Have You Been Robbed?

0:00:00     Hey there. Are you being robbed? Jesus said, there’s a thief among us, and he will rob you. And I’m going to teach you on today’s podcast, More Faith, More Life, of how to set yourself free. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast. Today we’re going to talk about the thief. There is a thief in your life. There’s a thief among us, all of us. Even Jesus mentioned it. He says, there’s a thief.

0:00:24     And that thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. Now, I want to tell you something. I don’t know very many people that have not been robbed of something in this life that they could have been something more. You could have been something more. They could have been something more. A relationship that you thought was going to be so special, so wonderful, didn’t work out. What happened? Something got messed up.

0:00:49     Children who you loved and nourished and took care of, and then they get a certain age, they don’t want to have anything to do with you. Now you’re robbed. Holiday time, they don’t want to come over. They don’t, you know, just on and on where you worked hard and you work hard, and the finances just don’t seem to add up like they should. And, you know, there, your neighbor bought a new car and you’re still driving a clunker, and you go, this isn’t fair. And why does this happen to me?

0:01:15     There is a thief, and I want to talk to you about that thief among us. And like I said, I don’t know very many people that have come to the point where, if anything does go wrong, it’s rare, because they live this life, this blessed life of the grace and mercy of God. Because everybody has to battle something, you know? Because in the world, there is things, there’s tribulations, there’s troubles. We’re here in the world, but we don’t have to lose.

0:01:43     And if we do lose, we don’t hardly ever lose. Right? Don’t hardly ever lose. And the reason is there is a thief. And Jesus says, the thief comes to steal and kill and destroy. That’s from John 10:10. And we want to identify the thief. All right, so the first is obvious to you. Been church folks. If I said, who’s the thief in the Bible, you’d say, well, it’s got to be Satan. Got to be the devil. Right?

0:02:06     He comes to steal, kill, and destroy. Well, yeah, he’s the ultimate, most famous thief. Lying thief. Right. That instigates it. Okay, so we look and we can talk about the devils after me. I’ve had people say the devil’s stealing my money. I try to tell him, the devil doesn’t even need your money. What he wants is your loyalty. So he steals your money to upset you. So you get mad at God and start going back to your old ways again.

0:02:32     But anyway, there’s a thief among us. Ultimately the thief is Satan inspiring other people. But Jesus said this before that he said, listen, all those that came before me are thieves and robbers. Well, we can’t have all the. He can’t mean there’s a hundred devils out there running around. There’s one devil, one Satan. And so who are all these others? Well, in his generation he’s saying there are false prophets, there’s false teaching, there’s a lot of corruption. In Jesus day, we don’t understand sometimes a lot of the things he said as being taken. Like he’s anti Jew, anti-Jewish. That doesn’t make any sense. He practiced Judaism in the synagogue every week, right? Supporting it, supporting what they were doing.

0:03:21     But he didn’t like the corruption because it says corruption came in and now the leaders are loving money, loving power, loving prestige, all that kind of stuff. And so it was corrupt. You couldn’t trust what they were saying. They’d say everything, right? But you couldn’t trust them because they were full of hypocrisy. So the thief now is bigger than just saying, well, the devil’s a thief in the Bible. No, there are people being represented, inspired. And you know what? These are regular folks. Some go to church, some don’t. They could be in your church.

0:03:51     It could be a pastor, it could be a former pastor, it could be a friend, a former friend could be an ex-wife, a former wife, husband, whatever. But you got robbed somehow and we need to put a stop to it. We need to catch this thief or we need to resist this thief. And there it. And Peter, the apostle Peter, he said it a different way. He said this way, he said, be on your guard, be alert, be sober minded.

0:04:20     Why do I have to do that? He says, because the devil prowls around like a lion, a prowling lion seeking someone to devour. Not just looking as an audience say, well, I’ll just look for the most knucklehead among them and then I’ll get that one. No, looking for anything, anything he can devour in your life, seeking a place to devour. So now we have our. And the Bible says your enemy, the devil doesn’t say God’s enemy, says your enemy, the devil Seeks to destroy and prowls around something to destroy, something to mess up. So you got that one.

