Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Greetings from the Cayman Islands, where I just did a reboot this week. It was amazing. Praise God for that. Listen, I want to expose right now for you the devil's first line of attack. His oldest trick, it tends to work on people again and again. He has a very small playbook, but he doesn't need a big one because we don't live very long. And so he just tries the same thing generation after generation after generation. And you need to see it coming. And it's an attack on your identity, on how you see yourself, specifically how you see yourself as a child of God. It's that great lie that you don't have a father who's looking out for you, that you are on your own. He tried this in Genesis. Now stay with me here, guys. In Genesis, his big temptation, Adam and Eve, was that if you do what God said not to do, you will be like God's. Now how is that an attack on their identity?
[00:00:50] Because human beings have an innate desire to be like God, to thrive, to excel, to go more and more and more and more. And they had that desire. And we all have that desire because God placed it in our hearts. You see, he created us to be one with him, to be partakers in divine nature. So they had this desire planted inside of them by God. And the evil one's lie was, God isn't going to fulfill that for you. You don't have a father. You have to do it your way.
[00:01:22] I did it my way, right? You have to just disobey God and we'll make this happen on our terms.
[00:01:32] Fast forward. It's the same line of attack he had on Jesus when Jesus entered the desert to fast and pray and the devil showed up.
[00:01:42] And every temptation the evil one brought to Jesus began with the words, if you are the son of God, if.
[00:01:50] If he was trying to shake Jesus sense of identity, his sense of self.
[00:01:56] Because if he gets that, see, as we see ourselves, so we feel, so we act, and so our entire life pans out. All the decisions come from how we perceive our very selves. Now, of course, we all know that wasn't going to work on Jesus. But as I said, the devil has a very thin playbook. And it's all he has to go by.
[00:02:14] If you are a son of God, guys, the devil tries this. We with you and with me, in countless ways, all the time.
[00:02:22] The lie sinks in in so many ways. That lie that makes us forget our identity as children, beloved children of Almighty God.
[00:02:31] And instead of listening to the word of God and letting that inform how we see ourselves, how we talk to ourselves, how we feel, how our entire life pans out. What we do is we listen to our worst sins.
[00:02:41] The devil's called the accuser. It's a great name for the devil and the Bible that we start to think that we are the thing we did. Or maybe we listen to a lack of positive words that were supposed to be breathed into us by people who were supposed to do a better job than they did at loving us.
[00:02:56] I try my best as much as I can to tell my kids I love them. At random times, I try my best to tell them, I'm proud of you. When they've done nothing. I try my best to remind them. And there's no graceful, cool way to say this as dad, but just driving to school, hey, you make me happy.
[00:03:12] I delight in you.
[00:03:14] Why?
[00:03:15] I'm just telling you, just you sitting there makes me happy. Guys, when we don't get that sense that we're inherently good and delightful, we start to think with a lie of Adam and Eve. I have to do that myself. There's guys who work so hard their whole lives to add value to their existence by their accomplishments. We wonder why so many men are so angry, because they're terrified. There's no more terrifying way to go to work every day than to think that you're actually giving yourself value and that that's what's on the line as you go to work. All right.
[00:03:44] The lies creep in through tragedies that leave us thinking that the joys of life don't belong to us. They're not for us.
[00:03:52] But I'll tell you what, the lies creep in in the subtlest ways, too.
[00:03:56] One of my kids, I have six. So I could. I could say stories like one of my kids without letting you know which. Which one. It's one of the benefits, as a Catholic speaker, of having many children.
[00:04:07] She just, like, fell head over heels for some guy in high school, and she told him because he was putting vibes out to her, so she thought, okay, he likes me back. And he's like, oh, gosh, I'm sorry. I don't like you back.
[00:04:21] I hate seeing that kind of thing happen as a dad. Makes me want to cry. But she. She just. I'll tell you what. As she was telling me that she's like, dad, I feel so stupid. And I could see that it was going to the next level of identity, and she was thinking, something's lacking in me, or this guy would like me back.
