Fervent in Prayer

“God is the God of “right now.” He doesn’t want you sitting around regretting yesterday. Nor does He want you wringing your hands and worrying about the future. He wants you focusing on what He is saying to you and putting in front of you … right now.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Discerning the Voice of God: How to Recognize When He Speaks

Amen.
Amen. I’m so glad to be back with you.
And I want to say before we just dive into a few final thoughts for you on this afternoon.
And this last session of our conference, I want to say how much I love Pastor Debbie.
Do y’all love Pastor Debbie Moore. I love her. I love that.
She just told us we don’t need to wear Spanx no more.
I feel freedom coming on.
I’m so excited about this opportunity to just share some thoughts with you that I’m praying are gonna just send you and me out of here with a sense of victory in Christ with a sense of spiritual capacity to stand firm against the schemes of the enemy.
I have a sweet friend that I want to invite up here in just a second to just pray over this last session.
She happens to be my niece. She’s a sweet, sweet little girl who, who believes in prayer.
She believes in the power of God’s Word and I’m just watching God do incredible things in her life.
So Alina, if you’d come up here and join me, she’s gonna pray over this session as she walks up on the platform.
You might actually recognize this sweet little girl because this is Danielle from the movie War Room.
If you saw that, she was a little shorter when we filmed the movie.
But if you wondered maybe why we looked a little bit actually alike.
That’s because we’re actually related to each other.
And it was a gift gift to be able to be a part of war room together.
And I love that this girl has got the power and the spirit of God on her that she’s not just talented, but she’s anointed with the Holy Spirit.
I’m gonna ask you to pray over us and pray over our session in the word dear God.
Thank you for this day. Thank you for healing and your power. I thank you that we can trust you.
And I pray that with these last few words, you would help us all to understand your love and I pray to keep us safe in Jesus name.
Amen. Amen. Thank you so much. High five, don’t leave me hanging.
Uh Some of my, my nieces closest friends are my boys, my son’s her cousins.
We’ve got a big full family here in Dallas and lots of kids around that age that are all kind of playing together at different people’s houses throughout the week.
And so my three boys are among some of her closest playmates. They played together quite regularly.
And one of the things they like to do is go outside and play basket A lot.
My boys are into sports. That’s just their thing. My boys are big boys.
They are big boys and now the disparity between them and some of their other cousins really are, is coming out because they just keep getting bigger and bigger like their daddy.
I realized that I haven’t introduced my husband to you.
And he loves when I shine the spotlight on him in front of 10,000 women.
But I’d love to introduce Jerry Shire to you. Would you just stand up, babe, please?
And let them get a good look at you.
You buy.
So Jerry, as you can see is no small guy and my boys are taking, taking up right after their father.
I mean, they are big boys just to give you a little bit of perspective on them.
My 13 year old, he just turned 13, 5 or six months ago.
My 13 year old is standing about this tall now over me, wears a size 13 men’s shoe.
He goes into his father’s closet now to get shoes uh from his daddy.
And then the 11 year old, he and I are the exact same height than my seven year old little Jude that I think I mentioned yesterday.
Jude is coming up right after them. Jude is our surprise baby. Our third boy, uh he shocked us.
He surprised us. God pulled a good one on us. Um So Jude.
Jude showed up and we named him Jude on purpose because that’s as close as I could get to revelation because it is finished.
It is over the end of the line.
So we’ve got these three precious boys and sports are there thing.
Basketball is what they like to play most of the time.
But our second son has found himself enthralled for the past several years with baseball as well.
He enjoys baseball and I love baseball season in the springtime when we go out, I enjoy it because I like sitting there in the cool of the evening when, when spring ball starts and the breezes brushing across your face.
You’re sitting there enjoying the kids playing underneath the lights on the baseball field. I enjoy that.
I also love the Saturday morning games crisp early morning here in the Dallas Fort Worth area.
There you are sitting on the bleachers, Starbucks cup in hand with the other mothers watching everybody sort of play mom and dad’s and just enjoying those mornings.
I like that. The only problem with spring ball is that it is going to become summer ball.
And, um, you guys are from my neck of the woods.
The majority of you probably in this room are from Texas.
And so, you know that in the summer it doesn’t warm up a little bit, it gets hot, like serious hot, like where you feel like the sun is trying to get you back for doing something to it.
Like it’s mad at you about something, you know, and it’s beating down on you and you’re still okay when you just have one game that your child is playing on a Saturday morning.
