In Episode 7, Part 1, we established how Satan uses the allurements of his world system to play on our desires. He does this in order to break our fellowship with God and bring us into alignment with his wicked way of thinking. In Episode 7, Part 2, we look at the way to overcome that ever-present threat by being filled with godly wisdom.

Wisdom from above involves making decisions in our lives based on God’s standard of right and wrong. If God’s way of thinking is our foundation, then Satan will not be able to get control of our hearts. He can’t manipulate us through our desires when something better than our unreliable emotions defines our actions. This may have been what Solomon was talking about when he said, “Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.” – Proverbs 28:26 (ESV)

Today, Nate Danser and Ed Buch sit down to talk about the topic of wisdom, using James 1 as a launching point for their discussion. If you need deliverance from spiritual strongholds and addiction, we hope this interview will encourage you to start seeking out godly wisdom.

Resources

This series is based on the book Intoxicated with Babylon: The Seduction of God’s People in the Last Days by Steve Gallagher. You can find out more about that book by visiting our bookstore.

In a recent Pure Life Ministries service, Pastor Ed Buch spoke on the topic of gratitude and how essential it is in the life of a believer. Listen in, as he describes attributes of God that can always prompt our praise and thanksgiving.

Pastor Ed: I'm going to share a couple of thoughts out of Psalm 103. It’s a familiar passage, but it came to mind, because it's been one of those difficult days for me. Maybe you have had days where things just don't seem to go the way you want them to. And for me, Psalm 103 came to mind as a good place to go get reset inside. David writes this Psalm, saying in verses 1-2 (NKJV), “Bless the Lord, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits.”  That's what was real to me when I read this, because that is exactly what I needed to do. I needed to go back and just count some of my blessings. I needed to not forget all His benefits and remind myself that I am not lacking anything. It may feel like I am lacking a lot at times, but that is a lie. The truth is that I am not lacking anything and truly have more benefits than I can use.
           Psalm 103 continues by saying that the Lord forgives all our iniquities, He heals all our diseases, and He redeems our lives from destruction. Wow. Thank you, Lord! Thank you for doing that. My life was destroyed. Most of us who come to Pure Life Ministries understand that firsthand. We destroyed our lives in one way or another, but praise the Lord because He redeems us from the pits of destruction that we place ourselves in. Was someone else going to come along and do that? Did you have some other hope left? I did not and I think most of us did not. We were at that point where we said to ourselves, “this is horrible, there's no way out and no way to fix this.”
          At one point the idea of our life being redeemed may have seemed like a mirage or a false hope. But then God comes along and He does it. He actually does it! He turns our lives around and uses them for good. Personally, He made it better for me than if I had never done some of the wrong things that I did. I’m not saying I should have done them. I’m not saying He needed me to do them in order to make good happen. But He is so good at redeeming things that He can turn the worst things that have happened around and make them work for good and bring glory to Himself through them.
         Psalm 103:4b-8 (NKJV) says, “Who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies, who satisfies your mouth with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. The Lord executes righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the children of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, Slow to anger, and abounding in mercy.” Oh, I wish I was more like him. Merciful, gracious, and slow to anger.
We need to slow down sometimes and rein in our feelings. It is not the Lord speaking when your feelings are racing and your thoughts are racing, because panicking like that is outside of His character. He is slow to anger and abounding in mercy, but He will not always strive with us, nor will He withhold His anger forever. There is limited time on this earth to respond to the Lord and repent. Billy Graham said in a sermon one time, “You think that you can come to the Lord whenever you want, but you can't.” Scripture says that we're drawn to the Lord. God has to draw us. If we're not drawn, we can't come. Don't miss those drawing seasons in your life because it's not going to be on any day that you want it to be. It's not like you can say, “Yea, I feel you drawing me Lord, but I'm going to choose a different day to respond.” That different day to respond doesn't always come. Look in Scripture for yourself and you'll see that there were men who sort of barely missed the Kingdom of God in their encounters with Jesus or their encounters with the Apostle Paul. They heard preaching, but they didn't receive it with fertile soil in their hearts. They were drawn, but they didn't respond the way that they needed to.

