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We are halfway through our month of dedication where our church consecrates itself and desires to hear from God through a time of special prayer and fasting. I will confess that I am hearing from God for our church, but the messages are not what I expected. It has been my prayer that whatever it may be that would hinder us from being all that we should be in God, and whatever is keeping us from being ready to embrace the harvest and the future that God desires to give us this year, that those things would be revealed to us during this month and that we would be willing to do whatever it takes to remove them from our lives. I showed you the video, "40,000,000 minutes" before this message because it says in a nutshell what I feel God has been showing me about our church, and of what needs to change in us if we are to see the revival that we are to see.

It is my firm conviction that we are a marked church, living in a marked generation. If there has ever been a time where God wanted to do something great, then it is right now. We are the people whom God has chosen to be alive at the end of this great time of Grace. We are the people whom God has chosen to represent His kingdom at the time right before His coming again. Simply put, if there is going to be a harvest in these last days, it will be because you and I stand up and allow God to use us mightily. If there is to be a mighty revival and a last thrust of the sickle of winning people to God, then it will be you and I who are alive at this time who are manning the sickle. If the latter rain and the last pouring out of God's Spirit is to be mightier than the former rain of the Book of Acts, then it is you and I that must stand for truth and allow the Holy Ghost to flow through us. You are not ordinary, simply because of the time that you live within. We are a marked generation: marked for the greatest blessings and anointings of God that this world has ever seen!

But I must remind you that being marked as a target of great blessing from heaven has also marked you with hell. The devil knows the prophecies and the promises that this generation has received. The devil knows what God desires to do with you and I in this time. And the devil knows that his time is short and that he only has a little while to perform his work. What that means is that while we live in a time in which God desires to do His greatest work, we also live in a time where Satan is pulling out all of the stops to try to stop God's will in your life. Never before has there been a generation that has had to face an onslaught of the devil as you and I do. We daily face things that people twenty years ago never dreamed of. The devil knows that if we ever tap into the potential and perfect will of God for our lives, then his cause does not stand a chance. The same scriptures that I just quoted you, are known by Satan, and so he is doing everything that he can to distract you and I from fulfilling those promises! Maybe you did not even realize it, but you are being attacked in a Satanic attack everyday -- not by some spirit coming to haunt you -- but through much more subtle means. Paul told the Corinth church that:

The New Century Version says that "we know very well what Satan's plans are." And yet I cannot help but feel that maybe the church in Corinth back then was very familiar with how Satan works, but most Christians today are ignorant of the way Satan attacks. Most Christians think that to preach that the devil attacks you daily is a joke or something not to be taken too seriously. Or worse, they think of a séance and a pentagram as being how the devil will try to slip in their lives, and yet the devil is much more sly than that. If you think that Satan's greatest desire is to get you to sacrifice maidens for his cause, then you are quite naive to his devices because he can grasp your soul and get you to miss the plan of God without going to all of those extremes.

The startling truth is that the devil often works in the saints of God's lives and they never realize that it is an attack from Satan and often hold to his teachings without even realizing it. In Revelation 2:9 and 3:9, there is a startling phrase that Jesus uses twice about some people in the churches of Asia. These churches were Jesus' name churches that were based upon the Apostle's doctrine, and yet Jesus twice makes mention that some of the people were really of "the synagogue of Satan." The synagogue was the Jewish equivalent to the "local church" and there was a synagogue in every city and village. And so it is very startling that Jesus said that some of the people that were affiliated with His churches were really members of the "synagogue of Satan." They pretended to love God but really they had become a part of the devil's agenda and the "devil's church." While sitting on a pew where truth was preached by some of the mightiest preachers of the Gospel, some of these people had unknowingly let the devil slip in under the radar in their lives. It has been said that "if you give the devil an inch, he will think himself a ruler," and apparently even in the early apostolic church, some people unknowingly had become a place for Satan to establish himself in the churches of God. They had fallen into the traps of "subtle everyday devils."

Before you think that I've lost my mind, let me direct your attention back to our text in 1 Timothy 4. I will read it this time in the NIV:

Paul warned Timothy that a sign of the end times would be people of God abandoning the faith to follow deceiving spirits and "things taught by demons." Understand that the church of Satan's greatest successes does not exist in an underground city in Europe with pseudo-draculas and such, but the greatest strides of the devil's kingdom has been subtly affecting and ensnaring people who sit on a pew every Sunday of whatever church and yet unknowingly spend the rest of their time living for Satan's teachings. Today, the world is full of people who would say that they are believers in Christ and yet whose lives more closely match the devil's philosophies and agendas and who -- while taking up space in a church -- have yielded more to the subtle attacks of Satan to alienate them from truth than the presence of God.

