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Hello everyone, thank you again for joining me on another episode of the Dorsey Rus Show.
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Today we have a special guest with us.
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His name is Mike Manuel.
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Before becoming a pastor at the age of 40, mike spent several years in the broadcast industry as an on-air video personality and a TV news anchor for local NBC affiliate.
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Over the last two decades as a pastor, micah's equipped thousands of people to experience more of God's power, purpose and peace through effective deliverance ministry and understandable biblical teaching.
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Mike has written two books.
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One is named Torn, emplacing the New Covenant in an Old Covenant World, and there's Noah's book, breaking Up with the Enemy how to Defeat the Devil's Deceit and Reclaim Peace, hope and Joy.
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As my podcast guest today, mike will give us my listeners tangible biblical steps that they can take to experience more of the abundant life that Jesus promised in John 10.
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Mike, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
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Yeah, you're welcome.
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It's great to be with you, Dorsey.
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Thank you Absolutely.
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Now, what is your favorite?
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As I said earlier I know, give my guests an icebreaker question.
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Today's icebreaker question is what's your favorite funny story to tell?
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Well, that's an easy one.
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I grew up on a family farm and then moved later on, moved back to the farm as an adult, raised my boys and worked with.
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So, growing up working with my dad and my dad was a pretty colorful person and his name was Rex R-E-X and we—he was quite a character and there was some—several episodes on the farm that lent itself to some great stories, and so every time we would get together for a family gathering, later on in the years people would say tell us a Rex story.
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So that's my favorite stories to tell are Rex stories.
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Growing up with my dad on the farm, and what would be one of those stories?
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Well, I'll try to not make it too long, but the one that I think that started everything.
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I was probably about eighth grade, I think kind of a smart aleck junior high boy and our dog got ran over a great big St Bernard lab cross, and its leg got broken.
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And so my dad was going to take it to the vet and so he tried to put it in our pickup truck and it would just jump out.
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It didn't like being in the back of the pickup so it wouldn't stay in the pickup.
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Even with a broken leg it would jump out.
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And so he decided to put it in the trunk of our car and at that time we had one of those great big Olds 98, big banana boat cars and I was inside the house watching.
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I should have been out helping, but again, I'm a smart aleck eighth grade boy, and so I was watching out the window and he'd scoop up this dog and put it in the trunk and then put his hands up on the lid of the trunk to close it.
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But the dog would jump out and this repeated itself three or four times.
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Put the dog in the car, dog would jump out before he could get the trunk closed.
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So he hollered at me to come out and help him.
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And he was.
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He was kind of intense when he was doing things and I always tried to please my dad, and so he said, okay, I'm going to put this dog in and hold him down.
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And when I say close the trunk, you close the trunk quick.
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Well, he put the dog in and he said, just starting to say, close the trunk.
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Well, I came down with all the force of the universe with that trunk and hit him right on the top of the head.
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It was the most sickening thud I've ever heard in my life and I honestly thought I killed my dad.
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And he howled around for about 30 seconds and I thought, you know, I was asking him should I call an ambulance?
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And he just kind of shook it off.
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He said I'm fine and got in and took the dog to the vet.
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But you know, it's that story of the young boy trying to please his dad and you know I'm going to do things so well, but I kind of got him off guard.
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So anyway, that was kind of the first episode of the wreck.
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how did you in your bio that-air radio and then got into the TV side?
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That's a long story I won't tell now.
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And I was single at that time when I was in the TV business and then got married during that time and my wife and I wanted to have kids.
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And you know, doing the local news you have newscasts at 5.30 and 10.
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So I was gone every evening, every weeknight evening, and I could see that that wasn't going to be really family friendly.
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And although I mostly enjoyed that career, I could just tell that it was not going to be the best to raise a family.
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And at the same time we had an opportunity to move back to the family farm and kind of take that over.
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So we made that decision and so I did that for a while until I was called in to the ministry as a pastor.
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Did you grow up in the church?
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Were you?
