Joyce Meyer - The War for Man's Soul - Part 1

Well, thank you very much for joining me today on, «Enjoying Everyday Life». I have a teaching today that I feel is very, very important. And so, you might wanna take some notes or maybe you can re-watch the program again later, I’m sure it’s on more than once a day. But I wanna talk to you today about «The war for man’s soul». I’ve been talking about temptation and I like to say it like this. The devil tempts us to do bad things, but God also tempts us. He tempts us to do good things. And it’s interesting, like you might be tempted to give something away.

You might feel that you’re supposed to give something away, but it’s something that you like. And then the enemy will come and tempt you to keep it. Or you might be tempted by the enemy to be angry with someone. And God might tempt you then to forgive them. And so, we’re always making choices all the time about whether we’re going to follow God or follow the enemy. And so, this teaching is out of Romans chapter 6. And I always like to say, if you can understand Romans 5, 6, 7, and 8, then you understand a lot about your doctrinal position in Christ and with Christ. And they’re very important chapters to understand, although sometimes you have to study them for quite a while before you really begin to get them.

We are a tripart being. We are spirit, soul, and body. And from your spirit, that’s where you get intuition, conscience, and communion. You commune with God in your spirit. That’s where your conscience is at, lets you know if you’re doing something right or something wrong. And intuition is where you get Revelation, like you just like, «Oh, yeah, I get that». And your spirit is the deepest part of your being. When you’re born again, that’s where the Holy Spirit comes to live. He lives in you. And you become a new creature in Christ, according to 2 Corinthians 5:17. «If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. All things pass away and all things are made new».

Next, you have your soul, which our soul gives us a lot of trouble. And that’s kind of like the main thing that needs to be renewed. After you’re born again, something wonderful happens in your spirit, but nothing’s happened to your soul yet. That’s where the Holy Spirit comes in and he starts working with you to learn how to follow the spirit and no longer follow the flesh. Your soul is your mind, your will, and your emotions. Your soul tells you what you think, what you feel, and what you want. But all of that can be totally different from what God feels and thinks and wants. And then you have your body, which the body, you just, you contact the world with your body.

When the Bible talks about «The flesh,» you’ll see the term the flesh, it’s talking about a combination of the body and the soul. That’s your flesh. Now, whatever part of your soul has been crucified to self and belongs to God, that’s good. But that takes a while and it takes learning for that to happen. And a lot of people don’t understand this. Until I understood it, I was just going nowhere as far as growing in my walk with God. In this chapter, chapter 6, we see that we are dead to sin. But you say, «Well, how can I be dead to sin if I still want to sin»? Well, really, it’s not your spirit that wants to sin. It’s your flesh that wants to sin. And that’s why sometimes you feel like you have a war going on inside of you. Once you become a new creature in Christ, you want to do right. You want to do good things.

Before I was born again, I could do all kinds of bad things. It didn’t bother me at all. First, I had no teaching that it was even wrong. And there was no conviction because my conscience was in darkness until I was born again and filled with the light. Once I was born again, then things that I had done without them bothering me at all began to bother me. Like, once in a while, now, I will try to watch a movie that I watched maybe 30 years ago and it will have stuff in it that I think, «Well, I can’t watch that. How could I have watched that 30 years ago»?

Well, it was because I couldn’t sense any conviction from God about it. But now because of spiritual growth, I do feel conviction and I know when I lose my peace that I need to turn it off. It’s not proper for me. Now, Romans 6:1 says, first of all, let me say that before this, Paul had been talking about grace and how where sin abounds, grace does much more abound. Well, these people that he’s talking to have lived under the law. And so, this whole grace thing was a totally new thought and subject for them. You can just imagine how hard it must have been for them to have understood what he was talking about. So, they came back and said, «Well, what are we to say to all this? Should we remain in sin in order that grace (favor and mercy) might multiply and overflow»?

So, when Paul said, «Where sin abounds, grace does much more abound,» what he meant was there’s no sin that you can commit that God’s grace cannot cover and forgive you for. It’s God’s grace. «We’re saved by grace through faith». It’s God’s grace, his favor and his mercy, his undeserved favor. And I also like to explain to people that the Spirit of God, the grace of God is power. It’s the power of the Holy Spirit coming to us to help us do with ease what we could never do on our own without God’s help. For example, do you know that you can’t change another person? And we spend a lot of time trying to do that. I spent a lot of years trying to change my husband. And you know what? It didn’t work.

Matter of fact, sometimes he just got worse in the area that I was trying to change. People don’t wanna be controlled and they will resist control. Only God can change people because true change has to come from the inside out. I wonder how many of you are watching, right now, and there’s maybe a handful of people in your life that you’re trying to change. Maybe you’re trying to change one of your children. Maybe you don’t like the direction that they’re going in their life or you feel like they should do something that they don’t feel like they wanna do. And the only thing you can do is pray that God’s will, will be done in their life. And then his grace can change them if indeed that is what’s needed.

