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Hi everybody, Karl Diffenderfer here with Higher Impact. And today I want to spend a little bit of time talking with you about a concept that is near and dear to my heart. And the reason it is near and dear to my heart is that I think we as business owners, as business leaders, all need to apply these things to our lives. These principles that I’m going to teach you today are true for everybody and they are also true for us to test ourselves, to see how we’re doing at representing God well, representing Jesus well in our faith, in our workplace. I’ll start off with the disclaimer. I am far from perfect, none of this stuff have I mastered, but it is something that – I’m conscious about it on a daily basis saying ‘okay, Lord, how can I honor you with all that I do in each moment of each day’. And so we have our moments where we don’t live up to that, we have our moments where we do. And our goal is that each day we might be able to come closer to being a representation of Christ in each moment, and really practicing the presence of God. If you’ve ever read the book Practicing the Presence of God, that’s a great book to kind of think about and say ‘okay, how do I live in the presence of God in each moment of the day?’.
Right now I’m just seeing a huge onslaught, an attack towards believers out there and if you are one of those people, please let me know, private message me, comment in the comments below, whatever, and say ‘can you pray for me’ because I’d be happy to pray for you. But the enemy is attacking a lot of families, and marriages, he’s going against our businesses and I think it’s because we as believers are really starting to stand up for our faith and say ‘No, we believe in God and we’re going to stand strong with that’ and so these attacks from the enemy are Satan’s attempt to steal, kill, and destroy.
Today, I’m going to have a little bit of a Bible study or a little teaching time for you inside of our podcast, and the reason for that is that I really want to challenge you to live up to the best version of you that you can for God’s kingdom. So my challenge to you today is going to be really to take what I talk about, think about it, and then apply it to your business and apply it to your world and apply it to your family so that you can really win for God’s kingdom for kingdom treasure.
1 Peter 5:8 says: “stay alert, watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith, remember that your family of believers all over the world is going through the same kind of suffering that you are.”
So, as we think about this, we need to say ‘okay, how can we be alert to what the enemy is doing?’ and he does it in very conniving ways. You might have an argument with your spouse or an argument with your employee, you might have a moment where you’re jealous of somebody or you’re comparing yourself. You might have a moment of impatience where you lose your cool or you don’t do so well on the highway, whatever it is that you struggle with. By the way, one of the ones I struggle with is having patience with people on the highway, but he’s using those moments to dig in, to start to plant seeds that are not from the Lord. Now, one of the things though that I think we need to remember, and this is kind of a concept that I was taught years ago and the idea is kind of like mind-blowing when you first hear it.
I hope you enjoy this as you think about it, but I’m going to say a statement here that really is going to cause you to say ‘huh, never thought about that’ and this is a scriptural principle, I’ll share the scripture to go with it, and the scripture is this or the concept is this: Satan can’t read your mind. It says in scripture that God is the only one that can read our minds. He is the only one that can know the human heart, and that’s in 1 Kings and I believe it’s also in Psalms 2, if I remember correctly.
So, if Satan can’t read your mind then, what does he have to use against you? How does he know whether or not you’re on board with God’s plan or with his plan? Well, I think our actions show that. Now our actions can happen through our tongue through what we actually do physically. But that’s why scripture says that: “out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks”, so when we say something that does not exemplify Christ at that moment, we are now giving Satan fodder to use against us. We’re giving him the weak spots in our armor. Think about that for a second.
We have weaknesses in our hearts, and when we act upon them, now we’re giving Satan the opportunity to attack. So, I would like to challenge you to, first of all, hold your cards close to yourself so that Satan can’t understand what your chinks are in your armor that’s step number one obviously walking in obedience, but there’s another part to this then too and that is being faithful to God. I don’t know about you, but I want to be faithful to God in everything that I do, every day and every moment, and it’s hard to do. I fail at it, that’s what grace is for, that’s what his love is for. But as a follower of Jesus, I need to be able to do that. And so my thought for you then is that you need to identify what are those chinks in your armor and take them to the Lord and say, Lord, I need your help with this.
