Disappointment by Ps Phil Kinney
The devil one day decided that he was going to have a yard sale and in this yard sale he would have for sale all of the weapons in his arsenal. And he would sale them to some sinister creature that would take his place. So he made the advertisement that his weapons were for sale.
The one day walking up his drive way he saw a dark, hideous sinister creature looking at him and saying to him, ”I want to be the next enemy of the world”.
The devil takes him through his yard sale and begins to show him all that he has for sale. As they begin to walk up and down the rows of tables they see on the tables weapons like
-covetousness
-lust
-worry
-envy
and as this dark sinister creature sees all of these things he says, “my goodness what wonderful and powerful tools these would be in my hands to stop the work of God in the earth and to keep the people of God from being what God would have them to be”.
But then the devil turns to this sinister creature with a smile on his face and says to him, “yes these weapons have been used wonderfully and yes of course they have accomplished the work that I have wanted them to do, but I want you to see the weapon I have used the most to bring down nations and to cause people to go on serving God and to stop great things from happening in the world”. As this sinister creature awaits wringing his hands anxiously to see what weapon that the devil is talking about, the devil reaches back in a corner and pulls out a weapon and written at the top of this weapon is the word, “DISCOURAGEMENT”.
The devil presents this weapon before him and says, “by this weapon I have toppled kingdoms, I have stopped people that were excited about the things of God and excited about serving God, I have stopped them dead in their tracts, by this weapon I have stopped people that have made a good start with God, I have made them to give up and lose hope and lose heart, by this weapon I have conquered and by this weapon I have overcome more than by any other weapon in my arsenal. And by this weapon you can well continue on the work that I have begun”.
I want to tell you that the single greatest weapon that the devil has to use against the people of God is discouragement.
If the devil can get you discouraged then you will
Not pray ( what’s the use, God don’t hear)
Not read the bible (what’s the use God don’t speak to me)
Not pay all of your tithe (what’s the use, I can barely make it now)
Not give in the offering (things are really tight now)
Stub up at what the preacher is saying (this guy don’t live in reality)
Look at everyone else and not to Jesus (I cant believe them)
Not come to church (What’s the use)
Lose sight of what God has for you and for this church!
Because of this weapon of discouragement, statistics tell us that every month in America 200 pastors quite the ministry, because of this great weapon of discouragement 3,000 churches every month put a pad lock on the door and close down.
Because of this weapon called discouragement the people of God become down hearted, hopeless, burdened down and weary in well doing.
a. Discouragement- the fact, state, or feeling of being discouraged Discourage- 1 to deprive of courage, hope, or confidence; dishearten
2 to advise or persuade (a person) to refrain
3 to prevent or try to prevent by disapproving or raising objections or obstacles
One of the problems is it is often people in the church who are doing the work of the devil! Someone steps up and take son a task – and the first thing we hear is someone else sticking in the boot! That’s not how it is done. That’s not going to work. They’ll never make it. They are sure to fail. They don’t know how to do it right. They are much too young. They are much too old. They can’t do that, they are female. They don’t understand – he’s a male.
Last night elected into parliament was the youngest ever representative – a 20 year old. This guy –Whyatt Roy– not only just contested his first election, it is actually the first time he has voted in a Federal election because of his age. How many people’s first reaction is “he’s too young, what would he know”. The bottom line is, Whyatt the 20 year old will be a sitting member for Longman in Qld and part of the new parliament because tens of thousands of people voted for him.
Australian’s are funny people. We believe in giving everybody a go, but when they succeed we want to stick the boot in and pull them back down! And I think it is some of the worst in the church.
I pondered why we are like this. Why aren’t we more positive in church? Why do we always see the negative and bad side of things before we see the positive and potential? With all the hope and potential outlaid in the Bible, the new and abundant life promised through being born again, why are people of the church negative when we first encounter a new vision or idea?
1 Peter 2:11 (NKJV)
"Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul"
I pondered on this verse, because before it there is reference to being “Royal Priests” – which if you attended the Bible college –you would know means we reign in this world. Yet here we have “war against the soul”. Last time I spoke we looked at the make up our being – spirit, soul, mind and body. The soul we identified as the area that carries our personality, creativity, art, music, likes / dislikes, desires, memory, conscience, imagination.
Most people assume that sin is war against the spirit, or alternatively against the body. But as Peter clearly shows, sin is against the soul. Why does satan war against our soul? Because when he wars against the soul, we lose faith and vision. When we sin, all we see before us after we sin is the sin itself. We start to see ourselves not in the context of being redeemed from sin, but in the context of having committed the sin. When this becomes our vision, we lose our God given vision because we don’t deem ourselves worthy of doing anything for God because we are “carrying” this sin. Where does this vision we lose come from? Visions and dreams originate in our soul. They are the God given calling on our lives for greatness. We have a huge God, and He has huge prosperous plans for our lives. But when we lose sight of these plans and only see sin, we shut down our soul and the creativity and dreams and visions held there, and allow a new vision to form – one as a sinner in the context of our sin. And if we keep doing this we lose sight of vision all together and become discouraged and negative. We then feed this discouragement onto others. When we see them getting up and having a go and getting ahead of the pack we want to pull them back because it reminds us of our failed attempts- and who do they think they are – better than me?
Sin robs us of our joy, our creativity, it sears our conscience and becomes implanted in our memory, and we start to define ourselves in view of the sin.
But this is not God’s intention. God wants to reignite visions and dreams. He wants us to be creative, to have vision, to be dreamers, to let our imagination run wild with the possibilities we have in Him, for our memory to remember who we are in Christ, forgiven, cleansed, white as snow.
When we get to heaven and our life is shown on the big screen, God is not going to look at us and say “what a terrible sinner”. He can’t, because He has removed our sin far away and remembers it no more. No where there is sin in the book, all the Father sees is Jesus.
What we will see are the missed opportunities God has given us, where we missed living the victorious life because we see ourselves in the context of our sin, rather than in the context of who we are in Christ.