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         Psalm 103:9-10 (NKJV) says, “He will not always strive with us nor will he keep His anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins nor punished us according to our iniquities.” With those verses in mind, no matter how bad things have gotten for us, and no matter what you feel like you're overcome with, as far as consequences and punishment, it's nowhere near what it should be or could be. That's the truth of God's Word. He spares us. He never lets it get that bad. He's kind to unthankful and evil people.
         Can you find something that you want to say thank you for today? I'm preaching to myself in all of this. That's what I was telling myself today. I'm looking at this passage in Scripture and thinking about how I need to get back to a place of giving gratitude to the Lord. I need to quit asking Him for things and just give gratitude, give thanks and be grateful for what He’s already flooded into my life with His goodness and mercy. I’m reminded too that the first step into the spiral of degradation mentioned in Romans 1 was that they chose not to give thanks. Let's get up, out and away from that spiral as far as we can and start giving thanks. I want to be free from that spiral. I don't want to live right on the line of falling into the spiral of degradation.
          If you want to live in the center of God’s will, gratitude will help you get there. But you have to open your mouth and say thank you for the things that He has done. You need to bring those things to mind, because like the beginning verses of Psalm 103 says, we must not forget all His benefits. Some are even listed there to help you get jump started. And you have the whole book of Psalms that mostly does that. It helps us jump start the thanksgiving process in us.
One of the things that really helped me was when someone once told me there are four things that you can always give thanks for. These are things God is never tired of hearing you say thank you for. He never could hear it enough. He never gets tired of you coming to Him and saying thank you for these four things. Those things are Jesus Himself, His blood, the Word of God and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
         So, you have four things that you can say thank you for from your heart at any time to the Lord and you can get right into His throne room with gratitude. I’m telling you the Lord’s heart opens wide if you give thanks for those things with any kind of fervency and sincerity. Remember those four things to be thankful for: Jesus, the blood, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. If you've got a bad memory, write them down and practice them until it becomes something that is natural for you to do. Every morning I start my prayer time with one of those and I usually get all four in there somewhere. But one of them just takes off in gratitude in my heart and then I'm on a tangent about the blood or about His Word. Through gratitude you can become obsessed with God for a change instead of all the vile thoughts that you are accustomed to. You can use gratitude to change your inside world.

A lot of times when someone gets sick of their addiction, they go to Google and search for help. And that's when they realize there are actually a ton of different options out there. Now that might seem good, except for one thing: the vast majority of those solutions are powerless to help them really change. So in this episode, we break down the problems with two very common remedies for addiction: secular accountability groups and the always-popular “resolution” to change.

Resources

• The 4 Elements of Effective Accountability (Blog) by Jeff Colón

Maybe you’ve heard the saying, “The Christian life is not a playground, it’s a battleground.” Never has this statement been as true as it is today. And yet, when we look at American Christianity, it begs the question, “How many people truly live their lives like they’re in a spiritual war?”

Our culture is brimming with tantalizing pleasures, both innocent and perverse, which vie every day for our devotion. Nonbelievers quickly and easily run to these enticements, but sadly multitudes of Christians live with little to no concern for the spiritual threat surrounding them.

This dangerous spiritual climate hasn’t come about by chance, but by the careful scheming of the enemy of our souls. He has carefully built this world-system, utilizing the aid and skills of his army of fallen angelic beings. Join Steve Gallagher as he once again unmasks the deception of these last days and lays out the spiritual strategies needed to escape the clutches of the spirit of this present evil age.

Resources

This series is based on the book Intoxicated with Babylon: The Seduction of God’s People in the Last Days by Steve Gallagher. You can find out more about that book by visiting our bookstore.

