The church in America is really in trouble.
We have a church that is much more into flower vases up front on the stage
and what the color of the carpet is,
how cushiony the pews are than they are about spiritual warfare,
the battle in the heavenly realm.
And it was me being on the mission field,
so many years ago that I first discovered the power of the demonic
and the power of Satan.
And I came back to America and quite frankly,
even though I had grown up in America,
I was shocked to come back into even the evangelical church
and just realize how much the church is just overwhelmingly fascinated
with gimmicks and stuff and how little impact that we're having on the culture.
And I'm beginning this series on Satan, Demons, and the Fourth Dimension
by looking, first of all, at the three-dimensional church.
And let me just classify and define what I'm talking about here.
What I mean by the three-dimensional world is the world that we can see,
we can touch, we can feel.
It's where we live our lives.
You know, it's going to the bank.
It's getting in our car.
It's eating food.
That's the three-dimensional world that we live in.
It's the world that we make decisions in by what we can see, what we can feel.
But the fourth dimension is the spiritual realm,
and that spiritual realm is where Satan, demons, and angels, and God hang out.
I mean, that's a real world.
As a matter of fact, I would argue, and I will in this series,
that the fourth-dimensional world is actually what determines
what happens in the three-dimensional world.
So it is, there's so many spirit beings that are involved around us,
touching us, influencing us way more than we want to know about
and that we even care about, especially in the Western church.
So the Western church has been largely a church
that does not understand the fourth dimension.
Now, we understand God and demons.
We like to study about God and demons if we're a Bible-believing church.
And we come to these passages about Jesus casting out demons,
and we maybe make reference to it.
But very, very few pastors, very few leaders,
very few men and women in the evangelical church
know anything about how to engage in the warfare
that's involved with Satan and demons in the fourth dimension.
And so I want to give you ten things.
This is ten issues that I think are ten problems
with the three-dimensional church in the West.
And the reason I'm going to classify the West
is because in other parts of the world,
I'm going to say like Asia, South America,
I would call it the two-thirds world,
where people have grown up with much more of a closeness
to the spiritual dimension.
It's either through the relationship of witch doctors, shamans.
When I was on the island of Okinawa, the Utah, whatever,
there is a classic understanding in their culture,
even their traditional culture of demons and of God.
And that's not true in the West.
The West has largely been very, very intellectual,
very pragmatic.
And because of that we've tended to just push that world
that we can't necessarily practically define
out of our Christianity.
So I'm going to give you ten problems
with the three-dimensional church in America.
Number one, running after the latest, greatest gimmick
to grow the church.
I've never seen so many gimmicks as we have in American churches
to try to grow their churches.
I mean the advertising we use,
the type of music that we are enhanced by,
the way in which we set up our churches is so gimmicky.
And I just, I think that works against us
largely because we're looking at the church
as a sociological institution
rather than a spiritual powerhouse of God.
So that's number one.
Number two is selling out to the culture
by not teaching the whole counsel of God.
So what we mean by that is that by and large
the church has so been enamored by,
missiologically speaking, the culture,
that the culture is more influencing the church
than the church is influencing the culture.
And so we've allowed the cultural taboos to be out
and the cultural enhancements to be in in our churches.
Number three, using secular business techniques
to build the church.
