Win The Spiritual Battle For Success (251)

0:00 I want to welcome you to the Quality Christian Living Podcast. I am your host, David Friend. Today's topic is Win the Spiritual Battle for Success. We're in the middle of a series dealing with success and prospering and abundant living for Christians. And this particular podcast may be the most important one that I've prepared for those who are seeking God. I see people who seek success and that's wrong. But today we're going to talk about how to seek God and when we seek Him first we'll see success and prosperity and abundant living come into our life. I want to prove to Christians how to defeat the attacks that Satan brings on. We'll look at the things that will be some of our greatest challenges in life.

0:43 And we're also going to look at why it is so important to know our true enemy. We're going to see why we must never seek success first and always seek God first. But before we do that, let's pray. Have any father? Once again I ask for your guidance, direction, your leading. I pray the Holy Spirit would bless everything that comes forward today. I pray that you would take over now. Take complete charge of what's taking place here. And for those who are listening in, I pray blessing upon them that they would receive your touch, Father, and your favor and your blessings. I thank you Lord for this wonderful opportunity that's been provided for us to be able to reach out to people, quite frankly, around the world. And I ask for your blessing and anointing in all that we do and always careful to give you all the praise for it.

1:25 In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. When you talk about the subjects of success and prospering and abundant living for Christians, there's some people that just get turned off. They think that, well, that's just not of God and it's not something we should desire. Well, I agree it's not something we should desire first. But if we seek God first, as Matthew 6.33 tells us, seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and then all these things will be added unto you, evidently the word of God is telling us that something is going to be added to us. And I believe that's God's blessing, that's his goodness, his kindness, and that he can place success in our life. He can bring prosperity into our life. He can bring abundant living into our life. But we first have to abide by his guidance, his direction, and how he tells us to operate according to his word.

2:10 You see, the Bible tells us why we face challenges and why so many people struggle just trying to keep their head above water, trying to keep themselves from filing bankruptcy or being in serious trouble spiritually or with their family or with their relationships. God has a plan that he can help us in all those areas. God's word not only gives us the keys and guidance and direction to receive success in our life and to live the abundant life, but his word also gives us the answers and the instructions to identify the source of all failure, anxiety, fear, negative thoughts, and anything that keeps us from success, prospering, and having abundance. The answer is found in the words of the apostle Paul as he was anointed by the Holy Spirit.

2:52 So I want to read to you a scripture that is so wonderful. And remember, we're dealing with understanding where did the attacks come from? Why is it that sometimes we don't seem to get through and get the answers to prayer that we want or that we're desiring or that why do we struggle trying to have a little success here or maybe being some little, maybe more abundant life, a little more enjoyment, a little more fun in living the Christian life. And he gives us the answer to that and how we can come against these things. So I'm going to read in Ephesians chapter six and verse 12 in the new international version, just this one verse, and this kind of gets us started on discovering how we win the spiritual battle for success. Here's the words of Paul, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood. Now I'm going to stop right there.

3:33 What Paul is saying is that the battles that we face and the trials that we have in life is not against people. It's against spiritual powers and in terrible places. And we're going to get more into that, but I'm just stopping for a second because if you're having a battle right now with an individual, we're not wrestling against that individual. We're wrestling against the spirit that is controlling that individual or directing that individual to take the actions that they're taking. You see, there's a lot of good people who are influenced by the negative influence of the devil himself. The devil wants to go around and what? Kill and still and destroy. So therefore that's what he's trying to do and he's trying to destroy our relationships with each other. I'm going to remember if we're in the midst of a conflict with someone, it's not the person.

4:16 It's that spirit that's operating in them. The source of what's causing them to be like they are is a spiritual battle. Paul said, I'm not making this up for our struggle is not against flesh and blood. He said, but against rulers, against authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Now Paul is telling us there's a huge battle going on. And so if we want to have success in our life and we'd like to have abundant living and enjoy life a little bit more and have some of those things that God wants to bless us with, we've got to understand that our battle is not against the people we know, the people that are our friends, the people we associate with. The battle comes from the spiritual influence that Satan has over people, including us.