The connection between a worldly lifestyle and sexual sin is very strong. Anyone hoping to overcome their sexual addiction must be willing to admit this, and then examine their lives and see where that connection is strongest and what God might be asking them to do about it.
This is part two of our interview with Luke Imperato on this subject. If you haven’t already read part 1, you can find the link to that article below.

Click here to check out Worldliness Leads to Sexual Sin (Part 1)

Nate: So, we’re talking about the connection between sexual sin and worldliness. I want to start off this half of our conversation by asking, what kind of guidance do you give to somebody who is trying to create a separation between the things of this world and their heart? I think it can sound like reading the Bible and praying are the only good things that you can do and everything else is dangerous and sinful. It is easy to fall into heavy legalism where you think that you have to get rid of everything and you have to basically become like a monk. How do you counsel someone who is thinking along those lines?

Luke: Well, first of all, I would say that it is truth to say that everything in this world is dangerous. The enemy is looking for ways into our lives and as soon as we leave our prayer closet, we’re in a war zone and the enemy is looking for ways to attack. So a lot of the things in this world really are dangerous. That doesn't mean that we'll always get hurt by them, but they are dangerous. I would say that the first step if you're looking to really get serious in your walk with the Lord, especially if you're struggling with sexual sin, is to start cutting things out of your life that are causing you to stumble.
        If you asked yourself or if someone were to ask you what's the most important thing in your life, the Christian answer would be, “Well, you know, following Jesus, or following the Lord. That's the most important thing in my life.” Okay, good answer. But what does the reality of your life indicate? If you listed out the order of priorities – faith, family, career, hobbies, based on the time and attention you give each one, what would be the true order? If you find that your walk with the Lord is getting beat out by other things in your life, I think you need to be a little more brutally honest with yourself and realize that maybe your profession of faith is just talk and it's just an outward form of Godliness.
       The book of James says that if you're hearing a lot of the Word but not doing it, you will be deceived. If you’re hearing the truth that the Lord has to be number one in your life, but you’re not actually implementing that in the reality of your life, the product is that you're going to be deceived. So, you need to understand that you have been deceived and realize that some things do need to change in your life. You may do an inventory of your life and say, “Maybe God isn’t the most important thing in my life, but I don’t feel like that is true.” According to James, you have been deceived. It would be better to just take God at His Word and admit that you may be being deceived. ‍
         Get brutally honest with the Lord and say, “Hey God, you have to do a radical work. You have to change the way I see things. You have to really show me in my life where I'm wrong. What things do I need to cut off?” If you’re not willing to cut the things off that He shows you that you clearly need to, then I don't think you're going to find the victory over sexual sin that you're looking for. It's just not going to happen, because this world will foster every kind of sexual perversion and selfish lifestyle you could imagine. And you could even find that kind of teaching in a church, so if you're not really willing to make some serious decisions to cut things off, you're not going to find victory.

Nate: Yeah, I've used this illustration before - Let's say that a person has a pretty healthy lifestyle, but they drink a shot of poison once a day. How are they going to feel? They're going to feel miserable! You can work out, eat right and do a bunch of stuff, but you’re still going to feel miserable until you stop drinking the poison. And you may say, “Oh, but I really like it.” Well, okay, then there is literally nothing you can do to stop feeling the way you do until you stop doing the thing that is killing you. If you're not willing to give up Netflix, or if you're not willing to give up social media or whatever things are clearly leading you consistently into sin, you will be insane for the rest of your life, no matter how much you cry out to God, read the Bible, or go to church, because you're not following Him. He told you get rid of it and you're not listening to Him.

Luke: Yeah, when Jesus said, “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out”, He was referring to sexual immorality. We have to be willing to do that when it comes to worldliness and the influences of this world.

Nate: Yeah, and it's just amazing that many people often worry about what they will do with their time if they give those things up. I know we can both say from testimony that once you are without it, and you experience the liberty and the joy of not having that cloud of lust hanging over your head, you just don't want to go back to it.

