How the Enemy Makes Christians Give Up | Screwtape Letters Week 5

Faith Palmer's Church, how we doing this morning? Come on. Hey, whether you're at God Behind Bars, online, gathering at one of our campuses, I am honored to be here this morning, standing and speaking to all of you. It is truly a blessing. My name is Micah. I get the amazing opportunity to lead our student ministry at Blunt. I love you, Blunt. I love you guys. I will miss them this morning. But I wanna start off our time together with a story. I just recently got back from El Salvador. It was an amazing experience. Faith Palmer's Church sends missions teams all around the world to reach, to serve, and to love people in that nation. And so while I was in El Salvador, I felt like I was on the spiritual mountaintop. You know that feeling, the spiritual high? You have all these incredible experiences and you wanna take it home with you. Maybe for any of us, right, it may not have been El Salvador, but it could have been movement conference, right, or whether it's a worship night or baptism. A few days go on and we're remembering the experience. We're remembering the feelings.

A few days go on from El Salvador and I'm remembering the worship. I'm remembering the prayer. I'm remembering the breakthrough spiritually, right? And then you start to think, well, maybe this wasn't even real. The Monday, the Tuesday, the Wednesday, you're at school, right? And it's like, where are these feelings now? Was it fake? Was it real? How do I continue in this? And this thought, these feelings, they're not random. And they may not even be yours, right? It's a strategy from the enemy. We've been reading together as a church out of the screw tape letters. I hope you have been loving listening and reading along to this book. I've been gleaning so much wisdom from C.S. Lewis. And in letter 28, he writes, you see, it is so hard for these creatures, that's us, to persevere. It's so hard for us to persevere. You see, the enemy would rather any of us to slowly drift from the Lord and separate ourself rather than a loud crash, a dramatic sin that takes us out. He doesn't need that. And that can be for any of us in the room,

not just the students going and coming from movement, right? That's for our families, for our parents, for our adults. I see the way serving the families at Blunt every single week that the enemy is attacking our families. He wants to come after the first ministry ever created. I understand the need to provide and care, and I see that. It's easy to let God become our second and our third option, right? How many times do we wake up, we sleep past our alarm, we sleep through quiet time, we get busy, right? And then it's like, I'll do that later, and we never get to it. I feel that. I understand that, but we're not alone in the fade. I want to start off in scripture this morning. If you have your Bibles or your phone, you can flip over to 1 Kings 19. I'm gonna give some context into 1 Kings 18. It's in the Old Testament. I love seeing the physical Bibles from the students here. It's amazing, leading us. And in 1 Kings 18, we see Elijah, a mighty prophet, a mighty prophet of the time. And he just wins one of the craziest battles you'll see. You can read it in your free time. But in 1 Kings 19 following, we see Elijah's response to this mighty battle that just happens, the mountaintop, and we come down from there. In 1 Kings 19, verses four through five, it says, while he himself, he went a day's journey

into the wilderness, he came to a broombrush, he sat down under it, and he prayed that he would die. Listen, I have never, ever, ever in my entire life prayed that I would die. I actually love my life a lot. And so, hey, maybe some of you guys have. I don't know. But he must have been in a terrible spot, right? He's in the fade. But I wanna see, I wanna look at and see how God responds. The angel of the Lord, this is verse seven, came back a second time and he touched him and he said, get up, eat, for this journey is not too much for you. The next few days are not too much for you. Where God is sending you into your mission field, that is not too much for you. And we see, starting in verse 11, that there's this crazy earthquake, mighty earthquake. The Lord's not in it. This mighty wind, giant storm passes through. The Lord's not in the storm. There's this fire from heaven. The Lord's not in the fire. He's not in the crazy experience. He's not in the big moment, but there's a gentle whisper that comes and meets Elijah, and the Lord is in the whisper. He's in the gentle, the small. That's where his presence is found. We cannot measure our faith by our feelings.

