Rick Warren - Winning the Battle Inside Me — Part Two

Today on Daily Hope with Pastor Rick Warren, we continue

in our riveting journey through the series The Invisible War.

In it will explore the unseen world of good and

evil and see how it impacts our day to day existence.

Join us for eye opening biblical insights into the spiritual

dimensions that influence our lives in ways we never imagined.

Right now, here's Pastor Rick Warren with part two of

a message called winning the Battle inside Me.

The fourth thing that happens when I don't know how

to fight the battle, then I keep losing. And long

comes number four, self condemnation. And oh, some of you

have gotten really good at this. You're a pro at

putting yourself down. You're a pro at condemning yourself. And

because you keep stumbling in the same area over and

over and over, I still lose my temper. I still

say them being things, I still have those thoughts. I

still and you start going, I'm no good, I'm worthless,

I'm junk. Why should I call myself a Christian? God

must hate me, God's mad at me, blah blah blah

blah and all those other things. And you start condemning yourself.

That's an inevitable sign that you're in this spiritual battle.

Verse eighteen, Paul says, I know I'm rotten inside as

far as my old sinful nature is concerned. Now, who

told him that? He's telling himself that he said, he's

putting himself down. He's condemning himself. And that is a

mark of when you have habitual areas that you keep

falling in over and over. I want to keep how

many resolutions have you made that you didn't keep? A lot?

And then you start putting yourself down and do the

self condemnation. That leads to number five frustration. And this

is a mark of a Christian trying to live on

their own powers at a God's power, you get frustrated.

Says this. In the next verse, verse eighteen, he says,

no matter which way I turn, I can't make myself

do right. I want to, but I can't. When I

want to do good, I don't. And when I try

not to do wrong, I do it anyway. Now, if

I'm doing what I don't want to do, it's plain

where the trouble is. Sin has me in its evil grasp.

Now the Bible calls this the law of sin, and

the law of sin is the spiritual counterpart to the

physical law of gravity. They both pull you down. Gravity

pulls you down, Gravity loads you down. Gravity actually ages

you because it's wearing on your body. And as I

said last week, if you're down there and I'm up here,

it's always easier for you to pull me down than

for me to pull you up. This is the law

of gravity in the physical realm, and in the spiritual

realm it is the law of sin, which means it's

always easier to be pulled down and do the wrong

thing then it is to be pulled up and do

the right thing. Happens all the time, and that law

is trying to keep you down. Now, let's say I

want to ignore the law of gravity, and I say

I'm going to fly. I'm going to be the first

human being to fly. So I go out and I

start flapping my wings, you know, my hands up and down.

I can flap as hard as I want, as long

as I want. I'm never getting off the ground. Why,

because the law of gravity is stronger than my human

ability to fly. The same is true in a spiritual realm.

When I try to do the right thing simply by

willpower I'm just flapping my wings. I'm not going to

get off the ground. I may get off the ground

for a week or two weeks or three weeks or

a month, and then after a while, I'm going off

the Daniel plan, or I'm going back to my smoking,

or I'm going back to my pornography, or I'm going

back to yelling at the kids. And when I try

to change by willpower, I pretty soon get tired and

I give up and I stop flapping. You're not going

to beat the law gravity physically, and you're not going

to beat the law of sin spiritually. It's going to

cause frustration in your life. And Paul says, I am

so frustrated. Let me read you a great theological piece

by Arnold LaBelle. Now, actually he's not a theologian. He's

a children's book writer. And when my kids were little,

if you've ever had preschoolers, you probably know the series

of books called Frog and Toad Together. And I used

to read into my kids, and one of my favorite

stories to my kids was this story called cookies. Frog

and Toad. Toad bake some cookies. These cookies smell really good,

said Toad, and he ate one and they tasted even better,

he said, So Toad ran over to Frog's house. Frog

Frog cried, Toad, taste these cookies that I've made. Frog

ate one of the cookies. These are the best cookies

I have ever eaten, said Frog. So Frog and Toad

ate many many cookies, one after another. You know, toad,

said Frog, with his mouthful. I think we should stop eating.

We will soon be sick. You are right, said toad.

Let us eat one last cookie and then we will stop.

So Frog and Toad ate one last cookie. But there

were very many cookies still left in the bowl. Frog

said toad. Let us eat one very last cookie and

then we will stop eating cookies. Frog and Toad ate

one very last cookie. We must stop eating, cried Toad

as he ate another. Yes, said Frog, reaching for a cookie.

We need willpower. What is willpower, asked toad. Frog said

willpower is trying hard not to do something that you

really want to do. You mean, like trying not to

eat all these cookies, asked toad. Right, said Frog. So

Frog put the cookies in a box there, said Frog.