Luke: Yes. After living in that kind of freedom from the world you become very sensitive to worldly influences. If you watch an old movie or do something that you used to do, you will see that it makes you feel way different than it did when you watched it when you were enslaved to a worldly mindset. You can look back and see that things you were subjected to were much more worldly, much more sensual, and were alluring your flesh more than you realized previously.

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Nate: One thing we've said a number of times is that God is not only calling us out of the world, but he's also calling us into Himself. Can you talk about that just a little bit.

Luke: Yeah. That is actually really important, because if I don't have hope of where I'm going, and if I don't have any inspiration or a goal, it's very hard to get motivated to do something. I think that's true for many people. If my only takeaway in this conversation was that these are all the things I can't do, while in some degree, it actually might be helpful, it really doesn't give you the full picture and it leaves you feeling fairly hopeless. And that's not the heart of God. He says, “At my right hand are pleasures evermore.” He loves us and He is full of life and joy. We have to remember that the destination that the Lord is taking us to at the end of all of this is full of life and joy for eternity and the true enemy is our flesh, and the world just breathes life into our fleshly and carnal nature. So, when the Lord is saying, don't do this or put this off, it's because it's slowing me down or hindering me from growing closer to Him.
         In Ephesians 4:22 Paul starts off by saying that we are to put off concerning our former conduct, the old man, which grows corrupt according to deceitful lusts. He’s talking about the lust of this world. He's saying put those things off and essentially avoid their influence in your life. I take it as a warning because it's dangerous. But he doesn’t stop there. Paul says in Ephesians 4:23, “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” You need to spend time with the Lord and have Him renew your mind and put the truth into you. That's referring to quiet time with the Lord, a prayer time, and a devotional time or a time of worship where you are spending time with the Lord and He is renewing your mind. But Paul goes on to say that if you do that, there will be a result. And that’s a good thing. He goes on to say in verse 24, “Put on the new man which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness.” And he goes on in Ephesians 5 saying, “Though, once your heart was full of darkness, now it is full of light from the Lord.” Our behavior should show that.
         It’s similar to Galatians 5 where Paul talks about the fruit of the Spirit. He lists all of the fruits, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc., and at the end of listing them he says, “There's no law against these things.” Does anyone have a problem with the fruit of the Spirit? Well, no, we want love, joy and peace in our life. We want self-control and gentleness. We want all of the fruit in our lives that comes as a result of receiving the Holy Spirit. God is saying in His Word that in order to have that kind of fruit coming forth in your life, you need to put off your former life, and all of the things that so easily entangle you and feed your lusts and the things of your flesh.
         And I would throw something in there as well to someone who is living in sexual immorality and is just beginning to make the decision to fight against sin. A lot of the decisions that you make are going to be more radical now than they will be, let's say five or ten years down the road. Initially you need to cut everything off. That may mean getting a phone that has no internet access. That may mean not owning a laptop. That may mean that you can never shop alone and you have to check in with your pastor every other day. At first it’s like, “Man, this is a whole lot.” As time goes on though, those things that you used to be enslaved to will lose their hold on you and they won't have the same grip that they used to in your life. As time goes on, you'll find that you're walking in more and more victory and more and more freedom.
        You will also learn a lot during this process. You will learn what many of your own weaknesses are. When you stumble or fall into sin you can then realize that you need to get more radical and cut more worldly influences out of your life. You may need to just make adjustments as far as when you are allowed to have access to certain things or maybe the Lord calls you to abstain from certain activities that you may even really enjoy for a period of time. If you keep living a life like that, after a few years, I'm telling you, you will see that you have more freedom and your heart is being renewed. You won't desire worldly things like you used to and it won’t be as much of a temptation as it used to be. So, it may seem you are being radical and life is super restrictive right now, but that's okay because you have to take that initial plunge.

Nate: Yeah. And that's good too because really what's at the heart of it is not all the rules but the fact that what you are doing without restriction is causing you to be mastered by something. What we're not saying though is that after six years you can start living the same kind of life you're living now. In reality, you won't want to. You may even say for a period of time, “You know what, I'm not going to watch baseball at all, because I am being controlled by my love for it.” Well in five years maybe you can watch a baseball game, because you can enjoy it now without it controlling you. That's the point. What is controlling you? And once the Lord begins to control you, then you can enjoy some things in a way that is still honoring and pleasing to Him and you're just living in freedom.

