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Walk It Out Wednesday
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Connected by scripture or shared themes.
Walk It Out Wednesday
Continue exploring
Connected by scripture or shared themes.
As we continue our journey through the book of Acts, we've watched the New Testament church come alive. In chapter 1, we hear the promise: "You shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you." In chapter 2, they are filled with the Holy Spirit and begin to speak with tongues — and we've been asking what those tongues mean, and what we're doing with all that power God has given us.
In chapter 3, Peter stands up and 3,000 souls are saved. The church is growing. In chapter 4, they're fighting again. In chapter 5, Ananias and Sapphira disobey God — they were supposed to sell everything and give it to the house of God, but they held back.
Tonight we want to start with Acts chapter 6, where something interesting happens.
"In Acts chapter six, there rose this great distraction, because they're fighting over who should serve food and who should preach and who should teach — the Greek versus the Hebrew."
That raises a question I want us to sit with: When distraction becomes warfare, how do you really handle it? What is competing for your attention and slowly pulling you away from your relationship with God?
One of the most honest answers is this: sometimes the very thing that pulls us away from God is doing good works.
Think of the story of Martha and Mary. A lot of Christians relate more to Martha than to Mary — getting lost in the work, the responsibilities, the desire to do the right thing, and prioritizing those things over true intimacy and closeness with Jesus.
It's tricky, because it feels right. It feels like progress. But there's a difference:
The good thing is not always the God thing.
When our own perception of wanting to be worthy — or even, selfishly, wanting to make a name for ourselves and look good — begins to drive us, the heart posture has shifted. And when the heart posture shifts, we can find ourselves operating outside the will of God. The desire should simply be: "God, I want to be with you because I want to be with you, not because I have something to do."
For some of us, doing has been placed in a position of idolatry. There can be this innate desire to perform — to show up at our best — and that desire to perform is often connected to a deeper root: rejection.
"Performance is often grounded in rejection."
When we've been rejected — when we didn't receive affirmation from someone we held in high esteem — we can spend our lives chasing that affirmation from people. And then we carry that same performance mentality into our relationship with God, trying to prove our worth to Him.
But here's the truth, and it's rooted in Romans 8:
So don't let doing distract you. Get back to that anchor:
I am God's son. I am chosen. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I am valuable. I am more than enough.
That's how you fight back when the distractions come. When that performance thing tries to jump on you, remember: sons don't perform. I don't have to do. I just have to be.
The distraction changes as you grow older. At one stage it's the doing. But as you live longer, you're exposed to more, and the distraction becomes the sheer busyness of life.
The busyness of life becomes life.
You've got to preach and you've got to go to work. You've got to pray and you've got to pay your bills. You're trying to find that settled place where you can lie down before God, where you can have time on your face. And as you live, more begins to pull on you, tug on you, and take you.
Scripture warns us here:
"A false balance is an abomination to God, but a just weight is His delight." (Proverbs 11:1)
God calls many things an abomination — but a false balance? A life out of balance is something He takes seriously.
Here's another way distraction shows up: we can make our relationship with God more about God doing things for us than about God Himself.
When we pray in a week, how many of those prayers are "God, do..." rather than "God"? Disappointment, disagreement, confusion, paying the bills, buying the house — everything can turn our relationship into a genie relationship, where we just want things resolved.
We once did an exercise where we asked people to write down everything God has done for them. People thought they'd finish in a few minutes — but it went on for weeks. Because God's giving is more than "I got up this morning, I have food." It's more than the things that come to mind immediately, and more than the things we ask Him to resolve in a moment.
So we have to shift:
Sometimes the deepest prayer is not "God, heal this" but "God, be present." When you stop asking only for what you want and ask for Him to be there with you, everything changes.
Let's be honest about another distraction: we're tired. We find our rest in Him, we know He is our peace — but it doesn't always feel like rest when He's waking us up at 4:30 to pray.
And here's the trap:
"In my pursuit of rest, I go further away from Him."
Rather than resting in Him, we find a place outside of Him that we think is rest. That's why balance matters. True rest is found in His presence, not away from it.
In Acts 14, the Apostle Paul is beaten and stoned nearly to death at Lystra. The disciples gather around him — and he rises up and keeps going. What makes you get up and keep going when stones hit you that you didn't expect?
