Samson is perhaps the most famous biblical character known for courage but have you considered that he might have had an average physique at best? I truly believe God’s glory was manifested through Samson precisely because he was nothing special to look at…Can the same be said of you? The point being, God is looking for average folk to glorify Him, by seeking Him and fellowshipping with Him daily. What is holding you back friend? Join Carl now to find out…
Here is a complete transcript of the broadcast (below)…
Friend, welcome to part two of live in session, talking about courage and confidence. You know, Hebrews 11:6 six says, “without faith, it is impossible to please God.” And friend, if we shrink back in fear or unbelief, God is not pleased with that. He sincerely wants you to advance in the next step for what he has planned for your life, friend. And the very fear that’s stopping you from that next step has to be overcome. And I’m believing that we’re going to share some key concepts here in these teachings to enable you to advance for the next step that God has for you. Let’s join me now live in session. I believe Samson, man, was like a 95 pound guy. He may not have been that big, but the strength was in the anointing of God. And that’s what made it even more amazing is that Samson was just chasing after, what, 200 foxes and lit them on fire and whatever other exploits he did.
But the theme tonight is that you have a roaring lion in your life. That’s you. You’re coming down sharp attack high with a sword. You’re taking out the lion. You can only take out that lion if you know your identity in Christ Jesus. But if you don’t know your identity, rights and privileges in Christ, it’s going to be very hard to beat that lion, right? Because what he does is he accuses you. He condemns you. He comes with an accusatory tone. And some people can just get so bound up in discouragement, fear, and all these emotions that if it goes on long enough, Satan will convince you you’re not even saved. Okay. There comes a point where you’ve got to speak to your enemy, amen, and address him directly. That’s called being confrontational in a positive way.
Amen. How many like confrontation? There’s not many people who do, but we have to confront the enemy guys. We have to do it. All right. Paul said, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, right? But principalities, powers, rulers of darkness, the spiritually wicked in high places. A wrestling match. If you’re in a wrestling match and you start giving up, what’s your enemy going to do? He’s just going to go, oh, chill, man, whatever. No, he’s just going to keep working you until you’re completely defeated. And so the onus is on us to stay guarded in the spirit. Amen. Now, that’s a long to-do list, Pastor. Yes, it is. However, when we remain in the fellowship with the Father on a daily basis in his word, in our thoughts, in our speech, you’ve got the armor on. Okay? That’s it. Some people want to put the armor on every day. I put on the helmet of salvation, the breastplate, you know, they go through their whole routine in the morning. Fair enough. If you want to do that as a faith activation.
But if you are in fellowship with the Father, you have your armor on. Amen. Simple as that. Now, I said last week, you can be in relationship or fellowship. If you’re married and you have an argument and you storm off in different rooms, you’ve broken fellowship, but you’re still in relationship. It’s like that with the Father. Sometimes we just forget there’s a God and go for weeks and months without talking to him. We’ve broken fellowship, friend. We don’t want to be in that position. Okay? We want to be open to his guidance. Amen? Because he knows everything. He knows what’s coming in our daily activities.
Okay. So, are you running from the lion in your life? Satan has two strategies. He uses fear and discouragement. Fear and discouragement. Now, you could argue there’s a third tactic, which is ignorance. And ignorance is not bliss. For the Christian, ignorance is dangerous. Okay? Maybe a tough word. But we need to know our identity in Christ Jesus. So important. We need to focus on who we are and what Christ achieved for us, not our past. Some people can never get over their past. Well, I got saved, but I’ve just done so much stuff since I got saved. I just feel so guilty. I just can’t seem to have any faith anymore because God, well, I don’t even know if God’s forgiven me. Huge condemnation issues. Okay? Friend, we’ve got to make some resistance towards that and get out of the pit. We got to start getting out of this pit. Some people are put in the pit. Some people put themselves in the pit. All right? But like I said, if God is asking us to forgive 70 times 7 in one day, he’s willing to do that himself towards us. Wow. That’s so great. What an awesome, forgiving God. So it’s kind of cute. Fear. Someone said, fear is false evidence appearing real.
And there’s some truth to that. You know, the enemy lies to us. How many times have you worried about something that’s going to happen the next day? And you’ve pontificated five different scenarios in your head. When the next day comes, like nothing happened. How many have done that? I have. Particularly in the area of meetings. When I was an engineer, my boss, man, he had a knack for springing meetings on me at the last minute. I don’t know if it was a special gift he had. But he would like walk into my office at a five o’clock and go, oh yeah, I forgot about this man. But tomorrow you’re going to talk to the CEO and the partners about your field. I’m like, what? Normally a presentation like that takes like an hour or two, three hours to really prepare, to do it right, to do it properly. To give it service.
But, you know, I ended up winging some of this stuff. And I would cast my care. I said, Lord, that’s too hard for me. I’m not going to be able to do that by myself. I cast my care. I thank you, Lord. My fear is cast down. You’re going to empower me, amen, to do the thing tomorrow. And lo and behold, 99% of the time we came through, okay? The vast majority of the time. But you see, the mind is a dangerous thing. The mind speculates, pontificates, permutates. And we have all these fears. Fear of man, fear of making decisions, fear of being laughed at, fear that no one will laugh at your jokes every week. I’m over it, okay? It’s okay. I can take rejection, amen.
Fear lies to us. It falsifies our reality to the point where we’re in stagnation. We’re frozen because of fear. We don’t want to act. Well, I tried that five years ago and I’m not trying that again. I was embarrassed. And the Lord’s going, I want you to move in this direction. But you’ve lifted up fear as an idol. And now you’re just using it against me. You’re afraid of this outcome. Friend, there is joy and victory on the other side of what God is asking you to do. That’s the truth. And it may look fearful to you. It may look like you’re going to be shamed or embarrassed. But if the Lord is leading you, there’s going to be a wonderful reward, amen, for going to the next step. So there’s rational fear and then there’s irrational fear. Rational fear is wholesome. We believe in traffic laws.
