The Alternative

Dr. Tony Evans: A lot of people talk about faith and wonder why faith isn't working.

Announcer: But is our problem a shortage of faith? Dr. Tony Evans says the answer may surprise you.

Unidentified Speaker 1: Stop looking for more faith. You don't need more faith. The moment you act on what God says, that's all the faith you need.

Announcer: This is The Alternative broadcast featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans. Spiritual attacks are inevitable in life, but spiritual failures are not. Let's join Dr. Evans as he takes us to Ephesians chapter 6 for a look at how to defend ourselves even when we feel cornered.

Dr. Tony Evans: I'm sure you've had this experience of putting some silverware in a glass, a fork, a knife, or a spoon, having the light come through the glass and making it look like the silverware was bent. It wasn't bent, but what you saw was a process called refraction. Refraction is where when the light hits something immersed in water, it can create a distortion called refraction. We live in a world that creates a refraction, a distortion. It can so turn things to make things that are straight look crooked, and make things that are crooked appear to be straight. And so, living in an upside down world, we often become upside down people.

Thinking we know the right way and going the wrong way, having the right way, choosing the wrong way. In fact, the world can make it look like a straight Christian is a crooked person, or that a crooked person is a straight person. It can refract reality. God is giving us reality, and he wants you to know that you don't wrestle against flesh and blood. The physical world is not your problem. It's merely the vehicle for your problem. Because he says in verse 12, we wrestle against principalities and powers and forces of wickedness that are located in heavenly places or the spiritual realm. But because of the process of refraction, distortion, the spiritual realm has been made to be seen as unreal and out there.

Because after all, we operate in the world of the five senses. The five senses are very real and very necessary, but they're not the starting point for the Christian who's been seated with Christ in heavenly places. That's not where we start. That's what we deal with, but that's not where we start. The moment you start there, you're in a refracted scenario because you're not getting things as they truly are, you're getting them as they appear to be. God has provided armament for us to wear as we deal with spiritual battles in life. In verse 14, he started off with the belt of truth. Truth is God-based knowledge.

It is knowledge from God's perspective. It's God's viewpoint on a matter. If you're going to win in the spiritual realm, truth must be worn continuously as a belt because Satan is a liar, and if he knows you're not committed to truth, he will suck you dry. He then says, put on the breastplate of righteousness, that is, tether your rightness to the truth, the breastplate, the chest, because in the chest is the heart. Have your heart committed to right based on the truth that you now concur with. And then last time we saw in verse 15, he says, have your feet in the gospel of peace. True peace, lasting peace comes not from a pill, it comes from the gospel.

It is embedded into the gospel because the gospel has the grace of God within it, which has been deposited into the spirit that's lodged in your soul. Your soul is lodged in your body. In the pill of your spirit is all the peace you've been looking for, that you've been paying for out there. He says the peace you're looking for is in the pill called the gospel. But if you don't know the gospel or you don't know how to access the gospel, then the peace that the gospel holds, you don't experience. So you go out looking for pseudo peace, false peace, temporary peace, or you settle for chaos management.

Chaos management, not authentic peace. And I said, you always know whether it's God's peace because you don't understand why you have it, given the mess you're in. It's a peace, the Bible says, that passes understanding. You say, well, how do I access this victorious living in the midst of the spiritual battle that I'm experiencing in my physical world? How do I access it? He answers that in verse 16. Taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the evil one. I want to today clarify faith for you because many of us have misunderstood faith, misused faith, misunderstand faith, and yet faith is critical because he says, leading off verse 16, in addition to all.

In other words, and I know I've told you a lot so far, but if you grab this one, you got it all. Notice the verb, take up. The first three are something you wear all the time. You keep truth with you, you keep righteousness with you, you keep the peace of God with you, you keep those with you. But now when he comes to this next piece, the shield of faith, he says that one you pick up. Faith is your access point. Romans chapter 5 verses 1 and 2. He says faith gives you access to grace, and grace is where God has deposited everything he's going to do for you. Your problem, my problem is withdrawing it, not getting it.