0:04:58     And then you’ve got inspired people who are thieves and robbers. They’ll rob you of your faith. They’ll rob you of your courage. They’ll cause you to be afraid. They’ll cause you to not trust God. You’ll try to have faith in God like I’m trying to tell you today. Get more faith. You get more faith in God, you’re going to get more life in this life. You’re going to get more out of it. But they’ll rob you. That doesn’t work. Church doesn’t matter, you know, we’re the church anyway.

0:05:25     We need to just go out in the woods and walk around and find God. That’s how I find God. Well, that’s not a church. The church is a collective group of people that all think alike, that all believe God and all trust God. So if you want to get out of this, first of all, you got to believe who Jesus said he is and what he is. He’s the Messiah of the world. Before time began, he was, but he became. He became a child in this world.

0:05:51     All of all God, because he was conceived by the Holy Spirit, but all human because his mother, as you know, was Mary. Well, this is a new kind of human we’d never seen before. This is a human that can defeat that devil. This is a human that’s going to stand up to the thief for us and then empower us after the fact to stand up to him too. And so the Bible says this about. He says, listen, here’s what you have to do.

0:06:17     Submit to God. Now, we’re not very good at that. We’re. I mean, you’re not going to hear very many sermons on submission in the churches here in our country and mostly around the world. You’re not going to hear it. There are some. There are some good that will teach you that. Most of them, though, we’re not here to submit. We’re not here to have any rules on us. We’re not to have any expectation on us.

0:06:43     We’re just here to know God loves us and he’s going to get us through our crisis and he’s going to help us limp along through life till it gets better and we all get on the other side. We all cross over, over Jordan and get to. Then it’ll be all be better then, but now it’s not so good. And so we look at people who’ve been robbed in relationships and finances and future and ministry and Friends. And just the list goes on and on and on.

0:07:09     And so submitting to God is very important, but we don’t hear much about it. It sounds awful. We don’t like the word submission, right? But then it says, resist the devil. And what will he do? He will flee from you. He’s not very brave devil, but he’s very smart. You see why? If you’re going to resist him, you’re going to stand up. So he starts lying, right? You’re in church and you hear the word about eternal life, or you hear a word about being baptized in the Holy Spirit. And somebody says, yeah, I got baptized in the Holy Spirit.

0:07:43     And I began to sing and. And I began to speak in tongues and sing in tongues and worship God and prophets and all of a sudden some, oh, that’s not a God devil. That’s devil stuff. Tongues is of the devil. Who would tell you tongues of the devil? Unless it’s not the thief, the devil, the prowling lion devil. Cause he doesn’t want you to speak in tongues. No, he’s going to tell you, I’m doing it through you. It’s me. It’s the devil doing it through you. Well, you got to resist that and say, that’s impossible.

0:08:13     Because this is a gift from God. It’s real. It was real then. It’s real today. I was reminded by somebody the other day of a sermon I preached. They may hear this and be glad they reminded me of it. They said they heard me talking to a pastor. And a pastor was saying, well, that tongues is not unknown. Tongues and all that. When it said tongues, it means we’re to speak in known languages. And he said. I looked right at the pastor and said, then why aren’t you doing it?

0:08:44     Why aren’t you doing it? If that’s what it is, start right now. Let’s do it. Well, he didn’t have any answer. Because he didn’t do that either. He just plans on doing nothing, right? Just doing nothing. So you get robbed of power. We try to tell you that today you can pray for prosperity. You can pray that God helps you in your finances. Now there’s. You need to get involved. You need to be a giver. You need to be generous. Yeah, sure, sure, sure.

0:09:07     But there are things to do. But you can’t increase the blessing in your life. Why be robbed? Because you don’t believe it. That’s why you need more faith. You need to believe it. You need to be a tither, in my opinion, because it works. But if you don’t Believe it, Don’t worry. If you want to argue with me about it, don’t worry. I’ll give my money and you can keep yours. And let’s see who gets the blessing of God. You see what I’m saying?