Sometimes what looks like the promise of God doesn't match what we're experiencing. Consider a season where relationship after relationship, plan after plan, gets stripped away.
You sense God clearly say to move — to leave the dream city, the thriving ministry, the friendships — and you obey. But when you arrive, nothing looks like the word you received. No beaches. No familiar comforts. You feel forsaken. You feel left.
It's like Abraham. In the "hall of faith" of Hebrews, he's honored as someone who went out, not knowing where he was going. God promised him a promised land, that he would be the father of many nations, rich and overflowing — but there was a season where everything in front of him did not look like that at all.
When we keep taking the hits without saying anything, the pressure builds. But there comes a moment when we finally let it all out — like David in Psalm 139. He goes on this whole rant, pouring out his heart, even crying out about his enemies. And then something happens. Humility sets in, because he recognizes how much he actually needs God. He closes the psalm by praying:
"Search me, O God, and know my heart... and see if there be any wicked way in me." (Psalm 139:23–24)
That's the turn. All the while we're looking for God to fix the situation, God is challenging us to look within.
"All these things were going on within me, and because I didn't see it clearly, I was forfeiting the type of freedom that I actually had access to."
Sometimes God takes away the things that gave you value — the things you thought your worth was in — so He can show you why you were chasing them. And then He says: "You don't need those things. You need to embrace that you're a son. And we're going to heal that thing, too, and walk it out together."
Use every tool available for that healing, including godly counsel and therapy.
Here's the pattern of the world: the older you get, the more times you find yourself being left for dead — often by those who are performing. Because when people are performing, they leave dead bodies everywhere.
But listen:
Those who have been left for dead are the ones God will raise up at an appointed time.
"For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
When you can't see your way — while you're lying on the ground, left for dead — you'd better know God has a plan for your life. As long as there is breath in your body, God has a plan.
When Paul is left for dead in Acts 14, he is walking out the life of Jesus Christ. And here is the good news:
If God could raise Jesus from the dead, surely He can snatch you out of what stoned you, what left you for dead, what put you on your back, what made you want to quit.
The sign that you are a Christian is that you do what Jesus did — He was raised on the third day. So when are you going to get up?
The moral of the story: keep getting back up.
Once we get back up and back in the fight, we sometimes have to deal with what they dealt with in Acts 15.
"And certain men came down from Judea and taught the brethren, 'Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.' Therefore, when Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and dispute with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas and certain others of them should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders about this question." (Acts 15:1–2)
There was real contention in the church. Later, Paul didn't want to take John Mark, because John Mark had left him in the middle of the work at Pamphylia. Barnabas said, "I've got him — you take Silas, and I'll take John Mark." The contention was so great that they separated.
Has disappointment, church hurt, or betrayal ever made it hard for you to trust God or His people? And how do you learn to separate your relationship with God from your experiences with people?
First, notice the enemy's strategy in Acts 15. Wouldn't it be of the devil to try to stop someone's salvation over a dispute between men? Some people don't think you're holy enough. But salvation is by faith — not by anyone else's approval.
Here's an honest confession. Churches, by nature, create spaces for us to serve and to sow. And when someone speaks well of you, it can open up everything in you to give to them.
But affirmation is a bottomless well. There were never enough thank-you lunches, volunteer galas, or pats on the back to resolve what it cost to serve. If the reason I'm serving or sowing is in anticipation of a leader's affirmation, I set myself up to be continually let down — because no person can fulfill what it cost me.
"It wasn't church hurt. It was that I was looking for the church to resolve something they couldn't resolve for me."
So how do you create the distinction between man and God? You remember why you do what you do.
At the end of Acts 15, after all the contention, Paul and Barnabas can't resolve it with each other — so they separate and keep fulfilling the mission. That's the resolve: why do I do what I do? Not for a title, not for the affirmation, but because of the mission. Every decision, every meeting: Did I get somebody saved today?
Keep the main thing the main thing.
And here's the warning for young people especially: the same thing that makes me serve or sow for affirmation is the same thing that will have me posting on Instagram for a like, or exposing myself for a compliment. Don't do the action for someone else's reaction. The only reaction I care about is God's response to what I do.
