Hope, Healing & Freedom Podcast: Episode 164
TRANSCRIPT
I think we all know what a sink hole is. We have seen them on tv or learned of them in school. It is a place where the earth beneath the surface begins to erode to the point that the surface ground then falls into the hole caused by the erosion underneath. The sinkhole started with just a little erosion that grew into more and bigger erosion until the surface caved in. As I read about how to repair a sink hole, the solution was to… get ready for it… the solution is to restore the foundation. I kid you not. The way to fix a sinkhole is to go into the hole and repair the point of the erosion. To restore the foundation. Wow! Come with me as we look at how erosion might be causing sinkholes in our Christian life and how Restoring the Foundations has the solution.
I’m Lee Whitman with Restoring the Foundations and I welcome you into this Hope Healing and Freedom Podcast. There are many different ways the enemy tries to attack your faith. There are the point-blank head-on attacks. Those are the attacks where the enemy pulls out his big guns and comes at you head on. Those frontal assaults are easy to recognize as attacks from the enemy. Those are attacks, for example like when the enemy is trying to slow you down or defeat you by attacking your children. That is a head on frontal attack. Or the times when the enemy will try to steal your finances by causing a car accident, or by causing a repairman to attempt to do a poor repair costing you more money. I believe those things are often a head on attack by the enemy to steal from you.
In this podcast I want to talk about the not so obvious attacks. Those subtle attacks that are causing your faith to be slowly eroded until we end up in the pit of a sinkhole. The verse for today is Genesis 3:1, when the serpent tempted the woman by saying, “Did God really say”. Notice how the serpent did not come with a full-frontal assault on the character of God, but he attacked through doubt. Doubt is the erosion of their trust in what God had said. It is the subtle erosion of their belief that God is good and not trying to hold out on them. This subtle erosion is one of the same tactics that the enemy uses in our lives today and the tactic we are confronting in this podcast.
This enemy uses spiritual erosion because he is playing for the long term. He tried an all-out frontal assault on the Kingdom of God thinking that if he could have the Son of God killed, he would win. He found out the hard way that by killing Jesus, the Gospel actually spread. Then he thought that if he could kill the apostles and prophets of this new Kingdom of God, that would cause the Kingdom to be diminished. He was wrong once again. By persecuting and killing the apostles and prophets of God, the Kingdom of God actually spread through all the world. So, it appears that he has learned that in order to stop the Kingdom of God, he will need to do it a little at a time. He has found that by eroding the faith of believers he is much more effective in stopping the spread of the Kingdom of God than he ever was through his frontal assaults.
This spiritual erosion manifests itself as indifference.
Look around the church worldwide. There are very few passionate people willing to stand against the sin that is being portrayed as normal. Oh, there are many people who believe in Jesus in the world, but there are not many with the passion to take the Gospel out of the church into the world. Let me use a recent example of what I am talking about. In 2020 we had the Covid pandemic. The governments around the world told churches that they could not gather together for worship. And if they did gather together, they had to wear a mask, stand six feet from each other, and could not sing worship songs because that would spread the virus. What did the church of Jesus Christ do? We allowed the government to shut us down. We, The Church, did not rise up and fight the government who was using illegitimate power to control us. Instead of being the passionate followers of Jesus who were willing to face death for our Lord and Savior, we cowered in our homes without saying a word. I remember driving in my car and the driver in front of me had an “I Love Jesus” sticker on the back of his car, and he was driving down the road all by himself with a mask on. I trust that the next time the government attempts to control the church, and there will be a next time, we The Church stands up to the government and refuses to let them dictate to us how we will operate.
Another sign of spiritual erosion is the neglect of spiritual disciplines which leads people to question their beliefs. This erosion makes practices like prayer and worship and bible reading become less important. It does not happen all at once, but this erosion increases slowly and causes one to neglect those things that are important to a vibrant spiritual life. Unlike an abrupt falling away, this spiritual erosion is a slow deterioration, similar to how minor erosion over time causes a massive sinkhole. People who experience this slow spiritual erosion find themselves focusing on worldly pleasures rather than on life found in Christ. Falling into a sinkhole of sin does not happen all at once, it is usually due to a gradual falling away from the disciplines of a Life in Christ.
This gradual decline in the life-giving disciplines of our faith causes a person’s spiritual foundation to disintegrate and crumble. This causes a loss of spiritual strength. We all know of King Davids famous sin with Bathsheba due to his spiritual erosion. But later in his life, David found the solution to his weakness. It says in 1 Samuel 30:6, “But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.” David learned that he had to find his strength in The Lord his God and not in his own strength. I think the reason that David got into sin with Bathsheba was because he was allowing an erosion of his faith. He was letting little thoughts come in and plant seeds of doubt and unbelief about God.
