Dharius Daniels - The Enemy Uses LIES to LABEL You

You’ve been losing in joy; you’ve been losing in faith; you’ve been losing in hope because when the enemy sends it in your direction, you’re not hitting it back. But this is your season to get the lick back on the devil. He uses lies to label us. The Bible says, «As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.» In other words, we will always behave in a way that is consistent with how we see ourselves. We won’t behave in a way that’s consistent with who we are; we’ll behave in a way that’s consistent with how we see ourselves because who we really are is who we are in God’s eyes. So y’all aren’t talking to me. This is why, when the angel appeared to a man in the Bible named Gideon, who was threshing wheat in a wine press, the angel said to him, «The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor.» There is nothing about Gideon’s activity that suggests he is a mighty warrior or a man of valor. He’s taking wheat and threshing it in a place where they press wine; he’s hiding, he’s fearful. But the angel calls him who he is, not how he’s behaving. Did you hear what I just said? The angel knew who Gideon was, but Gideon didn’t know who he was. We will always behave in a way that is consistent with how we see ourselves, and this is why I want you to think about this objectively. Just step back and look at the scriptures objectively, and you can see there seems to be intentionality on God’s part in always telling us who we are. Just think about it; from the Old Testament to the New Testament, He is always telling us who we are: salt, light, chosen, royal, special, peculiar, beloved, selected, elected, protected, head and not tail, above only and not beneath, come on, lender and not borrower, blessed and not cursed, blessed in the city, blessed in the field! This means the blessing is not on it; it’s on me. So if you put me in the city, I’m blessed, and if you put me in the country, I’m blessed. Blessed in my going in and blessed in my coming out. So I’m blessed when I enter, and I’m blessed when I exit because the blessing is not on it; it’s on me. Here’s my question: if I am that, why does He tell me I’m that? If I already am that, why won’t I just be that? But He has to tell me that because He knows that for me to experience that, it’s not enough for Him to know it; I’ve got to know it. And so the enemy knows this, and what he attempts to do is to use lies to get us to believe something about ourselves that is inconsistent with what God says about us so that we begin to behave in a way that is consistent with what he says about us and not what God says about us. Listen, when you get better spiritually, everything gets better. Spiritual life is not the only important part of your life; it is the most important part of your life because it affects every other part that’s important. But you don’t get stronger spiritually by accident; it takes intentionality. You need to get fed, and you’ve got to learn how to understand, how to interpret, how to apply, and how to explain the Bible. The Bible is the blueprint to your best life, and I’m going to tell you Sunday is not enough to give you the tools that you need to get better with the Bible. I want you to join me in my community called Bible U, where I help you take your understanding, application, and explanation of the Bible to another level. We see a powerful picture of this in Numbers chapter 13, family, where there’s this group of people that are getting ready to possess this place that God promised them. The land they were about to possess was called Canaan, and as God prepared them to occupy this land, Moses, who was leading Israel at that time, said, «Alright, I’m going to take 12 spies. I want 12 spies to go over to the land and scout it out and come back and give me a report.» Now, God had been bragging about the land. God had been saying, «This is a land that’s agriculturally rich; it’s a land that’s flowing with what you need agriculturally. It’s not a desert. You want some grapes? There are grapes as big as you’ve never seen in this land!» So the spies go over to do some recon of the land; it’s 12 of them, and they come back, and 10 of the 12 say this: «Everything you said about the land is true. It’s some big grapes over there, but there are some things about the land that you left out. You told us about the grapes; you didn’t tell us about the giants. You told me I would have it—come here, church—but you didn’t tell me I would have to fight to get it.» Did you hear what I just said? Just because you’ve got to fight doesn’t mean it’s not yours. Just because you’ve got a battle for it doesn’t mean it doesn’t belong to you. As a matter of fact, a revelation of whether or not you believe it’s yours is your willingness to fight for it. You fight for something that’s yours in a way that you don’t fight for anything else. I don’t know who this is for, but I want to tell somebody this is your season to fight like it’s yours. You can’t have my peace; I’m gonna fight like it’s mine. You can’t have my sleep.