The problem is at the end of every season, there’s gonna be a tournament which means they want you out there on Thursday at about eight o’clock in the morning for your first game.
Then about 10 o’clock, you’re gonna have your second game, then they’re gonna give you a little lunch break for an hour.
But depending upon how your kid is doing and their team, you’ve got to come back to play about two o’clock in the afternoon.
And then if they do, well, you gotta come back for that four o’clock game.
And then depending upon how your team did on Thursday, they’re gonna shift you to a whole nother bracket of teams.
You’re going to face another team on Friday morning at eight o’clock and then at 10 AM on Friday.
And then they’re gonna give you a little lunch break, but then you gotta come back for that two o’clock game and that four o’clock game.
And if your team had the nerve to do, well, you have to come back on Saturday where you face a whole another group of teams at eight a.m. and then at 10 a.m. and then a little lunch break and then two PM and four PM and there, you are sitting trying to be happy that your kid is doing well, but really you want to just pray that they lose so you can go home.
Can I get one witness in the house? That knows what I’m talking about?
The sweat is pouring down your brow and you know, the kind of sweat that pours down the inside of your T shirt and down your Spanx.
I mean, you are just hot and you’re trying to cheer, but really, you’re hoping that this ends fairly quickly.
And I remember a couple of seasons ago it was particularly hot during the tournament.
We were so excited for the lunch break on one day, Jerry and I remember this because we, we had been so hot and we just wanted to go to a restaurant for this hour for air condition, mostly more than food.
We wanted air condition. We wanted water with ice cubes that actually stayed ice, you know, in the, in the cup.
And, and so we refreshed ourselves, came back for the next game, opened up the back of the SUV, gathered up all the gear for the next game, headed over toward the baseball dugout.
And I remember that as we walked from the parking lot to the next dugout for the next game.
I mean, it wasn’t that far away. And I watched my second son who is a gregarious outgoing personality.
I watched him with his chest poked out and he had his chin up.
He had a little skip in his step. He was actually really excited about this next challenge.
But the closer and closer we got to the dugout, the more I saw my son’s countenance change.
I watched his head that had been up. I watched it hang down.
I saw him start wringing his hands and insecurity.
I saw his shoulders kind of hunched over and I saw him kind of looking a little bit skittish like he was worried and I couldn’t figure out how from the parking lot just to the baseball diamond, how there had been such and why there’s been such a drastic change.
But as we continued, I was following behind him.
So as we continued, I was looking around to see what the problem might be and I saw some players from another team that I would come to find out was the team we were about to play in the next game there.
They were all sprawled out in the grass underneath the shade of a big oak tree just getting refreshed themselves before this next game.
So we walked right past them to get to the dugout.
And when I got close enough, I got a good look at these boys laying on the ground underneath the oak tree.
And when I saw them, I realized what the problem was, this was the team we were about to face, but we had faced this team earlier in the season.
And when we played this team earlier in the season, this team had annihilated my son and his team.
I mean, this was a team filled with serious baseball players.
You know, the kind that have the serious parents ain’t nobody got time for all that, too much.
It’s too much. These are the kind of parents that when they gave birth to their son, you know, they put a ball in one hand and admit on the other, they’ve been preparing for this their whole lives.
You know, that’s the kind of team we were about to play.
And I had to admit, I remember these boys, they were good players. They’ve been playing for a long time.
So I saw, I saw them laying there and, and now I realized when my boy was bringing his hands and while he was insecure the closer and closer, he got to the dugout.
But as we passed by the team, we overheard two of the teammates talking to each other.
I think they thought they were whispering, but they weren’t doing a great job.
one leaned over to the other and said, there goes that big kid from the Red Sox team.
Was he the one that got those outs when we played them before?
Yep, that’s the one, he’s the one that hit the ball and it went over the fence line.
That’s that, that’s that kid from that team.
You mean that’s Jerry Shire when my son heard his name cross the lips of the opposing team members that chin that had been hung down.
All of a sudden, I watched it pop back up again.
I watched him throw his shoulders back and I watched my boy get his swag back.
In fact, we had to bring him down a few notches before the game started.
It really is amazing how your countenance changes.
Not because the challenge has gone away, but just because now you over here and really understand what the enemy thinks about you.
When he sees you coming, There are 9000 daughters warriors, victory holders that are in this room That have been through these sessions, through the worship, through conversations that you’ve had with each other.
