Satan is after your faith

Fill in these blanks… #1 I might give up on God if I ever lost _______. #2 Satan is after my ______.There is a possible disconnect between what Satan is after and what we are willing to give up on God over.We need to realize that Satan is after our Faith! Jesus told Simon Peter that Satan desired to “sift him as wheat, but I have prayed for you that your FAITH doesn’t fail.” (Luke 22:31-32)Do we understand this powerful illustration of sifting? Sifting is the act of separating the important from the less meaningful.. separating the valuable from the worthless. This is where we get the phrase “separating the wheat from the chaff.”Consider this. Satan is focused on the important (Wheat), and we maybe focused on the less important (Chaff).

Welcome to Redemption Church! My name is Chris Fluitt and I am excited to share the Word of God with you today! Hello to everyone experiencing this online. One day we hope you can visit us in person in beautiful Plano Tx.

I want your help today. We are handing out notecards and pens. On one side of the notecard, I want you to write the word that you would use to fill in the blank.

“I might give up on God if I ever lost ________.”

Be as honest as possible. It is understandable that there would be some situation that would at least give you pause.

All our online viewers and listeners, please feel free to write down your own response.

Hurry because I have a second blank for you to fill.

“Satan is after my ________.”

If Satan is after something of yours it would be wise to take time to identify his plan.

If losing something would cause you to give up on God, then it is worth identifying what that something is.

There is something you could lose that would cause you to give up on God. Today I want us to focus on this thing… It is Faith.

Faith

If we lose our faith we have given up on God. In the words of the great song by the artist “Sting,” “If I ever lose my faith in you, there’d be nothing left for me to do.”

What is faith?

We use this word a lot, but do we understand it?

Here is a direct answer from scripture.

Hebrews 11:1 (NIV2011) Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

This is a great verse, but today I want to give something a little simpler. Here is Faith in a way a child can understand.

Faith is believing what God says is true.

Faith is believing God when he says that he truly loves you.

If God says He will forgive and forget all your sins, then faith is believing that what He promised is true.

Faith is tied to Truth

You have FAITH in God if you believe what He says is TRUE. And your obedience to God flows from your faith in what he says.

In the Garden of Eden, the snake tried to cut the tie between Eve’s faith & God’s Truth.

Genesis 3:1 (NIV2011) Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

“Satan is after my ________.”

Earlier I asked you to fill in the blank… I want you to consider that Satan is after your faith.

Satan is after my Faith

You are a big deal. At the center of a cosmic struggle – an infinity war between heaven & hell if you will… is you. You are the center of it all.

This struggle includes you because…

1. God wants you.
2. Satan wants your faith.

 

God wants you by His side, in His Kingdom, in His throne. God wants to provide for you, empower you, have a relationship with you, give His only son for you. God wants you!

Is Satan anything like this? NO WAY. Satan does not want you by his side but under His feet. Satan does not want to give you anything but to steal, kill, and destroy.

Satan does not want you.. he really just doesn’t want God to have you. Satan is like that spoiled kid who only wants to play with the toy some other kid has. Satan’s motive is not on having you, but keeping God from having you.

God wants you. And God has you… through faith.

Galatians 3:26 (NIV2011) So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith,

Ephesians 2:8 (NIV2011) For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—

God has you through faith… So Satan wants your faith.

Satan is after my Faith

Luke 22:31 (NIV2011) “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat.

Luke 22:32 (NIV2011) But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

 

Satan is after Simon Peter, but Jesus has prayed. How did Jesus pray?

Now I want you to answer this with your note card… I want you to take the word you put into the sentence “If I ever lose my ______ I might give up on God. Take that thing that if you lost you might give up on God, and put it in this blank.

“But I have prayed for you, that your _________ may not fail.”

• Job
• House/Car
• Marriage/Relationships/People in your life
• Health
• Money
• Respect of others

There have been people who have given up on God because they lost some of these things. Perhaps you placed one of these things on one side of the note card.. if I lost _______… I might give up on God.

But the other statement, “Satan is after my ________.” No one would say Satan was after their job or car. Very few would say Satan was after their marriage or health. I imagine most of the people in this room decided that Satan was after their SOUL… and you wouldn’t be wrong.

But Jesus says…

“But I have prayed for you, that your FAITH may not fail.”

Not your job, but your faith.

Not your house & car, but your faith.

Not your marriage/relationships/or people in your life, but your faith.

Not your health, money, or respect of other people, but your faith.

