TLP 360: The Spiritual War in Your Home, Part 6 | the battlefield

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The word basically refers to a quack, a charlatan selling snake oil. This person who has a worthless product, claiming with loud voice and arrogant assertion its grand and glorious worth.

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Welcome to Truth, Love, Parents, where we use God's Word to become intentional, premeditated parents.

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Here's your host, A .M. Brewster. Welcome to part six of our Spiritual War in Your Home series.

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I pray the foundation that we've been laying is helping you see your family in a whole new way. I know it has been in my life.

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My wife and I just got back from a four -mile walk this morning, and I was just talking to her about how this series has just changed the way

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I'm looking at so many things in my life. But I also hope that you were blessed by my interview with Becky on our last show.

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It was a nice break in this series, but it also dovetailed with it so well. That episode focused on just one of the many attacks that Satan, the world, and the flesh use against us parents.

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They all try to convince us that we're not the right parent for the job. But God says otherwise, and I'm so glad Becky shared her book with us.

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If you haven't bought a copy yet, you should. And if you're trying to win a copy through our giveaway, there's still time, so get to it.

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Now, back to our series in spiritual warfare. Yes, it's important to know who your enemies are, but it's even more important to know who your allies are and to know that your allies aren't your enemies and your enemies aren't your allies.

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I hope you're well on your way to distinguishing the two. Let me give you some direction here for our next few episodes, though, as we move on from the topic of enemies for a little bit.

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We talked about the basic realities of spiritual warfare. We've talked about how your family is not the enemy, and then we introduced you to our three spiritual enemies,

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Satan, the world, and the flesh. And I know there were a ton of things you wished I had said about those enemies, but those were just supposed to be a brief introduction, okay?

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Now, over the next few episodes, we're going to talk about the fronts on which those enemies attack our families, the weapons of our spiritual warfare, and the statistics, basically, how do families fare in this spiritual war?

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As we talk about each of these, we will reveal more about Satan, the world, and the flesh, so you can understand them even more.

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We'll also discover how they engage us on the three battlefields that we'll discuss today. We'll look at how they respond to the spiritual weapons and see what weapons they use, and we'll discover how well they fare in their mission to destroy our families.

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And then we plan to use the final three episodes to get super nitty -gritty applicable. Of course, we're always trying to be relevant and applicable and practical here, but I hope those episodes will really equip you to have victory in the very real spiritual war swirling around you today.

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By the way, if you are new to the show, I encourage you to go back to episode 354 to get caught up on this series. Of course,

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I always encourage new listeners to work their way back through previous seasons. Go ahead and start in our pilot season and walk through this journey with us.

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Yes, with the exception of our series, most of our shows can stand alone and you can listen to them without hearing all the ones that went before, but we've been doing this for nearly four years now, so many of the lessons we're learning now stand on the shoulders of past lessons.

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And don't worry though, our content is evergreen, so it'll always be valuable and relevant to you. You can hop around and look for topics that might be applicable to your family right now, whatever you want.

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It doesn't matter. Just go back and listen. And you should also check out truthloveparent .com. There are so many awesome resources there for you.

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One of those is our TLP store where we have a free parenting course called 25 Days to Becoming a

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Premeditated Parent. You should check that out and join the hundreds of families that have dedicated themselves to becoming more premeditated in their parenting.

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And while you're there, you can also get our free episode notes from this series as well as read our transcripts.

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All right, perfect. Now let's pull back and get an idea where we can expect Satan, the world, and the flesh to attack us and our families.

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I want to start our discussion today in 1 John 2. The author of this letter also wrote the

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Gospel of John as well as 2 and 3 John. This is the man of whom it was said Christ loved.

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Of course, Jesus loved everyone, but his relationship with John was unique among the disciples. I believe it had a lot to do with John's devotion and his understanding of Jesus' character.

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Either way, some people get the idea that the disciple whom Jesus loved and who reclined on Jesus' chest must have been some weak little man.

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But when you read John's letters, you find them filled with deep doctrine, passion, and sometimes a very coarse reality check.

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I love taking people through 1 John, especially when they are uncertain whether or not they're truly followers of Christ.

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1 John is the go -to for most pastors and counselors because John makes it so incredibly painfully clear.

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And we're going to see this as we start at the beginning of 1 John 2. John starts the chapter saying, My little children,

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I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the

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Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

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Now, the idea of not sinning is a theme, okay, not only of this chapter, but also of the entire book.