It's already given. Faith withdraws it. Faith is a law, Romans 3:27 says. It's a rule whereby you operate. He says you're not only supposed to get saved by faith, he says in Romans 1, you're supposed to live by faith. In other words, this is supposed to be the way you flow. You're supposed to have a faith walk. That's why the Bible calls it walking by faith. You're supposed to have a flow faith. It's supposed to be your groove. It's supposed to be your zone. But it must be linked to truth. Now here's, here it is. Please notice this. I'm explaining faith. Faith, if you want it to be real, watch this now, cannot be limited to your five senses.

If you limit faith to your five senses, it won't be real faith. It won't be real faith. Because we're talking about accessing the invisible realm, not the visible realm. So we're not talking about accessing the stuff you can see and touch and taste. Hebrews 11:1, faith is the substance of things hoped for. It is the evidence of things not seen. If you can see it, it's not faith. If it's tangible and if it's moving in the physical realm, it's not the faith God is talking about. That's just human faith anybody can have. Anybody gonna believe something that they looking at. I believe you sitting there.

How come? Because I see you. That's not what he's talking about. He's not talking about that. He's saying it's the evidence, it's the substance, so it's real. Even though it's in the spiritual realm, it's real, and it has evidence, it's provable, but it's not yet seen. The whole point of faith is to grab something out of the unseen realm and bring it down to the visible realm. So you never start with what you see to determine whether you have faith. That's called sight. It's a whole nother word. And because we don't live by faith, in other words, because that's not how we roll, that's not our flow, we don't see much grace.

He says, in addition to all, above all things, take on the shield of faith. Why do I need the shield of faith? Faith, faith, faith, acting like God is telling the truth, acting like it is so even when it's not so, in order that it might be so simply because God said so.

Announcer: Dr. Evans will explain how we put faith into action every day in our physical lives and why we need to do the same spiritually when he continues our message in just a moment. First, though, I want to tell you about a powerful book that'll help you build on what we're learning. It's called Victory in Spiritual Warfare. In it, Dr. Evans explains why we need to turn to God for help in order to win the invisible spiritual battle going on around us. Depression, marriage issues, money trouble, even addiction are often either caused or complicated by the enemy. Well, this book will equip you to see what's really going on and teach you how to claim the victory God has already won for you.

We want you to see the change that happens when you fight the right battles with the right weapons. So we'd like to send you a copy as our gift when you make a donation to help keep Tony's teaching on this station. Request Victory in Spiritual Warfare right away, and we'll bundle it along with Tony's current 8-part teaching series, Armor of God. Get the details today before this limited time offer runs out. Visit us at tonyevans.org or call 1-800-800-3222, where team members are always on hand to help with your resource requests. That's 1-800-800-3222.

Unidentified Speaker 2: Dr. Evans will return right after this. Far too many of us want to throw in the towel before we've thrown up the prayers. Dr. Tony Evans says Christians have a habit of underusing or overlooking our most valuable spiritual resource. Grace is available, but only at the throne, and you can only approach the throne through prayer. You can deepen your connection with the Lord through our in-depth course on Kingdom Prayer at the Tony Evans Training Center. You'll discover how God has wired the world to work by prayer and experience for yourself how it connects heaven with earth and time with eternity.

You'll not only gain a new understanding and appreciation for prayer, you'll actually pray in transforming ways you've never experienced before. The course is intense, but you can work through it at your own pace and get all the help you need through our online forum. And of course, there's custom content from Tony not available anywhere else. Connect with the Tony Evans Training Center at tonyevans.org. It's like having a seminary on your smartphone or other device. Start today, tonyevans.org.