0:09:31     So there’s a thief among us and if we resist him, he’ll flee from us because there’s so many goofy people out there that are such easy targets. He’ll just go to somebody else who doesn’t believe anything. Somebody discouraged, somebody that’s going to get just ready to give up. They’re so disappointed in the church, they’re so disappointed in their friends, they’re so disappointed in their wife, they’re so disappointed in their boss. There’s just all everything.

0:09:58     And so they’re just about to give up. Well, who’s the devil going to prowl and devour that one? Don’t devour that one. Cause it’s so easy. He doesn’t have to put up a fight. You’re doing all the work for him by unbelief and doubt, right? So he’s not going to take you on if you say no, sir. I know who God is. I know who he is. I know he’s the creator of the universe. I know who Jesus is. I know he died for the sin of the world.

0:10:22     And I need to believe in not just that he existed, I need to believe who he said he was and is. He said, I’m the way, I’m the truth, I’m the life, I am the resurrection. I’m going to. There’s going to be the resurrection of the dead. So even if you die or somebody else dies, it’s sad, it’s no fun. But if they’re in Christ and they served him while he was alive, they’re going to come alive again. They’re going to come out of their graves because Jesus did.

0:10:48     He came out of his grave and now he’s spirit, soul and body back alive with a glorified body. And says, that’s going to happen to you. It happened to me. So you got to believe it happened to Jesus. He rose from the dead in his body, a glorified body. And you will too. So don’t get robbed of that. That’s our hope. And people pass away and we know, we’re thankful that they do go to heaven. But your hope is you’re going to see them again and they’re going to be alive and you’re going to be alive. You’ll either see them in heaven or they’ll pop out of the grave, you’ll pop out of the grave and we’ll start this, all this whole thing over in glorified bodies.

0:11:20     Yeah. So you have to learn all that and you have to resist humanism, you’ve have to resist me ism, you have to resist selfishism. You know, none of that, none of that, that’s devil stuff. The devil, all he cares about is himself. Most self-centered creature ever created is Satan himself. And so you want to free yourself from that and get free, stand up against it, resist selfishness, resist trying to get angry, resist trying to judge people.

0:11:47     Resist thinking you know what other people don’t know. They say they don’t understand me because they don’t know what I know they haven’t seen. We think we’re so clever, we know what other people don’t know. We know what other people don’t. We see what other people don’t see. And so we get there now that we’re perfect for the devil because that’s how he says, I know everything, I know what I’m doing.

0:12:09     Well, he’s going to end up, you know, in the lake of fire, but he, oh, he knows what he’s doing all right. He knows that you can’t tell him anything. Prideful, arrogant. And so if you get that way, then all of a sudden you can’t be, you’re hardened, your heart is hard before God and instead you don’t have that blessing that could be yours. You’ve been robbed of the blessing of God. You’ve been robbed of who you could be. And chances are the devil never appeared to you personally.

0:12:36     But a whole lot of people did that said don’t serve God, you’re wasting your time in church. The Bible doesn’t work. God’s a, God’s not a good God. God, why does God create wars? Why does God murder people? You have all these things that aren’t true, but, and, but you’ll be swept away without faith, without the confidence, without the relationship. And then you’ll be less, you’ll end up less than you can be because God wants to make you all you can be.

0:13:06     Because if you keep reading, yeah, it’s in there about the thief. They come to steal, kill, destroy. And all those that came before Jesus, they were thieves and they were robbers. But then Jesus says, but there’s something else. I am the gate and I am the good shepherd. And I’m going to round up those sheep of mine and I’ll know their mind because the sheep hear the voice of the good shepherd. They hear my voice.

0:13:33     Now if you look at your life and you say, well, I don’t really want to admit it. I don’t admit it very often. But, you know, I do feel disappointed in myself or other people or the way my life turned out, the way my kids turned out, the way my marriage turned out, the way my job, money. You know, I’m really disappointed. I thought it would be more. Well, it’s not too late. It’s not too late to turn this around and start believing by faith.

0:13:58     Because Jesus said, I’m a good shepherd. The sheep hear my voice. If you’ve been robbed, if a thief has robbed you, whether it be a relative, a friend, or the devil himself, it’s probably because of what you’ve been hearing. See, he said, the sheep hear my voice. Well, then they don’t make dumb mistakes. Sheep don’t make dumb mistakes. How could they? Because they’re going to listen to the good shepherd. The good shepherd is talking to them, saying, don’t do that.