We have been equipped to go out of these doors and all of our challenges will not have not magically floated away in the 24 hours that we’ve been here.
I can tell you that same as some of those same struggles will still be sprawled out in front of you for you to get a good look at as soon as you walk out of these doors.
So it doesn’t mean your circumstances will change.
But it does mean that the way you and I face those circumstances should be completely different from this point on because you need to understand that even if you don’t believe every single thing that the word of God declares to be true about you, you need to know that even if we don’t believe it, we have an enemy who knows everything God has declared us to be as daughters is absolutely true.
Y’all, he knows that you have already been forgiven. He knows that you have already been given the victory.
He knows that he can form a weapon against you but that, that weapon will never have the opportunity to prosper.
He knows that you have been made competent by the very spirit of God.
He knows that there is therefore now no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus.
He knows that in the end we win.
And I’m saying, what ashamed it would be if he could just sprawl out a little difficulty and challenge in front of our lives and it would be enough to cause us to shrink back in so much fear and discouragement and anxiety that we won’t even step up to the plate of being who God has called us to be y’all.
We can’t walk out of these doors after the refreshing filling experience.
This banquet feast that has been laid out before us.
We can’t walk out of these doors and face life the way we did before we came in these doors.
I’m saying it would be ashamed for the enemy to believe more about our potential than we do.
And so yeah, life happens.
Gosh, it seems like this whole, this whole conference has been about struggle and how to handle it and how to worship through it and how to circle it and how to ask your questions.
But still in a mode of trusting God.
And when those difficulties in life seem to play out right before our very eyes, when those struggles come up in all of our circumstances and they will, the scripture has given us weapons for warfare.
Kerry called it a moment ago.
Ways we can face the battle with our chins held high, not in our own strength and power, but in the power that comes from Almighty God, knowing that God’s spirit lives on the inside of us.
So our challenge might not go away. But the way we face it can completely change from this point on.
So I thought that this would be a great opportunity in this final session to give you a final word from Paul the Apostle in Ephesians chapter six, Beginning in Verse 10.
He says this finally you be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might, you put on the full armor of God so that you might be able to stand firm against the schemes.
Somebody say schemes, schemes of the devil for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places.
Therefore, you take up the full of God so that you may be able to resist in the evil day and having done everything to stand firm, you stand firm.
Therefore, the Apostle Paul says, I’m gonna tell you how to have a little victory. I love that.
The Apostle Paul wrote this passage to us so plainly and clearly that he says it is the final word that needs to be the stamp that is put on your heart and on my heart.
Before we leave this place, that we need to be prepped for victory, that we need to get our war clothes on that we need to know we have an enemy and that that enemy ain’t joking around that he is after us.
Y’all do know that this is not a playground.
Life is not a playground, this is a battlefield and we don’t have to be afraid, but we better be on our guard ready to stand firm against the schemes of the enemy.
So the Apostle Paul spells out almost um for the first time in scripture very clearly this issue of spiritual warfare.
Other times throughout the scripture, it has been um it has been inferred, there have been stories told in the Old Testament and New from which we can, can sort of pull out the principles of spiritual warfare.
But this is the first time that one of the writers comes along and just says overtly and bluntly to make sure that you don’t miss this very important principle that literally can change the trajectory of your entire life.
He says, you need to know that your enemy is not some caricature that wears a red jumpsuit with a pitchfork that he is very real.
And he’s hoping to disguise himself so fully and completely that we will forget he’s there.
So he says, almost say it overtly just so that you will never ever forget this because it’s important and you and I experiencing victory in our lives.
He says, you need to know you have an enemy and your enemy is not flesh and blood.
Your enemy is not the person you are sitting next to your enemy is not your husband.
Your enemy is not your coworker.
That one that if she says one more thing to you, you gonna knock her out that one.
It’s not your enemy. Your enemy is not your boss.
Your enemy is not your worst issue in the physical realm that you can see or touch or feel with your five physical senses.
Your enemy is unseen. And he’s hoping that you and I will think that just because he is invisible that he is also fictional.
He is hoping you will talk him up to fiction and that you will, you and I will not take him seriously because he knows if we do that, then we will direct all the wrong weapons at the wrong culprit.
We will direct our words and our frustration will throw our money at the problem.
We’ll throw our own rationale at the difficulty that is coming up in our lives.
We will use all of the wrong physical weapons directed at the wrong culprit.
I want you to look at the person next to you and say, girl, you are not my problem.
I thought you were but it’s not you.