Let me use a couple of examples of how this erosion can lead to a spiritual sinkhole. Depression is a very real struggle for many people. Oftentimes depression is a physical problem caused by the lack of certain chemicals in the body that must be treated medically. But sometimes depression is triggered by the erosion of a person’s beliefs causing them to live with negative and fearful thoughts. My question is, which came first? Was it the erosion of their faith causing negative thoughts triggering the negative effect on their chemicals or was it the physical change in the chemicals in their body triggering the negative thoughts.
My wife tells the story (and I am re-telling it with her permission) that we had three very difficult events happen in a short period of time. All three were attacks by people close to us. All three attacks came back-to-back to back. Cindi was able to begin to recover from the first attack when the second attack occurred. She uses the word picture of being in a boxing match. The first attack knocked her to the canvas, but with some effort, she was able to get back up. Then immediately the second attack occurred, and she was knocked back down to the mat. This time it was much more difficult to recover from this attack because she was still weak from the first attack. But she was able to get back up. Then almost immediately after getting up from the ground after the second attack, the third attack came and knocked her back down. She had never dealt with depression before, although it was something that was in her bloodline. Her grandmother suffered from depression and her mother suffered from depression, but Cindi had never been plagued with depression. During this season of these three attacks, she found herself depressed. Depressed to the point that she could not get out of bed in the morning. She was already predisposed to depression because it was in her bloodline. It had lived in her in a dormant state for all these years, but when these three attacks came, the erosion of her thought life triggered the depression. Fortunately, she knew what to do and went to a fellow RTF minister and received wonderful ministry for this depression and it is gone. So, which was it? Did the generational iniquity of depression that is in her bloodline trigger the thoughts, or did the thoughts activate the generational iniquity of depression? It really doesn’t matter what the cause, RTF has the solution.
Let me give another example. Fear and anxiety is an issue for many people. Statistics show that the number of people struggling with anxiety today is growing. Usually, the root of anxiety is fear. And fear is not from God. 2 Timothy 1:7 says, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind.” The struggle with fear and anxiety usually has its roots in generational iniquity. The iniquity of fear is usually passed down from our ancestors. All you have to do is look at what the generations before us had to live through. The great depression, World War I and II, Vietnam war, rioting over war, race riots, and on and on the list goes. Many of us inherited the curse of fear from our ancestors. Then today we have the erosion of our faith in God through social media, through the news media, through what is being taught in school, through our government espousing fear at every turn, and frankly through progressive Christianity that has infiltrated much of the church. Today more people are taking anti-anxiety drugs than ever before. Which came first? The medical need for anti-anxiety drugs, or the erosion of our faith and trust in God.
I really believe this is where RTF can help stop this erosion. RTF deals with the roots of this erosion and not just with the surface issue. On the surface before a sinkhole happens, you can’t notice a problem until the surface caves in. The problem is underground. RTF deals with what is underground, it deals with the roots.
To stop this erosion, we must start by stopping the generational iniquity that is putting pressure on the person to allow the erosion. The generational iniquity of depression and fear and anxiety causes the propensity toward thoughts of depression and fear and anxiety to come. By cutting off the generational iniquity, it gives the person a clearer ability to recognize and take captive those erosive thoughts, not allowing them to chisel away under the surface.
The second way RTF is effective in stopping this erosion is by changing lies that are believed into God’s truth. It is many times the little lies that cause the most erosion. We can easily recognize and dismiss the big lies thrown at us by the enemy. It is harder to fight the little erosive lies that over time cause the sinkhole because these lies seem true. We have the best truth detector living within us: The Holy Spirit. Ask Him if you are believing some of these little erosive lies and see what He has to say. He wants you walking in the Truth even more than you do.
And of course, we need to get our hearts healed from the damage caused by living here on planet earth. Christians are really good at denial. “Oh, that wasn’t a big deal. It didn’t bother me.” By taking even little hurts to Jesus, you will find that approaching life from a healed place will give you more strength to fight the battle of erosion.
And then lastly RTF is a wonderful way to clean out the demonic influence from your life. We have people often say that they did not realize how much demonic interference they were experiencing until it was gone.
Go for freedom. Please don’t let your faith be eroded. Even a little erosion is stealing from you what Jesus wants to give.
PRAYER
Father God, we need your help to recognize any places of erosion that have crept into our walk with You. Would you show us where we are allowing erosion to steal away our faith in You. I thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit and I ask you to move on each one of us to invite Him to show us any places of erosion. Thank you for loving us as we are but loving us too much to leave us the way we are.
Thank you for joining us on this Hope Healing and Freedom Podcast. If you are blessed by these podcasts and would like to help financially support the ministry of RTF, please go to our website restoringthefoundations.org and click on the Donate button on the top of the page. Thank you for taking the time to listen to these podcasts.