Sometimes we’re so full of pride, we think it’s the other person that needs to change one actually, it’s really us. But God can do in one second what we cannot do in a hundred years of our own effort. And so, this whole message of grace was just shocking to them. They’re like, «Well, if grace is gonna cover our sin, should we just keep sinning so that grace can keep working»? And so, Paul starts out and he says, «How can we who died to sin live in it any longer»? Now you may sin, but you won’t habitually and purposely sin. We’re dead to sin, but sin is not dead. In other words, we’re never going to stop being tempted. The enemy is always going to come around and tempt us. And I hate to tell you this, but it’s true.

So, I’m going to tell you, the devil is never going to leave you alone. Oh, you may have periods of rest where he’s not bothering you. But to be honest, sometimes if the devil’s not bothering you, maybe it’s because you’re not bothering him. You know, I’ve recently written a book about the enemy and there’s been so much attack since I wrote that book. Well, the enemy doesn’t want to be exposed. He wants to deceive people. He hides in deception and then he wrecks and ruins people’s lives and they don’t even know that it’s him. And so maybe that’s not a very exciting subject to study, but it’s something that we need to do. So, then Paul goes on to say, «Are you ignorant of the fact that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death»?

Now there’s a little word, two words in the Bible, «In Christ». And in the New Testament, if you take in Christ and in him and through him, that little phrase is in the New Testament about 200 times. In Christ is in there 100 times. And I can tell you that you understanding what it means to be «In Christ» is one of the most important things for you to learn. And if you don’t learn it, you’re never gonna have the righteousness, the peace and the joy that Jesus died for you to have. I like to say it like this, «It’s not my 'do' that matters. It’s not what I do that matters so much as who I am'».

And see, the law was always about what they did or what they didn’t do. And then when they didn’t do right, they had to make sacrifices for their sins. When they did do right, then they would be full of pride and get all puffed up with pride and judge other people. So that didn’t work either. But under the new covenant, we belong to him. He comes to live in us, and we are considered to be in him. That’s our legal position is «In Christ». But what is legally ours and what we experience is sometimes two different things.

So legally I’m in Christ. He died for me. My sins are forgiven. He’s gonna work with me the rest of my life when I do sin and make mistakes. When I repent, his grace is going to be right there to cover me. But as we grow in Christ, we should sin less and less and less. And that can’t happen if you don’t know who you are in Christ. And there’s just, I mean, there’s a list a mile long of the things that the Bible says, «You are in Christ,» and they’re all beautiful and wonderful. «You’re the apple of his eye, you’re precious, you are a masterpiece, you are a chosen race, you’re set apart for God’s use».

It’s amazing all the things that God says that we are. We’re strong in him. Just lots of things. But as long as we see ourselves in the natural, we don’t see ourselves according to what God says that we are, we’re never going to have victory over these problems. I couldn’t change my husband, but as soon as I started praying for God to do it, he made the changes that he wanted to make, not the changes I wanted to make, but that he wanted to make. And so, one of the parts of our soul is our will. And God, he’s given us free will, but he wants us to use that free will to choose his will. Have you chosen God’s will for your life? Or are most of your prayers you trying to get God to give you what you want? Or do you pray like Jesus did, «Father, your will be done and not mine»?

You know, Jesus didn’t want to go to the cross and suffer. Three times in the Garden of Gethsemane, he prayed the exact same prayer. «Father, if possible, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, your will be done and not mine». Let me tell you, one of the worst things that you can have in your life is to have something to finagle around and manipulate and get something you want that is something that God doesn’t want you to have, and it is going to make you very, very unhappy. Like God has called me to this ministry, so I have a passion for it. I enjoy it. I don’t mind the work that goes with it, and I’ve been doing this for going on 50 years, 48 years. But if God had not called me and I just decided that I was going to try to do this, first of all, it would have been a wreck. It would have never worked. Nobody would have listened to me, and I certainly wouldn’t still be here after 48 years.

And a lot of times people will ask me, «How do you start a ministry like yours? I’d like to have a ministry like yours. How can I start it»? And I always tell 'em, «You better hope and pray you don’t start it, because if you start it on your own, it is not going to work». One of the things that we get to do, which is such a privilege after we’re born again, is lean on Christ, abide in him, live, dwell, and remain in him. Having a relationship with Jesus is not about just going to church on Sunday and sitting in a pew, hardly waiting for the pastor to get done so you can go eat your lunch. It’s about living with him, inviting him into everything that you do, him being first in your life.

Now, I’m still reading in Romans 6, I’m jumping around a little bit, I’m not going to read the whole 23 verses, but I strongly suggest that you do after we’re finished. «Are you ignorant of the fact that all of you who have been baptized into Christ Jesus, were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by the baptism into death». See, we were buried with him. You say, «Well, I wasn’t buried with him». Well, spiritually you were. If you can see it with the eye of faith, then you say, «When Christ died, I died. When he was raised, I was raised». But if you’re only going to look at it in the natural, with your own natural mind, and you’re going to believe what you think more than you believe what the Bible says, then you’re never going to understand these things.