The Apostle says it’s not her, it’s not her.
There is an enemy who’s trying to stay disguised and half of the battle is won when you and I just get our eyes off of the physical, the flesh and the blood and we place it on the real culprit that is behind the scenes hoping you will forget he is there.
So the challenge that you might face as soon as you leave this room with all of the equipping that has been given to us through the word of God, through the incredible teaching and passages that we’ve heard expressed through the incredible thoughts that have been given to us over and over again and worship and, and through this conference that have been, has been laid out before us.
If you would not want to be able to have victory, we have to go out of this place with our eyes on the real culprit, not directing it towards any other other person or problem that will suck from us energy that should be reserved in standing firm against the schemes of the enemy.
I do like the word that Paul uses schemes. Somebody say schemes.
If I find out that somebody’s done me wrong, I mean, I’m gonna be upset but I can, I can get over that.
But if I find out that somebody has been planning to do me wrong, that’s a whole another thing.
Yeah. When I find out that you’ve been strategizing for this, that you’ve been sitting back watching my tendencies and you’ve been trying to put a finger on where I come and where I go and what I do and what I think about and you’ve been trying to, trying to get a finger on where I’ve been, what my history and tales so that you can figure out what are the hot button issues that might be able to send me on the wrong path.
When I find out, not only that you’ve been watching my tendencies and my flesh is Proclivities, not only me, but when I find out that, that you’ve been watching my husband so that you can figure out what’s in his history and in my history that you can use to cause an explosion between the two of us so that we won’t be able to be unified in our relationship.
When I find out you’ve been studying him to determine what his hot button issues are and what the tendencies of his flesh are.
And when I find out that not only have you been watching me and not only have you been watching my man, but you’ve been studying these three little men of God that the Lord has given me to rear.
You’ve, you’ve got your eyes on my kids so that you can figure out what tendencies they have and how you can keep them from reaching the destiny that God has assigned to them.
When I find out you’ve been strategizing against me.
Well, now that causes a holy indignation to rise up on the inside of me.
I’m not just gonna just gonna stand back and let you run roughshod over my family and over my peace of mind and over my sense of stability emotionally.
When I find out you’ve been strategizing against me.
Well, you better believe I’m sure not gonna have a strategy against you y’all.
We, we can’t mess around with this that if it’s a war that he wants, well, then it’s a war he’s gonna have that.
We’re not gonna just open up the front door and let the enemy come into our homes that you and I are gonna be the gatekeepers that will stand in our doorways and we’ll pronounce the blessing and the truth of God over ourselves and everyone who crosses that threshold That we will speak God’s word over our spouses and over our husband or our, our Children.
We will make sure that, that the word of God like Deuteronomy six says is posted over the door post and it is, it is planted in their minds and in their hearts, we will meditate, meditate on it.
We will know it. We will make sure that the enemy knows he doesn’t have any place here.
We will go to war for our sense of peace, of, of mind and peace of heart that, that he will not be able to just come in and play us for the fool easily that we will take seriously the weapons of our warfare that the victory that we have dwelling in this place.
We will continue to have when we walk out of these doors in just a few moments.
And that will continue to make our homes a sanctuary where the presence of God dwells and where the enemy knows he has no opportunity to flourish.
And so you and I have to decide to go to war to decide that the enemy strategy is not gonna be the only strategy on the table that you and I also are going to have victory in our lives.
And the Apostle Paul, he tells us how you and I don’t have time to go over all of these pieces of armor.
I just want to take time really to highlight one of them with you, maybe two if we have a few minutes.
But I just want to tell you that while most people think that there are six pieces of armor that the Lord has given us with which to stand firm against the schemes of the enemy.
It’s not just six y’all really at seven because he not only tells us in verse 13 that we are verse 14, that we need to have our loins girded with truth.
And he doesn’t just tell us we need a breastplate on, called righteous.
He doesn’t just say in verse 15 that we need something for our feet.
And it’s the gospel, the gospel of peace.
He doesn’t only say to us in verse 16 that, that we need a shield called faith or in verse 17, that we need a helmet called salvation or a sword of the spirit called the word of God.
He does not stop there. In verse 18, he says, pray.
He says, you better pray if you want any chance a standing firm against this enemy who is scheming against you.
You got to be a woman of prayer.
It can’t be something that you do once a week on Sundays because Pastor Morris is leading the congregation in prayer.
I hope that you go to a church where like gateway, you have leaders like that who will stand and pray over you.