So I've been a pastor now for,
28 years and I can tell you that as an organization gets bigger
We definitely become more and more aware of the business side the organizational side of the church
And that's necessary, but oftentimes that actually drives
the service and drives the way church is done everything from the length of the service to the length of the worship to the length
Of the sermon and we have to be so careful with that number four
Unwilling to surrender and this is really important unwilling to surrender
to the mighty power and work of the Holy Spirit man when I got filled with the Holy Spirit when I was
Baptized in the power of the Holy Spirit everything changed and I began to understand spiritual entities
I began to understand Satan and demons in a whole new way and people are scared of that stuff
and so because of that
We've we've not wanted many evangelical churches have not wanted to move into the power and work of the Holy Spirit
Because of the crazies and there's I mean there let's face it there are crazies out there in different aspects of the church
But I think the challenge for us as pastors and leaders and for you that are Jesus disciples
Is to is to go after all of the power in the work of the Holy Spirit
Number five fearful of the unknown and lack of experience in spiritual warfare, and that's huge
Because sometimes we're the most fearful of the things that we do not understand and I know I was
And I read and read and studied and it really wasn't until I actually was in the arena
Of casting out demons out of people that I began to grow in confidence
But we have this fear factor about things like this like we're gonna be made fools of we're not we're not gonna know what to do
Totally get that but you got to push through that
number six
Unprepared in seminary and other trainings and how to deal with real spiritual power from the enemy. That's absolutely true
so I went to seminary and
There was one class on spiritual warfare
But this was this was a seminary that was very cutting-edge
Most
Evangelical conservative seminaries have very very little except from a theological biblical perspective about
Dealing with the enemy dealing with Satan and demons, but not the practical
Hands-on approach of how to cast out demons and so because of that
Pastors and leaders are coming out and they are completely untrained in these areas
Number seven pastors who are fearful of man and what people will say if they delve into spiritual warfare
this is pretty huge too because a lot of churches are elder driven and
So they're kind of hirelings to their elders rather than being visionary leaders. And so because of that there's a fear. There's a fear of
Delving in to some of these dark
Arts, I would call it kind of dark arts as it were
Because of what people will think what people will say and I know that when I
Began to move in the area of spiritual warfare both in Japan and Asia as well as the United States
Definitely people asked a lot of questions. And so you have to be prepared for that and a lot of pastors are not
number eight
spiritual warfare mania and
That is where there are people out there there's pastors and leaders and churches out there. They're they're weird
I mean, let's just face it and here at the road at Chapel Hills and Colorado Springs from time to time
I have the weirdies come to the road and they talk to me after the service and they tell me about their deliverance ministry and
all that they do and it's almost like they want me to be fascinated by how strange their
experiences have been and
As we get into this series, I'm going to show you that you can have a balanced approach. That's not weird
You can walk in power and authority and you can walk in confidence and you and here's the thing
I have a real strong conviction about that. We'll talk about
In the ongoing series here is how we respect the dignity of every person
even someone who
Maybe has many demons and we have to cast a lot of demons out or we have to begin to help them
get set free we need to honor them we need to bless and they're creating the image of God and
So we're not looking for wrestling matches and MMA spiritual warfare
number nine
cessationist theology that has taught that these things don't happen today, so
cessationist theology is the idea that
spiritual
Warfare as I'm defining it
signs and wonders miracles
The gifts of the Holy Spirit that are more the power gifts of the Holy Spirit ceased
the completion of the New Testament canon. And I don't
believe that, but many do. And so because of that, that
drives them. As a matter of fact I was in a debate last
year with a cessationist theologian that was really
fun to do here in Colorado Springs where we debated the
idea of signs and wonders being for today, and the idea
of cessationism. And it was a very animated debate, really
fun to do. And then lastly, number 10, Christians don't
struggle with this stuff because we have the Holy
Spirit theory. So the idea is that if you're a believer in
Christ, you have the Holy Spirit, you're not going to
struggle with demons. And so that causes people to
struggle with demons, because the demons are hidden, and
they have no belief that they could even struggle with
demons. And they're struggling with them like crazy, but
they don't even know it. And so it's really sad how many
believers have gone through most of their life with a
particular ailment, or a particular struggle, or a
particular area that if they just had a theology of the
demonic and the power of the Holy Spirit they literally
could be set free tomorrow. But they're not because they
have no concept of what they're struggling with. So
that's where we're going with this. And I felt like it was
a good place to start because that may be your story. That
might be the kind of church you're in. That might even be
the kind of believer that you are. And I want to challenge
you in this series that demons are real, Satan is real, but
that we have authority and power in Christ Jesus. So I'm
excited to get into this. I hope you're excited. It's
going to be a great study.