Bill Johnson - How to Step Into Your Calling With Confidence
You can become more aware of important things if you just stop to recognize what the enemy is targeting. I don’t mean he sets the pace; I don’t mean he shows us what’s important. We just learn what he fears in this individual and in this family because he only attacks what poses a threat to him. You can tell what the enemy fears about your life by recognizing what he attacks. The enemy lives in reaction to realities, and when he recognizes something that he fears you discovering, he attacks. Sometimes his attacks are overt and extreme; we see it in tragedy, crisis, difficulty, affliction, those kinds of things. But the most common attacks of the enemy are his questions. Now, the Lord is not at all afraid of questions; he’s pretty secure and fairly intelligent. It’s not the questions themselves; it’s just that whenever the enemy gets you to ask his questions, it’s always to lead to deception and unbelief. Deception rarely begins with an outright lie; it starts with a distortion of something real. When the Lord asks a question, it’s always to bring you into understanding and greater faith.
The two stories we’re going to look at are one from the first Adam, which is Genesis 3, and the last Adam. We don’t call Jesus the second Adam because there isn’t going to be a third; he’s the last of it. He is literally the firstborn of the dead. Now, he’s not the first person to rise from the dead, but he was the firstborn from the dead because in his resurrection is the template, power, or mandate to raise up an entirely new generation of people. Everyone born again is a new creation, something that has never existed before. The first failure, the failure we see of Adam and Eve, happened in the Garden of Eden, a place of absolute, perfect beauty and abundance. The last Adam, instead of failing, succeeded in a wilderness with the devil.
You can become more culturally aware of important things if you just stop to recognize what the enemy is targeting. I don’t mean he sets the pace; I don’t mean he shows us what’s important. We learn what he fears in this individual and this family because he only attacks what poses a threat to him. You’ll notice in the Old Testament, in the story of Israel on their journey from Egypt, eventually into the promised land and then taking over the land that God had given them as an inheritance, they were attacked by an enemy nation whenever they were close to another victory. As I heard somebody say recently, Israel found themselves being attacked whenever they were close to another victory. The implication is that when you are under attack for whatever reason, it’s because you are a threat to him and you’re close to another victory. What he does in his attempts to target our lives is get us to turn inward instead of upward. We question our spirituality instead of relying on his.
I heard somebody say once that while casting out a demon, something happened where a demon pointed out that they hadn’t been fasting, and the guy said, «Well, I bind you in the name of Jesus; I fast.» That was pretty good! Listen, on your best day, it’s only by the grace of God. The moment you show the strongest measure of faith you’ve ever known in your life, that was a gift too; it all traces back to the gift of God’s grace. Absolutely!
So, let’s take a look at these two stories. Oh, I was going to read, I’m sorry, Romans. Let me take a couple of verses just because I want to create the context of the first Adam and the last Adam. Romans 5:12 says, «Just as through one man sin entered the world and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because all sinned.» What’s being said here is that the first Adam sinned, resulting in a death sentence being released to all humanity through his one sin. Alright, so what’s happening is Paul talks about how the sin of one spread death to all. Got it? Now, verse 17 says, «If by one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who received the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.» Now, I realize that may be awkward wording; just follow through here. He says if death reigned through Adam, then even more so, life reigns through Jesus Christ to the point where you will reign in life. It’s the phrase he uses, «reign in life.» Say that with me: reign in life. It’s a strong biblical term because it is actually the purpose of the Book of Proverbs. Thank you! The Book of Proverbs is training for reigning. The Book of Proverbs is training to reign in life. Reigning in life is not ruling over people; it is reigning over life. Money doesn’t control you; you control money. Relationships don’t control you; you don’t get depressed because someone didn’t like you on your Facebook page. You are not controlled by the opinions of other people; you manage those things for the glory of God. You manage your own heart for the glory of God and reign in life.
So yes, great! It’s amazing—contrast the first Adam’s death reign with the last Adam’s reign. I didn’t make that up; that’s in the book. Now, obviously, we reign in Christ, not independently of him, but because of him.
Alright, so let’s go to Genesis 3 and read that story. Genesis 3:1 states, «Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord had made,» and he said to the woman, «Has God indeed said, 'You shall not eat of every tree of the garden? '» The woman said to the serpent, «We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat it'»; she added this part, «nor shall you touch it, lest you die.» The serpent said to the woman, «You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.»