But if the only time you pray is once a week at church, you’re gonna be in trouble.
If the only time you pray is once a year because the pink conference, it’s time again.
If this is the only time that you are on your knees going to war for your family and for your own peace of mind and for your own destiny, that the Lord has for you.
The enemy knows he’s gonna run roughshod over you.
Of Sunday’s all that God gets Monday through Saturday, is that the enemy’s disposal?
And so you’ve got to decide, I’ve got to decide that we will not neglect prayer.
Because if I were your enemy, one of the main things I would want to do is devalue the significance of some of the most important and powerful weapons that I know you had in your arsenal against me.
One of them is worship. Kerry said it earlier. I would want to devalue worship.
I would want you to save it for the end of the day.
When you really don’t have any time or energy left.
I would want prayer to be the last thing on your to do list so that you’ll nestle yourself in bed at the end of the night, hoping to spend some time with God.
But really, you can barely keep your eyes open because you’ve just saved the last bits of energy in your day for prayer.
That’s what I’d want if I were your enemy.
But no, no, I wouldn’t want you to have a war room. I wouldn’t want you to have strategies.
I wouldn’t want you to have intentional prayer.
I wouldn’t want you to have promises of God that are significant to the areas of our life where we see fingerprints of the enemy’s handiwork.
I wouldn’t want you to be praying according to the promises of God.
Because if you get serious enough about prayer, the enemy doesn’t stand a chance and he knows it.
But the Apostle Paul says, not only do you need to pray, but there are a couple pieces of armor that I just want to highlight to you that I think are gonna send us out of here with victory in our path.
He says in verse 14, having girded your loins with truth, somebody say truth.
He says, you need to gird yourself.
First of all and foremost, with truth. In the first century, Roman soldiers were everywhere.
The regular Jewish civilian would see Roman soldiers everywhere, walking the streets, uh in the store, the places of economy, they would see them everywhere.
And so the uniform that a Roman soldier would use would wear would not be something that would be a foreign to them.
They would know it specifically, Paul was in prison when he wrote this letter.
I want you just for, for a moment to picture the possibility of Paul sitting there in his prison cell which would have been house arrest when he wrote the epistle, the letter of Ephesians.
He is on house arrest. I want you to picture him sitting there on that floor with that parchment paper spread out in front of him, ink quill in hand, beads of sweat, pouring down his brow as he tries to write this letter to the first century church at F and I want you to picture him as he’s trying to figure out what is the best way for me to describe this first piece of armor that has to be in place if these believers are going to have any chance of standing firm against the schemes of the enemy.
And as he tries to figure out what piece of armor would most dictate the importance of truth?
I want you to picture the possibility of him looking up from his parchment paper and seeing that Roman guard stand, standing guard right outside of the door of that room where Paul would have been.
And he would have at first seen that big brilliant broadsword that every soldier carried 3 to 4 ft long.
He would have also seen that smaller 18 inch dagger that would become the sword of the spirit.
He would see that breastplate that was the majority of the uniform that the Roman soldier wore.
He would see that big helmet that, that the Rome soldier had on most of the time with tall feathers on the top so that people could see them coming from a far off.
He would have seen all that more flashy, more obvious pieces of armor that the Roman soldier was wearing.
But when he thought about truth, he didn’t pick the flashy, he didn’t pick the obvious, he didn’t pick what would be most easily noticeable from other people.
He knew that underneath all of that was a belt.
And when he thought about which piece applies to truth.
He didn’t pick the sword, he didn’t pick the shield, he didn’t pick the helmet.
He picked that inconspicuous because of all of the pieces that the Roman soldier would put on the belt came first.
If you want any chance.
If I want any chance of standing firm against the schemes of the enemy, we have to make a decision about being women of truth.
1st, primarily our focus has to be, has to be to be women that plant our feet solidly on the promises of God on the truth of God.
As declared by His word. We have to determine that we will not be swayed by the ways of this culture that we will not lean to political correctness, but that we will decide as for me in my house, what we’re gonna do is serve the Lord that we’re going to decide that truth will be the directive for our life.
Truth is God’s opinion on any matter. That’s a simple definition. It’s God’s opinion.
There are two opinions to every issue God’s opinion and everybody else’s and everybody else is wrong and you have got to decide.
Am I gonna be the popular mother in the P T A or am I gonna be the one that stands for truth?