There's a throughline running through all of this: an inner motive. What keeps us chasing affirmation, validation, the like on Instagram? It's because those things make us feel good about ourselves in a place where we're broken.
So there's a deep need for all of us to become self-aware. Consider the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control. How can you be self-controlled if you're not self-aware? How can you address the broken piece that's driving you if you won't acknowledge it?
"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." (Philippians 2:12)
It's your own walk with the Lord. And there are things in each of us that God is saying, "I want to heal this." Because we're being conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8).
The affirmation, the like, the pat on the back — it's all an attempt to fill a void that nothing can fill except Him. When we let Him fill it, our motive changes.
"Whatever you do, do it heartily, as unto the Lord." (Colossians 3:23)
What if everything we did — every conversation, every time we served, every time we truly listened — we did as unto the Lord?
When people don't know who they are, they'll go to any extreme to let other people define them. Sometimes we have to unbecome what our environment, society, family, and friends told us we were — and anchor ourselves in the Word instead:
"I am fearfully and wonderfully made." (Psalm 139:14)
"For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." (2 Timothy 1:7)
So when they say, "You're just shy" — no. The Word says I do not have a spirit of fear; I have power, love, and a sound mind. On social media, we're often trying to find ourselves before we've allowed God to shape and define us in His truth. And the voices out there? Many of them don't even believe what they're saying. They're just trying to invoke an emotion. Don't subject the vulnerabilities of your heart to things that hold no weight. We give it weight when we decide to believe it.
Wouldn't it be of the devil to stop you from learning who you were — to make you someone he wants you to be, different from who God designed you to be? That's spiritual warfare.
Some years ago, while preparing a series on the battlefield of the mind, the Lord gave a strange instruction: go get the book The Art of War by Sun Tzu, a war strategist who lived around 500–400 BC. Here's the nugget that came out of it:
"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."
And notice where we learn strategy:
Strategy happens in small places. Strategy happens in war rooms.
The battle starts with knowing yourself. That's why seasoned believers matter — we come to teach the young how to know themselves. Not that we've stopped struggling, but we can say something about something. When you come to know yourself and know the mental enemy you're dealing with, you can win battles without even going to war.
This connects to Paul's teaching:
"For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh... casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God." (2 Corinthians 10:3–5)
We're pulling down the arguments, pulling down the fights. And in the midst of it, the question to ask is: does my life look like what He told me? Often we see all the things He told us to do that we did not do.
If someone spent one week watching your life, what evidence would they see that Jesus is transforming you?
Transformation is a daily new work — God reveals new things to work on every single day. It's not automatic; there are steps we must take. You might feel the nudge of the Spirit to talk to the Uber driver, ignore it, and find yourself convicted two hours later doing exactly that. The contradictions of life. It's a constant work — and a real one.
For some, the transformation is learning to move from merely loving people to genuinely liking and caring for them in the moment — asking the questions beneath the surface, praying for what they didn't even bring up, letting God move through you in ordinary conversations.
And here's a crucial one: the evidence isn't that you never fall.
"For a righteous man falls seven times, and rises up again." (Proverbs 24:16)
If you're looking for the real deal, you'll see a person fall and get up. It's not the fall — it's the getting up. And it's who you turn to when you get up.
What does the war teach you about God, and what does it teach you about yourself?
Every hard and challenging moment teaches us more about God than anything else. It's the sufferings and trials — the moments of confusion, asking "God, why am I here?" — where He meets us.
"We do not suffer as those who are without hope."
Suffering is the testing ground. Suffering is where God develops us — and where He reveals Himself to us. Jesus was our suffering Savior. When you listen to the saints who've gone ahead, it's not their triumphs that teach you most; it's the battle scars along the way. David failed all through Scripture, yet he was a man after God's own heart — because when he got up, he turned back to God.
And what does war teach about yourself? How much you need Him.
"My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness... Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then am I strong." (2 Corinthians 12:9–10)
Paul had a thorn in his flesh. He asked God three times to remove it, and God didn't. Instead God said, "My grace is sufficient." And so, in our humility — in acknowledging how desperately we need Him — the power of Christ rests on us.
Here's a word that captures what war teaches us about God:
"You don't have to fight in the battle, but you need to meet Me on the battlefield."
