Christian Fight Club

Episode Transcript

Ethan (00:00):
Raising joyful children in an angry world, a podcast
dedicated to faithful parentsnavigating their families
through a stormy cultur
It seems these days thateveryone has a fight club, and I
want to talk to you today aboutthe Christian fight club.
This is raising joyful childrenin an angry world.
I'm your host, Paul Osborne,teaching your children to fight.

(00:24):
Let's take a look at that inExodus 17.
it's been my experience at timesin my life, and I think this is
true for many Christians.
We go to church, we get ourforgiveness card, has this nice
eternal life stamp on it.
We share it with our family.
I've been working on a pyramidabout the Christian life and

(00:48):
there's three triangles on it.
And one of the triangles is theChristian life is learning to
love well, fight well, andfollow well.
And our kids, I believe,desperately need to learn how to
fight.
And I'm talking about somethingmore than a self defense course,
so that may be necessary.
I believe if you don't learn tofight as a Christian, if you

(01:10):
don't understand war, spiritualwar, you don't understand the
tactics of the enemy, your kidsare going to struggle in their
freedom, their joy to find theirgifts in the kingdom.
And you, as a parent, you'regoing to get baited into a bunch
of stuff by not recognizingsometimes Wow, this is a war
going on.
My, my child's been infectedwith some sort of mind disease

(01:33):
and how to deal with thatinstead of trying to argue back,
which is what, you know, welargely do.
Let's just be honest.
We, see that and we're like,wait a minute.
So today I want to talk aboutthis.
It was interesting.
William Hague, he is the formersecretary of state.
He had A little piece in theSunday Times, and he was
suggesting that the future ofwar between America and Western

(01:54):
Europe, what we call the West,and Russia and China will be a
cognitive war.
In other words, he says, look,there's the physical war.
That's the battle on the land.
The ocean and the air.
And then there's thecommunication battle, right?
Logistically, and how do we getour messages back and forth?
And then there's the cognitive,that's the battle in the mind.

(02:17):
And it's interesting, he saysthat the cognitive war, the
reason it's becoming such abattle is because it is designed
to break down trust in theinstitutions that we are
serving.
And it is exactly the same goalin spiritual warfare.
The enemy strategy is to breakdown the trust.

(02:40):
And then when the trust isbroken to rob us of our peace.
And I want to show you how thisworks and then what to do about
it.
As we look at Exodus 17, how dowe recognize the state of the
the mind?
What is the battle?
What are the communications?
What's the goal of the war ofthe enemy and what is our goal?

(03:00):
And so to me, you've got tounderstand that one of the, one
of the goals of the enemy is tobreak down trust in you, the
parents who are the chain ofcommand, which is also to break
down trust in God.
And the goal is to lose yourconfidence in your Christian
identity, the things and theinstitutions that serve you.

(03:23):
And, and the outcome when thishappens is it leaves people
struggling to find theirpromised land.
In other words, what are mygifts?
What are my talents?
What has God given to me?
And we get lost on thepilgrimage to the promised land
in our youth.
And so it's important that youlearn how to fight.

(03:44):
When you look at the battlebetween Moses with the
Israelites and the Amalekites,it takes place in Exodus 17,
you're going to see God's chosenpeople and a nomadic, sorcering,
envious guerrilla war groupcalled the Amalekites.
And so the first thing that Ithink you've got to recognize.

(04:06):
Regarding the state of mind andthe influence of the enemy takes
place in what's called thedesert of sin, right?
They have left and they're ontheir pilgrimage to the promised
land and they reach the place ofdesert and I believe sin is
really More of a geographiclocation, but the deserts where
the temptation takes placeThat's where the Lord was

(04:27):
tempted by the devil or thedevil tried to tempt the Lord I
should say And our situationalawareness, there's no water in
the desert, starts to play mindgames and you'll notice it in
the questions they ask.
The way you ask and the wordsthat you speak reflect the mind.
And the people asked Moses inthe very beginning of this

(04:50):
chapter, Have you brought us outof Egypt to kill us, our
children and livestock withthirst?
You see the question?
They're questioning the motive.
of Moses and of God.
And then this, this sort ofattack, it spreads into the
leadership.
Then Moses goes to God.

