Leading The Way

Dr. Michael Youssef: Once you decide to live righteously and selflessly for Christ, you're going to have opposition. Because the world, the flesh, and the devil, these three superpowers, will not stir up trouble for a believer who's not living in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Guest (Male): Thank you for making time in your day for Leading The Way with Dr. Michael Youssef, as he looks forward to giving you a look at schemes that the devil leverages to keep you from living a righteous life. Remember that Dr. Youssef and the team at Leading The Way want to be good stewards of God's provision. That's why we'd love to know details about how and where you connect.

So, be sure to tell the representative when you call to give a gift or order a product at 866-626-4356. Let them know how you listen or watch, or when you visit ltw.org. But wait until after the teaching time because right now you want to listen as Dr. Youssef reveals the 12 evidences of faith from the book of James.

Dr. Michael Youssef: We have started a series of messages from the Epistle of James entitled 12 Evidences of Faith. We have seen the theme of James' epistle; it's very simple. Anybody can claim to be a Christian, but James is saying it's fine, you can claim all you want, but is there evidence to that claim? If you're guilty of being a Christian, is there any evidence to convict you in a court of law?

Then he goes on to list at least 12 of those evidences in that epistle, and we have seen seven of them so far. The first evidence is joy in the midst of trouble. Then defeating temptation, feeding on the word of God, loving the unlovable, doing regular self-examination, and number six, the control of the tongue. Number seven, asking and receiving godly wisdom, heavenly wisdom from above. Today we come to evidence number eight: how to take down the three superpowers that are working against us. I hope you're already turned to James chapter four.

Look with me please as we examine these 12 verses. James here makes it very clear that spiritual warfare is for real. It is part of the Christian life. It's part and parcel of living with eternity in your heart. That's what he's trying to tell us here in these few verses. First, the flesh. What is that flesh? Is it the human body? Not necessarily. In the Greek, there are two words that are translated flesh. The human body is one word, but our fallen nature that we inherited from Adam is also called the flesh.

So what are those fleshly desires? Listen carefully. How do I recognize those fleshly desires? How does it manifest itself? Selfish ambitions, viewing ourselves better than others, placing ourselves at the center of the universe, or highly valuing my ideas and my opinion, always wanting to do things my way, not God's way. That is the legacy we've inherited from Adam. It's called the flesh, the old nature, several names for it in the scripture.

So what happens to that legacy when we become believers? What happens? Does the flesh die? No. The flesh, with all of its selfish and self-centered ambitions, becomes like a deposed dictator. I know dictatorship. I can sense dictatorship when I see it. I lived in terror the first 18 years of my life of the treachery of dictatorship. Before we come to Christ, the flesh is that dictator. It is dictating. You do this, and you have no control. You're following your slave, you're in chains.

So when Christ comes into my life, what happens? When he comes into your life, what happens? That flesh, that dictatorship is going into exile. When I become born again, that dictatorship called the flesh with all its envy, bitterness, hatred, jealousy, selfishness, lust, and pride, becomes deposed. Not dead, just deposed. And you don't have to have a 200 IQ to realize that deposed dictators do not like to be deposed. And they're not very happy, and they're angry, and they always want to come back to power. They always want to come back to power.

Now you can choose to live in fear of that old dictatorship, the deposed dictatorship of the flesh, or you can choose to have victory over that because that's what Jesus wants you to have. He gave you the Holy Spirit so that you will have power over the dictatorship of the flesh. He gave you the Holy Spirit to empower you to live victoriously. Now let me tell you an example from history to illustrate to you what I'm trying to say.

Between 1971 and 1979, there was a dictator in Uganda, a beautiful country in Africa. Between '71 and '79, there was a dictator by the name of Idi Amin. During those eight years of miserable dictatorship, Idi Amin murdered 350,000—that's what we know—mostly Christians. He imprisoned countless others. The people of Uganda—and I know many of them at that time—lived in fear. They were terrified of Idi Amin.

So in '79, with the help of the neighboring Tanzania with Julius Nyerere, they deposed that dictator and defeated him and sent him out into exile, and he went to live in Saudi Arabia between 1979 until he died in the year 2003. Listen carefully. I'm not just giving you an example of history for the sake of an example of history; I want to prove something to you. Between '79 and 2003, while this dictator is in exile, thousands of Ugandans lived in fear of that dictator. Some were loyal to him, and they wanted to install him back by their free will. This continuous fear and loyalty to the old dictator, the deposed dictator, put them in conflict with the newly elected, democratically elected government.

Now I come to the Christian life. Now I come to the flesh and explain from that history. There are Christians who are either living in fear of that old slavery or remain loyal to that deposed dictator called the flesh. But Christ the liberator has come into your life and into my life to liberate us from the deposed dictator, the flesh. Christ came to give us liberty over the flesh, all the old nature. Christ came to defeat and set us free from the old nature, the flesh, the tyranny of the flesh. What James is saying: every time you let the old nature out of its cage, every time you let the old nature out of its exile, what happens? Conflict and turmoil will be the norm.