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You know were you saved most of your life.
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Yes and yes, I grew up in the Lutheran church, which I'm, you know.
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I'm thankful.
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You know I learned some of the Bible stories and, of course, knew about Jesus and His death on the cross.
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You know, there's some things I didn't catch.
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This concept of salvation somehow escaped me.
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But I went to a Bible camp more of a non-denominational evangelical-type Bible camp when I was 10 years old and that's where I first heard this idea of salvation, old, and that's where I first heard this idea of salvation and, you know, personal salvation and putting your faith and trust in Jesus to be saved.
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Before that I thought, well, you just be, you know, just be good.
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But I'm only 10 years old too, so you know you're still trying to figure this out.
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But anyway, it was at that Bible camp that I accepted Jesus and was saved.
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But you know, then, through the teen years junior high, high school I still continued to go to church, but I wasn't well-discipled and I didn't learn a lot about the Bible.
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But I was saved and I did stupid high school things, you know, like a lot of people do.
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But I would say it was probably in my younger adult years, 1920, 21, going to college, getting into a good church.
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That's where I really learned more about salvation, jesus himself and the gospel message.
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When it comes to what you do now as a pastor.
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What makes you passionate about what you do?
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Oh, that's a great question, honestly.
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It's to see life change in people, to see them transformed.
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You know, there's so many people that just don't have peace and they don't know how to get it and they just think know how to get it and they just think it's elusive.
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And that crosses all boundaries financial boundaries, society boundaries, educational boundaries.
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There's just—people don't have a lot of peace and they're increasingly losing hope.
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And when they're taught the gospel message and salvation through Christ and freedom from the influence of the enemy and God's love for them and God's forgiveness for them, to just see their life transformed and even after salvation, to see them grow and become more and more like Christ, to experience more peace and more joy and more hope and just to see them come alive, that's my passion.
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And here's another question that I would like to discuss with you If the devil was defeated on the cross, why do we still have to deal with him?
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Yeah, that's a great question.
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It's a question I had to wrestle with.
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So I'm a second-career pastor, as some people refer to it.
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I started pastoring when I was 40, as you mentioned in the intro and the first few years pastoring I was kind of a spiritual ambulance, trying to kiss everybody's boo-boo and help everybody.
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But the need is so great, there's so much people are going through out there, and it became almost overwhelming, and so I began sending people to, referring them to professional counselors, which there's definitely a need for that.
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But what I really found out is the majority of people were struggling with spiritual issues that led to emotional issues, and so the root problem was spiritual, not clinical.
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You know there was some of that clinical problems, but not a lot.
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So I really began to.
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You know, god just really took me on a journey, teaching me how to set people free from the influence of the enemy and how much the enemy was influencing people and bringing baggage into their life.
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But one of the questions I had was a question you asked is well, why are we—Jesus defeated Satan on the cross, the Bible says that.
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So why are we even messing with him?
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And what I learned is this that Jesus did win a victory the victory on the cross, that Jesus did win a victory the victory on the cross and we're called to enforce that victory, just like when you know if nations are in battle, like World War II, for example.
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We won World War II, we won the victory, but then we had to enforce the borders.
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We kept soldiers on the borders to make sure that the enemy didn't try to cross the border again.
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And it's similar to that in our Christian life.
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Jesus won the victory for us, but we have to enforce that victory and he's given us power and authority to do it.
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But a lot of Christians number one don't know how to—they don't know that they have that power and authority, number one and they're missing some critical—I would say a critical step in taking power and authority over the enemy.
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And so there's—like Paul said, we shouldn't be ignorant of the devil's devices, of his schemes, but a lot of Christians are of his schemes, but a lot of Christians are.
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And the Bible also says you know, the devil comes to steal, kill and destroy as well.
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Right, so what I hear you saying is that we can keep the enemy from you know, from our lives.
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We just have to know how to deal with that.
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Right, exactly, and a lot of Christians, including myself.
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Even years as a pastor.
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I was not really well equipped to do that.