We spend so much time wanting to fight, but the battle is not ours — it belongs to the Lord. You may not have to fight, but you've got to get on the field. We've already won the war. We have the victory. Just meet Him on the battlefield.
What strategy should we use while we're going through real warfare, especially while we're young?
Be adaptable and change your strategy. The enemy has no new tricks — everything he's doing, he's done before. But if what you've been doing hasn't been working, change your approach. Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results is insanity.
Keep your seasoned saints ahead of you. Listen to their wisdom.
Use your main tools: fasting, prayer, the Word of God, and worship. If one isn't working, go to the next.
Submit and resist.
"Therefore submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." (James 4:7)
Submitting may mean moving distractions out of the way — getting off the phone, turning on worship, getting still, going on a walk. When you get into the real presence of God, the enemy has to flee, because he answers to Him.
Be persistent — do it until you see it. Like diet and exercise, the fruit doesn't show in the first few weeks. Consistency is what produces the harvest. Don't do it once or twice — do it until you see it.
Don't do it by yourself. Isolation is where the enemy attacks. A two-fold cord, a three-fold cord — we hold each other accountable. We need each other to see real progress.
Play by the rules — do right.
"Therefore to him that knows to do good, and does it not, to him it is sin." (James 4:17)
Sometimes it feels appropriate to fight the evil way because the enemy plays evil. But everything I do must be right. God's protection and covering in the war are aligned with my posture of walking as He would walk. In war there are rules — and we play by them.
Here's the realest question of all: What do you do when you're doing everything you're supposed to do, but things keep going the opposite of the promise of God?
Consider Moses. He kept doing the same thing — "Let my people go" — and things kept getting worse before they got better. So what do you do when you're forgiving people, fasting, staying close, refusing to let anything separate you from God, and things still get worse?
The answer is persistence and pursuit.
"Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD." (Hosea 6:3)
Pursuit means work. We have to dig in, reach for Him, strive toward Him. We can't always break down the door immediately. This warfare is a battle after a battle after a battle — it's lifelong. And He promised it would be hard, because it was hard for Him.
"I'll be real with you — He died. One Friday night, He died. But early Sunday morning, He got up."
That's where we started, and that's where we end: If God could raise Jesus from the dead... Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.
Even in prison, Paul and Silas sang praises at midnight (Acts 16). So the challenge is this: turn your praise into a midnight praise. Praise God before you see the change.
The disciples once asked, "Lord, teach us to pray." Notice — they didn't ask when to pray, because men "ought always to pray" (Luke 18:1). They asked how.
The truth is, we don't always know how:
"We know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself makes intercession for us." (Romans 8:26)
That's why you need the Holy Ghost. The God on the inside of you makes the connection from earth to heaven. All you need to do is go down on your knees — and the Holy Ghost will stand up in you and pray for you, through you, and over you, because Jesus "ever lives to make intercession" for you.
You don't have to pray eloquently. You don't have to say, "Father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." Jesus gave us the pattern:
If you're broken — if you've fallen and can't figure out how to get up, if you've walked through divorce, if your finances are a mess, if you just need help — this is a war room tonight. We serve notice on the enemy.
If you want to learn how to pray, if this question resonates with you, come to the altar. And if you're called to support, come stand behind someone at the altar.
This is a kairos moment — a moment where God wishes to invade, to speak, to manifest Himself. The same God who is here is the same God who is with you online. And the enemy wants nothing more than for you to leave and forget everything that was declared, taught, and caught tonight — because if he can get you distracted, if he can snatch the seed of today, he'll keep the harvest from happening tomorrow.
What happened in a moment, God wants to become a monument.
So on your ride home, maybe you ride in silence. Maybe you play worship all the way home. Maybe you avoid carnal conversations and stay off social media tonight. Guard what God did, so the enemy can't take it from you.
We're taking it back. You cannot have our children. Devil, you are a liar. Everything the enemy meant for evil, God is turning it for your good. I declare no weapon formed against you shall prosper. This is our war cry: I'm going to submit, I'm going to resist, and the devil, he will flee.
Whom the Son sets free is free indeed. There's healing in the room. If you're believing God for a miraculous healing, make your way to the altar — the water is being troubled, and God is releasing miracles, signs, and wonders. When you leave here, don't just walk toward victory: you are victorious. You live victorious. Every battle is already won — because we meet Him on the battlefield, and this battle belongs to the Lord.