When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew they were naked; they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees.
Verse 9: «Then God called to Adam and said to him, 'Where are you? '» God asked Adam where he was, not because he didn’t know, but because Adam didn’t know. When the Lord asked the question, it’s different than the enemy. The enemy tries to take us into deception and eventually unbelief. Unbelief is partnership with the demonic. When Jesus asks a question, it’s always to heighten awareness of what truth is, to lead us into understanding, revelation, and greater faith. So God asked the question, «Adam, where are you?»
It’s interesting to note that the first temptation in this story was not to eat of the forbidden fruit; it was to question what God said. The serpent came to Adam and Eve and said, «Has God said?» At some point, you have to come to a resolve as a believer; it’s critical that the sooner, the better, you come to a resolve that you will live with absolute abandonment and trust in the word of God.
There aren’t as many errors in this book as there are in you. First of all, I say there aren’t any, but if there are, for conversation’s sake, there aren’t as many in there as there are in you. So, I’m not going to let the bigger error redefine the lesser. Thank you! It’s the only book in existence where the author shows up when you read it, which I’m really thankful for because it would be horrible to be in your bathtub reading a book. Let’s be honest. I’m thankful that the author shows up when you read; you’re engaged with a person because it’s a living book. It is vital to understand that his words actually give life; they bring life.
One of my favorite stories I reference fairly often is in John 6, where Jesus is teaching. People were enthralled with every word that came out of his mouth; they would say he teaches like someone with authority, not like the scribes and Pharisees, and they were always amazed at his words. Except for this one sermon where he began to teach, «You have to eat my flesh and drink my blood,» and the people, I don’t know; they were probably thinking, «Everybody has a bad day; let’s see.» So, the crowd of perhaps fifteen thousand left, and Jesus was left with his twelve disciples. He turned to them and said, «Are you guys leaving too?» Peter, the best dancer, said, «Where are we going to go? You have the words of eternal life.»
Think through this: where are we going to go? To me, he’s saying, «All we know is Jesus. We don’t understand what you just taught any more than the crowd that left. What we do understand is that whenever you talk, we come alive inside.» There’s life in a word you don’t understand; that’s the whole point. That’s why we come yielded; we come ready to learn, ready to be impacted.
As God said, the beginning of the downfall of humanity was the questioning of the most reliable thing in the universe: God’s declarations. I was listening to a message on YouTube just last week by Derek Prince, one of the best Bible teachers of the last hundred years. He’s an amazing man, and I assume he’s talking from the 70s or perhaps the 80s. He was giving this message about a book he’d read that discussed the persecuted Church in China, highlighting many believers who lost their lives, many who were imprisoned, and many who were tortured and beaten. This book did a study comparing this group with others who had confessed the Lord but turned away in the face of difficulty and denied the Lord. This book compared the two groups to find out the difference. The answer completely shocked me: the common denominator of all those who did well in the face of opposition was that they all memorized scripture.
It’s John 15:7: «If you abide in me"—that’s the felt realization of his presence—and «my words abide in you.» It’s more than just putting verses to memory; it’s allowing the impact of what he says to become you, to shape you. The goal isn’t just to be able to provide a nice scriptural answer to a question; that’s a good beginning. The goal is to become the answer in a sense, for it to come forth from you because you’re so intimately intertwined with what God has said.
This may sound strange to you, but God wants his word to become flesh again. The first temptation for Adam and Eve was to question what God said, and anytime the enemy knows that some of you are too deeply entrenched, you’ve been at this too long; you’re not going to deny the word of God. However, perhaps your weak point is that while you wouldn’t deny the word of God, you would deny your ability to hear from God. They are interconnected, and the enemy will always look for the weak point and try to shift us from the awareness that we were designed to hear from God. Again, it’s a gift; it’s not that I worked hard and arrived at this place of breakthrough. I was designed to hear from the Lord. Everything about me is wired to perceive him, from my physical senses to my emotional and mental faculties; it’s all designed to perceive him.
The most obvious thing in the universe is him. You have to work hard to train yourself to ignore him, and that’s the truth.