Gregory Dickow - How to Silence the Accuser
This is what the devil consists of. He throws accusations at you day and night, day and night, day and night until he penetrates your soul. And there he releases explosive power through the power of guilt, condemnation and accusation. And so if we can attack that guilt today, if we can deal with guilt the way Jesus intended us to. If we can take these accusations captive and learn how to overcome the accuser of the brethren and the accusations that come from hell. Because if you learn how to overcome these accusations, that's when you're going to walk in such freedom and joy. Nothing robs us of joy more than guilt. Nothing robs us of effectiveness more than guilt. Nothing robs us of peace of mind more than guilt. Nothing makes us more anxious and depressed more than guilt.
Guilt is an insidious, demonic force that wants to beat you down and beat you up one side and down the other until you start beating yourself up so he can move on to somebody else. That's what the accuser does, and it's time to throw him down. It says the accuser has been thrown down. He's been thrown down. He's been thrown down. And how has he been thrown down? Look at verse 11. He's been thrown down. They overcame him by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony. And they were not in love with their lives. They were in love with Jesus, not their soul life. They were in love with Jesus' life, not their life. And that's how they were able to throw down the accuser of the brethren. Jesus threw them down. And now we continue to remind him that he's down.
And don't let him back up in our heads. Don't let him back up in your business. Don't let him back up in your mind. Don't let him back up in your heart. Don't let him accuse you day and night, because that's what he does. But it's time that we learn how to walk in victory over the accusations. The guilt and the condemnation that comes from the pit of hell comes from Diablo himself. Hey, it's time for us to walk in the joy and the happiness and the peace that comes from living a guilt-free life. I don't know about you, but you know, there are some foods that are advertised sometimes, like guilt-free, right? Guilt-free this guilt-free that guilt-free sugar guilt, I want some guilt-free potato chips. How about you? I want some guilt, I want some guilt-free Doritos. I want some... Come on now. I want some, I want guilt-free food. I don't want to live in guilt another day in my life. And Jesus doesn't want me to either. And he doesn't want you to either.
Come on, somebody say amen to that. Anyone know what it's like to feel accused? Day and night. Come on, now. Don't say yeah. I'm married to him. Don't say yeah... The voice of accusation becomes so familiar to us that it actually sounds like we're saying it to ourselves. And it sounds like our voice. Satan disguises himself with our voice until in our minds we are accusing ourselves and Satan's not even having to do anything about it because you're doing a good enough job by yourself that he doesn't even need to mess with your mind anymore because he's got you thinking like him. Thoughts like, how about this? You never do enough. You don't say the right things. You don't measure up, you don't get it all done. You don't do enough for your children, for your parents, for others. You don't do as much for others as they do for you. You always seem to blow it when you seem to be making progress.
You say things you regret, you get angry too easily. You think bad thoughts. You don't have the right clothes, eat too much, you don't exercise enough, you don't pray enough, you don't read enough, you don't serve enough. Anybody heard any of those thoughts before? And they stop coming in the form of "You don't do enough" and they start coming in the form of "I don't do enough". I don't measure up. I don't I don't have the right things. I don't I'm not good enough. I say things I regret. I get angry easily and you begin to agree with these accusations until you are so weighed down with guilt that it brings you into actually a place of depression and sadness and ineffectiveness in life. And if we could throw down this guilt once and for all, we could experience real freedom, the freedom Jesus paid for us to have, and we could experience a peace that passes understanding and a joy, unspeakable and full of glory.
That's the life that God has for you. God doesn't want you being guilty and beating yourself up about your mistakes, about your past, about what you've done, about what others have done to you. Listen. And Satan is a manipulator, and he uses people to manipulate us through guilt. People sell us things with guilt. People get us to apologize through guilt. People get us to do what they want through guilt. And we've got to stop being manipulated by guilt because we're so accustomed to feeling guilty because we know how flawed we are that we allow guilt to control us and we allow guilt to influence our decisions so that we can feel like we've paid for our guilt. But we don't have to pay a cent for our guilt. We don't have to pay a second for our guilt because Jesus already paid for it in its entirety so that we can live a guilt-free life.