As we continue our journey through the book of Acts, we've watched the New Testament church come alive. In chapter 1, we hear the promise: "You shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you." In chapter 2, they are filled with the Holy Spirit and begin to speak with tongues — and we've been asking what those tongues mean, and what we're doing with all that power God has given us.
In chapter 3, Peter stands up and 3,000 souls are saved. The church is growing. In chapter 4, they're fighting again. In chapter 5, Ananias and Sapphira disobey God — they were supposed to sell everything and give it to the house of God, but they held back.
Tonight we want to start with Acts chapter 6, where something interesting happens.
"In Acts chapter six, there rose this great distraction, because they're fighting over who should serve food and who should preach and who should teach — the Greek versus the Hebrew."
That raises a question I want us to sit with: When distraction becomes warfare, how do you really handle it? What is competing for your attention and slowly pulling you away from your relationship with God?
One of the most honest answers is this: sometimes the very thing that pulls us away from God is doing good works.
Think of the story of Martha and Mary. A lot of Christians relate more to Martha than to Mary — getting lost in the work, the responsibilities, the desire to do the right thing, and prioritizing those things over true intimacy and closeness with Jesus.
It's tricky, because it feels right. It feels like progress. But there's a difference:
The good thing is not always the God thing.
When our own perception of wanting to be worthy — or even, selfishly, wanting to make a name for ourselves and look good — begins to drive us, the heart posture has shifted. And when the heart posture shifts, we can find ourselves operating outside the will of God. The desire should simply be: "God, I want to be with you because I want to be with you, not because I have something to do."
For some of us, doing has been placed in a position of idolatry. There can be this innate desire to perform — to show up at our best — and that desire to perform is often connected to a deeper root: rejection.
"Performance is often grounded in rejection."
When we've been rejected — when we didn't receive affirmation from someone we held in high esteem — we can spend our lives chasing that affirmation from people. And then we carry that same performance mentality into our relationship with God, trying to prove our worth to Him.
But here's the truth, and it's rooted in Romans 8:
So don't let doing distract you. Get back to that anchor:
I am God's son. I am chosen. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I am valuable. I am more than enough.
That's how you fight back when the distractions come. When that performance thing tries to jump on you, remember: sons don't perform. I don't have to do. I just have to be.
The distraction changes as you grow older. At one stage it's the doing. But as you live longer, you're exposed to more, and the distraction becomes the sheer busyness of life.
The busyness of life becomes life.
You've got to preach and you've got to go to work. You've got to pray and you've got to pay your bills. You're trying to find that settled place where you can lie down before God, where you can have time on your face. And as you live, more begins to pull on you, tug on you, and take you.
Scripture warns us here:
"A false balance is an abomination to God, but a just weight is His delight." (Proverbs 11:1)
God calls many things an abomination — but a false balance? A life out of balance is something He takes seriously.
Here's another way distraction shows up: we can make our relationship with God more about God doing things for us than about God Himself.
When we pray in a week, how many of those prayers are "God, do..." rather than "God"? Disappointment, disagreement, confusion, paying the bills, buying the house — everything can turn our relationship into a genie relationship, where we just want things resolved.
We once did an exercise where we asked people to write down everything God has done for them. People thought they'd finish in a few minutes — but it went on for weeks. Because God's giving is more than "I got up this morning, I have food." It's more than the things that come to mind immediately, and more than the things we ask Him to resolve in a moment.
So we have to shift:
Sometimes the deepest prayer is not "God, heal this" but "God, be present." When you stop asking only for what you want and ask for Him to be there with you, everything changes.
Let's be honest about another distraction: we're tired. We find our rest in Him, we know He is our peace — but it doesn't always feel like rest when He's waking us up at 4:30 to pray.
And here's the trap:
"In my pursuit of rest, I go further away from Him."
Rather than resting in Him, we find a place outside of Him that we think is rest. That's why balance matters. True rest is found in His presence, not away from it.
In Acts 14, the Apostle Paul is beaten and stoned nearly to death at Lystra. The disciples gather around him — and he rises up and keeps going. What makes you get up and keep going when stones hit you that you didn't expect?