5:00 You see what this scripture is telling me. It tells us who is for us and that's God. And it too, it tells us who's against us and that's the devil himself and the people that we're having battles with. Many times there's something inside of them that's different. They're having a terrible time with a challenge with and that's something that we need to find help for them and lead them to the word of God to see where they can receive the help that they need. So we're going to talk about this today and very directly in dealing how we can win the spiritual battle that we face to have some success in our life. Now the scripture that I just read, it makes it easy for us to recognize the source against our success. But we cannot just move on in this podcast without completing the words that the apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians chapter 6.

5:48 So let me read a little bit more and make some comments on that as we continue to read in Ephesians chapter 6 in the new international version starting at, let's go back and start at verse number 10. Paul says these words, finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that we can take our stand against the devil's schemes for our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Verse 13, therefore put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes you may be able to stand your guard and after you have done everything to stand. Verse 14, stand firm then with the belt of truth buckled around your waist with the breastplate of righteousness in place and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.

6:35 In addition to all of this, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit which is the word of God and pray in the spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints. That means for everyone that we know, for all the people that we know are believers in Jesus Christ we need to pray for them and pray for those who are not Christians because they are also going through the same battles. Verse 19 says, Paul says, listen to this, in all this advice he's given in direction, Paul's a smart man and he says in verse 19, pray also for me that whenever I open my mouth words may be given to me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

7:17 In verse 20, for which I am an ambassador in chains, pray that I may declare it fearlessly as I should. That's just so much to talk about there. I almost sometimes wonder if I should have read all that or not but the bottom line of it is people have heard this but they don't understand or a lot of us don't understand. This needs to be part of our everyday living and our everyday actions in order to be able to defeat the attack that the devil has on us. You see when we get a terrible thought like maybe we're driving down the road and somebody cuts in front of us and we have a terrible thought to maybe scream out the window at them or make some kind of a terrible gesture or something, that's not us. That's not the spirit of God in us. That's the influence of Satan himself. Wants us to do something that makes us look foist, that makes us look angry and say something or do something that's really not us.

8:02 And so that's the influence that's there. In order to be successful, in order to have some prosperity in our life, in order to have abundant living, we've got to move that stuff away and win this battle, this spiritual battle that's against us each and every day because Paul says we're not fighting against people but we're fighting against a spiritual battle. So our biggest challenge, our largest challenge to have success in our life is a spiritual one and that's the focus of this podcast. Now I'm not asking you to remember every word of Ephesians chapter 6 verses 10 through 20, but although I do know there are a lot of people that I've met recently who have that memorized and they go around quoting that and they claim it. They don't speak it out loud to people, people wouldn't understand that, but they drive their car and they claim those promises, they get out of bed and they say, I'm going to put all in the form of God today, I'm going to win the battle that is trying to mess me up and keep me from being blessed to the Lord.

8:56 But I do want all of us to read these words before trials hit us. A lot of times we run to that scripture after they've hit us and sometimes that's a little late, but the bottom line of it is if we have to understand this, the spiritual battle going on, we can avoid the battle. If the spirit of God is so strong in us that when someone cuts us off in traffic, we can ignore it and just move on, then we won that battle. See when we're facing trials and when those trials come to defeat us and come up against us, we already need to be filled with the spirit of God, we need to have the shield of faith and we need to have those things operating in our lives to win those battles so they don't become a challenge to us and rob us of God's blessings. Then after all this takes place, we must thank the Lord for what he has done and for who he is.

9:41 When we're in a battle and we pray and we see that this is calming down and we're walking in the spirit and not in our flesh, then we need to stop in the middle of that and thank God for what he's done, not what we've done. When we're walking in the spirit, we're not doing it our own, we're doing it because God has held the Holy Spirit. Help us to come into our life and comfort us and guide us and direct us and correct our thoughts and our actions and what we say and what we do. Often in our prayers, we thank God for a good result and we thank God when something wonderful happens like we're healed and we should or when we get a promotion or something or one of our kids do something good in church and they just turn out to be great kids and we just thank God for that, but we got to remember as we're going through the trials of life that we should always thank God regardless of what we're going through.

