Acts of Faithfulness — David Ravenhill

Well, it's good to be here. You're all spread out all over the place. If you feel like moving up to the front, you can. I know the Bible says the Pharisees loved the utmost seats in the synagogue, but we will not make that a hard, fast rule.

You're welcome to come closer. If you have your Bible, turn with me to 2 Chronicles, chapter 31, the last two verses, and then we'll be looking into chapter 32. One of the problems these days is as you travel, people post your messages, and then people say, oh, I've heard that already, and so on.

I remember Jack Hayford many, many years ago. He had prepared a brand new series, and it was the first time he ever gave it. He gave it in his church there in California, and a week later, he flew to Australia, or maybe it was two weeks later, flew to Australia, and he gave the same message again.

It was only the second time he ever gave it, and somebody, he said, came up to him at the end of the meeting and said, oh, I've heard that message before. She was in his church just a week prior to that, but you know, we live in a media age where things get posted.

Hezekiah’s Faithfulness Before the Attack

If you've heard this before, that's fine, but this is the portion of Scripture I felt to share with you. It's the story of Hezekiah. Hezekiah, one of the great spiritual leaders in the Old Testament, one of the men that brought about one of the greatest revivals that we have in the Old Testament, was brought about by this man at the time.

He was just a young man. Years have gone by now, and his life is summarized for us in verse 20 and verse 21 of chapter 31, and it says,. And thus Hezekiah did throughout all Judah. He did what was good and right and true before the Lord his God.

Every work that he began in the service of the house of God and law and in commandments, seeking his God, he did with all of his heart, and he prospered. I think that's a pretty good summary of somebody's life.

Caleb asked me a question I don't think I've ever been asked before as we had dinner tonight, and he said, how do you want to be remembered, basically, was the gist of the question, and I said, well, ultimately, you know, I want God to be able to say, well done, that good and faithful servant.

But I have said over the years, and my wife has heard me, that if the tombstone was big enough, and if we can afford one, and if I die first, I would love these two verses on it. Now, obviously, it would be modified a little bit, and it would read like this,.

And thus David did throughout all America. He did what was good and right and true before the Lord his God. Every work that he began in the service of the house of God and law and in commandments, seeking his God, he did with all of his heart, and he prospered.

That is a pretty good summary of somebody's life. Everything this man did, God put his blessing upon it, prospered. Why? Because he did that which was good and right and true before the Lord his God. Now, one of my pet peeves in the Bible are chapter divisions, and so let me just keep on reading.

I'll read verse 21 again. Every work that he began in the service of the house of God, in law and in commandments, seeking his God, he did with all of his heart, and he prospered. And after these acts of faithfulness, Sennacherib, who happens to be the enemy, the king of Assyria came and invaded Judah, besieged the fortified cities, and thought to break into them for himself.

Notice, after these acts of faithfulness, not after these acts of stubbornness, not after these acts of rebellion, not after these acts of perversion, not after these acts of disobedience, but after these acts of faithfulness, the enemy comes.

A good sign that you are prospering spiritually is that you are under the attack of the enemy. Let me say that again. If you are prospering spiritually, you should be under the attack of the enemy. In fact, I would go as far to say if you are not being attacked by the enemy, you need to ask yourself the question, why?

I think too many Christians have made terms of detente, if you like, with the enemy. You know, they've gone to his office, so to speak, and made an appointment and said, devil, I know you're incredibly busy running back and forth on the face of the earth seeking whom you can devour, and so I'm here to make your life easier.

If you don't trouble me, I won't trouble you. And they shake on it, and that's the deal. And the enemy, as they walk out of his office, said, well, you never troubled me anyway. But, you know, we've sort of made terms of detente, or terms of peace.

My father was raised a Methodist, back when the Methodists had some life. All right, thank you. And he sat under the ministry of a man by the name of Samuel Chadwick. Samuel Chadwick was a great revivalist, a real fiery preacher.

The school that he went to, he only went for one year, it was an all-male school. And on the weekends, they would be teamed up and sent out to little Methodist churches all over the Yorkshire area, where the school was in England.

And the old man, Samuel Chadwick, would give them a word of exhortation, encouraging them to, you know, seek God, and go out in the power of the Spirit of God, and so on and so forth. He'd give them a little word of exhortation, and then he would pray, and at the end of his prayer, pronounce the benediction, and then he would pause.