Sometimes what looks like the promise of God doesn't match what we're experiencing. Consider a season where relationship after relationship, plan after plan, gets stripped away.
You sense God clearly say to move — to leave the dream city, the thriving ministry, the friendships — and you obey. But when you arrive, nothing looks like the word you received. No beaches. No familiar comforts. You feel forsaken. You feel left.
It's like Abraham. In the "hall of faith" of Hebrews, he's honored as someone who went out, not knowing where he was going. God promised him a promised land, that he would be the father of many nations, rich and overflowing — but there was a season where everything in front of him did not look like that at all.
When we keep taking the hits without saying anything, the pressure builds. But there comes a moment when we finally let it all out — like David in Psalm 139. He goes on this whole rant, pouring out his heart, even crying out about his enemies. And then something happens. Humility sets in, because he recognizes how much he actually needs God. He closes the psalm by praying:
"Search me, O God, and know my heart... and see if there be any wicked way in me." (Psalm 139:23–24)
That's the turn. All the while we're looking for God to fix the situation, God is challenging us to look within.
"All these things were going on within me, and because I didn't see it clearly, I was forfeiting the type of freedom that I actually had access to."
Sometimes God takes away the things that gave you value — the things you thought your worth was in — so He can show you why you were chasing them. And then He says: "You don't need those things. You need to embrace that you're a son. And we're going to heal that thing, too, and walk it out together."
Use every tool available for that healing, including godly counsel and therapy.
Here's the pattern of the world: the older you get, the more times you find yourself being left for dead — often by those who are performing. Because when people are performing, they leave dead bodies everywhere.
But listen:
Those who have been left for dead are the ones God will raise up at an appointed time.
"For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
When you can't see your way — while you're lying on the ground, left for dead — you'd better know God has a plan for your life. As long as there is breath in your body, God has a plan.
When Paul is left for dead in Acts 14, he is walking out the life of Jesus Christ. And here is the good news:
If God could raise Jesus from the dead, surely He can snatch you out of what stoned you, what left you for dead, what put you on your back, what made you want to quit.
The sign that you are a Christian is that you do what Jesus did — He was raised on the third day. So when are you going to get up?
The moral of the story: keep getting back up.
Once we get back up and back in the fight, we sometimes have to deal with what they dealt with in Acts 15.
"And certain men came down from Judea and taught the brethren, 'Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.' Therefore, when Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and dispute with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas and certain others of them should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders about this question." (Acts 15:1–2)
There was real contention in the church. Later, Paul didn't want to take John Mark, because John Mark had left him in the middle of the work at Pamphylia. Barnabas said, "I've got him — you take Silas, and I'll take John Mark." The contention was so great that they separated.
Has disappointment, church hurt, or betrayal ever made it hard for you to trust God or His people? And how do you learn to separate your relationship with God from your experiences with people?
First, notice the enemy's strategy in Acts 15. Wouldn't it be of the devil to try to stop someone's salvation over a dispute between men? Some people don't think you're holy enough. But salvation is by faith — not by anyone else's approval.
Here's an honest confession. Churches, by nature, create spaces for us to serve and to sow. And when someone speaks well of you, it can open up everything in you to give to them.
But affirmation is a bottomless well. There were never enough thank-you lunches, volunteer galas, or pats on the back to resolve what it cost to serve. If the reason I'm serving or sowing is in anticipation of a leader's affirmation, I set myself up to be continually let down — because no person can fulfill what it cost me.
"It wasn't church hurt. It was that I was looking for the church to resolve something they couldn't resolve for me."
So how do you create the distinction between man and God? You remember why you do what you do.
At the end of Acts 15, after all the contention, Paul and Barnabas can't resolve it with each other — so they separate and keep fulfilling the mission. That's the resolve: why do I do what I do? Not for a title, not for the affirmation, but because of the mission. Every decision, every meeting: Did I get somebody saved today?
Keep the main thing the main thing.
And here's the warning for young people especially: the same thing that makes me serve or sow for affirmation is the same thing that will have me posting on Instagram for a like, or exposing myself for a compliment. Don't do the action for someone else's reaction. The only reaction I care about is God's response to what I do.
There's a throughline running through all of this: an inner motive. What keeps us chasing affirmation, validation, the like on Instagram? It's because those things make us feel good about ourselves in a place where we're broken.