10:27 Thank God for who he is, not always for what he does for us, but many times we should just stop and say, Father, I just thank you and praise you for who you are. Now, allow me to give you a word of caution on the spiritual battle that we face for success. We've talked about identifying the source of these battles and trials that come into our life and we know that the spiritual battle is always going to be there because devil just wants to come in and just wipe us out. He wants to cause all kinds of grief in our life. So we know that's the source of one of the battles we face, but we need to identify the source of our trial. You see, sometimes we must be held accountable that maybe it's because of something that we did. We either lacked wisdom or we didn't have the training or we didn't have the understanding or we didn't do what I call the due diligence, check things out before we take actions.

11:16 Sometimes we go borrow money for a car and then we regret what we did a month later, got giant car payments and we make mistakes. We all make mistakes. I've made my share of mistakes and there's no question about it. So let me give you a couple of scriptures that helped me when facing trials and some of these trials are things that I made mistakes on and it wasn't just the devil himself. In Proverbs 13.10 it says wise people take advice. Well if we want to make good decisions, we should try and get advice from wise people, Christian peoples, believers in the Word of God. Let's not just do everything on our own. Let's bounce things off of other people and get their opinion or their thoughts on a situation before we take action and do something. Here's another guidance that the Lord gives us to understand how to deal with these trials.

12:00 It's found in Proverbs chapter 2 and verse 6. The Lord gives wisdom. Once again, advice on getting wisdom. God brings wisdom into our life and we get that wisdom through the Holy Spirit, through the people that we know and through the Word of God. These are all sources of gaining wisdom and understanding for the decisions that we need to make in our life and we just can't go around blaming everybody else for the trials and challenges that we face because we've brought some of them on ourself. The devil tries to bring them on so we just need to understand how to deal with them and we need guidance and wisdom by the Holy Spirit to help us and also fill ourself with God's Word and good counsel from some good Christian godly people. Psalm 119, 66 says this, teach me wisdom and knowledge because I trust your commands.

12:45 Once again, the Psalmist here is saying, I need help and I know that my best source of help comes from you. The Bible says that there's wisdom in the counsel that we receive from many people and I'm just a big believer in bouncing things off of people. What do you think about this or what do you think about that? I don't like to ask people what you think after I've already made a mistake, after I've already done something wrong. That's like when a person comes up to me and they say, oh, look at the new car I've got and they're driving this extremely expensive car and it's really beautiful and it's wonderful and I'll say, well, have you already bought it or is that something that you're thinking of buying? If they say it's something that they think they're going to buy, they're not sure what they should do, then I give them my thoughts.

13:26 But if they say I've already bought it, they've already done that decision so there isn't a whole lot that you can do for a person like that. But if someone comes to you and you have some wisdom in this particular area for a question they have for you, then give them good, godly, spiritual, scriptural advice and that'll be a help to them because the Word of God tells us there is wisdom in seeking help and guidance from other people and that'll help us from falling into some of the trials and challenges that we'll face in our life. I hope that helps you because it's always helped me. I've been thinking a lot about this and how to kind of finish up the second half of this podcast today and so I made up a list of three, what I call the greatest challenges that we'll face when we're trying to be successful at something in our life.

14:06 Here's the first one, never seek success. When I wrote that down it made me think of the advice I used to give my granddaughters. I would tell them never seek a husband. Wait for the Lord to bring him to you. You see, the man you marry must seek you and want you, wants to be with you not because you're pushing yourself on him or whether you're jumping in front of him all the time. But I used to tell him that. I know sometimes I'd get some terrible responses but you know later on as they were dating and they met guys and they date a few people and then they would break up and whatever and as time went on they understood that it was best to wait upon the Lord. Bible says they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, right? So their strength was renewed in being patient and waiting for the right person to come on and I would then smile when all of a sudden they would meet someone at church.

