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Growing In God with Gary Hargrave


Feb 8, 2023

Without a doubt, we are living in the end times, which means our choices are becoming more and more critical as we near the Lord's return. We cannot listen to the lies of satan. We cannot listen to the confusion of mankind. We must be careful to seek God about the choices that need to be made. Our good and loving God invites us to look to Him when making these important decisions in our lives, to ensure that we are heading in the right direction and not being deceived by satan’s tactics.

 

Show Notes: God is making us come to grips with the fact that, yes, we have a free will, but that free will means we must make a choice. And the reality is that there are consequences because of the choices we make. As we read repeatedly in the Scriptures, God gave Israel a choice between serving Him and serving other gods, and He made very clear to them the consequences of their choice. Choosing to serve Him meant life and blessing. Choosing not to serve Him meant death and a curse.

 

God gave Adam and Eve a choice, and their choice to disobey God resulted in death and a curse for all mankind. We also find that satan was at work to deceive them and bring confusion about the true consequences of their choice. Likewise, these days will be a time of great deception as satan seeks to confuse, bring lies, and contend with us so that in our humanity we make wrong choices and wrong decisions.

 

As it was with Adam and Eve, today we are facing many choices that will have grave and deep consequences in our lives and in the days of the Kingdom. So we want to be able to make the right decisions. We want clarity in those decisions. It is urgent then that we begin to pray and prophetically proclaim the binding of satan, the binding of his lies, and the binding of his confusion. The Word of God tells us very clearly that we can bind on earth what has been bound in heaven. We must bind the strong man and his lies and his deceptions that are going on at this time.

 

Key Verses:

 

  • Joel 3:12–15. “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision!”
  • Deuteronomy 30:19–20. “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live.”
  • Joshua 24:15. “Choose for yourselves today whom you will serve.”
  • 1 Kings 18:21. “How long will you hesitate between two opinions?”
  • Deuteronomy 6:13–17. “You shall fear only the LORD your God. … You shall not follow other gods.”
  • Genesis 3:1–5. “You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die. The serpent said to the woman, ‘You surely will not die!’”
  • Luke 22:42. “Yet not My will, but Yours be done.”
  • Matthew 16:18–19. “Whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven.”
  • Matthew 12:28–29. “He first binds the strong man.”
  • Mark 3:27. “He first binds the strong man.”
  • Revelation 12:9. “Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth.”

 

Quotes:

 

  • “What we realize when we make a choice is that we are not only choosing whatever that decision is, but we also, whether we recognize it or not, are choosing the consequences.”
  • “We're to mature in God and we're to make right choices in God based on the free will that we have been given.”
  • “The choices must be made, but we need to seek God and in our seeking God prophesy that the lies of satan will be bound, that the confusion of satan that he's trying to bring against us will be bound, that the way he's trying to force us into making wrong decisions will be absolutely taken away.”

 

Takeaways:

 

  1. God has given us a free will, and that free will must be exercised by our choices. And God is encouraging us, even requiring us as He did through Moses and Joshua and Elijah, to choose if we will serve Him or not.
  2. We do not make simple choices between one thing or another. We are agreeing to the fact that we will invoke the consequences of those choices. And we must be aware that satan is bringing deception and confusion to cloud our choices and blind us so that we do not recognize the consequences we are facing.
  3. Let us pray as we have never prayed before. Let us rise up and speak the Word of the Lord to bind the strong man and his deceptions, so that we as the sons of God, as the Body of Christ, are those who bring down the plots and plans of satan so that we make clear choices to serve the Lord.