Now we will not eat any more cookies, but we

can open the box, said toad. This is true, So

Frog tied some string around the box. There. He said,

now we will not eat anymore cookies. Toad said, but

we can cut the string and open the box. That

is true, said frog.

So Frog got a ladder.

They put the box up high on a shelf there,

said Frog, Now we will not eat any more cookies.

But Toad said, we can climb the ladder and take

the box down from the shelf and cut the string

and opened the box. That is true, said frog. So

Frog climbed up the ladder and he took the box

down from the shelf, and he cut the string, and

he opened the box. And Frog took the box outside

and threw all of the cookies out, and he shouted

in a loud voice, Hey birds, Hey birds, here are

free cookies. Birds came from everywhere. They picked up all

the cookies in their beaks, and they flew away. Now

we have no more cookies, said Frog. But we have

lots and lots of willpower. You may keep it all.

Frog said toad. I'm going home now to bake a cake.

The great theology of Frog and Toad. Now, how many

times have you played Frog and toad with something you thought,

I'm not gonna do it? Anymore. I'm not gonna do

it anymore. I'm not gonna do anymore, and then you

do it. This is the frustration, and it always leads

to number six, which is discouragement and despair. Paul gets

so discouraged from this war going on inside him, and

he says, it seems to be a fact of life.

In other words, I'm giving up on This seems to

be a fact of life that when I want to

do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong.

And in my mind, notice this is a mental battle.

The battle's going on in your mind. In my mind,

I want to be God's willing servant, but instead I

find myself still enslaved to sin. He staid, I feel

like giving up. I'm in a battle and I'm losing,

and I'm feeling hopeless, and it causes these six things

in my life. Now. Next, Paul discusses not the cost

of the battle, but the cause. And what is the

cause of this battle that's going on in you? You

write this down? The reason is I have two natures.

You actually have two natures inside of you. You have

your old nature which you were born with, and you

have the new nature that was given to you when

you trusted in Christ, when you were born again, when

you became a believer. And this new nature wants to

do the right thing. But you still have the old

nature inside of you. And these two natures are in

constant conflict with each other. And that's the cause of

the battle. You have two natures, not one, two natures

inside of you. In verse twenty one, Paul says this,

I love to do God's will so far as my

new nature is concerned. But there's something else deep within me,

my lower nature. That's my old nature. The Bible often

calls it my flesh, or it calls it my carnal self,

or calls it the old man. These are synonyms for

the old nature. There's something else deep within me, my

lower nature, that is at war with my mind and

wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin.

That is still within me now, even though I'm a Christian,

my old nature is still alive. And I hate to

tell you this, but you're going to live with it

the rest of your life. You don't get rid of

your old nature until you go to heaven. When you

became a foller of Christ, he gave you a new

nature and a new ability to do the right thing.

But that's at war with the old you. And sometimes

you feel like I feel like there's two means inside

of me. I heard about an old Indian chief who

was a Christian, and he was trying to explain this

war between the new natures to his son, and he said,

it's like two dogs in my mind in battle together.

There's a good dog and there's a bad dog, and

they're fighting it out. And the young son said, well, Dad,

which one wins? He said, whichever dog I feed the most.

And that's going to be true in your life, whether

you feed your old nature or feed your new nature.

But even though I'm a believer and I've walked with

the Lord for in a long time, I still have

my old nature in me, which wants to be prideful,

which wants to be self centered, which wants to gossip,

to lie or steal or make myself better or you know,

exaggerate or whatever. That old nature is still there, and

the lust and the gossip and the lie and all

that stuff there. Now, let me tell you why the

problem is your problem. Because willpower is not enough to

defeat your old nature. And if you think that you

can change simply by wanting to change or by learning

about change. It ain't gonna happen. It'll happen for a

little while, but then you're gonna get tired and you're

gonna stop flapping. Knowing what to do is not enough

to change you. If it was, I would never have

to repeat a sermon topic. You'd get it, you'd change

in that area, and then we just go on to

something else. But just because you know the right thing

to do does not mean you do it. The next

verse says this, so you see how it is. Paul says,

my new life tells me to do right, but my

old nature that still inside me loves to sin. Oh,

what a terrible predicament. I'm in circle. That phrase terrible

predicament in the original Greek, it literally means the exhaustion

of hard work. It means being worn out after an

intense battle. It means you're out of energy, you're wiped out,

you're fatigued, you're frustrated, you feel like a failure. Paul's

cry of agony says, I need relief, I need help now.

This is not a pretty picture. Roman is the picture

of a defeated struggling Christian. And finally he falls on

his face and out of exhaustion, and Paul goes, what's

the cure? And then he tells us, and he says

God's battle plan for victory, and he tells us what

the plan is. Now, this plan is all in chapter eight,

and we're going to cover all of that next week.