14:54 They'd meet a nice Christian young man and they would realize that you know Lord, you brought him into my life and they kind of grin at me because I know that we had that conversation. Don't seek what you want. Allow the Lord to bring it to us and that applies to how we deal with situations in our own life and that's point number one and my suggestions to how to deal with greatest challenges is that never seek success. Seek God first. In 1 Corinthians chapter 16 verse 11 in the new international version it says, look to the Lord and his strength, seek his face always. In Jeremiah chapter 29 verse 13 it says in the new international version, you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

15:37 The word of God says over and over and over again that we need to seek him, right? So point number one, never seek success, always seek God first. Point number two, to have successful experiences in our life, always put our God first and our trust in him. Proverbs 3 verses 5 and 6, one of my absolute all time favorite scriptures in the new living translation says this, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean or depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do and he will show you which path to take. So step number two is always put our trust in God, not our trust in our own wisdom or own knowledge or own understanding. You know I've mentioned before that I was a home builder, my wife and I had a wonderful real estate development company and we would pray and ask God's guidance and direction and through that we had learned to develop a list of things that were the right steps to take to have success in buying property, building homes and selling them and making a profit because that was our intention was to make a profit or to be successful.

16:37 However when we got away from those steps that were led to the Lord and we did things on our own understanding, we would have a problem with a house situation. We have a very difficult time being with a house that I didn't follow the guidance and the steps that the Lord gave us on the right steps to take. So it's one thing to say I'm going to trust in the Lord with all my heart, but it's another thing then to depend on our own background, our own understanding which is a violation of this word because it says do not depend on your own understanding. And this scripture says seek his will, not our will, well not what we think is best because God knows what's best. See God doesn't think or wonder what's best, God knows what's best for us. That's why we should ask him, seek him and we will then take the right step to have success in the things that we're trying to accomplish in our life.

17:22 Alright, and step number three of the list of the three things I think that will help us see successes in our life is remember God is our source for blessing. That's the more important thing. Earlier in this, I mentioned in this podcast, I mentioned that we know the source of evil and the attacks in our life and we know where that all comes from. We should also then always remember that God is our source for every good thing that happens in our life. Proverbs 10 verse 22 in the New King James Version says this, the blessings of the Lord makes one rich and he adds no sorrow with it. See God is our source. God provides every good and perfect gift and it comes from heaven.

18:03 Everything good in our life comes from God. So God is our source for all success, for all abundant living and all prospering. I feel like I may have gone through that just a little bit too quick. So let me do a very, very quick review of the three greatest challenges I think we have to success. Number one is to seek God first, not seeking our thoughts and our ideas first. And number two was to trust God and not to trust in only our understanding. Oh, it's fine to listen to our understanding on things that we really do and have a good solid foundation on. But remember God's ways are greater than our ways, as in Isaiah chapter 55, I think it's verse seven or eight, it says that God's ways are greater than ours.

18:45 His thoughts are higher than ours and His ways are always better than ours is what it's saying. So therefore, even though we have understanding, we might want to take a moment and just a little extra time say, Lord, pray and just pray and say, is this good? Do you want me to do this? Is this something I should do? Don't just automatically do things over and over again and expect to see great results from it. And people have that challenge in their life to not want to seek advice or not seek direction from someone else, but they just want to lean on their own understanding. And that's good to a certain point, but there certainly comes a time in every one of us when we need to seek God's understanding and not lean on only our understanding. All right. And the third one was that God is our source and recognize that and show him the respect for it.

19:29 You know, anytime something good comes into our life, I don't care if it's getting a parking space at a parking lot. You're going into a shopping center and cars are everywhere and all of a sudden you get a really good parking spot up close. I think we need to say God, thank you for that. Matter of fact, I go a little farther than that. Sometimes when I see a parking space pop up, I'll say, Lord, thank you for that. I know that you provided that for me. And you even spoke to the person who was in there to get out of that space so that I could have it. Now, I take a little bit farther than that. If I see a good space where I see someone pulling from a good space in front of me, sometimes as I drive by them, as they're today, they've taken a space that I was hoping to get. I'll say, Lord, I pray that you'll forgive them from taking my blessing from me. Now, I know that's kind of corny and kind of funny, but in reality, what it shows is that we just relate to God, that he's our source of every good, blessing anything good comes in our life.