So there's a deep need for all of us to become self-aware. Consider the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control. How can you be self-controlled if you're not self-aware? How can you address the broken piece that's driving you if you won't acknowledge it?
"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." (Philippians 2:12)
It's your own walk with the Lord. And there are things in each of us that God is saying, "I want to heal this." Because we're being conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8).
The affirmation, the like, the pat on the back — it's all an attempt to fill a void that nothing can fill except Him. When we let Him fill it, our motive changes.
"Whatever you do, do it heartily, as unto the Lord." (Colossians 3:23)
What if everything we did — every conversation, every time we served, every time we truly listened — we did as unto the Lord?
When people don't know who they are, they'll go to any extreme to let other people define them. Sometimes we have to unbecome what our environment, society, family, and friends told us we were — and anchor ourselves in the Word instead:
"I am fearfully and wonderfully made." (Psalm 139:14)
"For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." (2 Timothy 1:7)
So when they say, "You're just shy" — no. The Word says I do not have a spirit of fear; I have power, love, and a sound mind. On social media, we're often trying to find ourselves before we've allowed God to shape and define us in His truth. And the voices out there? Many of them don't even believe what they're saying. They're just trying to invoke an emotion. Don't subject the vulnerabilities of your heart to things that hold no weight. We give it weight when we decide to believe it.
Wouldn't it be of the devil to stop you from learning who you were — to make you someone he wants you to be, different from who God designed you to be? That's spiritual warfare.
Some years ago, while preparing a series on the battlefield of the mind, the Lord gave a strange instruction: go get the book The Art of War by Sun Tzu, a war strategist who lived around 500–400 BC. Here's the nugget that came out of it:
"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."
And notice where we learn strategy:
Strategy happens in small places. Strategy happens in war rooms.
The battle starts with knowing yourself. That's why seasoned believers matter — we come to teach the young how to know themselves. Not that we've stopped struggling, but we can say something about something. When you come to know yourself and know the mental enemy you're dealing with, you can win battles without even going to war.
This connects to Paul's teaching:
"For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh... casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God." (2 Corinthians 10:3–5)
We're pulling down the arguments, pulling down the fights. And in the midst of it, the question to ask is: does my life look like what He told me? Often we see all the things He told us to do that we did not do.
If someone spent one week watching your life, what evidence would they see that Jesus is transforming you?
Transformation is a daily new work — God reveals new things to work on every single day. It's not automatic; there are steps we must take. You might feel the nudge of the Spirit to talk to the Uber driver, ignore it, and find yourself convicted two hours later doing exactly that. The contradictions of life. It's a constant work — and a real one.
For some, the transformation is learning to move from merely loving people to genuinely liking and caring for them in the moment — asking the questions beneath the surface, praying for what they didn't even bring up, letting God move through you in ordinary conversations.
And here's a crucial one: the evidence isn't that you never fall.
"For a righteous man falls seven times, and rises up again." (Proverbs 24:16)
If you're looking for the real deal, you'll see a person fall and get up. It's not the fall — it's the getting up. And it's who you turn to when you get up.
What does the war teach you about God, and what does it teach you about yourself?
Every hard and challenging moment teaches us more about God than anything else. It's the sufferings and trials — the moments of confusion, asking "God, why am I here?" — where He meets us.
"We do not suffer as those who are without hope."
Suffering is the testing ground. Suffering is where God develops us — and where He reveals Himself to us. Jesus was our suffering Savior. When you listen to the saints who've gone ahead, it's not their triumphs that teach you most; it's the battle scars along the way. David failed all through Scripture, yet he was a man after God's own heart — because when he got up, he turned back to God.
And what does war teach about yourself? How much you need Him.
"My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness... Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then am I strong." (2 Corinthians 12:9–10)
Paul had a thorn in his flesh. He asked God three times to remove it, and God didn't. Instead God said, "My grace is sufficient." And so, in our humility — in acknowledging how desperately we need Him — the power of Christ rests on us.
Here's a word that captures what war teaches us about God:
"You don't have to fight in the battle, but you need to meet Me on the battlefield."
We spend so much time wanting to fight, but the battle is not ours — it belongs to the Lord. You may not have to fight, but you've got to get on the field. We've already won the war. We have the victory. Just meet Him on the battlefield.