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John then goes on to make it perfectly clear that if you want to know whether you have a saving relationship with God, all you have to do is see if you are obeying him.

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Verse 3, By this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments.

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The one who says, I have come to know him and does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

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That's an example of that boot -on -the -neck truth that John throws at us. It's really that simple. If you don't keep

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God's commands, you're not born again. Now don't misunderstand. John isn't saying that you have to keep them perfectly all the time without ever sinning even once.

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The Greek is clear that John is referring to consistency. Christians sin. They choose to live in the dark, but they don't stay there.

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They repent. So, yes, a genuine follower of Christ may sin, but he will be known as someone who strives to obey the

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Lord, though imperfectly. Moving on, verse 5, But whoever keeps his word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected.

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By this we know that we are in him. The one who says he abides in him ought to ought himself to walk in the same manner as he walked.

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Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment, which you have heard had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you have heard.

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On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.

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The one who says he is in the light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now. The one who loves his brother abides in the light and there is no cause for stumbling in him.

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But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

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And then John breaks from this discussion to offer encouragement for families. Verse 12 reads, I am writing to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven you for his name's sake.

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I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who has been from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one.

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I have written to you, children, because you know the Father. I have written to you, fathers, because you know him who has been from the beginning.

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I have written to you, young men, because you are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one.

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I hope to work through this passage more carefully in the future, but for now, take comfort that any success we ever hope to have in the spiritual war is going to come through Christ.

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Do you want your family to overcome the evil one? It's possible, but we're going to need to use the right weapons and learn the right strategies, and I can't wait to talk more about that with you.

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And now we get to John's main focus for today. Starting in verse 15, Do not love the world, nor the things in the world.

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If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the

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Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts, but the one who does the will of God lives forever.

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There's just so much good stuff here, but let's take a closer look at this idea of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.

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A couple episodes ago, when we talked about the nature of the world, we saw that there was nothing but death and destruction because it was made up entirely of this triplet of lusts.

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This is the battlefield of our spiritual war. Yes, we've established that the war is waging in your home and with your family, but since it is a spiritual war, it's not waging in a physical location.

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It's happening on a spiritual front, a spiritual battlefront. So let's work carefully through these concepts so that we understand what they are, how we interact with them, and how your kids and spouses, right now, are being attacked on these fronts.

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Let's start talking about this word, lust. Lusts are desires, both good and bad.

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Jesus uses the word in Luke 22 15 to refer to his own desire to eat the Passover with his disciples. But in John 8 44,

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Jesus, talking to the Pharisees, said, Satan's desires are obviously wicked.

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But given the way that the word is being used in 1 John 2, I believe translating it as lust instead of desire was probably best.

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The lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes are sinful and are consistently communicated as such throughout Scripture.

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We'll look at a number of them before the day is out. Now, I believe that John listed these battlefronts in ascending order.

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I believe the first grows from the second, which has its roots in the third. And I believe he listed them this way so that we could appreciate how each battlefield overlaps with the ones after it.

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But for our purposes, we're going to discuss them in reverse order so that we understand how they overlap and how they affect each other.

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We talked about self -esteem last time. These ideas are very similar. If you've been with us for any length of time, then you know that we have only two options for our worship.

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We can either worship God or we can worship self. Worship, simply put, is the act of showing that we value something over something else.

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A silly example may be valuing a healthy meal over junk food. The healthy meal has a higher value, more worth to me than the junk food, and so I eat the healthy meal.

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Hopefully. In regard to God and self, when I replace God's commands with my desires,

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I've shown God, everyone else, and myself that I value myself over God. My way has more worth.

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I'm worshiping myself. You can learn more about this concept in our family worship series. It's been said that pride is at the core of all sin.

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The arrogance it would take to suggest that my desires, my plans, my expectations, my abilities are better and more trustworthy and more valuable than God's is so deluded.

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This is the meaning of the word here in 1 John 2. It's used only two times in Scripture, here and James 4 .16,

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where it says, But as it is you boast in your arrogance, all such boasting is evil.

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And the word basically refers to a quack, a charlatan selling snake oil. This person who has a worthless product claiming with loud voice and arrogant assertion its grand and glorious worth.

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This kind of arrogance actually exceeds the pride of Satan from Isaiah 14 .14. Satan thought he could make himself like the most high.