And I can't share it all one week because it's

too much material. But let me get you started on

a couple of advanced steps on how you start to

win the battle going on inside you. You do three

things initially, and then we'll cover all of the material

next week. The first thing I need to do God's

battle plan for winning the battle inside me is I

must deepen my understanding of Christ. Now you already know Christ.

It's you've got to deepen your understanding of Christ and

what He did for you on the Cross. Now we're

not talking about being an unbeliever here, you're a believer.

Paul is a believer here. Jesus is already in you.

In fact, that's why you have this battle. If you

aren't a Christian, you wouldn't have this battle. Why because

you'd only have one nature. And if you only got

one nature, your old nature. You just go ahead and

do whatever you please and do the wrong thing, and

you don't even care about it. So a non believer

does not have this battle going on in them because

there you don't have the good nature battling with the

old nature. They just got the old nature says, do

whatever you want to do. So the fact that you've

got Jesus in you is what's causing the battle. But

having Christ in you is not enough. He doesn't just

want to be resident in your life. He wants to

be president in your life. He doesn't want to just

take up space. He wants to be in charge. He

wants to be the Lord of your life. What does

that mean? The lord? It means he's the CEO, he's

the boss. He's calling the shots, he's the chairman of

the board. He wants you to put a sign over

you that says under new management. That's what it means

to have Jesus as the president of your life and

under new management. But the first step is I have

to deepen my understanding of Jesus Christ. He's in my life,

but I got to know more about him. Roman seven,

verse twenty four and twenty five who will free me

from this life? Who will free me from this life

that is dominated by sin? Thank God? The answer is

through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Now I want you to

circle the phrase dominated by sin. This is an amazing

phrase here in the original Greek, it is literally, who

will free me from this body of death? This body

of death? And Paul is giving a striking illustration here

that you wouldn't understand unless you knew what was going

on in the Roman Empire, because in those days, one

of the punishments for murdering somebody was sometimes they would

chain the body of the person you murdered to you,

and you had to walk around with that person until

they decayed and fell off. And instead of putting you

in jail, they would chain the person you murdered and

took their life, and that body of death would be

chained to you, which means everywhere you go, you're carrying

around the memory of your sin, and you wake up

each morning and the stench is unbearable, and wherever you

go you have to drag that body with you. That's

the phrase Paul is using here in the Greek when

he says, Who's gonna free me from this body? Of

death that's keeping its stinking. Now I want you to

notice on that phrase circle the word who. He says,

who will free me? He doesn't say what, because the

answer to the battle in you is not a principle.

It's not a program, it's not a pill, it's a person.

It's Jesus Christ. He doesn't say, what will free me

from all these hang ups I've got in my life?

He says, who will free me? The answer is that

only God can free you. Jesus Christ, who will free

me from this decaying life I've got. Paul says, I'm

at the end of my rope. He's been talking now

for verse ACTI verse I'm at the end of my rope.

And at the end of his rope he gets a

flash of hope and he says, oh, I got it.

Thank God. He just blurts it out, thank God. The

answer is in what Jesus did. He says. The answer

is through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Now it's not enough

just to say Jesus is the answer to all your problems.

I want to know how How is he the answer

to all my problems? So you're going to have to

come back next week for that because I can't go

through the eight reasons, the things that Jesus did for

you that are in Romans chapter eight. We're going to

go on that, but the first thing you've got to

do is you've got to learn to deepen my understanding

of Christ.

You're listening to Pastor Rick's Daily Home. We're so happy

you've chosen to study along with us today. Why is

everything in life so hard? Why does the right thing

often feel like a battle. It's because every day there's

a spiritual war raging all around you. Here's Pastor Rick

to tell you more. You know, we all face temptations

every day. It's a spiritual battle that takes place inside us,

and it makes us vulnerable, particularly if we don't know

how to fight it. To overcome temptation is absolutely essential

that you know the tactics that Satan uses.

To trip us up. And it's vital to learn the

biblical defenses that God gives us. He has told us

in his Word how to handle and how to manage

the attacks of Satan. Now, in order to help you

learn how to respond to the predictable patterns that Satan

uses to tempt you, I've created a study kit called

the Invisible War Winning the Battle of Temptation. This kit,

The Invisible War Winning the Battle of Temptation includes a

DVD with seven different sessions and a simple booklet that

will help you learn how to overcome and defeat temptation

in your life. You really need this. In the series,

I will teach you the three kinds of temptation, God's

antidote to temptation, and even how to avoid temptation in

the first place. It is a steady guide that you

can use by yourself, but you'll actually get more out

of it if you'll gather a small group of friends

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