And after the benediction, he would say this, my father said, go, and may the devil go with you. And then he would pause again and say, because if the devil doesn't go with you, you are not worth sending as a good Methodist.

In other words, our job as believers is to give the devil a headache, so to speak. We are to ransack his camp. We are to be on, as my father used to say, I want to be on the top 10 most wanted list in hell.

How many of us aspire to that? So here is a man that is doing what is good. He's doing what is right. He's doing what is true in the sight of the Lord. And as a result, the enemy comes, and he mounts an attack against him.

And so tonight, we're going to look at how do we resist, how do we overcome the enemy. I find so many Christians that live defeated lives. In other words, the enemy has got them, and got them in his clutches, and they just, you know, go from one crisis to another, so to speak.

Spiritual Maturity and Facing the Philistines

Now, before we get into this chapter in any sort of depth, let me take you to the book of Exodus for a moment, and I want to talk to you for a moment about a situation here. Exodus chapter 17. Exodus chapter 13 and verse 17, I think.

That may help, right? That was a little dyslexic there. Yeah. Verse 17. Now, it came about when Pharaoh had let the people go, the people being the children of Israel, that God did not lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines, even though it was nearer or closer.

For God said, lest the people change their minds when they see war, and they return to Egypt. Now, the children of Israel have just been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. In typology, they are just babes in Christ.

Moses, of course, has had some experience with this God. He knows this God. He's had some encounters with this God. But the children of Israel basically are sort of living off Moses' experience, and they're putting their trust in Moses because he's done a few signs and wonders and so on.

But in typology, they're just babes in Christ. They've only just been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. And like any babe, a babe is not sent out to war. A babe is not sent out to battle. You don't send your five-year-old to enlist in the Mounties or whatever it is that you have up here, I guess.

And so God has a purpose, and that is to take the children of Israel from where they are into the promised land. And the straightest way to get there goes right through the land of the Philistines. And God looks down and He says, you know, if I take them on the shortcut or the straightest route, we'll go through the land of the Philistines.

And if we go through the land of the Philistines, there will be war. And then He looks at the spiritual stature, if you like, of His people, and He says, they're going to turn. As soon as they encounter war, they're going to head back into Egypt, and it's going to thwart my whole purpose.

And so God bypasses the problem. We do that as parents. If you have a two-year-old that can, you know, just beginning to walk a little bit, hopefully by two. But anyway, walking around, and you are downtown right in the middle of, you know, Victoria, you don't send that little two-year-old across the street by himself.

He is not capable of grappling with the Mack trucks and logging trucks and so on and so forth. What you do, you pick that little one up, let's say a year old, you pick that little one up and you take that little one across that difficult stretch of highway, and then you may put him down on the other side.

That's a good parent. And God does the same thing. Now turn with me to the book of Judges chapter 3. Now this is the same children of Israel, the years have gone by now, and notice it says, now these are the nations, verse 1, which the Lord left.

He left them in order to test Israel by them. That is, those who had not experienced any of the wars of Canaan, in order that the generation of the sons of Israel might be taught war, those who had not experienced it formally.

These nations are, and notice number one, the Philistines. In other words, there is a time when God will bypass the problem, take you around it. There's another time when God will cause you to face a Philistine, and He will leave it directly in front of you, and He says, I want you to learn to fight.

I know you didn't come to hear that good news tonight. But God wants us to mature. He wants us to fight. He wants us to rise up and overcome. The whole book of Revelation is about overcoming. Well, not the whole book, but quite a number of references there.

God wants you to overcome. He says, even as I overcame. In fact, in the book of Revelation, the bride comes down out of heaven in the form of a city. That city has got 12 gates. The way you get into that city, obviously, is through the gates.

Those gates are made of one substance, not made of silver, or brass, or gold, or aluminum, or wrought iron. They're made of what? Pearls. What is a pearl? A pearl is a problem that's been overcome. Every single pearl has, at the core of it, a problem.

I have never been an oyster, but that little bit of grit, or sand, or whatever, becomes an irritant, gets in the shell, and that oyster, I guess, can either get bugged to death, or it can secrete a substance, and overcome, and turn that negative into a positive.

And people will pay a great price for genuine pearls. I don't think it's coincidental that God chose gates made of pearl, because he's looking for an overcoming company. You and I, one day, are going to be married to the king of kings.