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So what would you say to the Christians, and to myself even, how would you say, what would your logic or what would your outline be to do that?
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Here's the key the enemy can't do whatever he wants.
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Again, he's been defeated, but he's still active.
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He still has some power, but the only power the enemy has.
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When I say enemy, I'm talking about the devil and his army of fallen angels, which the Bible calls demons or evil spirits.
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They're real.
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Jesus referred to them.
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He said you know, you have power and authority over them because they're real, right.
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But the only power they have is the power of our agreement.
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And we would think, well, I would never agree with the enemy, but we do, unknowingly, unwittingly.
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And so in Genesis 1, god gave us mankind power and authority on this earth.
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It's his earth, right.
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He's the sovereign king, he's the Lord of all, for sure.
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But in his sovereignty, for whatever reason, he's given mankind power and authority on the earth.
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And he said that in Genesis 1, and he reaffirmed that in the New Testament, you know more specifically in Matthew 16.
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He said I give you the keys of the kingdom.
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So we have power and authority.
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Of course, he created us with free will as well, so that we could love, and that's another topic.
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But he knew that we would use our free will to at times disagree with him.
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And Adam and Eve did that.
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They disagreed with God and agreed with Satan, and that's what empowered Satan and that's what empowers him today is our agreement.
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And again you would think, well, I would never agree with the enemy.
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But here's a simple illustration that I think we've all probably experienced.
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You know, the Bible says this is the day the Lord has made.
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I'll rejoice and be glad in it.
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So if we get up in the morning and say, god, I don't know what today holds, but you hold today and I trust you and I'm speaking life into today and I'm just believing that you're going to go ahead of me and that there's going to be joy and peace, and so'm just believing that you're going to go ahead of me and that there's going to be joy and peace, and so I just partner with that in Jesus' name.
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When you do that, the Holy Spirit is there to help that happen and there's a word for that.
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It's called prayer.
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When we speak according to God's will, god is there to help make that happen.
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That's biblical, that's the basis of prayer.
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Conversely, when we speak in disagreement with God's word, the enemy is right there, the devil's right there, to help that happen.
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So if we get up in the morning and say, oh, today's going to be a horrible day, today's going to stink, the boss is going to be grouchy, kids are going to be sick, the weather is going to be horrible, or you know whatever.
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Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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We don't think anything of that, but that's the type of stuff that the enemy can agree with.
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You know, the Bible says in Proverbs 18, 21, that death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.
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I just used to think that meant, you know, say nice things, don't say bad things.
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And it does mean that.
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But it means much more.
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It means there's power in our words.
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That's why Jesus said watch the words you speak.
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There's no such thing as idle words.
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So when we speak in agreement with God, he's there to help that happen Again.
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Consequently, if we speak in agreement with the enemy, he's there to help that happen.
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And there are people having supernaturally cruddy days simply from the words of their mouth.
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And so, again, we wouldn't think that we would agree with the enemy, but we do, and one of the main ways we do that is simply from the words of our mouth.
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Yeah, I would never have thought about that either.
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But you know, you're right, we do and, like you're saying, with the words that we say and the words that we speak, we need to be careful with what we say and with what we speak.
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Yeah, because actually what you're doing then and this is a really important concept and I talk about it in my book Breaking Up With the Enemy is that we actually, through that, give the enemy legal consent in our life.
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There's this concept that I talk about in my book, that the Bible talks about.
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Jesus actually talked about it.
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One of the places in Matthew 18 is an example of that, and I can talk about that in a minute of this idea of legal consent or opening doors to the enemy.
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Again, the enemy can't do whatever they want.
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They just can't attack and do whatever they want.
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They're very limited, again, by our agreement.
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But when we do agree, we've opened a door to the enemy, we've given them legal consent.
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Now, that doesn't mean we get possessed, because Christians cannot be possessed.
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The Holy Spirit possesses us, but we can be oppressed, we can be influenced, and that's what the devil does.
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When we agree with him, he gains access really to just speak into our life and tries to influence.