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At least Satan was a spiritual being with supernatural powers. We are finite creatures, in many ways far more impotent than the angels, and yet we try to make ourselves like the most high.

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We get to be the final authority of our little lives. How do you know whether Satan or the world of the flesh is overcoming you or your family members on the battlefield of the pride of life?

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There are two main ways. A. Ask yourself what's being said. The pride of life speaks its heresies.

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This may sound like, but I don't want to go to bed, leave me alone, but I… and even affirm no.

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But it can also sound religious. The sentence, God wants me to be happy, used to justify sin, for example.

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I feel like God wouldn't want me to make other people feel uncomfortable, perhaps used to avoid confronting people about their sin.

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But not only can we ask what's being said, we can also b. look at what's being done.

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Remember, the lusts of the eyes and the lusts of the flesh flow from the pride of life. Therefore, where they are, you know the pride of life is involved.

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Satan, the world, and the flesh are constantly trying to destroy our families on the battlefield of the pride of life. If Satan can use those under his control to fill your child's head with lies, he will.

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If the devil can guide the world's system to overwhelm your spouse's mind with thoughts that run contrary to the Bible, thoughts about how he or she quote -unquote deserves peace and quiet or has the right to be treated in a certain way,

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Lucifer will not hesitate for a moment to unleash that barrage. And Satan knows that our hearts are desperately wicked.

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He knows we're regularly being tempted from our own minds to value our way over God's way. All Satan has to do is apply the right pressure on the outside in order to multiply the pressure already coming from the inside.

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Today, your children's words and actions will betray what they are worshipping. Listen and watch carefully and know that every self -centered word and sinful choice is the revelation that your child has been overcome on the battlefront of the pride of life.

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We'll talk about how you can respond in those situations in a later episode. For now, we need to focus our eyes so that we see the spiritual warfare waging around us.

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We've taught ourselves to see the participants and now we need to be able to identify the battleground. Number three, the lust of the eyes is the battleground of self -seeking.

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When defenses have fallen on the front lines of pride and arrogance, it's not hard to overcome the backup forces defending the piece of ground called the lust of the eyes.

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The lust of the eyes refers to the unique place our eyes play in our desires. Imagine what you would not desire if you could not see.

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Nearly 100 % of after -school commercials would cease to appeal to your kids. But once Satan has overpowered our defenses in the pride of life area, he can send his beautiful sirens in to distract and seduce our compromised army.

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Matthew 6, 22 -23 reads, The eye is the lamp of the body, so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light.

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But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

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This is also why Proverbs 27, 20 warns the darkened man, Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, nor are the eyes of man ever satisfied.

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The arrogant braggart, consumed with his own self -worth, will never cease trying to satisfy himself. For, if he really is the

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God of his life, nothing matters more than his own desires. Ecclesiastes 1, 8 tells us the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing.

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And Proverbs 17, 24 says, Wisdom is in the presence of one who has understanding, but the eyes of a fool are on the ends of the earth.

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They're always looking for something else that will make them happy. Psalm 73, 7 gives us a gross picture of the consequences of the lust of the eyes being fulfilled.

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Their eye bulges from fatness. The imaginations of their heart run riot.

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They see something and covet it, and the more they greedily give in to that lust, the more their imaginations want even more.

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The lust of the eyes includes gazing, coveting, lusting, and greed. It's self -seeking, constantly searching for that which will make us feel the way we want to feel, and it always flows from our own inflated sense of self -worth.

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2 Samuel 11, 2 records, Now when evening came, David arose from his bed and walked around on the roof of the king's house.

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And from the roof he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful in appearance. David's eyes saw something that would make him feel good, and he coveted it, and he took it.

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Now would he have done that had he seen her and he had not given in already to the pride of life? I'm the king,

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I can have whatever I want, I can take whatever I want, I can kill whomever I want. No, he wouldn't.

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He would have seen that, and he would have turned his eyes away. If he were valuing God and putting more worth in God than he was in his own desires.

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But that front had already fallen, and so when he saw this beautiful woman, he started to lust after her.

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But even if he hadn't taken it, I mean, even if he hadn't physically reached out and committed adultery in Matthew 5, 27 through 28,

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Jesus said, You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks on a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

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This is why Job in chapter 31 verse 1 says, I have made a covenant with my eyes, how then could

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I gaze at a virgin? How will you know if your family is being overwhelmed on the battlefield of the eyes?