And therefore, we've got to learn how to reign. We're going to be married to the great physician. We've got to learn how to bind up one another's wounds. We're going to be married to the great shepherd of the sheep.

We've got to have a love for the flock. We're going to be married to the judge of all the earth. We've got to know how to pass righteous judgment. This is our training ground. That's why God leaves us here, rather than annihilates us the moment we get saved, and, you know, doesn't take out his 45 and say, bang, and, okay, go to glory, now you're saved.

No, we've got to mature. And part of the maturity is that God allows us to face problems, in order that we can overcome. And so he will leave us with a Philistine to teach us. Now, we don't like that.

My, I should say, our oldest daughter is a missionary in China. Her first year of school was in New Guinea. My wife and I were missionaries there in the early 70s, 71, 72, and we left in 73. She started school in a place called Murray Barracks.

It was an Australian school at that time. New Guinea was under the sort of auspices of Australia. It's now independent. And she came home from school one day with a sheet of problems, her first assignment.

And major problems, two plus two equals, three plus two equals, four minus one equals, and so on and so forth. And she said, Daddy, I've got all this homework to do. You know, help me. And I understood now that she was in a new phase of life.

She was now in school. And she was learning to develop the gray matter between her two years, and it was no longer time to be jumping on the trampoline and playing with dolls and so on and so forth. Now she had to begin to grapple with these major problems.

And I said, Lisa, what is two plus two? I don't know, Daddy. And after a while, we solved that major problem. And then, you know, it was three plus two. And then four minus one, and so on and so forth.

I could have done that sheet of problems in literally 15 seconds. It took us well over an hour. She has a degree today. I don't. But what I'm saying is, if I would have kept on doing her assignments, I would have been getting letters in the mail from college.

Dear Dad, here's your next assignment. Have it in by the end of the month. It counts for a third of my entire grade. And there's a project due. I'll give you the information at the end of next week when we get the thing.

So you got plenty of time to work on it and so on. Now, we laugh at that. And yet, that's really what the average minister does. That's why we pay him to solve our problems. Pastor, pray for me. You know, we traipse forward at every chance we can to get somebody to lay hands on us and do our assignment.

That is not a good pastor. I passed not too far from here, down in Tacoma for five years. At least across the bridge in a little place called Gig Harbor. And on more than one occasion, I would have people come into my office.

I made Monday available just as a day where people could drop in without an appointment. Sometimes they had to wait. Sometimes they didn't. And they would come into my office expecting me to lay hands on them and impart something or depart something and walk out, you know, with the answer solved.

And I would say to them, because I knew the individual having been pastor to them for a while, I would say, I'm not going to pray for you. It's time you killed your Philistine. You need to fast. You need to pray.

You need to use a concordance. You need to get along with God. Blah, blah, blah. Now, I did it in a nice pastoral way. But basically, I was not going to do their homework because they will never ever grow.

They will be constantly dependent upon me. There was a time in my own personal walk with God where I made a, wasn't a vow, but I made a promise. I'm not going to go forward to another altar call. Not ever, ever, ever, ever type thing.

But the people that are up there that are giving me counsel and whatever, why can't I? Have that knowledge. They obviously attained it some way. Why can't I get my own answers? And I made that commitment.

And so I would grapple and get into the word of God, get a concordance or whatever, look things up and so on. And that's the way you grow. Here then, let's go back to this story now. Because here is a man that has a problem.

Hezekiah Cuts Off the Enemy’s Supply

His problem is a king by the name of Sennacherib. This king has got something like almost 200 ,000 troops according to Isaiah. There's a cross reference here. You can read a little bit more detail in Isaiah 36 and 37.

But let me go back now. It says, After these acts of faithfulness, Sennacherib the king of Assyria came and invaded Judah, besieged the fortified cities and thought to break into them for himself. The enemy and God both want your life.

God wants you for himself. The enemy wants you for himself. And the enemy will do everything he can to undermine what God is doing in your life and try and reclaim you, if you like, for his purpose. Now notice the enemy has already invaded Judah.

He's already besieged certain fortified cities. In other words, he's already got a track record amongst the people of God. And now he is heading towards Jerusalem where Hezekiah lives. So what does Hezekiah do?