Now translate that into your life. Think about the times when you allowed the flesh out of its cage and how chaos, conflict, and grief followed. You desire what you don't have, he said. Then you covet and you can't obtain, so you fight and you quarrel. Now this is a biblical principle that I plead with you, don't miss it. Here it is: a covetous person is an ungrateful person. When you are filled with thanksgiving, when you are filled with thanks living, you are too busy to covet somebody else's stuff.

James said when you ask and you don't receive, why? Because you ask with the wrong motive. Covetous desire will not only lead you into wrong actions, it will lead you to pray the wrong prayer. And when God does not answer your wrong prayer, you get angry with God. And then your anger and resentment toward God inevitably is going to spill over into your relationships with other people. And you become angry with those whose prayers have been answered. How? Because you think God has let you down. He's let you down.

Listen to me. When you pray, you can pray and ask for anything you want. I mean, God is not going to fall off his throne because you asked for something. But listen to me. When you conclude in your heart and in your spirit, in your mind, that "Thy will be done," and when you pray the will of God, contentment is going to grab hold of you because you are contented that you are obeying the will of God. When you pray for the glory of God, you'll be amazed what he gives you.

Second enemy is the world. Again, when the Bible talks about the world, he's not talking about the beautiful outdoors or the planet Earth, nature. No. When the Bible talks about the world, he's talking about the world system. And there is no secret that the world system is at enmity with God. It's constantly in a state of rebellion against God. Sadly, many Christians get caught up and have fallen into the wheels of the world system.

Spurgeon used to say—and I'm quoting from memory here—"Christians are the only soldiers who fraternize with the enemy." Beloved, here's a rule of thumb. Whenever you compromise your Christian conviction under the guise of witnessing or whatever it is, you are fraternizing with the enemy. Whenever you compromise your biblical values, you are a friend of the world system. I am privileged to have non-Christian friends. I go to their parties, I go to dinners with them, and I go to their functions. But I share Christ with them, and they know that I ain't going to compromise nothing for them.

Listen to me. Both the Old and the New Testament have an imagery that runs through it: that God's people are the bride and God is the bridegroom. In the Old Testament, Israel was the bride of Jehovah. In the New Testament, it tells us that the church is the bride of Jesus Christ. Amen? That's in the Scripture. It's very clear. And that is why James is saying fraternizing, flirting, compromising, appeasing the world system is a form of adultery.

You say, "I don't commit adultery." That's what he's saying. Don't shoot the messenger now. And if you go to the Old Testament, Isaiah and Jeremiah, Ezekiel and certainly Hosea—if you've never read the book of Hosea, go and read it—use this figure of speech to address Israel as an adulterous generation. And Paul said in 2 Timothy 4:10 of one of his disciples by the name of Demas, he said he succumbed to the lure of the world, he succumbed to the world system, that he had forsaken me.

And beloved, let me tell you something. It breaks my heart to tell you this, but it is the truth, that we have lots of Demas-type preachers in the church today. They want to please this world system so much that they sold out their convictions. They want to be accepted by this politically correct culture so much that they approve what God disapproves. They want to be liked so much by this fallen system that they become spiritual adulterers.

The third enemy that James talks about here is the devil. Verse six: "God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble." Verse seven: "Submit yourselves to God then. Resist the devil and he will flee from you." Verse eight: "Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands and purify your hearts." Verse 10 again: "Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up." Don't miss what I'm going to tell you. Don't miss it. Because fighting these three superpowers—the flesh, the world, and the devil—corresponds to the three members of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The world is in conflict with God the Father. The flesh is in direct conflict with the Holy Spirit. Paul said in Galatians there's a war going on, the flesh against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. Then the devil opposes God the Son. Let me ask you a question. What is the sin that caused Lucifer, the angel of light who was serving at the throne of God, to be thrown out of heaven? What was that sin? Pride.

Therefore, you can be absolutely sure that pride is Satan's chief weapon in the battle against the saint and the Savior. What is God's goal for you? You, child of God, you the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord. There's a goal and it's mentioned in the scripture many times. There's one goal: becoming like Christ. What is the greatest characteristic of Christ? Though he was God, yet he did not count that equality to be something to be grasped, but he surrendered it. He humbled himself and took a form of a man.

Satan's goal for you is the opposite of God's goal for you. God wants us to be dependent on his grace every moment and every second of the day. Satan wants us to be dependent on ourselves. Every time Satan infiltrates our ego and inflates our pride, he entices us. He lets that dictator out of its cage. Very quickly, there are three keys to victory, they're right here in the text. James gives them to us.

Key number one: submit to God. James speaks of these two things almost with one breath. He's not even taking a breath between saying "submit to God and then resist the devil and he'll flee from you." They go together. You can't do one without the other. You cannot resist the devil without submitting to God. And so when you submit to God, the devil is going to flee. I know and you know that in our culture, submission is not the hottest thing on Madison Avenue. Listen, I dare you to show me a commercial selling a product using the concept of submission.