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His only power really is influence.
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He lies to us hoping that we'll act on that lie or believe that lie, and it just brings anxiety and fear and hopelessness and just all kinds of junk.
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And so one of the reasons I wrote the book, based on a couple decades of ministry experiences, is it is possible to get rid of that baggage.
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There's so many people, christians, who are full of anxiety and fear and living lives of chaos and anger and sexual dysfunction and just all kinds of things, hopelessness, and again.
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The list goes on and on.
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I just think that's just normal, that's just life, that's just part of life.
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And Jesus didn't say that.
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He said in John 10.10, I came to give you an abundant life, which doesn't mean every day is going to be easy, but every day can have peace and hope and joy.
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And so I think Christians have just settled in their mind that, well, this is just, this is the way it is, and we just got to grind it out until Jesus comes back.
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And that's not what he said and that's not what he wants.
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Now you mentioned about your book, you know, breaking Up With the Enemy.
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Can you tell us a little bit more about that book, the title of it?
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The title of it sounds like you know.
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It sounds like you know we're in obviously we're not, but it sounds like you know we're in a almost like a dating relationship with the enemy and we're thinking up with them.
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Can you tell us a little bit more about the title and about you know?
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What made you write the book?
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Yeah, yeah, that.
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So um it, yeah, it's not like we're dating the devil, but it's like like he kind of is, he's influencing us and it's like being in a dysfunctional relationship.
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Uh, and it's there.
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You know, sometimes you just it's, you don't know how to get out of it.
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You just don't know how to get out of it.
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And of course, we don't knowingly date the enemy, but we do come under that influence and a lot of people are in a relationship with the enemy and don't even know they're in a relationship with him.
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In other words, the only power the enemy has again is the power of our agreement.
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But the only way he works that out in our life is to speak to our mind, to lie to us, and he gives us a lot of truth when he twists it, just enough to get us 180 degrees out of whack.
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And so a lot of people don't recognize the lies of the enemy.
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They just think it's themselves thinking things through, because the enemy speaks to our conscience.
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You know, it's not some scary deep voice from the pit of hell, it's a voice because the devil speaks to our conscience.
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It sounds like us just thinking things through, and I'm sure a lot of you know the listeners out there have had conversations with themselves.
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You probably have, I have.
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We hear basically three voices other than other people.
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We hear our own voice.
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You know we think things through, but then there's the voice of God that speaks to us and there's the voice of the enemy.
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And I think a lot of Christians don't recognize either.
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They don't recognize the voice of God and they don't recognize the voice of God and they don't recognize the voice of the enemy.
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They just think it's them thinking things through.
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But because God speaks to our conscience, again it sounds like us because it's not audible.
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It's just these thoughts that come in, but a lot of times they're God thoughts, but a lot of times they're enemy thoughts.
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Enemy is speaking to our mind, you know, getting us to act in a way that's not good or filling us with despair and hopelessness, like you're not lovable, you're not worthy, nobody, you don't count, you're not valuable to other people, and it goes on and on and on, and the enemy just constantly speaks that to people, hoping that they'll believe that.
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And a lot of people do, and that's what brings the baggage into their life Anxiety, fear, hopelessness, all that stuff.
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You know you mentioned about those voices that the enemy speaks into us.
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I remember he does at times as well.
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You know, still to this day he does, and you know I think that goes back to what I mentioned before that he wants to still kill and destroy us.
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But I remember, you know times where he would say you know you're telling me that I was no good.
00:22:59.625 --> 00:23:02.280
You know I wasn't going to make it in this life.
00:23:02.280 --> 00:23:04.267
You're ugly.
00:23:04.267 --> 00:23:06.843
You know no woman is going to love you.
00:23:06.843 --> 00:23:17.008
You know all those voices coming into my head and I had to realize and I had to say hey, you know, get behind me, satan.
00:23:17.008 --> 00:23:20.241
You know I'm going to believe what God is telling me.