Dr. Tony Evans: You go to the doctor because there's typically something wrong you can't fix, because usually you started off with over the counter. You started off with human ability. You started off with your own mind could conjure up. You started off with what you could take care of yourself. So you went to the doctor and you got, went to the pharmacy, you went to Walgreens or some other pharmacy and you got some, you know, something for your stomach, antacid, or you got something

Unidentified Speaker 1: because you were going to do the best you can to make life better. But your best wasn't working. So you call the doctor. You tell the doctor, doc, I've got a problem. My stomach hurts. The doctor's gonna hear your call, but he's not gonna take for granted your problem. He's not going to assume what you think is wrong is what's wrong. Now, you've talked about how you feel because you've talked about the pain, but in his mind, there could be something else causing what you think is a stomach ache. So he's going to do a battery of tests to ascertain the truth about what's really wrong, creating the pain that you're now experiencing.

Because all you know is the pain, you don't know what the real problem is yet, until somebody who knows more than you assesses the situation, who can tell you what the truth is about what you feel. All you know is I feel a little something, something, but obviously I don't know enough because I couldn't fix it. So I'm going to you, doc, for you to tell me what the real deal is. I need the truth. Why? Because until you get the truth, you can't fix the problem. See, as long as you're satisfied with anti-acids, and that's not your problem, then you're not dealing with the truth, although you think you're dealing with the truth.

You're just dealing with limited knowledge. But the doctor has information you don't have. He comes out and he says, oh, this is the problem, which was more than just a general upset stomach. He says, this is the problem. He pulls out a sheet of paper called a prescription, and he writes on it words you do not understand. In fact, if you can read his writing, he's not a real doctor. Because one of the ways you know a real doctor is a real doctor is he can't write. You have this piece of paper, and he says, take this for your real problem, because those antacids you were taking is not your real problem.

Take this. Maybe he's discovered an ulcer. You take a piece of paper that you don't understand to a pharmacy. You give it to the pharmacist whom you do not know. The pharmacist goes back there with a whole bevy of medicines and starts putting your stuff together. The only reason you're doing this is you know he's qualified. You know, he he's got a qualification. You don't know it based on what you're seeing, because what you're seeing may not be what it really is, and you don't even understand the paper, so you can't even test what he's doing by what's written in the paper. You got to believe that what he is offering is what's on the paper.

So you've taken the prescription, you've gone to the pharmacist, he's given you the medicine. Now you've done all that, you still got an upset stomach. And the reason why you have an upset stomach is the reason it was written and the reason you went to the pharmacy wasn't to get it, read it, and deliver it. It was to get it, read it, deliver it, get it, and take it. Until you take it, you've not fulfilled obedience. And if you don't fulfill obedience, you're not going to get better. Because your way was solving the symptom, not solving the problem. He says, the reason you do this, the reason why faith, that shield that you want to crouch behind, because it can handle anything thrown your way, all the fiery darts of the devil.

Dr. Tony Evans: Notice not all the darts or arrows. The word dart means arrows. The Roman shield is made of wood, but it's wrapped in leather or some kind of animal skin. When they went out to war, they dipped it in water. They knew that people were going to throw spears at them and that they were going to shoot at them, and that some would dip their tip of their arrow in pitch and light it. That's why he calls fiery arrows. That's an arrow that's been set aflame. Fiery darts are meant to dismantle you so that now you become open for everything else he wants to shoot your way. He says, the shield of faith is so strong that not only cannot arrows get you, arrows that's been put on fire can't even burn you down.

He says the shield of faith is staggering. Why? Because faith enters into the realm of grace and accesses God at a whole other level. It accesses God. That's why 1 John 5:4 says, we are overcomers by faith. In order to be an overcomer, there's got to be something to overcome. Maybe you're trying to overcome joblessness or finances or emotional fire of the mind or emotional depression, or maybe it's a relational fires that you're going through, or maybe it's sin and temptation that has set you aflame. Whatever the fire happens to be, he says faith can put it out. On the cross, Jesus Christ handled the sins of the whole world.

The whole world, for all people, for all time, all sin was pinned on Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago on the cross. All the sins of all mankind for all world was put on Jesus Christ on that day. So if he could handle all the sins and all the circumstances of all men for all time, what did you tell me your problem was? What did you tell me your situation was? What did you tell me your need was? And you're going to imply the God who could handle it for the whole world on the cross, yours is a little bit too heavy. No, what's missing is faith in it, not power for it. What he is suggesting to us is that if we will take faith seriously as God defines it, you will experience victory as you've never had it before.