Before I reveal some of the subtle tactics that Satan has used against you this very week, let me say this: the Bible is very clear that Satan's doctrine and the Lord's doctrine cannot coexist. The scriptures say:

If you are going to make it living for God, then when you realize the attack of Satan, and the agenda of the devil, and his teachings in your life, you must separate yourself from giving into them. There is no choice, because God's teachings and the devil's agenda does not agree in any shape, form, or fashion.

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With all of this in mind, let me preach to you about Satan's most efficient tools today in the homes and minds of Christians. Let me reveal three ways that Satan is subtly getting his doctrine and agenda across to Christians everyday and, through which, Christians sadly are surrendering to his plan by the droves. The first such device of Satan is through:

A simple illustration will help to make this clear. If I place someone before me and began to speak to them in a whisper, then as long as I am the only voice speaking to them, they have no problem hearing my voice clearly and understanding what I am trying to say to them. But add two other voices talking at the same time to them, then it becomes hard for that person to hear the whisper through the din. Add five or more voices screaming closer to the person than I am, then it becomes impossible for them to pick my whisper out of all the din.

Studies show that simply being alive today means that a person is subjected to over 3,000 messages a day! Billboards, websites, commercials on television and radio, magazines, newspapers, signs, advertising, and other people send you over 3,000 messages a day! Is it no wonder that one of the most common complaints that Christians today have is "how do you hear the voice of God?" or "I can't hear what God is saying." It's no surprise, seeing that the still, small whisper of God is drowned out with all of the other din!

One of the greatest failures in Christians today is a failure to get alone with God. To get in a place where there is no screen or speaker calling for your attention. Where there are not people demanding that you listen to them right then! To spend quality time with His Word and His Spirit and not just in communicating with Him, but listening for His reply. If the average Christians spends such a short amount of time talking to God, then that means that they spend even less listening to what God has to say! We can't hear the voice of God in our life because of all of the other noise that we refuse to turn off! We are tuned into so many voices that the voice of God is drowned out in our daily life. It's not that God is speaking less to this generation, it's that this generation is listening less to His voice apart from the noise.

And the tool of Satan is that we grow used to many loud voices that vie for our attention. We are used to being wowed by the voices that are speaking to us. We are used to having to be bowled over by their message in order to receive what it is that they say. The voices that speak to you today of the devil's teachings are bold and bright and neon signs over your life. You do not have to strain to hear their voice over the din. You do not have to concentrate to understand what they are saying. They are "in your face," so to speak. And so we expect God to use the same approach. We come to the house of God and because there is not flashing lights and a great excitement to our soul in spending time in prayer with God, we struggle to pray for ten minutes before service. You've got a jingle in your head from the radio. You've got a hundred messages sounding off in your head, so much so that we cannot even bow our head and fully get our minds ready for what the God of the universe desires to place within us this very night. After the glitter of Hollywood and the Neon signs of the world, if God's house is not showy and glitzy and pizzaz, then we are not interested in His voice. Announce a concert and everybody will come; schedule a night where we simply had a prayer meeting and spent time talking to God, and only a handful make it a point to be there. But which does more good to our soul? But it doesn't sound like fun to you because you are used to be wowed with show business and with hype and with "the ritz," but God desires to whisper His message to us so that only those who will tune in to His voice will receive what it is that He has for us.

Another way that the many voices of media has become the tool of Satan in your life is that it has programmed you to receive information in five to fifteen minute blurbs before a commercial break. Most of you are programmed to only have attention for one thing for a few minutes before needing a break. That's the reason that most preachers only preach for twenty minutes or so today. It's not because God's message is briefer, but rather they are making a concession to people's minds that have been trained by the devil's agenda so that they cannot pay attention as long! Before television infiltrated our society, people regularly went to the house of God and listened to sermons for an hour or half or two hours long. But television had the immediate result of shrinking people's attention spans, until people gripe if the entire service is over an hour today! Don't think that it is an accident that this has happened, because the devil knows that time spent in the house of God will lead to his demise and God's blessings and promises being fulfilled in your life through your increased faith! And so he attacks Christians everyday to decrease their attention spans and is trying to get preachers to give into secular demands and shorten services and shorten messages and streamline the church for the devil's timetables. The devil knows that if he can get the average person to watch three hours of his agenda on television a day, and only spend one hour a week in a church service listening to a watered-down, stream-lined fifteen minute sermonette, that his agenda will easily win! There is no way that God can compete if the devil succeeds in getting people to switch over to his timetables and teachings. He doesn't care if you will sit at the house of God for one hour a week as long as you spend much more time a day listening to the teaching from his church!