Submission is a dirty word in our culture. Even Christians, they snub and ridicule the idea of submission to anyone. I want you to imagine an army, any army anywhere, where the private or the corporal decides to take it upon himself and act as a general. And he starts commanding the troops like he's a general. Now I want you to think about this. Chaos will rule supreme. It's a disaster, and defeat is the end result. But that works everywhere. It works in the home, works in the church, works in the country.

God placed parents in authority over their children. Children who submit to their parents' authority are blessed. Today we have parents who are obeying their children. "I want to do what my kids want." Really? That's not what the scripture says. The same thing happens in the church. God placed spiritual authority. Leaders in the church are not perfect, their decisions are not perfect, but submission to spiritual authority is the key to victory.

Now we might not like the laws in the United States, and I thank God that we still live in a country where we can work hard to change the laws. But once it's a law, we are to obey it, even if I don't like the slow speed limit. I am under obligation to obey it. But what happens if the law is contrary to the word of God? We're going to be like the early Christians, we'll be like the early church. We're going to say, "God is to be obeyed and not Caesar," and then be prepared to pay the price.

The second key to victory is draw near to God and he'll draw near to you. What is that drawing near to God? Listen carefully. This is not physical activities, it's not something you have to do physically. Drawing near to God is an inward activity. It's by constantly listening to his word and constantly giving back his word back to him. How do you know that you are drawing near to God? You know that you are drawing near to God when you immediately repent of the sin that you've committed. Your spirit has become so sensitive, you don't wait for a day or a two or wait till you go to church on Sunday and then confess. You become so sensitive to the Holy Spirit that you immediately confess. You know you're drawing near to God. You know you're closer in intimacy with God. You are constantly being cleansed and purified. That's what he said here.

Third key to victory: humble yourself before the Lord. And then he says something about mourning and weeping. And I know probably some of you said, "What did James want us to do, look miserable all the time and walk around with a sour face and look like I've been baptized in vinegar?" No. This has nothing to do with outward appearance. It's an inward. All of these keys are inward. When you become sensitive toward what grieves the heart of God.

There's a final warning in verses 11 and 12. I don't want you to miss it. He is saying get rid of your critical spirit. Get rid of your critical spirit because a critical spirit is going to keep you from victory every time. It will. It will keep you from victory for sure. Verse 11: "Brothers, do not speak evil against one another." Did you know that a critical person is a prideful person? A critical person is the person who's saying, "God, I'm the judge, not you. I'm going to sit on the throne and I'm going to judge everybody." But you will receive victory every time you resist the devil by not unfairly and unjustly criticizing a brother or sister.

I know this is a tall order, but I'm here to testify to you regarding the defeating of the critical spirit. Now of course there's a difference between rebuking a sinning brother, which we have a biblical mandate for, that we ask the brother who's in sin to repent and turn to the Lord. And we point that sin, not criticize him as a person or her as a person, but the sin. And it's not in the spirit of criticism, but in the spirit of restoration because we want to restore the brother or sister. Today you can expose the critical spirit to God, and he will begin to do in you—I know what he's done in my life and in many others. I know what he did for me, and I know he will do it for you.

Guest (Male): Thank you for taking time for Leading The Way with Dr. Michael Youssef. You may enjoy hearing today's message again, or maybe you want to share it with family and friends. It's easy. Just visit the audio archives at ltw.org. You can also listen and share the Leading The Way podcast, or use the Leading The Way app.

Guest (Female): I was never really happy with who I was. I wasn't happy with a lot of things that society says is good. I did struggle a lot with anxiety during school and depression. Challenges that I see teenagers face now is social media and having to worry about the way society sees you and the way you need to be. Being a Christian isn't necessarily appealing to a lot of teenagers because it kind of gives you a label and it's different to what society says.

So I found out about Leading The Way through my cousin who actually works there. I really enjoy the app because it's really accessible, it's just on my phone. And every day he uploads another message, so if I want to find something really quickly, a certain topic or something, I can find it much easier. And my favorite series is on the seven last statements from the cross. And I love the way that he's made it really succinct but in depth, so that I'm able to really understand.

Michael's messages, because they're so short, they're much more convenient for teenagers. And he also focuses on a lot of topics that us teenagers do go through at the moment, like temptation. He has spoken about temptation or loss or heartbreak or trying to find your way back to God. And I think that makes it a lot easier for us teenagers to actually connect back to God, but also how to know that you are doing what the Lord wants you to do because he does have a lot of messages to help you strengthen your relationship with God.

Dr. Michael Youssef: As our Lord Jesus was doing, they did not know the horrors of what they were doing on that day was going to... We're going to ask the power of the Holy Spirit to work in you and through you. That you will give them strength to shine like the stars in the heavens.

Guest (Male): Connect with your representative at the Leading The Way call center when you call 866-626-4356 to stand with Dr. Youssef this month. Or use your computer or mobile device to visit ltw.org. And you can also write us a note. We're at Leading The Way, Post Office Box 20100, Atlanta, Georgia, 30325. This program is furnished by Leading The Way with Dr. Michael Youssef, passionately proclaiming uncompromising truth around the world.