Where would that get us if my faith was measured by how I feel today? Oh, today I'm just gonna live in this sin over here. I'm gonna do all this crazy stuff because I can. Like, where's that gonna get me? And then the next day I'm over here, and I'm like, okay, I believe that God is real, and I'm gonna commit my ways to him, and I'm gonna follow him and serve him, right? The Lord doesn't wanna use that because it's unstable. Something that Pastor Chase said yesterday, and it really has stuck with me. He said, there was more days I chose the Lord than I felt the Lord. That doesn't mean the Lord's not here. He is, but we may not feel him. We gotta choose him. So how do we fight? How do we fight the fade? My encouragement is out of Galatians 6, 9. It says, let us not become weary in doing good, for at a proper time, we will all reap a harvest if we do not give up. So the promise, the harvest that the Lord wants to give us is for those that will put their hand to the plow, and they focus on the Lord in the next step. They don't look back. They don't return to the old ways, right? It's protecting our time with the Lord. It's getting up every day and saying,

I'm gonna walk into accountability and vulnerability and confession, I'm gonna get in my word with the Lord. I'm gonna choose him even if I don't feel him. The promise is not for those that say, I don't feel it. I'm not gonna do it because I don't feel it. That's not where the promise is found. The comfort is in those that the Lord sees, I see you doing the hard work, even if you're not reaping a harvest right now. But our inheritance is to come. Because if we live our life with 1,000 small nothings, 1,000 small no's every day, that doesn't add up to a faith at all, right? That builds over time. So my encouragement to you is that you would put your hand to the plow, that you would commit and you would not let the fade dictate your decisions. The last thing that the devil wants for you, the last thing he wants for you is to keep showing up. What's our word for this year? Show up. The last thing that the devil wants is for you to show up. Thank you guys, let's get up for Lindsay. Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo!

Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Wasn't movement incredible? Yeah. Hey, but here's the thing, guys. Movement weekend, it's not even over yet. And I know that there are many of you guys that are already counting down to the next big thing, the next moment, the next mountain top experience. Come on, you guys all know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the moment where the pastor preaches the message that just speaks, speaks directly to you. The piano, it starts to play in the background. The worship team comes out and leads just the most incredible time. And you feel the presence of the Lord so closely. And all you could do is just dream of staying in that moment. But then you head home. When you get home, you say, okay, God, I'm gonna commit to this. So you open up your Bible because I'm gonna spend time with you and you play music on your phone, but let's just be honest, it doesn't always feel the same. Maybe it even feels boring.

Or maybe for you this morning, you showed up here at church, you're sitting right there, but it still just doesn't feel the same as what I did yesterday or did Friday night. And so this regular daily life with God, it begins to feel mundane. Can I tell you that that boredom, it's not an accident, but it was intentional. If we haven't met before, my name is Lindsay Wirtz and I get the incredible opportunity to be the student director over at our North. Knox campus, North, I love you guys. I'm so proud of you guys. And before I continue on, I want to say thank you. Thank you to this church. Because this church is a church that says, believes, and acts on the saying that we believe that the next generation is the now generation. And I get to stand where I am today because the church believed that in me. And we had at movement over 90 students say yes to that same commitment. Come on, can we celebrate that? Well, today as we continue on in our readings of Screwtape, we've been doing this over the past five weeks and I mean it. The Lord just aligned this week because what we're talking about

is so perfect for this weekend because Screwtape is all too familiar with boredom. In fact, in letter 25, he gives his nephew the sharpest line, my opinion, in the entire book. And he says this, work on their disgust of the same old thing. Okay, now hopefully that hits you like it did for me because it's this idea that we have actually been taught to be disgusted by anything that's ordinary. I mean, we have been trained to crave new, new, new until we cannot even sit in a still moment with the Lord. Sound familiar to anyone? Yeah, because the enemy knows that if he can hook us on that spike, that we will walk right past the daily relationship with God that actually changes our life. Sound familiar? Because the enemy, he has trained us for this. Think about your phone, let's go there. You scroll to the next video just in hopes that it's funnier or more entertaining than the one you're currently on. Or your feed, you refresh it after two minutes because it's already boring and dead. And so unbeknownst to you, you have been practicing needing this mountaintop moment your entire life. And the enemy, he uses that craving towards your faith. Hey, adults in the room, this goes for you too

because the disgust of the same old thing, it comes in many, many forms. Let's take marriage, for example. I'm married, I love my marriage, but come on, how many people do you know that have been divorced in this day and age? In fact, the Institute of Family Studies, it names infidelity and lack of commitment as the leading cause for divorce. Why do you think that is? It's because we get bored of the same old thing and start looking for something new. Or perhaps maybe for you, it's a job, a job that has been steady and consistent and treated you well for years. And suddenly you start wondering, maybe things are greener on the other side. And that is the same exact feeling that makes a church that has fed you for years feel like it's missing something. And you start to wonder, maybe the church across town has that missing piece. And it is what sends grown believers going from church to church and book to book hunting for the feeling instead of walking with the God that they already have. And hey, here's what the enemy, the enemy doesn't want anyone in this room to know. It's that God invented the daily rhythm. And can I tell you that he actually provides