0:14:27     Don’t buy that. Don’t overspend. Don’t buy something to impress people. Right. Don’t try, you know, don’t be that. Don’t try to be funny. You’re not that funny. Don’t be clever. You know, be real. All these kinds of things. And he’ll help you through this. And all of a sudden, now then it says, I came this Jesus, the thief came to steal from you, rob you. But he said, but I came, that you’d have life.

0:14:54     That’s why we say, more faith, more life. To the highest level that a human can have. Life. I don’t know what that is. I haven’t reached that. But I know that I’ve reached a portion of that to where I do not expect things to go wrong. You know that old saying, if anything will go wrong, it will. Is that. Yeah, that saying. If anything will go wrong, it will. If anything can happen, it’ll happen. Well, I’m just the opposite.

0:15:17     If anything goes wrong, I’m shocked because it’s going to go right. I’m expecting everything to go right. Occasionally, there’s a battle. Occasionally, you know, we have to fight something because we’re still in this world. There’s evil in this world. There’s evil people in this world. There’s thieves and robbers in this world. There’s a devil in this world. There’s a prowling lion. Yeah, all that stuff. Prowling, lying. And. Yeah, I get it.

0:15:39     But I’m still shocked if we don’t win it. Cause we’re more than conquerors. We Are victorious. He came that we could have life, the highest abundant, overflowing life that a human can have and still be human. Not die, yet still be human, still be in this body until either you die and go to heaven or Jesus returns to a whole generation that didn’t die that just met him. He comes back and establishes his kingdom, right?

0:16:07     So what I want you to do is get tired of being robbed. Say, listen, I’m tired of being robbed in my relationship. Maybe you’ve been married once, twice, or kids break down and that now you got a new kid on the way, or you got a new family, you got a kid 3 or 4 years old, the other 10 years old has already decided that you don’t want to have anything to do with you. Well, start over. Start sowing differently.

0:16:29     Start being a man or woman of faith, right? Help them get ahold of faith. You start walking by faith, trusting God and believing everything Jesus said about himself. And you’re going to get more life. And then you can resist the devil by just standing up for God. You say, how do I resist the devil? Stand up for God. Stand up for truth. Just stand up. You don’t have to be a genius. You don’t have to be a theologian.

0:16:51     You don’t have to be perfect. Listen, you’re not going to have to be, you know, get filled with the Holy Spirit. Get all the gifts of the Spirit. Just test them on that. See if speaking in tongues isn’t real. It is for the sincere, for those who want everything. So do I have to speak in tongues? Somebody asked me, I said, what is wrong with you? You don’t want to. Why wouldn’t you want to do that? Have a gift of God? Come on.

0:17:13     So, you know, get your faith up. Stop being afraid of God, that something weird is going to happen, or the weird God, no. Because there is a devil and he’s a thief. There are thieves that want to talk you out of serving God and get your loyalty down. They’ll talk you out of serving God. They’ll say, slow down, that’s too much. Don’t go too far. All that stuff. I just don’t. You just can’t go too far with God.

0:17:34     And then you got a prowling lion just looking for you to make a mistake or limp along and just prowl on you and get you and devour something in your life. Tell yourself, today, that’s it. No more thief. I’m going to start believing God. Because there’s just. The whole world has been going haywire and you want to escape the evil and get the blessings of God in your life. More faith brings more life.

0:17:56     Get the thief, time to catch him, Time to resist him, and he will flee from you. Be sure and follow us. Look at the products we have online at https://morefaithmorelife.com, like my books My Absurd Religion, When The Kingdom Comes, and If You Only Knew: A Guide for the Clueless Generation.  And then we’ll have our new book Mighty Like Gideon, that will be coming out in a few months. We’ll tell you how to get that real soon. So remember to tell your friends that there’s stuff you’re hearing here that you’re not hearing anyplace else, and it’s worth hearing and worth blessing your friends with the truth about the gospel. Till next time. Bye.