Whose Territory Are You In?

Author: Pastor Gary Keesee | Posted: Thursday, July 19, 2012 - 1:13pm

Let me get right to the point.
You have an adversary.
He doesn’t care if you’re in church, or that you’re going to heaven. He doesn’t care if you go sing a few songs on Sunday mornings. He’s already lost you. He doesn’t care if there are a million people in church. He just doesn’t want those “church people” to influence the world! He doesn’t want you to prosper.
He just doesn’t want to see you exercise your authority, discover your destiny, or advance and take territory for God.
You need to have a real clear picture of Satan’s intent. The world likes to be entertained by him. The culture has become desensitized to him. This isn’t just some preacher’s exaggeration. This is real.
I Peter 5:8 says, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”
Imagine you’re in the bush in Africa and you hear a lion roar. You’d be afraid, right? That’s a trick the enemy uses. He has no authority in your life, but he roars to make you think he does. Because he only has authority if he can make you think he does.
So he roars, and he makes circumstances appear bigger than what God says. He roars to test your agreement with heaven—to test your faith—and to see if you really have any authority.
He wants to reduce your effectiveness and stop your assignment. He wants to deceive you, to tempt you, to snare you. He wants to devour you. He wants to lure you into a place that you can’t get out of. He says, “Try it one time. You’re in control.” You must be wise to his tactics.
The enemy is fighting to desensitize people to his existence. He convinces people that he’s cuddly and warm. In my generation, we had a “friendly” ghost, and a “friendly” witch. In this generation, we have people in “love” with demons and vampires, white magic, harmless cussing, and more than anyone could have imagined. The enemy is infiltrating culture to desensitize YOU.
He doesn’t just come out openly and knock on your door. He sends friends who tell your kids things they shouldn’t know. He whispers through a coworker about some other woman, and the things you shouldn’t be putting up with from your wife. He puts those little scenes in movies for a reason. He wants to infiltrate your thoughts and make you callous against it so that it doesn’t bother you.
People have a weird idea that sin is just murder and the big stuff. But the Bible says that anything outside of what heaven says is right is sin. That includes your thoughts. Sin is stepping outside of how heaven functions.
In our culture, and in the church, we’ve lost the fear of sin. We think we can play with it and not get burned. But when you sin, you cut yourself off.
You’re in enemy territory.
When I was a young believer, I was a carnal Christian. My life wasn’t about the Kingdom. I went to church on Sunday, but I wasn’t about God’s Kingdom. I was about my own. So, God started to deal with me about some of the things I was doing. I thought, “So what? I’m not bad. I’m going to heaven. It’s no big deal.”
But it was a big deal. The enemy was tempting me outside of the protection of the covenant. You can’t play outside of God’s dominion and expect to stay in his protection. God kept dealing with me and I paid no attention. Until the day I woke up paralyzed.
Now, God didn’t do that. I had willingly stepped into the enemy’s territory. And I was paralyzed.
I woke Drenda up. We prayed. (Believe me, you start repenting from a lot of things when you think you’re dying.) That’s when God said, “Shut the door.”
It’s about time the church wised up and shut the door.
Most believers think if you just whisper the name of Jesus, Satan will run off like a wounded dog. That’s not how he functions. He’s persistent. He waits for opportune times. He’s diligent.
We have to guard our hearts and test our thoughts. We can’t think about just anything. We have to pay attention. We have to cast down thoughts if they don’t line up with what God says.
So be self-controlled and alert! Don’t let your guard down. Let the Holy Spirit lead you and protect you and help you stay out of the enemy’s traps. Shut the door.