What strategy should we use while we're going through real warfare, especially while we're young?
Be adaptable and change your strategy. The enemy has no new tricks — everything he's doing, he's done before. But if what you've been doing hasn't been working, change your approach. Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results is insanity.
Keep your seasoned saints ahead of you. Listen to their wisdom.
Use your main tools: fasting, prayer, the Word of God, and worship. If one isn't working, go to the next.
Submit and resist.
"Therefore submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." (James 4:7)
Submitting may mean moving distractions out of the way — getting off the phone, turning on worship, getting still, going on a walk. When you get into the real presence of God, the enemy has to flee, because he answers to Him.
Be persistent — do it until you see it. Like diet and exercise, the fruit doesn't show in the first few weeks. Consistency is what produces the harvest. Don't do it once or twice — do it until you see it.
Don't do it by yourself. Isolation is where the enemy attacks. A two-fold cord, a three-fold cord — we hold each other accountable. We need each other to see real progress.
Play by the rules — do right.
"Therefore to him that knows to do good, and does it not, to him it is sin." (James 4:17)
Sometimes it feels appropriate to fight the evil way because the enemy plays evil. But everything I do must be right. God's protection and covering in the war are aligned with my posture of walking as He would walk. In war there are rules — and we play by them.
Here's the realest question of all: What do you do when you're doing everything you're supposed to do, but things keep going the opposite of the promise of God?
Consider Moses. He kept doing the same thing — "Let my people go" — and things kept getting worse before they got better. So what do you do when you're forgiving people, fasting, staying close, refusing to let anything separate you from God, and things still get worse?
The answer is persistence and pursuit.
"Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD." (Hosea 6:3)
Pursuit means work. We have to dig in, reach for Him, strive toward Him. We can't always break down the door immediately. This warfare is a battle after a battle after a battle — it's lifelong. And He promised it would be hard, because it was hard for Him.
"I'll be real with you — He died. One Friday night, He died. But early Sunday morning, He got up."
That's where we started, and that's where we end: If God could raise Jesus from the dead... Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.
Even in prison, Paul and Silas sang praises at midnight (Acts 16). So the challenge is this: turn your praise into a midnight praise. Praise God before you see the change.
The disciples once asked, "Lord, teach us to pray." Notice — they didn't ask when to pray, because men "ought always to pray" (Luke 18:1). They asked how.
The truth is, we don't always know how:
"We know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself makes intercession for us." (Romans 8:26)
That's why you need the Holy Ghost. The God on the inside of you makes the connection from earth to heaven. All you need to do is go down on your knees — and the Holy Ghost will stand up in you and pray for you, through you, and over you, because Jesus "ever lives to make intercession" for you.
You don't have to pray eloquently. You don't have to say, "Father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." Jesus gave us the pattern:
If you're broken — if you've fallen and can't figure out how to get up, if you've walked through divorce, if your finances are a mess, if you just need help — this is a war room tonight. We serve notice on the enemy.
If you want to learn how to pray, if this question resonates with you, come to the altar. And if you're called to support, come stand behind someone at the altar.
This is a kairos moment — a moment where God wishes to invade, to speak, to manifest Himself. The same God who is here is the same God who is with you online. And the enemy wants nothing more than for you to leave and forget everything that was declared, taught, and caught tonight — because if he can get you distracted, if he can snatch the seed of today, he'll keep the harvest from happening tomorrow.
What happened in a moment, God wants to become a monument.
So on your ride home, maybe you ride in silence. Maybe you play worship all the way home. Maybe you avoid carnal conversations and stay off social media tonight. Guard what God did, so the enemy can't take it from you.
We're taking it back. You cannot have our children. Devil, you are a liar. Everything the enemy meant for evil, God is turning it for your good. I declare no weapon formed against you shall prosper. This is our war cry: I'm going to submit, I'm going to resist, and the devil, he will flee.
Whom the Son sets free is free indeed. There's healing in the room. If you're believing God for a miraculous healing, make your way to the altar — the water is being troubled, and God is releasing miracles, signs, and wonders. When you leave here, don't just walk toward victory: you are victorious. You live victorious. Every battle is already won — because we meet Him on the battlefield, and this battle belongs to the Lord.