No matter what you feel like, no matter how many mistakes you've made, no matter how far you've fallen short, you can live a life where you're not guilty. And by the way, when you live a life of freedom from guilt, you're going to be able to pray with power. Because what keeps us from being able to pray with authority and power is condemnation. In fact, if you look at this verse first, John, chapter three, verse 20 and 21. So if our heart condemns us, he says, God is greater than our heart and knows all things. Verse 21. But if our heart does not condemn us, then we have confidence towards God. Listen to what he says, beloved. If our heart does not condemn us, then we have confidence before God. But he's not saying: if you don't sin, then you can have confidence toward God. He's saying if your heart doesn't condemn you, then you have confidence towards God. Because even if I fall, even if I fail, even if I stumble, I don't have confidence today because I'm holy. I have confidence today because I am the righteousness of God in Christ. That's what gives me confidence. And if I fall or stumble, it doesn't change the fact that I'm the righteousness of God.
But religious preaching has doomed us to be a byproduct of our behavior, and God wants us to understand our behavior is a byproduct of what we believe. Believe right, live right. Living right is the reflex of believing, right. If your heart does not condemn you, then you have confidence before God. So back to Revelation 12 and 10, talking about the accuser of the brethren. Satan wants to accuse you continually. Satan wants to make you feel bad continually. And we make decisions because we feel bad. And we've got to stop making decisions because we feel bad. We got to stop making decisions to alleviate our guilt. We have to realize Jesus alleviates our guilt through his blood, through his precious, precious blood, not through our behavior. We've got to get a hold of this, folks. Why do people feel guilty? Because of our past. Because we make promises that we don't end up keeping. Because we're not living up to our standards. Because we're not living up to other standards. We're not living up to God's standards. So we feel guilty. Or we owe someone something that we can't pay, so we feel guilty.
People say something in anger that they later regret, so we feel guilty about that. We feel guilty about being overweight. We feel guilty when we look at the scale. You feel guilty because you don't finish your list. You feel guilty because you're not spending enough time with your children, or you think you're not. Or you're not praying enough or you're not reading your Bible enough. Or when you're reading the Bible, the devil is telling you to pray more. And when you start praying more, the devil tells you to read the Bible more. When you're doing one, you feel guilty about not doing the other. Or maybe you feel guilty because you have a messy house, not doing enough for your children, not finishing what you start, not taking enough time for yourself. We've got to realize these things. Satan uses these normal, natural things. None of us truly measure up to the perfect standard that we want to measure up to. And so we have to accept that we are humans. We have to accept that we are not flawless. We have to accept that we are going to make mistakes. We have shortcomings. It's not an excuse for them, but it's a reality that each of us, each and every one of us live in. And we can't be free from guilt by being perfect.
There's only one way to be free from guilt. It starts right here in Hebrews chapter 10, verse 22. And I want to read this to you from the New Living translation, Hebrews chapter 10, verse 22. Let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts, fully trusting Him for our guilty conscience has been sprinkled clean. Our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ's blood to make us clean and our bodies have been washed with pure water. Notice what he says. Our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ's blood to make us clean. He doesn't say our guilty consciences have been sprinkled by our confession to make us clean. He doesn't say our confession makes us clean. He doesn't say our apology makes us clean. He says only one thing cleanses us from a guilty conscience, the blood of Jesus Christ. And listen. He only died once and he's never going to die again. He only died once for all so that he never has to die again. And he sprinkles us with his blood.
Now, I don't know about you, but I'm into sprinklers that get the job done. How about you? So sometimes we think of sprinkling us with his blood sort of like, you know, like an infant baptism. You know, you just kind of dab the kid's head with a few sprinkles of water. No, no, no, no, no. How many have ever seen one of those sprinklers? You know, those sprinklers that go like this? And, man, they will rip your feet right out from under you. You know, if you get real close to them, you know, those things go. Those things are powerful. That's what I want you to envision. I don't want you to envision one of those summertime, you know, sprinklers like this.
You know, the rainbow sprinklers that you kind of jump in, right? And you jump through and you just jump right over. No, not the rainbow sprinkler. That ain't a real sprinkler. No, no, no. We weren't cleansed with some rainbow sprinkler. We were cleansed with this... Until peels all the sin right off of you and peels all the condemnation and all the guilt and all the shame and all your regrets and all of your mistakes and all your shortcomings and all that's left is you washed by the blood of the Lamb, washed by the precious blood of Jesus, and no longer have to live with a guilty conscience ever again. I don't care what you've done. It is over. It is washed. You have been cleansed. Jesus' blood is more powerful and it justifies you forever. It cleanses you forever. And it makes you free from guilt forever.