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Now this one is harder than the pride of life. You can't always know what your kids are seeing and how they're responding to it.

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Greed and envy and covetousness is an inner man problem. But just like the pride of life, it will slip out in what we do and say.

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So just like the last point, you need to be an interpreter of your kids. You need to hear their words, the

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I want, and carefully determine what's motivating them. And anytime your children disobey, anytime they refuse to eat their food, refuse to go to bed, hit their sibling, pop the pills their friends gave them, you can know for certain that they saw, they lusted, and they gave in.

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Satan, the world, and ultimately the flesh overwhelmed them and left them in ruin. Instead of being blind to it, we need to see the spiritual war unfolding in your children's words and actions.

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And speaking of actions, number four, the lust of the flesh is the battleground of self -autonomy.

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We've seen self -worth, self -seeking, and now self -autonomy. Pride says,

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I'm worthy of worship. The lust of the eyes says, I see the thing that will satisfy me. And the lust of the flesh says, and here

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I go to claim it. Each sin is a choice to claim my own pleasure. Each transgression of God's law grows from the lust to have something he forbids or to reject something he expects.

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Every single one of us is born into this world consumed by the flesh, dead in our trespasses and sins. This is why

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Paul says in Ephesians 2, 3, Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

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Only through the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, rooted in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, can enable us to overcome the flesh.

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But that doesn't mean that we do it perfectly every time. This is why God commands us in Romans 13, 14,

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But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.

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And again, in 1 Peter 2, 11, Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul.

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And this is the very stuff of spiritual warfare. Thank the Lord that the pride of life and the lust of the eyes exhibits itself in the physical realm, or we may never see it in our families.

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But when the fronts of pride and covetousness are compromised, there will be defeat on the battleground of our behavior.

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Galatians 5, 19 describes how the lusts of the flesh are manifested. Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which

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I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

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I'd like to take my children and my counselees to this passage. Sure, your kids may not necessarily be struggling with immorality and sorcery and drunkenness and carousing, but are you going to tell me that your kids aren't being sinful?

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There's no enmity, strife, no jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, pitting child against parent and mom against dad, envying, any self -worship at all?

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See, all of the behaviors that fill out those descriptions prove that all of your children's defenses have fallen on all three fronts.

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It's no longer a question of helping them defend that front. The best we can do is just try to retake the ground that was already lost.

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In Matthew 4, 3 through 10, we read about the temptation of Christ, and we see how Satan attacks Jesus on every front.

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The temptation to turn rocks into bread was designed to appeal to the lust of the flesh. The alluring thought of ruling the world was supposed to put pressure on the lust of the eyes.

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And the temptation to jump from the temple was intended to subvert the pride of life. But though Jesus could be tempted from the outside, from Satan and the world,

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He was not tempted from the inside, from the flesh. Now, we'll be using His model in future episodes to talk about how we can fight against Satan, the world, and the flesh.

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We need to know how to do that for ourselves, but also so we can help our kids and our spouses defend that spiritual front as well.

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But too often, the battle is lost on all three fronts. Genesis 3, 6 is a perfect picture of this.

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When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, lust of the flesh, and that it was a delight to the eyes, lust of the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, pride of life, she took from its fruit and ate, and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

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The very first sin that plummeted all of us into iniquity and self -worship was no different from every sin that has followed it.

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But not only do we have to constantly defend those fronts against the never -relenting onslaught of Satan and the world and the flesh, but not only do we need to help our family members recapture lost ground, sometimes the fight to recapture these battlefields is much harder than others.

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It's generally not too difficult to fight against a sin that we've only committed once, but when the enemy forces are allowed to occupy those three areas of our lives day in and day out, they set up fortresses and bulwarks and landmines.

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Thankfully, though the thought of helping your children turn the tide of the spiritual war in their lives may seem impossible,

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God has given us the weapons we need. Consider 2 Corinthians 10 .4,

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For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.

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And that's our topic for next time. If you need help because you see that members of your family are losing their spiritual war and you're not sure how to help them, please reach out to us at counselor at truthloveparent .com.

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I and the other TLP counselors would be honored to help you biblically step through and address the spiritual issues in your home.

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Remember, if we want our children to grow up into Christ, we must parent in truth and love. To that end, join us next time as we look at the weapons of our warfare.

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Truth. Love. Parents is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you become an intentional premeditated parent.

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Join us next time as we search God's Word for the truth your family needs today.