20:19 It's because of him. Anything bad comes in our life. It's because of bad decisions and things that the devil gets ahold of and tries to put some terrible things into our life. So with that, I hope that we'll seek God first, that we'll trust God always, and we'll understand that he is the source of every good and perfect blessing and gift that we have. Now, as a banker for 15 years and a pastor for 20 years, I set with hundreds, literally hundreds, most likely thousands of individuals, couples, business owners, young and old entrepreneurs, the wannabe entrepreneurs, and many of them have made mistakes. Lots of mistakes. I have. I have my share of them. Usually, the mistakes that they have made were made because they had not followed these three scriptural principles.

21:03 Seek God first, trust God, and know that God's our source. And when we follow that direction, we know that God will direct us. Matter of fact, you could sum them all up just in one of my favorite scriptures, Matthew 633. Seek, he first, the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and then all these things shall be added unto you. It's all about seeking God to see success come into our life. Now, may I suggest that you share this podcast with others who are struggling to obtain success. They might be seeking success, pushing for success, desiring for success, doing all that they can. I'm going to be successful. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. They need to stop for a moment and realize when they do that, they're on their own. God can't help someone who claims that they're all going to do it on their own.

21:46 They're basically turning their back on God and not letting God be God and do what he wants to know and wants to do because it's always going to be what's best for that individual. These people, these principles, I should say, these principles of seeking God first and trusting God and knowing that God is our source, these principles apply to business. They apply to marriage. They apply to parenting. They apply to our careers, even to our health and most definitely to our peace of mind. There's a lot of folks come to me for prayer. Many times they'll start the prayer off by saying, before I pray with them, they'll say, Pastor, would you just help me? I'm struggling with having peace in my life. I just don't have peace. You can just see it's written all over them.

22:26 It's because many of them are struggling on things that maybe mistakes they've made or other people have done things to them. Remember, it's not the people that did things to them. It's principalities and the spiritual things that got into that person that caused that person to do those things to these people. Bottom line, the people would come to me and say, I just can't get peace. I'm just going through so much stuff. Well, it's so important that we follow the words of the teaching of the apostle Paul, where he says, to be anxious for nothing. But everything through prayer, petitions with thanksgiving, make our requests made known to God and the peace of God that passes all understanding will guard our hearts and guard our minds in Christ Jesus. So let me pray for you. If you're struggling a little bit with some of these issues, let me pray that God will bless you on your traveling to seek God first and then anticipating and expecting God to bless us.

23:15 Bless you in a very special way. Heavenly Father, thank you for those who've listened in today. I pray that you would bless them. As a matter of fact, I pray our blessing for them, Father, that they wouldn't be able to even hold on to it, that you would bless them abundantly above and beyond anything they can imagine or even think, Father. So I just believe that for them. I pray, Lord, as they're seeking you, Lord, that success will come into their life, that abundant living will enter into their life, and they'll have prosperity first in their spirit, that their spirit would prosper. And that then their body would prosper, their physical body, their mental body would prosper, and that then they would see a blessing, Lord, that would meet whatever need that they might have.

23:57 I just thank you, Lord, that they're listening in and they're not listening in to get some quick fix, to get some little sprint race solution to what they're going through. But the people that are listening to these podcasts are in it as running in a marathon race. This is a race that takes time to go through the process. The Bible tells us that hasty speculation brings poverty, but steady plotting brings prosperity. It's one of your proverbs, Lord. And Father, I pray that for those who are listening in, that steady plotting are consistent following you and having a pattern of good works and doing those things, Father, that are pleasing to you, Lord, and then you will bless them, that, Lord, they'll never seek success but always seek you, Father, first, and that they'll always trust you, Lord, with all of their hearts, soul, and mind.