his freshness inside of it. We see that God, he fed the Israel in the wilderness and he fed them with manna. This was designed so that it couldn't be stockpiled. We see in Exodus 16 that you would gather it every single day. You would get just enough for that day and anything that was hoarded would actually rot overnight. And so God in this deliberately trained an entire nation to come back to him daily because the coming back was the relationship. And it is the relationship. Can I tell you that scripture says that the supply has not changed. In Lamentations three, it says this, his compassions, they never fail and they are new. When? What does that say? Every morning great is your faithfulness. They are new every morning. So with God, the same old thing is actually never the same old thing. The room, it might be the same. The chair, it might be the same. The person, it might be the same. But the mercy. brand new. And students at movement we talked about Isaiah and he had the peak of all peaks. He saw the Lord lifted high on the throne. The temple shook and he was never the same. But can I tell you that Isaiah didn't spend the rest of his life chasing that vision, but he spent it being faithful. Most of it unseen and I

can tell you almost none of it was like that one bright moment. And that moment might be what we talk about the most but it was just the start. Because Isaiah's faithfulness, it was the actual life. And so it should be no surprise that Jesus warns us about this. In Matthew 24 he warns us about a love that slowly begins to to lose its warmth and it goes looking for a warmer room and it says this, the love of most will grow cold but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. And so the reward, it doesn't go to whoever feels the most, but it goes to whoever stayed. And so I'm gonna end, I'm gonna send you out with this one challenge for the week. And this is for every person that is in this room because that boredom, it is not an accident. It is intentional and so would you name your same old thing? Would you recognize it? And every day this week would you give it a fixed time? What I mean, whether it's your quiet time in the room that you go to to spend time with Jesus or maybe it's the plain chapter or it's the same prayer that you're praying or the prayer without even the full worship team to support you. Whatever it is, treat it like manna, not like boredom. Show up daily. Take just enough for today and would you watch as the mercy is renewed every morning? Hey students, that mountaintop experience you had this weekend was God showing you that he's real. Now's where you put in the real work. And hey adults, the flat boring day is where you show the Lord that you believe him. Because what I can tell you is that the devil, he doesn't need you to quit Jesus, but he just needs you to quit. Good word. Come on Faith Promise. Let's give it up for Micah and Lindsay again. Man, this has been an incredible weekend. If you don't know me, my name is Evan. I have the pleasure of being the student pastor here at our Pellissippi campus and it's been so cool to walk through these different perspectives from our different student pastors. Because we are riding a high off the movement conference right now. All of the students who were here, hundreds of them that came over the course of the last weekend, met the Lord. Our prayer was to have them experience the presence of God and stand in awe. And let me tell you church, that happened. That happened. Some of them saw God in a new way. Some of them saw God

for the first time, but all of them stood in the presence of the Lord in awe. But we know as adults that we do have those moments. We have those moments and then those moments begin to fade like Micah talked about and we drift in our faith. Those moments begin to lose a little bit of their shine like Lindsay talked about and we start to look elsewhere to find that feeling again, chase that moment again. The answer to all of it, no matter how long it's been, is faithfulness. Because every one of us in this room, adults and students alike, have something that we've been praying for and it just doesn't feel like it's moving. Maybe it's your family and the brokenness that's been experienced inside of it. You're praying for God to move and it doesn't seem like anything's happening. Maybe it's a friend that you've been praying for, for healing, that they would overcome this circumstance in their life and it doesn't seem like anything's changing. Or maybe it's for you personally, that you have this habit that you've just been falling back into and you keep confessing it and you keep taking it to the Lord, but you keep finding yourself right back in the same place and you're like, God, where are you? At movement conference, a lot of our students handed a version of themselves to the Lord that they didn't want to live with anymore, but here we are just a day later and they might feel like that same person. And right now, a quiet voice is talking to them. It's not the same quiet voice that Micah talked about. God's voice tells them that they're worthy. God's voice tells them that he has a purpose for them. God's voice tells them that they're called. The enemy whispers too. The enemy's telling them that it was pointless. It was all just emotion. None of it mattered. You just did it because your friends You just did it because of all the people around you. He's trying to tell them that nothing that they did at Movement Conference, nothing that they experienced at Movement Conference has any value as they continue to walk with the Lord. And that little voice that's whispering to them right now, it has a strategy.

