Pastor
God delights in your prosperity. His plans for you are good. He will never withhold any good thing from you. God has blessed you with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly realms. He has made available to you all things that pertain to life and godliness. God has already allocated your blessings and inheritance to you. He has set them apart. Not even the devil can steal them. But within you exists a power that can stop you from entering your promise land. If your truly want to prosper and appropriate what God has set apart for you, you will have no option but to kill the enemies within you.
JOSHUA 7, Micah 7:6, Matthew 10:36,
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In 3 John 2, God declares clearly and unequivocally that He wants you to prosper. That’s why He has allocated blessing to you (Ephe 1:3). God cannot lie.
There are things within you that resist your progress, success and prosperity. They are not allowing you to take possession of your blessings. They have become your soul mates, your neighbours, friends, housemates. Some of them have even become your family members; part of you. This is why you say things like – ‘that’s the way I am’. ‘That the way we do it in our own place or culture’.
These things are destroying your destiny. They have held you captive for years without your realising it. You can assume that things are normal when you have become used to their presence. You cannot even remember a time when things were different so you cannot imagine that they are your problem. But even though you are used to living with them they are the bugs eating your leaves (robbing you of life and fruitfulness). They are little foxes eating your vine and denying your life of the wine of joy.
You merely condone and tolerate some of them because you believe they are harmless. But it is the lie of the enemy. They are sweet poison. They are weed planted into your life by the enemy in your time of innocence, ignorance and naivety.
TWO KINDS OF ENEMIES WITHIN
• JOSHUA 7 – Achan (lust). God told them to take nothing because everything is accursed to them but out of lust and covetousness, Achan took some things
• GALATIANS 5:16, 19-21 – Old inhabitants of the land (old nature) – God told the children of Israel to totally destroy the old inhabitants of the land but they did not. Rather they left some and tolerated them. These they became a trap, a temptation and a distraction for them. They allowed some of the old inhabitants to stay because they thought they could help them and serve them. The old inhabitants of the land represent the old nature and old habits that we have always used to our own advantage even though they were ungodly. We keep them and tolerated because they gratify your lusts, and paper over the crack in the wall of your character. They help hide (conceal) your weakness and your laziness. They seem to make life easier for you. They are agents of the devil and you have been deceived by the devil to let them stay. An example were the Gibeonites in Joshua 9:3-27 . They deceived the children of Israel and remained in the land.
How do you recognize the enemies within you?
You know the enemies within by their fruits and their works.
• Like Achan the enemies within will not let you have your victory. They will not let you go forward and possess your possession.
• Like the heathen they will always serve as the devils agents for distraction, ungodliness, a thorn in your flesh and an ever present weakness in your life of which you are always conscious. They will be a constant reminder that you have failed to fully obey God and so you have no authority to punish demonic disobedience or execute God’s written judgement on your enemies.
• They desensitize or deaden you to the graveness of sin. They make you not to see sin as a very serious thing. TV. Soaps. Fashion. Idolatory. They even make you question and redefine what is really sin. They are always quick to point out weaknesses in the people that God used in the bible and to remind you of grace. They point out that all our righteousness is like filthy rags and that no one is perfect etc. They say we are human and we need to be free to enjoy life so we should leave God to judge whoever He sees as doing wrong. They make you do things that God hates; things that separate you from God
• To tranquilize you towards the commandments of God and towards vital and necessary action for your breakthrough and success. This includes vital actions like investing time with God to truly hear Him, obedience, giving and loving.
• To bombard inundate you with worldly (civilian) concerns, lusts and ambitions so that you will be too tired and will always have hardly any time left for the things of God. They make you think more about earthly success than the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
• To kill your love and commitment for God and there take the place of Lord and God over your emotions and your life. You can worship fear, Anxiety etc.
• To truncate you destiny and keep you limited and stuck in mediocrity by making you believe their lie which is that you are okay; you have achieved God’s ultimate for you; and that at least you are better than some others. The fact that you are okay does not mean that you have achieve God’s purpose for you. The man who buried his one talent may not have lost it, but he truncated and limited it and denied it its potential. In short he wasted it.
One other way you recognise the enemies within is that they make you angry with God and God’s people and also lie and hide things from God’s people. Anything you have to hide from God’s people is an enemy within. God’s family is the family of love. There is no fear or secrecy in love.
Enemies within us include:
• Our Appetite for food and drink can put us in a state where we slumber and cannot spend time with God or have money for His works.