I will never forget it. I will never forget it. This is lodged in my mind. The 1996 Olympics. Her name was Carrie Struggs. She was a gymnast, little tiny girl. The United States gymnast team was in second place. Carrie Struggs was the last gymnast to go, and she had to make a certain score to overcome the first place team. I don't remember whether it was Romania or Soviet Union, but whoever it was, she had to do this certain 9 point something to overcome so that the United States would win the gold medal. So all the pressure is on Little Carrie. Carrie stands, and Carrie looks down because she has to vault.

She has to go, propel herself, flip over the horse, and come back down standing up to get a high enough score. Little Carrie takes off, and she's running. She hits the spring, she hits the horse, she flips over, and she comes down, but she comes down wrong. And she horrifically twists her ankle so that she cannot even walk. She falls down, she cannot even walk, low score. You could hear the hush over the crowd, particularly of the Americans. Oh no, you could see her team wince.

Unidentified Speaker 1: Carrie began to weep because this whole thing is riding on her. She has one more jump, one more jump, but she can't walk. And to do this, you got to be able to run, jump, hit, put pressure down and jump, flip, and you got to land standing up to get a high enough score to win. She's got one more jump. So she's there weeping and trying to, trying to stand up, barely can stand up on the one leg, can't put any pressure on the second leg. Over in the corner was her coach, Bella Carolla, the famous gymnast coach. He looked at Carrie crying because they couldn't go meet. He says, Carrie, look at me.

Don't take your eyes off of me. You look at me. I know you're hurting. I know you're in pain, but you keep your attention focused on me. You look at me right now. I know you're hurting. I know you're in pain. I know you can't walk, but girl, you look at me because I want to tell you you can do it. I know you don't think you can. I know you're hurting. You can barely walk. I don't but no, don't look at your foot. Look at me. Don't look at your circumstance. I know because if you look down there, all you see is more defeat. I want you to keep your eyes on me. Now you go back there, girl, and you do this thing one more time, but when you go back there, your full attention is to be on me.

Little Carrie goes around, limps to the starting place, and you can see her cast her eyes over to her old coach to look at him, because she's got to piggyback off of his faith, because her circumstances don't give her the power to piggyback off of hers. But in her pain and her anguish, she now looks down, half running and half hobbling. She makes her way down. Some of you saw it. She leaps up. She flips over the horse. She comes down, whap, boom. She come, whap, boom, immediately lifts up this hand. After both feet have landed, she lifts up this foot. She stands there wiggling, but stands in place.

The place goes absolutely crazy because she landed on two, even though she could only stand on one, and the United States gymnastics team won first place. You know why they won? Because there was somebody in the corner who said, don't look at your situation, don't look at your circumstance. I know you feel it, I know it's real, but keep your eyes on me. I think if the author of Hebrews here would say, keep your eyes on Jesus. The author and the finisher of our faith. He would say, don't look at your situation. You can't ignore it because it hurts, because if you'll keep your eyes on me, even if you got the limp, you're going to land right, and you're going to be able to hold your ground.

The shield of faith. Running on the truth will give you the ability to overcome the attacks.

Announcer: Dr. Tony Evans talking about the protection God provides, part of his current series on the armor of God. The full-length versions of these messages include material there isn't enough time to bring you on the air, and we'll send you the complete set on CD, USB flash drive, or digital download as our gift when you help support Tony's ministry with your caring contribution. Along with it, you'll also get the powerful book I told you about earlier, Victory in Spiritual Warfare. This special double offer is only available for a few more days, so be sure to make the arrangements before time runs out.

You can do that today by visiting us at tonyevans.org, or let one of our team members help you by calling 1-800-800-3222, day or night. That's 1-800-800-3222. If so many of God's blessings became ours when we accepted Christ, why aren't we experiencing more of them? Well, Dr. Evans will have the answer for us tomorrow as he talks about the helmet of salvation. I hope you'll join us.