Is there perhaps a disconnect between what Satan is actually after and what we are willing to give up on God over?

Jesus did not pray for Satan to quit, become distracted, lose interest, or to fail… Most of our prayers are for our enemies to be stopped and defeated, but Jesus prays differently. He prays for FAITH.

Child of God, when was the last time you prayed for an unfailing faith?

 

Sifting

Jesus gives us a powerful illustration! Pay attention.

Sifting is the process of separating the VALUABLE from the WORTHLESS. Sifting is the act of removing what is important and leaving behind the unimportant discarded materials.

“Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to SIFT all of you as wheat.”

How do you sift wheat? We showed you an important part of the sifting process in our intro video. We will show it again to remind you.

Threshing is the process the precedes the sifting..

After cutting the wheat down, the harvester has spread it out on a mat and has begun to beat it with an instrument called a flail. The harvester is after one thing, and in order to get this one thing, he violently attacks the wheat. He is knocking the wheat around to break it up and to loosen it up…

Simon, Simon, Satan is a harvester who aims to sift you… but before he sifts, he threshes. Satan will take you to the matt will try to land blow after blow against you. Why? In hopes to get you to let go of the one thing that He is after.

Satan is after my Faith

After the harvester has beaten the kernel from the stalk, he picks up the stalk and shakes free any remaining kernels, and then throws away the stalks. He was never after the stalks.

The harvester then beats on the kernels breaking them apart. There are 2 parts to the kernel… Chaff & Meat.

Chaff & Meat

The chaff is a casing, a husk, a hull, a shell. Inside the chaff casing is what the harvester was after all along. Inside the casing is the meat, it is the grain that we know as wheat.

• You grow wheat, not because you want stalks.
• You grow wheat, not because you want the chaff.
• You grow wheat because you what the meat.

At this point – the harvester is left with chaff & meat. He needs to separate the chaff from the meat. This is called sifting.

A little bit of wind is all it takes for the chaff to blow away.

After all the beating, flailing, and shaking of the wheat stalk, now all it requires to separate the chaff from the meat is a little bit of wind.

In this video they are pouting the wheat and the chaff from a bucket. Straight below is the bucket is a container to catch what is being poured. But there is also a box fan set up and as the contents pour from the bucket to the container the fan blows away the chaff and only the heavy meat reaches the container.

Luke 22:31 (NIV2011) “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat.

Satan wants to take you, flail you, shake you, break you up, and then sift you.

Satan is not focused on the chaff. We are focused on the chaff.

• Your job is chaff.
• Your marriage is chaff.
• Your health is chaff.
• Your money is chaff.

The thing you said would cause you to give up on God over if you lost – is chaff.

Satan is not focused on the chaff, but we are.

Satan has found out that he doesn’t have to steal your faith, he just has to mess with a little bit of your chaff and then you will give up your faith. Because we are focused on the chaff and not the meat.

We need to realize today how important faith in God is. Your faith is everything Satan is after.

Satan understands faith more than us…

1 John 5:4 (NIV2011) for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith

1 John 5:5 (NIV2011) Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

What is your victory? “This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith!” YOUR FAITH!

Who overcomes the world? The one who BELIEVES Jesus is the Son of God.

Your faith is everything Satan is after. He is willing to break up the chaff to get to the meat.

One day the chaff is going to blow away.

The things you might give up on God if you lost… If God allows enough time, those things will eventually happen.

If you wrote that you would give up if a certain person died. NEWS FLASH. Unless Jesus returns in less than 100 years, all of us will probably die. But we are only chaff anyway…

If you wrote that your job is the one thing you can’t lose… NEWS FLASH… Your job is chaff. If Jesus returned next week – do you think that you would be upset if your job went away?

If you receive the worst news from the doctor that you have terminal cancer… this flesh is chaff anyway. What is really important is inside the chaff casing. What is really important is not my body but the faith inside this body.

 

As we are about to come talk to God, I want us to focus not on the chaff… but on the meat.

Focus on Faith

Today I want you to take that notecard.. I want you to take that thing you were willing to give up on God over… I want you to bring it to this altar. I want you to leave it here at the altar.

Come right now.

Can we repent of being focused on chaff today?

Can you do some things in faith today? Can you pray in faith? Can you lift your hands in worship in faith?

Perhaps you are facing some hard situations. Faith is tied to truth. Could you just stand here and begin to declare the truth that God has spoken.

…God you are more than enough for me.

…God who hold me in your hands.

…God you love me.

…God you said You have forgiven me.

 

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