24:39 And I pray, Father, that they will remember that you are their source for every good and perfect gift. Now, bless them, Father, and keep them may your face shine upon them, Father. Be gracious to them, Father, and give them peace, Lord. I believe for that, and I'll thank you for it in advance. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. Well, I hope this has been a blessing to you. And if you would like to know more about quality Christian living, you can go to my webpage at davidcfriendauthor.com. And when you get there, the front page will show you a link to my podcast. And if you would like, you can go ahead and press that, and that would take you into the 251 now podcasts that are in there that I've done over about maybe two and a half years now. And those podcasts discuss so many different topics.

25:22 We're talking now about success and prospering and abundant living, but there was a wonderful series for people in business, or want to get into business, so 20 podcasts, I believe, on that. There's a wonderful series there where the Lord showed me how to talk about the gifts of the Spirit and the manifestations of the Spirit, how to operate in the gifts of the Spirit and to have the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. It also, there's a list of podcasts there dealing with faith and having faith for miracles and having faith to trust God for everything. And just the podcast, Lord, that you put on my heart, I kind of approached this podcast as I would pastoring my church. For 20 years, the Lord had my wife and I pastor a church in North Scottsdale that we founded, that our dear pastor Barnett introduced us to and gave us the opportunity to take that project on and to work it and build it and pastor it.

26:08 And when I think about that, every week I approached the sermons in prayer and asking for guidance and direction on where do we go next? What do the people need? What do I need to share with them? What do they start dealing with? What are the challenges they're facing with? And that's the way this podcast is done, is that we go through an extensive list of topics and subject matters. We probably had, I would say, at least 25 different topics that we've done series on through this two and a half years we've been doing this. So if you're interested in knowing more about quality Christian living, what we're doing, what we're speaking about, then you can go to my webpage and you'll get that information. When you pull the webpage up, you might want to scroll down just a page and you'll see a reference to a number of books that I've written.

26:51 I've written several books. I'm working on my seventh right now and it's a book on faith that really was inspired by a series that I talked about on faith here on these podcasts. But I have several books there, one on how to get out of debt, another one to how to help veterans with the challenges they're facing, another one on faith, another one on generosity, and another one on just being able to believe for things that are not happening in your life that they will happen. And that book is entitled, Receive Everything from What We Call Nothing. So I don't want to spend a lot of time on that, but those books are available and I hope that you would find them interesting to you. If you would like to subscribe to my podcast, you can do that by going to cpnshows.com, wherever you listen to my podcast. In addition to that, the next podcast series we're going to do, it's only going to be two podcasts, Dealing with Veterans.

27:37 I'm going to be talking about the challenges that veterans face and how to receive help. And every year, about this time, the first week or so in November, I do a couple of podcasts for veterans. I was a veteran. I served in the United States Army and the Republic of Vietnam and was so blessed to be able to come home from that and God spared my life there. And so I want to be able to help veterans and give them some hope and encouragement in the life they're facing because a lot of veterans, a lot of people don't know this, but in America today, there are 21 to 22 veterans every single day in America who are committing suicide and they're taking their lives because they're hurting. And so the Lord put up on my heart to address the issues for veterans. That's why I've written two books on veterans to help veterans.

28:19 Also I've spoken to literally thousands of individuals who are veterans over the years and God has given me a platform to help them. So that's going to be exciting. Well, I hope that you'll tune in for that. In addition to that, I just want to thank you for listening into my 251st podcast of Quality Christian Living. This podcast was entitled, Win the Spiritual Battle for Success. So let me close with these words. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May his face shine upon you. May he be gracious to you and give you peace. May you prosper in being good health, even as your soul prospers. So until next time, I pray that God will richly bless you. May he give you the desires of your heart and may your desires line up according to God's will and God's purpose for your life.

29:03 Once again, thank you for listening to Quality Christian Living. I am your host, David Friend.