You’ve got to decide, am I gonna be the pop the popular woman in my group of friends that are trying to decide whether to date or not date, whether to date like this or not, do it this way, you’ve got to decide, do I want to be popular or do I want to be a woman who has the favor of God on her life?
Because I’m standing on truth as written in this book right here.
You’ve got to decide not whether or not you’re going to fit comfortably in with society, but whether or not you’re going to be a woman who decides that this book and the truth and the principles in it are going to govern your life, which means to be girded in truth.
To be a woman who is girded in truth does not mean that you go to church on Sunday.
Oh, I hope you do. But that doesn’t mean you’re girded in truth.
It doesn’t mean that you’re on Bible in Bible study on every Tuesday night. I hope you are.
But that doesn’t mean that you’re girded in truth.
I hope that you are fellowship with other believers, but you can do all of that, more obvious, more conspicuous, more noticeable things.
You can wear the T shirt, you and I can have the bumper sticker on our car.
We can do all the flashy things that say we believe in truth, but only, you know, whether or not you’ve decided this is the compass for my life that I will not lean to my own understanding that I will allow the truth of God the opinion of God to be the directive of my life.
There is no hope of standing firm against the schemes of the enemy unless you and I have decided to be women girded in truth.
Y’all. Let me tell you why are y’all listening? Everybody? Okay. Listen, I know it’s the end of the day.
Hang in there. Okay. Hang in there. Listen. Listen, this is the reason why this matters, this issue of truth.
The enemy has a calling card.
It’s how you can know that something has the enemy’s fingerprints on it from a mile away.
His calling card is deception. Deception. Let me tell you what’s so scary about deception. Okay.
This is what’s scary about it when you are being deceived, you don’t know it.
Deception is so scary because embedded within deception seems to be a blinding agent so that the person that is being deceived has absolutely no idea that they are.
They are standing on the edge of a cliff.
They are about to take a step and everybody around them can see, oh my goodness.
If she takes that step in that direction, she’s gonna plummet into despair.
But for some reason, the person standing on the edge can’t tell, oh, you’ve had that happen before, you know of a friend of yours that has been trying to explain to you why this relationship they’re about to get in is worth leaving their family for that.
It makes complete sense to them, that it’s going to be healthy for them, that it’s going to make the most sense in the long run for her and for her family.
And it just seems completely rational and while that friend of yours is trying to tell you why that makes sense, your eyebrow continues to lift in more and more confusion because you can’t figure out how they can’t see that they are being deceived.
Oh, you’ve had it happen before that your teenager tried to tell you why they know what’s best for their life and they’re your, your 15 year old is trying to explain to you why it’s best for her, him to make this choice for his or her future.
And there you stand in your forties or in your fifties or your sixties looking at your daughter thinking girl, you don’t even know anybody know what I’m talking about.
And the truth is the truth is we don’t even have to look to another person because the truth is most of us, the vast majority of us in this room could just look at ourselves because y’all I gotta tell you there is a whole season of my life that I look back on in my early twenties.
I look back on that season of my life and I don’t even know who that crazy person was back there.
That person who allowed those kinds of relationships and who stepped into those kinds of influences and who walked down those kind of paths and who thought those kind of thoughts?
I can’t even believe that that was me. I’m anybody grateful for the delivering power of God.
I’m grateful and sometimes it’s not until you stand away from it.
In hindsight that you look back and see that the grace and the mercy of God brought you out of that foolishness.
Sometimes you can’t see it while you’re in it because deception blinds you.
And I know that in a group this size, there are some of you right now who are reeling from the consequences of having been deceived that right now you are sitting in consequences that you will have to deal with for this year or maybe for five years or maybe for a lifetime because of a choice you made in a season of deception and your heart hurts because now you look back and you realize that the enemy was taking you for a ride and you did not know it.
Then he did not tell you that, that, that that contract that had all of those incredible benefits spelled out for you that you signed your name to.
He forgot to show you all the fine print all of those warnings, you know those commercials that they have when they tell you, oh, you have a headache.
So you need this particular medication. So if you take it, it’s gonna take your headache away.
Now you might experience temporary blindness and you might not be able to use your left arm and you might not wake up tomorrow morning, but your headache will be gone.
All of those, all of those warnings, all of those, those things that, that will happen if you, if you take this medicine.
So the enemy doesn’t want to tell you all that.
He just wants to tell you how good this is gonna be and make sure that you are blinded to all the after effects, the side effects to following him down that road.