And Satan's plan has even worked greater because the majority of the onslaught of the messages that we hear today are visual. Listen to some quotes from some major advertising and programming experts from today:

Most people have spent so little time developing their reading skills today that their comprehension level is almost non-existent because they are used to visual media before them. Don't think that that is an accident. If a person struggles to read the Word of God for themselves and understand it and comprehend it, then chances are they will spend more time watching other forms of media than the printed Word of God.

And the track to the visual as our primary source of information has changed from what used to be "hearing." Jesus said "he that hath ears to ear, let him hear" not "he that hath eyes to see...!" The scripture says in Romans that "faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God . . . and how can they hear without a preacher?" People today have a hard time tuning into a aural message. They have a hard time listening and fully grasping an oral message from the preached Word of God because they are used to having eye candy thrown at them. Most people today, are so used to a constant visual representation of the devil's agenda, that to hear the Word of God and act upon it is quite hard. Their eyes have become the devil's playhouse. Many Christians have their guard up against a brutal attack of wizardry and the devil has affected their very ability to respond to the Promises of God through a much more crafty means!

Another tactic that the devil brings upon the common Christian is:

The Roman Empire fell because the Romans imbibed in a "pleasure-first" society to the point that they forgot how to fight. Their many parties also featured heavy drinking from lead cups, and as they caught lead poison from their chalices, the Romans literally "entertained themselves to death." Our society has far exceeded the entertainment promotion of the Romans, and many Christians are literally "entertaining themselves to a spiritual death from drinking continually from sin's cup."

Let me do something that I've never done before and read you a verse from the Satanic Bible by Anton Lavey. The Satanic Bible teaches that we should:

"Live for selfish pleasure and deny biblical values."

In Matthew 16:24, the Bible of God Almighty says quite the opposite, that we should "deny ourselves and live for Jesus." The top tool for Satan to get his teachings of this verse from his bible into us is through entertainment. There is nothing wrong with good, clean fun and having a good time, but which verse above does the entertainment that you most participate in best follow? The truth is most of the entertainment of this world helps imbed in us the values of the devil's teachings and runs counter to the Word of God. If you spend three hours a day reinforcing the devil's teaching and only a few hours a week reinforcing Jesus', then there is no doubt as to which side will win and govern your life. Many Christians today leave church and have entertained themselves with the devil's agenda so much that their lives have become the devil's playhouse where his agendas and plans are implanted and performed. And let me say this, if we spend more time with things that teach the devil's text of scripture than Jesus', then whose church are we really apart of? Could it be that such Christians are the modern-day equivalents of the synagogue of Satan that Jesus mentioned in the second and third chapters of Revelation?

Let's do a quick test to see how we do in what we have put as priority in our minds. Quick! Who said this and from what movie is it?

Now let's see how you do with these -- quick, somebody tell me who said this and where it's found in the Bible:

Why are the first quotes easier than the last? What does that say about our priorities and voices that we remember most?

People spend hundreds of dollars weekly and get all hyped up for a football or a basketball game that after all of the hype, leaves their life just as empty as it was before. And yet they cannot come to a church where God's presence moves mightily, three times a week? People can spend an hour and a half reading their newspaper and watching their favorite soaps and they cannot find thirty minutes a day to get alone with the creator of the universe? People can spend four hours on a golf course, or sitting quietly on a tree stand, or paddling quietly around a lake fishing, and yet cannot spend more than eight minutes in an altar where a God desires for them to respond to His promises? People can watch a movie that lasts for hours that only glorifies the text and doctrines of Satan, and complain if the preacher who is feeding them the good Word of the Lord goes over thirty minutes in his presentation? Is there any doubt whose philosophy and teachings that most people give the most time to? Is there any doubt why most Christians don't ever become everything that God desires for them to be? Is there any doubt as to why most Christians cannot even give a Bible answer to others about things that they believe? No doubt we have lived to see the fulfillment of Paul's prophecy in our text:

When most people spend more time entertaining the text of the Satanic Bible than the Word of God, there is no doubt that this scripture is being fulfilled! As we entertain ourselves to a spiritual death, our minds have become the devil's playhouse! We gear up against "Potty Harry" and Wicca and yet subtle everyday devils are teaching us their doctrine through entertainment that we purchase and we choose to partake of!