Verse 2, Now when Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come and that he intended to make war, so the first thing he recognizes is, number one, he's got an adversary. He's got an enemy. You and I need to take seriously the fact that you have an adversary.

It doesn't matter how old you are spiritually. There is an adversary. Your adversary, the Bible calls him, goes around as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. And his whole job is to undermine, again, the grace of God and what God is doing in your life.

And so that's the first thing in overcoming is recognize that you have an adversary. The second thing it says in verse 3, he decided to do something about it. In other words, he wasn't passive. He wasn't sort of, well, it'll resolve itself.

I don't have to worry. I'll just sit back and relax. No, it says he decided with his officers and his warriors to cut off the supply of water from the springs which were outside the city and they helped him.

Now one of the strategies of war, especially in the Bible, in the Old Testament was to fill in the wells of the person that you wanted to take over their land. For instance, the Bible tells us that Isaac had to re-dig the wells that his father dug because they had been filled in.

We get so used to turning on the faucet and there's a water supply, we don't think of it. But if you travel to third world countries, you've got entire towns or villages built around a well and they spend most of their day traipsing back and forth, children with these huge water pots on their head and so on.

I mean, that is their life source. If that well fails, that entire village then has to move off somewhere else. And so what Hezekiah does is this. He realizes we have a vast supply of water outside the city of Jerusalem.

And if the enemy comes, he will be able to sustain himself. Because where there is water, there is life. And so he decides that he is going to cut off the supply of water. Number one, he begins with the springs.

Now, I tell people I'm going to tell you the truth because I'm not an evangelist. Evangelists put a spin on everything, make it sound like, you know, the moment you come forward and accept Christ, everything, you know, you're going to turn into a millionaire overnight, everything's going to be rosy.

And us teachers sit there thinking, boy, these guys don't have a clue what's going to happen to them. The moment they get to the altar and accept Christ, He's going to put them on that wheel. He's a master potter, spin them up, you know, until they don't know what's going on, apply pressure on the inside, begin to mold and fashion them and so on.

But if we told you that up front, you'd never get saved. So, you know, the evangelist comes along and he paints this sort of rosy picture and, you know, it's almost irresistible. Let me say this. It is not easy to cut off a spring.

There is life there. These are not puddles where you take a wheelbarrow full of sand and just mop it up, so to speak. There's life. It takes effort. It takes, as it says, He decided. Not only that, but it says in verse four, and many people assembled and they stopped up all the springs and the stream that flowed through the region saying, why should the king of Assyria come and find an abundance of water?

So not only does he fill in all the springs, but he diverts a river. Now, that's not an easy task. I think you would agree with me. That takes a tremendous amount of effort to block up a stream. I'm sure with the beauty of this area around here, you've gone camping somewhere and there's some little stream and maybe you try to take some rocks and make a little wading pool for the kids, you know, when they're four or five or six years old and you know how almost impossible it is.

The water just seems to trickle through. You imagine trying to divert a river. But such was the determination of this man. And you say, well, what on earth does that have to do with, you know, you and I living in the 20th century, living here in Victoria and so on?

Well, the principle is that you have to remove anything that will sustain the life of the enemy. What we call in the New Testament repentance. You see, when you've got sin in your life, it is an attraction to the enemy.

In fact, it is legal ground for the enemy. You know that if you, let's say, you're growing marijuana in your basement. I assume it's banned here, although it's, you know, not in a lot of places in America now, but let's say it's banned.

And if the police find out that you're growing marijuana, they can legally come into your house and arrest you. The enemy, the same thing. He has a legal right. That's why the Bible says don't give place to the devil.

Don't give grounds to the devil. Jesus said, Satan cometh. He has nothing in me. He can't touch me because he has nothing in me. And so what we've got to do, we've got to take very seriously. What is it that is coming out of my life that is sustaining the life of the enemy?

And I need to cut it off. And you've got to be very, very deliberate, very, very honest, and very, very determined. Just as it was not an easy thing here, it's not an easy thing in the natural. You know what it's like.

Maybe some of you, I'm sure, the older people here on an occasion have opened the door in a winter's morning, and there is a little stray kitten of some sort. And you may not be much of a cat lover, but you know, it's 20 degrees below or something.

And so you go to the refrigerator, and you pour a little bowl of milk, and you put it down to feed that poor little critter. And guess what? You have created a problem. Every time you open that door, that thing is sitting there.