And then before we know what we have been deceived, that’s why if we want any chance at standing firm against the schemes of the enemy, we must be women before we walk out of these doors today that have made a decision.
As for me and my house, we’re gonna use this as the compass right here.
When Jerry and I go through the airport, we travel quite a bit.
When we go through the airport, the T S A agents always do the same thing.
It doesn’t matter how many times that T S A agent has, has done this that day or throughout his entire career.
Every time we go, they say to us, please give us your license.
So I hand the T S A agent my license and the T S A agent does the same thing.
He looks at me, looks at the license, looks at me, looks at the license.
He’ll tell my husband who normally has on his baseball cap to take it off so we can get a clear look.
And it is very obvious that I look just like this woman on this license.
It’s very clear that my husband looks just like this guy right here that whose picture is on this life.
It’s so clear, but it’s always amazing to me that the T S A agent does not trust what he can see with his own eyes.
He always takes that license and he passes it underneath some black light is what it’s called a little machine that will shine some sort of mysterious light on it that will cause a translucent film to show up on the top of that to authenticate that it is a real identity.
He does not trust what his eyes can see.
He doesn’t trust all the experience that he has doing this day in and day out.
He always has some light that he can shine over the top of that thing to determine whether or not this is the real deal.
Y’all. This word is a light until your path.
It will help you to determine whether or not that relationship is from God or if it’s on assignment from the enemy to steer you in the wrong direction.
It is the light of God’s word that will help you to determine whether or not this path for your family or this path for your career is leading you in the ways of God or not.
You got to decide that the lights will be the compass for your life.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a movie called Inception.
I will tell you that I never saw that movie.
I love, love going to the movies, but when I go to the movies, it’s normally with one of my closest friends who happens to be a Lena’s mom.
She and I will go to the movies together. That’s what we do.
We put our kids to bed and as soon as we put our kids to bed, one of us calls the other and says what you do it, I don’t know what you do and you want to meet at the movies.
Okay. I’ll meet you at the movies. What’s showing? It don’t even matter.
Let’s go get some popcorn and a Coke.
So normally we show up at the movies. We don’t even know what showing.
We’re just gonna find something that starts about the right time and is a girl flick.
I don’t want to think when I go to the movies in the evening, anybody know what I’m talking about.
I’m actually not interested in using any brain capacity at all. I wanna sit there. I want to laugh.
I wanna cry. I want to enjoy my hot buttery salty popcorn and a Coke and just relax, which is why I never saw Inception.
My dad told me about it, Leo Dicaprio’s character in this movie is oftentimes in reality, but he will go to sleep and have a dream and he’ll be in a dream, reality, a dream environment.
But everything, here’s the kicker, everything in the dream is so real.
It’s so tangible that to him, it seems like he is actually in the real world.
So he is making choices, he is making decisions.
He is walking in certain ways and doing certain things because he thinks he’s in reality, but he’s not.
So he keeps getting himself into trouble because his dream is so much like real life.
If that weren’t confusing enough, sometimes when he is in this dream sequence, he will fall asleep and end up in a second layer of dreaming.
So now in this second layer of dreaming, everything is so real and so tangible and so palatable that to him, he seems like he’s in the real world.
So he’s making choices and decisions based on the real environment because that’s not where he is.
He keeps getting himself into trouble.
So now he’s not just in a dream, he’s in a dream that was already within a dream, within his reality.
Sometimes while he’s in the second layer of dreaming, this brother has the nerve to have another layer of dreaming.
So now he’s three layers deep in dreams and there he is with things that are so tangible and so real that it seems to him that he is in reality.
So he keeps getting himself in trouble because his perceptions are telling him he’s in the real world, but he’s not.
He’s in a dream that’s within a dream, within a dream, within his reality.
So he widens up about halfway through the film I’ve heard.
And he begins to take this spinning top with him in his pocket.
And so no matter where he is, he will find a flat surface and he will spin the top and he’ll watch it.
If the top spins endlessly and it never slows down and it never topples over, then he knows he’s in one of those dream sequences because gravity isn’t working.
He knows this can’t be real.
But if the top slows down, if it falls over, he knows he’s at home, what he has learned to do is stop leading to his own understanding.
He no longer trusts his own perceptions.
He no longer believes that what his eyes see are exactly what he thinks, it thinks it is and believes it to be.
He has learned to have a standard that is outside of himself as what he looked to, to determine whether or not this is a dream or whether or not this is reality.