«So just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious [power] Of the father, so we too might [habitually] Live and behave in newness of life». I love that. We begin to form new habits. Before Christ, I habitually sinned. Now I still sin sometimes, but I don’t do it habitually over and over and over. I don’t do it purposely. I care about what God’s will is, and I work with the Holy Spirit to always try to do what’s right. I don’t always do what’s right, but when I don’t, I have the grace of God to forgive me and to help me learn and then go on to the point where I do it right. In verse 7 of Romans 6, Paul said, «For when a man dies, he is freed, (loosed and delivered) from [the power of] Sin [among men]».

Now, what is the power of sin among men? Well, I believe that it’s guilt and condemnation. I want you to think about that. When he forgives our iniquities, when he took our iniquities, he also took the guilt that was associated with it. But how many people, I did this for years, I would do something wrong, I would ask God to forgive me, and I even believe that he did. I believe that he did forgive me, but then I would feel guilty for days on end and sometimes even weeks I would feel guilty. And God had to teach me that, «There’s no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus». That’s Romans 8:1. «There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ». See? «In Christ». You’ve got to learn how important that is to be in Christ.

Verse 10, «For by the death he died, he died to sin [ending his relationship to it]». In other words, you don’t wanna sin anymore. You died to this desire to sin. Sin is not dead, it’ll still come after you, but you’re dead to it. You don’t want to. This is why sometimes you feel like there’s a war going on inside of you, because it’s like one part of you wants to do what’s right and another part of you wants to do what’s wrong. And then you begin to think, «What is wrong with me»? And you’ll see in Romans chapter 7 how Paul describes that feeling and it’ll help you to understand even more. Now, «For by the death he died, he died to sin [ending his relationship to it] Once and for all: and the life he lives, he is living to God [in unbroken fellowship with him]».

The more you fellowship with God, the more you meditate on his word, the more you talk to him throughout the day, the closer you get to him, the stronger you become spiritually and the weaker your flesh becomes. The Bible says, that we are «To crucify the flesh». In Colossians 3 in the Amplified Bible, it says, «Kill the flesh». Well obviously, God doesn’t want us to kill ourself, but what’s he talking about? He’s talking about don’t let the flesh control you anymore. Don’t let it control you. And I’ve found out that you can kill anything if you just don’t feed it.

So, let’s just say that, oh, Dave says something I don’t like and I’m gonna have to say something back because I’ve gotta have the last word. And I’m growing in God now and so I know that he doesn’t want me to be like that anymore. If it was some kind of a correction that Dave gave me, then I need to graciously receive it. Well, that’s challenging, isn’t it? Nobody likes to have somebody tell 'em they were wrong and just say, «Thank you, I appreciate you showing me that». But the Bible says that «Only a fool hates correction». And boy, it took me a long time to get to the point where I could say, «Thanks for showing me that». So, let’s say, I’m growing in Christ, now, growing in Christ, and so, now, when Dave says something that might be of a little corrective nature, like, «You shouldn’t do that» or, you know, «You probably shouldn’t have said that, instead of me following my feelings and saying something back so I can have the last word and not let him think that he can tell me what to do, now I have this alive spirit that is convicting me not to do that because it’s not what God would want me to do».

So, I have a choice. Now I’ve got this war in my soul. «I wanna do what’s wrong, but I wanna do what’s right». Well, the more that I don’t give in to the temptation to do the wrong thing, then I’m not feeding the flesh and eventually I can, so to speak, kill that thing in me that wants to do that by simply, sometimes right in the middle of it I have to say, «God help me, help me, help me». Because I want to talk back, but I know God doesn’t want me to, the devil’s pressuring me to, but God doesn’t want me to, God’s tempting me to do right, the devil’s tempting me to do wrong, now what am I going to do?

I have a decision to make. And every time I decide for God, a little bit more of my flesh loses the control that it has over me and a little bit more of me becomes to belong to God. Now, you’re probably gonna have to think about this for a long time, but I really suggest that you read Romans 5, 6, 7, and 8 and study it, and study it, and study it, and meditate on it, until you understand what it means to be «In Christ».

You see, we live in two places. We live in heaven and we live on earth. My feet are here, on this platform, but according to Ephesians, I am, right now, seated in heavenly places with Christ Jesus. See, the Bible says that, «After he finished the work that God sent him to do, he sat down at the right hand of God waiting for his enemies to be made a footstool for his feet». And then in another place it says, «And we are seated in heavenly places with Christ,» because whatever is his is also ours. Even though we didn’t earn it, he earned it for us. He deserved it for us. And now in his name, we can claim it as our own because we are joint heirs with him. What he earned, we inherit.