Why? Because you fed it. And the enemy is exactly like that. If you feed him, he is going to hang around. And we have got to cut off, again, repentance is getting rid of that which sustains the life of the enemy.

Rebuilding the Walls of Spiritual Discipline

The next thing that he does, verse 5, he took courage, and he rebuilt the wall that had broken down. Now, rebuilding a wall is not an easy task either. But first of all, in order to rebuild a wall, you've got to be brutally honest about the condition of the wall.

In other words, like Nehemiah, maybe, it wasn't quite as bad, I'm sure, as Nehemiah today, but he has to go around the wall of Jerusalem, and he's got to look at that wall and say, listen, we're vulnerable right there.

There is a low spot. If the enemy comes, that's an easy target. Over here, there's a lot of loose bricks and so on. That needs fortifying. Here's another area there where there's a hole in the wall. That needs to be plugged up.

And he's got to be honest about the condition of the wall. And then they have to set apart time and say, listen, that's got to be strengthened, that's got to be strengthened, and so on. Every one of us in this room have areas of vulnerability.

And the enemy long ago discovered your area of vulnerability. And the way he does that, not because he's omniscient, in other words, he doesn't know everything, but he does know everything about your life.

And since you live up here near the water, I imagine we have a few fishermen here, so let me use a fishing illustration. You know, you go out fishing, and you've got your tackle box. And you have in that tackle box a number of different lures.

And you put a lure on the end of the line, and you begin to cast it out there, and maybe you do it for, you know, a few minutes, 5, 10, 15 minutes, nothing's happening. And you think, you know, they're not attracted to this particular lure.

And so you change the lure, and you cast out again, and wham, you think, aha. And that happens two or three times. What do you do? You keep on fishing with the lure that works. You don't go back to the old lure, because you know the fish are not biting on that.

The enemy long ago has come into your mind, so to speak, and he's got a tackle box. And he pokes on that lure, you know, maybe lust, and he casts it out, wham, okay, got this guy. Maybe somebody else tries anger.

Nothing. Tries anger again. Nothing. Tries anger again. Nothing. Okay, this guy doesn't respond to anger. Let me try something else. And after a period of time, he knows exactly all your areas of vulnerability, and that's why you are constantly harassed with the same thing over and over, because he is smart.

Why should he fish, if you like, with something that doesn't attract you? And he knows you. He knows you well. And he will never leave you alone until you make a decision. I'm not going to keep biting that thing, so to speak.

I'm going to resist. I'm going to cut that thing off, and so on and so forth. And so here is a man that begins to rebuild the wall that is broken down. Let me show you how you rebuild a wall. Turn with me for a moment over into the book of Ephesians.

Ephesians chapter 4, beginning, let's say, verse 26. Be angry, and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. Do not give the devil an opportunity, or do not give, it says in the margin, literally, don't give the devil a place.

Verse 28, let him that steals steal no longer. Now, here is a person whose area of vulnerability is stealing. Now, this is not just a sort of a casual type stealing. This is not a bunch of guys on a weekend, you know, just hanging around some corner, and one kid says to the other, I bet you can't go into that store and walk out with a six-pack or something.

The other guy said, I bet I can. You know, and five minutes later he comes out, and he opens his coat, and there's a six-pack, and they get a little bit of a kick out of it. Obviously, that's wrong, and it's stealing.

But this person was not stealing just for the fun of it. This person was stealing in order to live. And they decided that, listen, it's easier to steal than it is to work. And so what Paul says, let him that steals steal no longer.

In other words, stop stealing. But that doesn't rebuild the wall. Then he says, but rather begin to labor. In other words, the way you rebuild a wall is to do the very opposite of what you have been doing.

Instead of taking, you now are beginning to work and earn your own living. You can imagine the chaos, if you like, if that's the word, or the pain that this man caused through the two or three or four or five years or whatever he'd been stealing.

My wife and I, when we got married, we worked with David Wilkerson after a two-week honeymoon, and one of my jobs was to do a prison ministry in a place called Rikers Island, one of the islands in the New York area.

There were 6 ,000 inmates, and 80 or 90 percent of them were in for drug addiction. Back then, the choice of drug was heroin. And the average heroin addict had to steal over two or three hundred dollars a day to support his habit.