We go certain speeds, right? We don’t run across I-10 without looking, all right, or whatever other motorway, freeway. There’s a rational fear that is positive. However, there is irrational fear, which is rooted in your psyche based on some sort of incident that occurred in the past, based on some sort of wounding where you’re now deciding I can’t advance in this area of my life because you know what happened last time, right? How many are there? I know I’ve been there, dude. Are you kidding me? I remember when I did my master’s in London many years ago now, but it was a science degree. It was engineering. I didn’t get much guidance in the summer.
It was a three-year placement in industry. I came into this presentation. I don’t know whether this guy was in a bad mood, but he tore me up, man. He just was like, this is wrong. This is wrong. This is awful. You can’t do this. You can’t do that. I was like, are you kidding me? I mean, but he just went to town and that caused a wound in me when it came to presenting. I was like, am I really that bad at presenting because clearly something’s not right here. It started to affect the way I thought, the way I saw myself, the way I carried myself, and God had to deal with me on this very thing. Some people are nervous about speaking in front of people. I know my wife has talked to me about that initially. It was tough for some people. It’s not natural. It’s almost like a skill that has to be learned. But God will help you overcome whatever it is, amen? Whatever is holding you back, whatever that thing is that you’re struggling with, maybe God has a promotion for you, but you’ve got to learn a new skill that’s going to be challenging. But some people don’t want to put themselves out because they’re like, oh no, I’m going to be embarrassed in front of other people, et cetera, et cetera.
So I’m speculating right now, what exactly is the very thing that could be holding you back? There may not be anything holding you back, but we can pray at the end and say, Lord, is there something I need to deal with? Is it something about my past? Is it something about advancement you want to grant me? Then we have the fear of God, which in scripture is rooted in love. It’s good to have a fear of the Lord because it constrains our behavior, amen? The fear of the Lord is a good thing. We love the Lord. We reverentially honor him, and so our behavior is constrained because we want to please him, amen? So that’s a positive thing. Fear isn’t always negative in scripture. But the irrational fear that comes, I mean, I’ve had several plane trips where I thought the plane was going to go down, one in particular, flying from Aberdeen, Scotland, which is very windy to London, oh man, it was only an hour-long flight, but I thought this thing was going down.
I didn’t know the Lord at the time, but I was praying to whichever God was available, amen? It was like, whew, and when he landed, he was coming into the airport, and because it was such a strong crosswind, the plane was coming in like this on the side because it was opposing the crosswind, and I was in the tail. So as soon as the plane landed, it shifted, I want to say, like 30 feet this way immediately, and I thought we were going to go over. In those situations, friend, we need to pray in the Holy Spirit. We need to thank the Lord that he is taking care of that aircraft. What else could we do? We could just sit there and just flip out and get into incredible fear. If the Lord says don’t get on that plane, don’t get on that plane either, amen? Amen. But we need to guard against irrational fear. Very important. Interesting story here, clinging to the familiar.
There once was this criminal who had committed a crime. He was sent to the king for punishment. The king said to him he had a choice of two punishments. He could be hung by a rope or take what’s behind the big, dark, scary iron door. The criminal quickly decided on the rope. As the noose was being slipped on him, he turned to the king and said, by the way, out of curiosity, what’s behind that door? The king laughed and said, you know, it’s funny. I offer everyone the same choice and nearly everyone picks the rope. So tell me what’s behind the door. I mean, obviously I won’t tell anyone, he said. Well, what’s behind the door? Freedom. But it seems most people are so afraid of the unknown that they immediately take the rope. Strange illustration. Some people are so familiar with the familiar, they don’t want to take a risk. They don’t want to come out of their comfort zone. Friend, walking with the Lord as I have.
He likes us to get out of that comfort zone pretty regularly, okay? Now sometimes we can make life uncomfortable by our own decisions, I’m not talking about that. However, in the aspect of sanctification, which is growing and growing fruit and bearing fruit that John 15 talks about, we are perpetually asked to come out of our comfort zone in areas that we don’t really want to move. But again, there’s a reward on the other side of that. There’s a reward from him by overcoming the giants in your life, by overcoming the strongholds. And again, I admire you. It’s Wednesday night, we’re putting ourselves before the word and we’re saying, Lord, change me based on your holy word. Show me. The fear of the unknown is a very powerful fear. Hey, try starting a church in Denver when you don’t know anybody.
Fear of the unknown. And now we have friends, amen? We have friends here. Amen. God brought them. Hallelujah. So the other one is discouragement. So we had fear. We’re talking about discouragement, discouragement, the moving away from courage. Everybody encounters it in life, but it’s how we respond to it that defines us, right? Think about it. Moses dies and they’re all mourning because Moses led them for so long. God said, okay, you’re allowed 30 days to mourn and now you’re going to go into the promised land. They thought they couldn’t do it without mighty Moses, but Joshua was being prepared, right? And what did God say to Joshua? Many times he said, be of good courage, be strong, be courageous in Joshua 1:6, “Be of good courage and be strong,” is found 44 times in the word. Over and over again. Don’t let the circumstances of life lie to you, okay? Because the circumstances are telling you one thing, but God’s word is the truth. Truth always usurps circumstances. Circumstances are subject to the truth of God’s word, right? Let’s pick it up again tomorrow for part three of Courage and Confidence in the Lord.
https://carljosephministries.com/podcast/making-wise-decisions-part-3/
https://youthgroupministry.com/lessons/youth-ministry-lesson-on-making-godly-choices-proverbs-35-6/
Title: Courage and Confidence: Part 2 (LIVE)
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