, you know, the sky is falling, and we are going to see the king.”
“Well, of course you should go see the king. This is a disastrous situation here. Yes, I will go with you. As a matter of fact, you are going the wrong way. I know a better way to the king. I know a shortcut. By the way, I think we need to stay overnight in my house.”
Well, Ducky Lucky and Turkey Lurkey were never seen or heard from again. And the fox’s stomach somehow got a little bit larger, and he was happy. The king never heard about the sky falling.
Now, that is just a simple illustration. I hope nobody is offended by it. I just use it to say, you know, we look at this children’s story and say, “Well, you know, this is a children’s story.” No, it is an adult story, because we fall into the same trap.
Brothers and sisters, we need to, by the Holy Spirit, lift our hearts before the Lord and give them to the Lord. Do not allow these thoughts.
I am particularly concerned, obviously, about this wall-eyed pike syndrome. He convinces us that we are hopeless. He convinces us: “Yes, you are a Christian, but look how you have failed the Lord. Look at you. You expected so much of yourself, did you not?”
Oh, what a trap. He builds expectations in us as Christians: expecting that we will follow the Lord unswervingly; expecting that as long as we are following the Lord and loving the Lord, everything in life will be okay.
Then we are hit with these circumstances that we do not understand. Like the wall-eyed pike, he could not figure out what was going on. It seems so confusing and so disruptive to my life. “Lord, nothing in my life seems to be working out here. I wonder if I am a Christian.”
How many of you have had that thought? You do not have to raise your hand. But he gets us in this state, the wall-eyed pike syndrome, and he works on our minds.
What does he cause self to do? It becomes totally passive. You know, self cannot be active. It is amazingly passive.
Then all the encouragement in the world, no matter how close, no matter how much, is like it is not there. It is like you cannot receive it.
Brothers and sisters, settle in your hearts today that wherever there is encouragement, receive it, because it is God’s gift to you. It is God’s gift to give that little spark of life in all of our hearts, to respond back to Him and to begin to come back to a healthy relationship with Him.
Do not let the enemy continue to take our wills through our minds. May the Lord really show us. There is much more, but we will see what the Lord does.
Lord, we come back to Thee. I feel so inadequate, Lord. I feel so much, Lord. But I do pray in the name of Jesus Christ that, Lord, this battle—the immediate battle—would not consume us, that the immediate would not distort the picture, Lord, so that we do not see what is behind it.
Lord, may we see what Your purposes are and what You are doing in our lives to build us into the bride of Jesus Christ, Lord; to make us strong in faith and able to overcome all the assaults of the adversary.
Lord, may we become true overcomers in Jesus Christ, not because there is anything in us, Lord, but because You are everything in us and to us. Lord, lift our eyes up to heaven. Lift our eyes up to You, Lord Jesus.
May we learn, Lord Jesus, these lessons that we are so much experiencing in these days. I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.