And the last daily attack of Satan on the Christian that I would like to bring to you is:

In our other text, we read a familiar commandment of God. We always emphasize the "one God" part but we tend to forget the commandments of the next few verses. Let me read them to you again:

This commandment is known to the Jewish people as the "Shema" and it was the most important commandment of Moses. Jesus reiterated this in Mark 12. But notice the verse following the commandment that there was only one God: it was the parent's responsibility to teach their kids about God. Moses said "you shall teach them diligently to your children!" It was and is the parent's responsibility to teach their children the things of God. It is not the sole responsibility of the pastor and the church, but learning about God should begin at home!

It is said that as many as 70-75% of children raised in a Christian home will NOT live for Jesus as adults! The average father spends less than seven minutes a week in meaningful conversation with his children. How can this be? Obviously, most Christian parents are not conveying the truths of God very well to their children. They may claim to come to a Christian church, but subtly the devil has slipped his will into their homes.

In our text, there were four specific times that God commanded parents to teach their children about God: "when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise." When you sit around in your house, that is the time that God commanded you to use to teach your children about God. When you "walk in the way" or travel from one place to another, you are supposed to use that time to teach your children about God. When you rise up in the morning and when you go to bed at night, those are times commanded by God to use to teach your children about God.

But what is normal in the average Christian household today? When they are sitting in their house, they are watching television, or play video games, or surfing the internet. When they travel "in the way" they have the radio blaring, the cell phones ringing, and dvd players for the kids in back. When people rise up, they immediately flip on the radio/television/computer. When they go to bed, they fall asleep watching or listening to something else. The devil has succeeded in robbing all of the times that God commanded to us to teach our kids about God from us! Is it no wonder why kids are spiritually dull and not attuned to the things of God? What have you taught them? What have they learned at the prime times that God has commanded?

Verse 8 commanded the Jews to write the laws of God on their hands and always have them set before their eyes. I saw the other day, where you can now get digital television piped to your cell phone so that you don't have to miss a thing. We aren't carrying the laws of God with us everywhere, but rather entertainment that spells out the doctrines of the devil! It is not the things of God that we place before our children's eyes, but rather things that present the opposite of the principles of the things of God!

And yet we expect the preacher and the church to save us from this society that we have immersed ourselves in! We expect the youth pastor -- in just the few nights a year that we manage to get our kids to youth service, to save our kids from making poor decisions, and yet every other waking minute, we let them watch people on a screen make every unGodly decision possible! And then some parents have the audacity to get mad at God if their sweet things don't love the things of God?! What have you been teaching them by your example!?

After the Columbine tragedy happened, the film maker Michael Moore interviewed the shock-rocker Marilyn Manson for a documentary entitled "Bowling for Columbine." In the interview, Moore asked Manson "if you had the opportunity to talk to the kids that did the killing at Columbine, what would you tell them?" I thought Manson's answer hit surprisingly close to home:

Manson: "I wouldn't say a single word to them, I would listen to what they'd have to say . . . and that's what no one did."

When our children do things that are not pleasing to us, then we want to go "tell them" what we think, when if we would have taken time to listen and respond to them years earlier, they would never have done what they have done.

The sobering truth is that many Christians are allowing the devil to rob the time that could be spent in a relationship with their children and families and therefore are setting them up for spiritual disaster. If we get so caught up in even good things and wholesome programming that we neglect our God-given responsibilities, then even good things can cause our lives to become the devil's playhouse. By robbing time from us, we allow the devil to work simply because God has not been given time enough to do so!

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For those of you expecting red horns and a pitchfork, or witches and warlocks, you should know that the devil's quest to get people to join his church is much more subtle. He is pulling out all of the stops because he knows that if you ever sell out to the kingdom of God that the anointing of destiny that rests upon you is so great that the devil will be completely destroyed in your life. This is our finest hour! Let's arise and become powerhouses for God Almighty, and not live our lives as the devil's playhouse! Let's resist the traps and teachings of devils and grab a hold of truth with everything in us! Just as he subtly crept into the garden and attacked Eve, so the devil is everyday trying to subtly attack your family. It's time to take a stand against his teachings!