And thankfully, C.S. Lewis wrote it down in the screw tape letters. This has been an incredible, incredible resource. For me as a student pastor, my goal is to equip the next generation to love the Lord and go out and win their world. And we get a peek behind the curtain of how the enemy is equipping the young demons to go out and wreck their world. And in letter 30, the old demon explains to the person that he's training up that the best trick to attack a tired person is not to break them down all at once. Like Micah said, not one big crash, one big fall, but it's to get them to give up one second before relief arrives. Says you must feed them with false hopes. Keep promising him that the next part is gonna be over soon. If they can just make it to next week, everything's gonna be easier. If they can just make it to next month, everything's gonna be better. Any of y'all saying right now, if we can just make it through summer, when school starts, we'll get back in the routine, amen? If we can just make it through this next month, if we can just make it till that next paycheck, if we can just make it until this point. The problem is, we don't know what's on the other side

of that date that we have in our head. And if we get there, and things aren't better, we get there, and things don't change, we get there, and we don't feel like God is showing up, then all of a sudden, the disappointment that we feel is crushing. We fold one step before the breakthrough that we never saw coming. Now, students, you know this voice is whispering to you right now, but adults, you may know this voice even better, because let's be real, your prayers are a lot older than some of the students who are in this room this weekend. For some of you, you've been praying for your kid for a long time, and they might be a kid that's 45 right now, but you're praying for them to come back to the Lord. And all of a sudden, that prayer in your mouth tastes a little stale. That prayer in your heart is a little bit difficult to bring to fruition. You're asking the Lord still, work on my son, work on my daughter, bring them back to you. But you're also listening to that voice in your head that's saying, does it even matter, they're gone. They're an adult, they can take care of themselves. They'll figure it out. Maybe for you, it's your marriage. God, just take us back to where we used to be, when we used to be in love, and we used to hang out,

and we used to have so much fun together. We feel like roommates in this house. I feel like she doesn't even care about me. I feel like he's not even trying. All of a sudden, we're listening to that voice. They don't matter to you anymore. What's the point of marriage? Do you even really understand it? Maybe for you, it's the diagnosis. Praying for God for healing, and you're trusting and believing that he can heal you, but you've been praying and praying and praying, and that chronic pain, that struggle, that tension, it's still there, five, 10 years later. All of a sudden, you hear that voice whisper, all of a sudden, you hear that voice whisper, where is God? He can heal. We believe that, but he's not healing you. Does he care about you? Do you matter to him? You start to think to yourself, maybe I don't. The enemy is not trying to get you to renounce Jesus. The enemy's not trying to think that God can't heal you. The enemy's not trying to get you to think that God is not for you. He's just trying to get you to give up one second before the breakthrough that God has for you. He wants you to quit the prayer. He wants you to quit the person.

He wants you to quit the calling right before God moves, because the devil knows something that you don't know. He knows how close you are to the breakthrough. He knows how close you are to God moving. He knows how close you are to God doing something incredible. You can probably feel in this moment what that thing is for you right now. Like I said, whether it's your marriage, whether it's your family, whether it's something going on in your life, you can feel the tension of it right now. The prayer you've prayed so many times, the enemy watches you in that exhaustion, and he gets excited. He watches you in your exhaustion, and he gets excited because the easiest soldier to get off the battlefield is the tired one, because he doesn't have to beat you. He doesn't have to win. All he has to do is convince you that staying in the fight is pointless. That's it. At Movement, a lot of our students stood in awe of God, and they brought their burdens before him, and they confessed their sins, they confessed their struggles, they confessed these things that they had been carrying, and they laid them down at the foot of the cross. And adults, we've all been there.