Can I tell you that the enemy is hoping you will trust your feelings, sisters, listen to me.
He is so hoping that you will go where your passions tell you to go, where your heart tell you to go without any guidelines, any boundaries of the word of God.
He wants you to trust your previous experience, what your heart feels, what you the opinions of other people.
He wants you to trust everything except the objective standard of the word of God. Y’all.
Because we’re so susceptible to being deceived.
We’ve got to have a standard that is outside of ourselves that we can look to, to determine whether or not the enemy is trying to play us for the fool.
Because the reality is Second Corinthians chapter 11: verse 14 says that your enemy disguises himself like an angel of light.
Do you realize that sometimes his work is not obvious right off the bat.
He’s not coming in a red jumpsuit with a pitchfork.
He’s trying as best he can to be as closely associated with the truth and with God’s will for your life that unless you have the discernment of the Holy Spirit, you might not be able to detect that ain’t God.
And so we pray like Charles Spurgeon, we pray and we say, Lord, would you please help me?
Not only to be able to discern between right and wrong, would you please help us to be able to discern between right and almost right.
And victory starts here, it starts with a room full of women who have not just applauded the songs that we’ve heard, who have not just stretched out our hands, who have not just sang words out of our mouth, who have not just listened intently session after session to the word of God.
It starts with a group of women who have not just heard it but have decided I am going to now align my life to this truth that I’ve heard y’all what a waste of time it will have been because listen, the enemy doesn’t mind if we all just come into this room and applaud the word.
Oh, he doesn’t mind. Go ahead, applaud it. Enjoy yourself.
As long as when you leave this place, you have no intention of living according to it.
But when a woman decides to align herself with truth in her behaviors by the power of the Holy Spirit, you’re not doing this with your own gusto.
This is not a New Year’s resolution. This is walking by the spirit of God.
As you decide to align your behavior to truth, we do it in our behavior, we do it in our actions and as we do, we guard ourselves with something that the enemy cannot penetrate.
He cannot deceive the woman who has decided to gird herself in truth.
I was watching a documentary on the late great Michael Jackson.
Y’all know Michael Jackson, right? Come on, y’all don’t try to act holy. Y’all know Michael Jackson.
So I’m watching this documentary is a documentary on the making of the Billie Jean video.
Okay. That was one of my favorite videos. I loved it.
Remember that was the one where he was dancing up and down this pathway.
And every time he took a step, the path would light up underneath his feet.
So they’re talking to the director of that video and they said, what was it like working with Michael Jackson?
And the director said a lot of things.
But one of the things he said was that that particular scene where the path was lighting up was one of his favorite to shoot with Michael Jackson.
He said, but beforehand, before we did that one, I had to call Michael Jackson off to the side and say, listen, Michael Jackson, we know you are an incredible dancer.
We know you have so many gifts, so many talents, you could probably out dance anybody in the world right now.
We know that. But what me and the other producers of this video needs you to know is that we have already gone before you and pre lit certain squares.
We’re going to need you to step on the squares that have a light underneath them.
Otherwise you’ll be doing all that dancing and expressing all that talent. But the path isn’t going to light up.
If you want this video to work, Michael, you’re gonna have to rein in all your personal preferences and step on the path as the directors have gone before you to light every single step.
Do you know that the book of Ephesians, the Apostle Paul also wants you to know that you have a good father who has already gone before you to prepare good works that you and I are just to walk in every single day of our lives.
And when we, as we align our with truth, not just because we waved our hands at church or said amen.
But when we align the steps of our life to the truth of God’s word, we will be stepping on his pathway that will light up with his favor and light up with his grace and light up with his provisions and light up with his victory over our lives.
And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to just put on a good show.
I want the path of God lit up underneath my feet.
Anybody one victory in the house and victory comes when we are women who are guarded in the truth of our God, Lord Jesus, I pray that in a few moments after we leave this place, God, what I’m asking is that you would cause us to be women who are compelled to gird ourselves in the truth of God.
Lord, I pray that the enemy would have no place in our homes, in our minds, in our hearts, in our relationships, in our churches.
Lord, I pray right now in Jesus name that when the enemy sees us disperse that he will see spilling out of the Fort Worth Convention Center, a group of women who are have their eyes peeled for victory.
Lord who are ready to gird themselves with truth, not just because we applaud it, but because we live our lives according to it.
Lord may the enemy shake in his boots when he sees us coming.
It is in jesus’ name that all the warrior daughters of God agreed with me and said, amen.