In other words, if you had a hundred dollar a day habit, and it was expensive in those days, you know, you could not, you know, you'd break into a church like this and you would steal the guitars and the PA system and so on.

And it may be worth, if you were to replace it, it may be worth $600, let's say, but on the street it's only worth $200. Otherwise, why not go buy a new one? And so you can imagine, 6 ,000 addicts, and that was the tip of the iceberg, the pain inflicted on New York City in just one day as they had to steal in order to support that habit.

Here is a man who's made people's life absolutely miserable. If I could monetize it, they get their new flat screen TV and 24 hours later, it's gone. They buy their kid a skateboard, come home, and the skateboard's gone, you know, and so on.

This guy has been stealing. Paul says, stop stealing, get a job. But he doesn't stop there. He says, performing with your own hands what is good. In order that, notice this, in order that you may have something to share with the one who has a need.

In other words, you've been ripping people off. Now start giving back. Let's say this is a young man, 18, 19 years of age. He comes to Paul. He's under conviction. We need to understand somebody described the New Testament church like an island in a sea of iniquity.

And so people were coming in. They were hearing the Word of God for the first time. And they were coming under conviction. Here is a man who spent his life stealing, doesn't think anything of it. Paul is speaking about don't steal.

He comes forward at the end of the meeting. He says, listen, I've been stealing all my life. What am I supposed to do? Paul says, stop stealing, get a job. So he gets a job. He comes to Paul a couple of weeks later.

He says, man, I've got more money now than I, you know, than I've ever had before. What should I do with it? And Paul says, I'll tell you. See that lady on the back row back there? Just lost her husband a number of weeks ago.

She's got three little kids. I know one of them is going to have a birthday this week. He's expecting some rollerblades. Obviously not 2 ,000 years ago, but you know. And Paul says, why don't you go buy the rollerblades, wrap them up, and write a little note.

Johnny, sorry to hear that your daddy is no longer around, but you have another daddy that's promised to look after you. Happy birthday. Paul says, by the way, don't put your name on it. In essence, that's what Paul is saying.

Start meeting the needs of people. You've been ripping off. That's how you rebuild a wall. Now, hopefully that's not your problem. The next verse, maybe. Verse 29. Let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth.

Here's a person, the margin of my Bible says literally, let no rotten word come out of your mouth. Here's a person that every time they open their mouth, they're tearing somebody apart, ruining somebody's reputation, degrading them, spreading rumors around the church or whatever.

And so Paul says, stop it. And then he says, you need to have a word that is good for edification. Instead of a word that is destructive, begin to build up, begin to edify, begin to minister life according to the need of the moment that you may give grace to those that hear.

Have grace. And that's how you rebuild a wall. You do the opposite of what you have been doing. The next one is verse 30. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit. How do you grieve the Holy Spirit? By having verse 31, all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, put it away from you along with all malice and be kind one towards another, tenderhearted, forgiving.

We grieve the Spirit of God when we walk in unforgiveness and instead we allow all sorts of bitterness and anger and wrath and so on towards that person. We project that. And Paul says, listen, Jesus Christ forgave you.

The least you can do is forgive somebody else. So stop doing that and begin to forgive. Now those are three examples, if you like, of how you rebuild a wall that is broken down. Let's go back to this portion of Scripture.

The Bible says in Proverbs, let me give you the reference here if I can find it. I thought I had it. Proverbs 25 and verse 28, it says, like a city that is broken into and without walls is a man or a woman who has no control over their spirit.

In other words, the Bible likens you and me to a city with or without walls. Now I grew up in England and not too far from where I grew up was the city of York. York is one of the oldest towns, at least it goes way back, and it still has part of the original wall.

And the old way of protecting a city, obviously, was to have a wall around it. And as long as that wall was intact, you could go to bed at night, totally safe, knowing that nobody could penetrate that wall.

You were in control of your city. But if that wall was broken down, you were vulnerable, and instead of you being in control, you could be controlled. Somebody else could come in, invade that city, set up their camp, and you were now under their dominion.

And the Bible says, like a city that is broken into and without walls is a man or a woman who has no control over their own spirit. I have pasted long enough that after a while, I could look at my congregation and say, with walls, without walls, with walls, without walls.

This person's controlled by tobacco, this person's controlled by lust, this person's in control, this person's got a problem with their temper, this person's in control. You know, in other words, you are either in control of your spirit or you are being controlled.