Romans Archives - David Westerfield

Originally posted at blog.myspace.com on Friday, February 17, 2006, archived here http://old.westerfunk.net/archives/personal/Dave%20Sermon%20Notes/

I. INTRODUCTION

A. Read Philippians 4:4-7

B. ILLUS. Chaplaincy. Summer 2002. I was assigned to the reception station at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. I was counseling teenagers just about to step into Basic Training. The ones who stopped by my office were stressed and anxious about girlfriends they left behind, mean drill sergeants, the radical culture change, etc. and I did my best to soothe their worries and give them hope. One afternoon, halfway through my assignment, the Deputy Assistant Installation Chaplain and my Brigade Chaplain (my boss) entered my office. They told me that the Red Cross just informed them that my dad had had a massive coronary and was being care-flighted to a hospital 100 miles away and that my mom was in a car trailing them. I was to be released immediately to fly home and take care of family business. The counselor had now become the counselee.

Satan’s Subversion Tactics Haven’t Changed

By David Westerfield

On January 2, 2012

In Theology

In reading Genesis 3-5 today, I was reminded that Satan’s tactics haven’t changed one bit in how he deceives and subverts the church today, moving us off the mark of Christ-centeredness and promise faithfulness, causing us to ask the question, “Has God really said?” or as my son’s Jesus Storybook Bible says, “Does God really love me?” As R.C. Sproul has said, faith isn’t believing “in” God (for Romans makes clear everyone does), faith is believing God, believing what He says about Himself, us and salvation. Even the demons believe and shutter though. The question is, do you believe unto eternal life what Christ alone has said and done on behalf of His own in His life, death and resurrection, that is, by God’s power, not your own? A faith of our own making will ultimately fail (this is the essence of religiousity), where we struggle to hold onto doctrines we don’t really believe at our core and are instead just putting up a front. A faith that God creates, sustains and carries through to the end is a faith that lasts unto eternity. This is a faith that Satan himself can do nothing to undo, for it is God’s work in us. This is saving faith. However, we must never by unaware of Satan’s tactics to keep us from Christ. And he does this primarily by sowing unbelief in God’s word and causing us to question the Lord.