Luke: And also, your lifestyle will match up with your profession of faith, and that's a beautiful thing when you know that you don't have to live a double life anymore. It’s beautiful when the reality of your life is showing that you love the Lord and He's your treasure. The Lord can see when someone comes to that place and at that point there are blessings that He can give you. You can have a life in Christ that gets to the point where the world is dead to you and you are dead to the world. That's what I'm striving for and hoping one day to get to, where the things of this world don't have a hold on me anymore. That's a step into eternity and that's not going to go away.

Babylon began as an ancient city built by a rebel. It later emerged as a proud, idolatrous, God-opposing empire. The origins and history of Babylon are so entwined with defiance toward God that it came to symbolize everything that resists the rule of God in the world. Its king is Satan himself. Its goal is life without God. This is the final episode in our series, Babylon: The Seat of Satan's Power. In today's show, there will be no history lessons, no discussions, no explanations. Just an exhortation to respond to the timeless words of God. Yes, His voice is still echoing in the prophet Jeremiah's ancient words: "Flee from the midst of Babylon!"

Resources

• Intoxicated with Babylon (Book) by Steve Gallagher

In this interview, Nate and Ken sat down in our studio to discuss chapter two of John’s first epistle. Their hope was to gain a greater understanding of what the “world system” is and how it impacts each of our lives. And as they took a look at what the Word of God has to say, they discovered that the spirit of the world infiltrates our lives much more broadly, and much more subtly than many of us realize.

We hope that this discussion will challenge you to consider carefully the warnings of Scripture and that you will heed the call to keep yourself unstained from the world.

Resources

This series is based on the book Intoxicated with Babylon: The Seduction of God’s People in the Last Days by Steve Gallagher. You can find out more about that book by visiting our bookstore.

The Bible teaches us that our hearts are naturally drawn toward wicked things. And these evil desires are adamantly opposed to God. But they are not opposed to the world system. In fact, the things that surround us every day, even things that seem good to us, can feed some of our worst habits. That’s certainly true of sexual sin.  But we often don’t want to hear that something in our lives which we think is good may actually be hurting us. We want to be free from sexual sin, but we also want to hold on to our lives in this world. However, the truth is that hope for freedom over sexual sin is only possible if we are willing to confess and repent of the real issues in our lives. In this interview, Luke Imperato discusses how worldliness is one of those issues.

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Nate: So Luke, what we want to do here is help people see that there's a really clear connection between worldliness and sexual sin. Because what we teach her at Pure Life Ministries, what we tell our counselees and preach from the pulpit, is that one of the main factors in overcoming sexual sin is learning to cut ourselves off from the spirit of the world. This is because when your whole life is centered around just going after what the world offers, then you're creating a spiritual environment inside of yourself that's going to make you really vulnerable to sexual sin. But I think that connection is not super clear, especially if you're in sexual sin yourself. You just don't see it. It's kind of like somebody who's continually having intestinal problems and they don't even realize that they have a food allergy. They're like, why is this happening to me? So, I think I want to dive into that a little bit more right up front. From your perspective, what is it about worldliness that is making our inside world a perfect place for sin to thrive.

Luke: When I was thinking about this question, what came to mind was the fact that the root behind sexual sin or what really makes a sexual sin lifestyle thrive is selfishness. We don't have to conjure that up. It comes naturally. We don't have to work to become selfish. So when I look at a mentality of worldliness, I connect it with a natural tendency to love oneself and the natural tendency to just protect self and to do whatever self wants. With that in mind, worldliness could be almost defined as just the pursuit of any earthly pleasure, or passion, or desire for anything that self wants. When we think about the fact that that's the message of the world, and it’s the natural tendency of our hearts which we know produces sexual sin, it should be no surprise to us that if we keep feeding selfishness and worldliness in our lives, we are going to produce a life of sexual sin.