• Our Temper, uncontrolled anger and outbursts that make us hurt people and do things we regret.
• Covetousness that makes us overwork, cheat, deceive, lie and dishonour the Sabbath
• Envy. Jealousy. They make us not to appreciate others and sometimes even hate them
• Pride and arrogance that makes us oppress, disrespect and look down on others
• Laziness and love of comfort and ease that make us to be laid back, and will not let us do what we know that we out to do. A little sleep. A little slumber leads to poverty.
• Nature: Grumbling. Strife. Discord. Being quarrelsome rather than seeking peace
* Another enemy within is the Second option, or alternative mentality which is also (or actually) doubt. If you believe you have another option you will never put all your life into even what you somehow believe in.
* But not until you are ready to die for something you do not yet see it a reason to live. Are ready to that for the fulfilment of your purpose and destiny on earth? Are you ready to pay any price to enter your promise land and possess your possession? Only then do they truly become your purpose and reason to live.
* Many of us love the enemies within us as if we are doing so in obedience to God. But when Jesus said love your enemies, He was not referring to the enemies within. Concerning those, He wants you to mortify them (Matt 10:34-39, Rom 8:13)
• Others – Things that God hates
Who are the enemies within your own household? What are your own Enemies within?
No matter how much God is your fortress, as long as these enemies are within you they will have the power to hinder and destroy you from the inside.
These enemies are within you as an individual. They have become part of the family. But God is keen to see you proper and have life and joy and victory (3 Jn 2 Beloved I wish above all …).
What must you do if you want to prosper succeed and have true and total victory in your life ?
God is very uncompromising and unforgiving when it comes to dealing with the enemies of His people. He said that whatever destroys His temple will be destroyed.
If you want what God wants for you from now on, you need to take some drastic steps.
If you want progress and victory, immediately begin to identify them.
Locate them and destroy them.
They may look like harmless things you can control. You may think the problems were just your mistakes. But No. That is not how God sees them. He knows they will not let you prosper.
Just as God told them to deal with Achan, deal with your own enemies within. Show them no mercy. Kill them before they not only kill you but also deny you and your children and even your descendants if your blessing (the more abundant life that God has given in the spirit or in heaven)
The only solution is to kill them. Watch out for them. Strangle them. Give them no breathing space in your life. Deny them any space or time. How do you do this?
1. First and foremost, recognise that they are agents of the enemy to cause disobedience and dishonour towards God and failure and defeat for you.
2. Invite God’s fire to consume them from your life as was the case with Nadab & Abihu.
3. Stone them with God’s word just like Achan. Make solid declarations of who you are whose you and what you believe, accept and permit and what you reject and renounce. Speak to your flesh. Speak to the old man inside you. Speak yo the ungodly nature that sometimes manifests. Speak to the enemies within you.
4. Ask the earth to swallow them like Korah and his accomplices.
5. Deny yourself unnecessary pleasures and indulgences which weaken you, make you slumber and take up your cross
6. After Achan and all his household were destroyed, Joshua rededicated the nation to God. Uproot what is ungodly and then proceed to plant what is godly with words.
Dedicate your life to God afresh. Make up your mind that henceforth you will reject and deny any agent of instant gratification. Deny them of air that is vital for life by not giving them any time within your thought life. Deny the enemies within, a foot hold in your life.
7. Instant hold captive and extinguish any ungodly self-gratifying desire, lust, covetousness and pure materialism. Show them no mercy. They can destroy your destiny
Killing the enemy within is not easy or without much pain. But the grace of God is enough to see us through. He said when we are weak then is His strength made perfect for us.
Killing the enemies means Change. Change is need if you want to be successful and victorious. Apostle describes this “change” in various words including very aggressive ones:
• Transformation – Romans 12:2
• Renewing – Romans 12:2
It is our personal responsibility to disarm, paralise and destroy the enemies within us. God will not do it for us. Apostle Paul describes what we need to do in very aggressive words:
• Mortify – Romans 8:13
• Bring under – 1 Cor 9:27
• Crucify – Galatians 5:24
• Separate – 2 Cor 6:14-18
These enemies are embedded in our character, our attitudes, our mindset and our priorities. They stagnate and frustrate us through agency of our passions, lusts, habits, customs and traditions. Romans 12:2 says we should not conform to the very source of these agents – the world. If we conform our new man will be compromised. Once Your nature is compromised the process of rededication is arduous and tedious but unless we yield to it, we will forever be going round the wilderness reciting God’s promises but never being able to truly take hold of them.