00:23:20.281 --> 00:23:25.820
Right, so you've experienced that.
00:23:25.820 --> 00:23:31.103
I think every Christian has experienced some degree of that, but most of them don't recognize it.
00:23:31.103 --> 00:23:35.204
They don't recognize the voice of the enemy.
00:23:36.978 --> 00:23:38.082
Why do you think that is?
00:23:39.236 --> 00:23:45.599
Well, again, because you know he's speaking to our conscience and we just think it's us thinking things through.
00:23:45.599 --> 00:24:07.030
And once you know so that's why I think this book is so helpful, again based on 20 years of ministry and doing seminars in this line of deliverance is once people kind of awaken themselves to the tactics of the enemy.
00:24:07.030 --> 00:24:15.337
They realize wait, so those aren't my own thoughts, that's the enemy.
00:24:15.337 --> 00:24:20.067
Putting those thoughts in there and then like oh, okay, and the more you are aware of that, the more you begin to recognize that.
00:24:20.067 --> 00:24:22.443
And it's the same with the voice of God.
00:24:22.443 --> 00:24:32.680
The voice of God can be audible and I think maybe I heard that once, but really most people that's not the experience.
00:24:32.680 --> 00:24:41.102
The Bible says it's this still small voice and again God speaks to our conscience and again it sounds like us.
00:24:41.102 --> 00:24:47.391
But it took me a while to really begin to recognize the voice of God.
00:24:47.391 --> 00:24:53.500
And even today it's like, okay, god, was that you, or is that me just thinking, or is that you?
00:24:53.500 --> 00:24:55.702
And if that's you, I'd like some confirmation.
00:24:55.702 --> 00:25:05.405
And so I think it's more subtle than we maybe expect and I think that's why people miss it, because they're waiting.
00:25:05.405 --> 00:25:09.790
Whether it's from God or the devil, they're waiting, you know, like say it's God.
00:25:09.790 --> 00:25:18.227
They're waiting for this big, boomy voice from heaven, you know, and that almost never happens.
00:25:18.227 --> 00:25:21.444
I suppose it could, but that's not generally how God speaks.
00:25:24.655 --> 00:25:26.402
Elijah had that same experience, but the same with the enemy.
00:25:26.402 --> 00:25:33.922
It's not some scary figure that shows up in your bedroom with horns and a tail and a pitchfork.
00:25:33.922 --> 00:25:40.221
It sounds like the voice of reason in our head, like did you see the way she rolled her eyes at you?
00:25:40.221 --> 00:25:41.423
Are you going to put up with that?
00:25:41.423 --> 00:25:44.843
You need to go tell her right now just what you think.
00:25:44.843 --> 00:25:49.252
You need to put her in her place, because if you don't do that, she's going to keep doing that and rolling over people.
00:25:49.252 --> 00:25:51.038
So you just give her a piece of your mind right now.
00:25:51.038 --> 00:25:52.584
You go and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:25:52.584 --> 00:25:57.804
I mean there's just thing after thing after thing that the enemy does.
00:25:57.804 --> 00:26:10.307
It tried to break up relationships, does try to break up relationships, try to load us down with hopelessness, just speaking to us and trying to influence us to act in a way that would be in disagreement with God.
00:26:12.936 --> 00:26:38.547
And I guess the way we get over that and the way we deal with that is obviously in reading of the Bible and, you know, studying the Bible, and also in then asking God to help us to distinguish those voices in our head and helping us to you know, know whose voice is actually speaking to us.
00:26:39.654 --> 00:26:40.538
Right, you're right.
00:26:40.538 --> 00:26:46.604
The more time you spend in God's Word, reading His Word, the more you learn His character and nature.
00:26:46.604 --> 00:26:52.279
And the Bible says the Holy Spirit actually speaks to you while you're reading the Word, helps you understand it.
00:26:52.279 --> 00:26:56.608
So that's a really important thing.
00:26:56.608 --> 00:27:02.347
But what I found I think here's something that's in my book that's really missing.
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