Nate: That's helpful. What you're basically saying is that we are already selfish by nature and part of that selfishness is wanting to indulge in sexual passions, which all of us have. Then this world’s spirit adds to that saying, “Yeah, do that. Whatever you want, whatever you crave, just go for it.” That perspective really helps to understand how that selfishness can be fostered by the worldly spirit. Why is God is so adamant about being separate from the world.

Luke: It's a chain reaction. If I look back at the chain of events in my own life, I see a lot of sexual sin in my life and I see how that was because I was selfish. The world fostered that selfishness, but the Lord is going to be adamantly opposed to anything in my life that's going to produce sinful behavior. So, if worldliness thrives in a selfish mindset, or even if selfishness thrives in a worldly environment, then the Lord's going to say that He doesn't want a worldly influence to be reigning in my life. Sometimes I find it helpful to just look at it through the lens of Scripture and just let the Word of God tell me what's right or wrong. If the Word of God is saying that something is evil, there are times where we just have to believe that.

Nate: Yeah. Without needing some kind of complex explanation.

Luke: Yeah, exactly. So, when I look at a verse like 1 John 2:15 (ESV) where John says, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in Him.” Just that verse is a compelling argument that if you're in love with the world, you don't have the love of the Father in you. That should be a huge warning. John goes on in Verse 16 saying, “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life is not from the Father.” It’s like God is saying that when you're holding onto the things of the world, those things are not of me.
          The Living Bible says in 1 John 2:16 (TLB), “For all these worldly things, these evil desires—the craze for sex, the ambition to buy everything that appeals to you, and the pride that comes from wealth and importance—these are not from God.” We just have to stop and realize that the Lord is adamantly opposed to things that are not of Him. He's trying to make a connection here that the things of this world, these passions, and desires, are not of me. So if we love them, then how can we claim to have a relationship with Him?
          We know the world is perishing. We know that this world is coming to an end and the Lord is going to judge His enemies, but we read several times in Scripture that God takes no pleasure in destroying the wicked. He's patient and He's kind, hoping that all would come to repentance. He doesn't want to destroy, and He doesn't want to judge in that way. He wishes that we would all come to repentance. So when the Lord is telling us to separate from the things of this world, He's saying, “I do not want to judge you. I do not want to harm you.” I think that oftentimes we don’t connect worldliness with the judgment of God, but that's the reality.
         Most of us know the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, where God rained down fire from heaven and destroyed these cities because they were full of all this immorality and sin. In our mind, we think that they were just a nonstop party city full of obvious evil. We think that it must have just been a terrible place. But if we look in Ezekiel, God gives us a little behind the scenes as to what was actually going on in Sodom and Gomorrah and what their actual heart issues were. The Lord speaks in Ezekiel 16:49-50 (NKJV) saying, “Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty and committed abomination before Me; therefore I took them away as I saw fit.” When I read that, I'm like, wait a minute, that’s what was really going on in Sodom and Gomorrah. In that verse you can almost get the sense that it was just worldliness that they were living in. They were just living for the here and now, living for their pleasures and their desires. They pursued whatever they wanted and the Lord said that was that was the iniquity of Sodom and Gomorrah.

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Nate: I think that's good to see, because if we could be transported back in time and actually just live there for a day, maybe it would just kind of look like a nice beach town in Florida where everybody's just enjoying life.

Luke: Yea. And we don't see that as dangerous, but the Lord does. He's crying out and trying to warn us in His Word not to be caught up in that mindset because it's going to lead to destruction.

Nate: Okay, so let me get your take on something because I know that objections start coming up in people's minds when we start talking about worldliness, especially if we start connecting it with specific aspects of our American lifestyle. How do you respond to somebody who easily gets defensive about this?