[00:04:38] So she's like, you know, I think it's because I'm. And I stopped her. I'm like, listen to me right now.
[00:04:44] Did you just give permission to a 16 year old boy to tell you your value and worth and who you are? Did you really do that?
[00:04:53] Because that's a really bad idea. I said, no, no, no. Your dad tells you your value and worth. You, your heavenly Father tells you your value and worth. You don't give that permission to a teenage boy.
[00:05:05] You take that permission back right now. Give it back to Almighty God.
[00:05:10] Guys, here's my question for you.
[00:05:12] Who and what have you given permission to. To name you, to tell you who you are?
[00:05:19] You need to take that permission back right now and give it back to Almighty God.
[00:05:24] You got to do what Jesus did in the desert when the lies creep in, the attacks and identity. What did he do? He quoted scripture. He talked back. There's a great desert, Father. Those are the first monks of the church who went into the desert to give their lives to prayer. And not just to escape the world, but to go to the front line in their battle against the evil one. And one of them, his name was Evagris of Pontus. And he wrote down all the temptations he would get from the desert, from the devil in the desert. And he wrote scriptures to counter each temptation that hit his heart.
[00:05:53] And he called it talking back.
[00:05:56] Boom. Guys, you got to learn how to talk back. Do what Evagrius did. Do what Jesus did. Respond to the lies. Well, first of all, first become aware of the lies that come in.
[00:06:07] You know, know what's going on in your heart and mind. Be aware. Wake up to the fact that there's a battle between heaven and hell and the front line is right between your ears. You need to pick sides. Take the pen into the devil's hand. He's a great script writer. Give it back to Almighty God. He's got the truth. And you got to start preaching the truth from the word of God to yourself, primarily about who you are and what you're worth and what your value is and what you're made for and where you're going.
[00:06:29] Start talking back. Guys. I don't preach all the time, so you'd hear me preach forever. I do this so you do it to yourself. I do this for myself. I'll look in the mirror in the morning, tell myself what I need to hear. You need to start doing. And I'll tell you what, if you're not doing that, you're too needy, you're too Neat. You need your bank account to tell you you matter.
[00:06:49] You need your kids to tell you who you are. Teenage girls need a boyfriend to tell them you complete me, Dude. No he doesn't. He's 15 years old.
[00:06:57] You need to tell you who you are. Get an agreement with Almighty God. 2 Corinthians 10 we take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.
[00:07:06] We take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ. Lord Jesus, help us to rest in our identity as your beloved sons and daughters. We reject all the lies from the evil one. We take them captive and make them obedient to you. The lies that were on our own. The lies that our past sins define us. The lies that our tragedies tell us that the joys of life are not for us.
[00:07:33] The lies that we are not enough, that we don't measure up, Lord. Yet you look at us from the cross and say, you, my beloved child, I delight in you and you are worth dying for. We claim that truth, Lord. Help us to see ourselves as you do, as you did from the cross. Help us to live out of that identity so our whole life could take the path that you will for us and not the path the evil one wills for us. In Jesus name, Amen. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. I love you guys so much. Listen guys, there is so much depth in that reading where the Lord pushes back the lies of the evil one in the desert.
[00:08:06] I couldn't go over it all in this video, but there's so many layers of meaning to peel back. We're going to dive into it each day this week in the Daily Anchor. If you're not signed up for the Daily Anchor, it's free link below this video.
[00:08:16] Let's go deeper and deeper into this reading.
[00:08:18] This stuff's going to blow your mind. I want to inspire you. Let us also, if you're a missionary of joy, there's an entire program called I Am that's offered to you where you dive in deeply to identity.
[00:08:31] Root your identity in Jesus Christ. I can't tell you how many lives this thing has changed. Link is below in the video for that as well.
[00:08:39] Have a blessed week.
[00:08:40] Have a blessed Lent.