So, some of the examples that come to my mind are business owners that I’ve worked with in coaching, where they have this struggle of just losing their cool and losing their top, losing their temper with their employees. When we do that we’re showing in our armor and we’re showing anger and in that the enemy is able to see that and come back after that. Or perhaps, I’ve seen I’m thinking of somebody who’s a woman that was gossiping just constantly about something they saw about a person and they didn’t like that about that person and so they were just constantly putting that person down and sharing all their thoughts about that person, everybody else but that person it’s gossip it’s wrong probably some envy and jealousy in there as well. Another one would be comparing we spend time comparing ourselves to the Joneses down the street. I don’t have this they have that, all of that is actually an outpouring of what’s actually going on inside of our heart and God’s after our heart. He wants us to have good fruit.
Galatians 5:22-23 talking about fruit says the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives:
“Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self-control there is no law against these things”
Take note, it says the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit. So it’s out of us going and connecting with God and coming close to him that He’s able to work in our hearts and begin to enable us to produce good fruit and be faithful and obedient to Him. Now it also says in scripture that we are going to be known by our fruit, and it talks about that in Matthew, and it talks about:
‘A good tree cannot bear bad fruit nor can a bad tree bear good fruit every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire therefore by your fruits you will be known.’
And so, our fruit really shows where our heart is towards God. So, you can go to Church every Sunday, you can read your Bible every day, you can be a devout Christian and yes, “I’m a good person”, but your actions and your fruit will prove where you stand. And so, I don’t know about you. I need to have better and better fruit every day all the day and ask God to reveal to me the things that I can’t see about myself.
Now finally in Ephesians, it talks about us putting on the full armor of God and so when we talk about the chinks, the little things that Satan does to get inside of our armor, I think Ephesians is a great place to go because it says:
“Be strong in the Lord and mighty in his power put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all the strategies of the devil. For we are not fighting against flesh and blood – enemies, but against the evil rulers the authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world and against evil spirits in heavenly places.”
When I was younger, I thought man I’d love to see that spiritual world. The more I think about it I think I would probably have a heart attack because I think there’s a spiritual world around us that’s so far beyond what we can even imagine. Today, I don’t want to see that, maybe someday God when I go to heaven I’ll see that. I don’t know, but I feel like we as believers need to really dig into our hearts and look at our fruit instead of looking at everybody else and all their bad fruit and say okay, how can I take care of this in my life. So what is the fruit that you need to work on? What’s the fruit that you need to have exhibited in your life that’s going to show that you are actually part of God’s vine. Think about it the fruit comes out of the vine that’s growing that’s connected to the Lord so do you want bad fruit or good fruit and the fruit is what proves it.
And then finally, the final closing thought that I have for you today is that our tongue actually is where all of this begins. Actually, I should say our heart is where it begins, but our tongue shows where our hearts are actually at, and scripture talks about that in James all over the place. The tongue is really capable of creating all kinds of evil. So, I would challenge you to start with your tongue, just say okay that critical statement that I was going to make about that person, that judgment, whatever it is that you’re using your tongue for, stop it just start to bite your tongue, and in that, you’ll be able to begin to have better and better fruit but remember the Holy Spirit is what produces that so you need to go to the Lord and this is why we spend time with the Lord everyday. Go to the Lord and say, Lord, I need more of your Holy Spirit in my life to help me produce good fruit, so that I’m a testimony for your kingdom and so, that someday I’ll be able to be in your presence in heaven forever and feel like I can get to the words “Well done, my good and faithful servant”.
So, I hope this was challenging for you. I hope it was helpfu.l I’m going to be doing more of these so keep tuned in, follow us on the different channels that you might follow us. And from today, I hope that this little devotional is an opportunity for you to start to say ‘okay how can I begin to have better fruit in my life. How can I begin to show Christ to those around me through my fruit?’ It’s a great way to do it take care, everybody, I will talk to you soon.
Have a great June. We’ll talk again here soon in the near future and as always, I’m here to serve so if you need something – even if you just need me to pray for you, reach out I’d love to serve you in any way that I can. Connect with me on social media wherever it is and keep in touch. Take care everybody, we’ll talk to you soon. Goodbye.
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