We've had those moments where it feels incredible, it feels amazing, and some of them in their own words. after confessing these sins said here I am send me I'm ready 90 students want to go into ministry that's incredible that's not an accident that's not a miscommunication that's God saying I'm gonna use faith promise to train up a generation of pastors and missionaries to go out and win their world for Jesus amen they said here I am send me I'm ready God heard him say it we heard him say it we celebrated him but the enemy heard him say it too the enemy heard him say it too and he wasn't allowed in this room but the moment when they walked out that door he started whispering he's not allowed in here this morning but the moment that you walk out these doors he's gonna start to punch you in the mouth I said this the first service I've been knocked out two times in my whole life it was both by my older brother and it was both because I disrespected my mom I know what it means to get punched in the mouth he still scares me a little bit I don't know what he's doing back there we know what it means to get punched in the mouth for a lot of us in the room today the devil's been smacking you around a little bit the Apostle Paul after a lifetime of getting beat down getting back up getting knocked down getting back up he writes this put on the full armor of God Ephesians 6 13 we talked about it all the time put on the full armor of God we'll go through the entire thing but why why do we have to put on the full armor of God he says you put on the full armor of God so when the day of evil comes and it's coming amen when the day of evil comes when the enemy starts to come around starts slapping you around starts punching in the mouth starts kicking you down starts whispering and saying that it's pointless when the day of evil comes you put on the full armor of God why so that you may be able to stand your ground you may be able to stand your ground we got some people crumpled right now in this church we got some people who have been knocked down for a while we've got some people who have been taken out of the knees we got some people who have been punched in the mouth and Paul is saying put on the armor of God so that you can stand your

ground do it for yourself do it for your family dads when was the last time that you saw your son or daughter dealing with depression anxiety or stress and you say you know what we're gonna do we're gonna get on our knees and I'm gonna pray the armor of God over you because I want you to be able to stand your ground not take a deep breath not hey we'll figure it all out we're gonna pray that the armor of the Lord will protect you because we know from God's word that the truth is that that's what's gonna help you stand and so as a family we're gonna sit down as a family we're gonna get on our knees as a family we're gonna pray that over you and if you're a kid struggling with that you know what you do you pray the armor of God on you and you stand in front of the enemy and you take the punches that's what this church is gonna continue to do for the next generation I will take punch after punch after punch for the next generation to rise up and lead and what God has called them to lead in and I'll do it standing firm not because I'm strong not because I'm qualified not because I'm equipped but because I have the armor of the Lord keeping me standing church a lot of us fade a lot of us drift a lot of us have been distracted by other things around us but for those of you right now who are feeling crumpled who are feeling down who are feeling broken I just want to remind you of this sometimes the only victory that you need for a day is to still be standing at the end of it sometimes the only victory is that you're still standing at the end of the day you want to know something incredible faithfulness to the Lord trusting in him is the one weapon that we have that hell has no answer for it's the one weapon that we have that hell has no answer for but you can't be faithful unless you're full of faith some of you this room today have never stepped into a relationship with Jesus you don't know what it looks like to follow after him you don't know what it looks like to put your full faith and trust in him and you're sitting in a crumpled heap on the ground right now and you need somebody to help pick you back up Jesus did it you need somebody to grab you by the arm and say I got you stand firm with me Jesus did it and we're gonna do it here this morning in

church together so whether you've been running from God whether you've been pushing him away whether you're confused and you don't know what he's doing in your life if you want to put your faith and trust in the Lord if you want to stand up because the devil's been beating you down if you want to put on the armor of the Lord put on that helmet of salvation Today is the day, church. Today is the day. So we're gonna take a moment right now, we're gonna pray together as a church. And if you wanna receive salvation, if you wanna start a relationship with Jesus, then I would encourage you to pray this prayer with me. We're all gonna pray it together. Here's a faith promise, nobody prays alone. Let's bow our heads, say Jesus, thank you for loving me. I'm a sinner and I need your grace. Thank you for giving it to me. I believe in who you are. I believe you did what you said you did. And I believe that you did it for me. I confess you as Lord, be the savior of my life. In Jesus name, amen. Hey, if you put that prayer today, if you put your faith and trust in Jesus for the first time, just put your hand up in the room. Come on somebody. I love it, amazing, fantastic church. Let's give it up for all those who put their trust in the Lord today.

Just stand firm. Hey, as we go into this next song, we're gonna create a moment for response. And like I said, some of you have been beaten down by the enemy. Some of you have given up on that prayer. Some of you have given up on that person. But today, I want you to think of their name. I want you to remember the prayer and I want you to step back into the fight with God helping you stand strong. We're gonna have prayer partners up here at the front. And during this time, my challenge to you, let's all stand up together as we continue to worship this morning. My challenge to you is to step out, come forward and stand up. Do not quit. Let's worship together.