Luke: It's hard, because I don't know if you can make a blanket statement that applies to everyone. It would be nice if there were just clear-cut rules like you're allowed 45 minutes on the internet a day and you will be a Christian. That may be simple and nice if it worked that way, but it doesn't. Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” I think we need to examine our lives and ask ourselves questions like, “What do I treasure? What do I value? And what do I put a lot of time into?” Our answers to those questions will tell us where our hearts are at.
          You just have to do an inventory of your life and realize, okay, while it may not be evil in itself, if you’re spending a substantial amount of time on entertainment or following politics, on hobby’s or at your job, you might have a problem. The Lord says in Scripture that if you want to know where your heart is, just look at what you treasure; look at what you value. So if you run an inventory of your time spent over a period of seven days, you could look and see that maybe 5% of that time was spent with the Lord in that period of time, you should consider how much you really treasure the Lord and if it matches how much you think you treasure Him.

Nate: That's good, because I think when I really studied that portion of Scripture that you read in 1 John 2, what I realized was that what was being represented as the love of the world was not just a blatantly immoral and flagrantly sinful lifestyle, but also a life that just shuts God out. If I look into my past when I was living in unrepentant sin, what my life was saying was that I didn’t have time for God. I pursued what my flesh wanted. I pursued what I saw with my eyes and what I wanted. I was just full of pride.
        I think even maybe some pretty decent people could be living in that spirit just because they decided that they don't have time for God. The bottom line is that they have shut God out by the things they have given their life to.

Satan's end goal is to create a global mindset of rebellion against God's authority. But how does he do it? What are his most effective strategies for shaping the minds of men and women? What are the cultural forces that we need to be most aware of and most on guard against? Our episode this week takes a look at one way he does this, a phenomenon that has gripped the hearts of over 4 billion people - social media.

Resources

• Intoxicated with Babylon (Book) by Steve Gallagher
• How Media Transforms and Deceives Us (Blog) By Patrick Hudson

It’s been estimated that there are over 3,800 distinct cultures on the planet. Even within a single country, you can find a wide range of people groups with differing dialects, traditions and values. Yet despite all these apparent differences, there is a common culture which unites all of mankind together. It was this spirit that the Lord sought to disrupt at the Tower of Babel.

Ever since that day, Satan has been plotting and scheming to reunite humanity in rebellion against God. Today, however, he no longer wants to do this by raising a single tower, but by raising up a single world leader – the Antichrist. But how could he influence billions of people divided across the whole earth? How could he overcome all their differences and unite them once again?
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The answer is kosmos.

Join us as Steve Gallagher explains how the spirit of kosmos is being manipulated by Satan to condition multitudes into a cohesive mindset. Pastor Steve also helps us see what all Christians must do if they hope to be prepared for the spiritual battles in the days ahead.

Resources

This series is based on the book Intoxicated with Babylon: The Seduction of God’s People in the Last Days by Steve Gallagher. You can find out more about that book by visiting our bookstore.

Before they came to Pure Life Ministries, Gabriel, Michael and Chris lived their lives in a frenzy, running from place to place. They couldn’t slow down long enough to allow the Lord to speak to them. This left them in a bad place spiritually. In this discussion, they share what it took for the Lord to slow them down. They’ll talk about how God did that as they went through the Pure Life Ministries Residential Program. They’ll also testify to the peace of God which comes from taking the time to meditate on His Word and taking the time to wait patiently for His direction in life.

Resources

• Intoxicated with Babylon (Book) By Steve Gallagher

Many saints throughout the ages have spoken of the value of being still. They've told us about the great spiritual benefits awaiting anyone who will regularly quiet their minds and hearts so that they might contemplate God. They've urged us to think deeply about His works, wonders and promises. They've testified about growing in the reality of eternity. If that’s the impact that was made on those who chose to quiet themselves before God, it’s no wonder why Satan loves fostering stress, pressure, lights, noise, and endless activity and motion in our culture. After all, if we are constantly tyrannized by what is happening right now, we will never have time to think about eternity.

Resources

• Intoxicated with Babylon (Book) by Steve Gallagher