(05:10):
Oh, these people are practicallygoing to kill me.
What have you done here?
They're asking the question, isGod with us or not?
You see, words that we speak andthe way we ask and the hyperbole
and the exaggeration, when ourchildren come to us, well, the
temptation is to kind of, I'mgoing to put you in your place,

(05:32):
but what we have to do really isto help them restore their trust
in God.
And so you'll notice how Godworks in this story.
First, he tells Moses, Hey, yougo strike the rock and the, and
the water comes out.
God is reminding them and hedoes it with his staff.
God is reminding them of hispower and his promises that he

(05:52):
is trustworthy.
And then Moses, is then givensome instruction, like how are
we going to do this?
How are we going to restore theconfidence?
And this is where the fightclub, where you really see it
because you and I and our kids,we We are at our weakest moment
when we begin to let go of thepromise of God and we don't

(06:14):
recall.
We don't recall that he'sforgiven us of our sins.
We don't recall that he's givenus his name in baptism and has
made us heirs in the kingdom.
We forget about the promises inthe Bible.
And for whatever reason, oursituation, our friends, the
world, what's popular, we startto lose our grip on the promise.

(06:38):
So then you see where the attackcomes.
And so we, one more thing aboutthe enemy.
So verse eight, right?
The strategies to break trust inverse eight, they're at
Rephidim, a place of rest.
Remember all you are burdenedand heavy laden.
Come to me and I will give yourest.
That's a promise from God.

(06:59):
It's the same promise that's inthe Sabbath keeping.
It means to be at peace with whoyou are and your relationship
with God.
And these envious Amalekites,right?
The plan is now that we'veweakened some trust, we're going
to attack you because in envy, Iwant to destroy what you have.
I can't have it, so now I'mgoing to destroy it.

(07:20):
And so one of the things thatyou have to learn from this one
is how do we recognize enemies?
Well, when people in our lifebegin to attack our faith in the
promises of God, they are underthe influence of the enemy and
they may very often be envious.
And there are people in yourkids lives.
who are going to be envious ofthem, their faith and their

(07:41):
family.
And so here comes thecommunication.
Moses goes to Joshua and hesays, I want you to choose some
men to go out and fight theAmalekites because tomorrow I'm
going to stand up at the top ofthe hill so everybody can see
me.
And I'm going to hold thatstaff, the part of the Red Sea
and brought water out of therock, which is indication.

(08:03):
It's a symbol of the promise ofGod.
And I'm going to hold it up.
And if you know the story, whileMoses is holding up the staff
there, the Israelites arewinning.
And when the arms come down,they're not.
And eventually Aaron and her goup to the hill and they hold up
the, the hands of, of Moses andthe staff and the promise of God

(08:25):
and the power of God is beingfought on the battle to restore
that confidence.
And so one of the things we'vegot to have for our kids Joshua

(08:47):
had some guys that hadn't brokenor hadn't lost their confidence
in the trust and they go out andfight and they see the promise
of God as Moses is on the hilland the trust is being restored
from the battle.
Youth groups and youth leaderswho will fight for your kids and
fight with your kids is criticalin the Christian world

(09:08):
understanding of the fight club.
And then you see the purpose ofthe battle itself, right?
God is seeing the battle torestore and strengthen their
trust in him.
So One of the things we've gotto do when our kids come with
these accusing hyperboles ofasking us something that, that

(09:30):
we haven't done or need to do.
And it, and it's attacking yourcharacter and God's character
and your integrity.
You've got to see the battlesometimes as a way to strengthen
their trust back with you andyour family and in their
relationship with God.
It's like the, the butterflytrying to fight out of the
cocoon.

(09:50):
Sometimes they've got to fighttheir way out as you remind them
of the promises in order tostrengthen that trust in God.
If you create a world, and thisis very difficult, when to be an
advocate, when to fight forthem, when to let them fight for
themselves.
But if you create a world inwhich they never have to fight

(10:10):
for themselves, when you neverunderstand the situation of the
battle, your kids are going tostruggle in those times when
they need to trust God throughdifficulty.
They've got to understand thatGod is working this out for
their good.
Now, The last thing I want tosay, a couple of things I want
to say one of the things we haveto do in the battle is in verse

(10:35):
14.
God says in verse 14 to Moses,write this for memorial, recount
it.
I will utterly blot out theremembrance of the Amalekites.
In other words, you've got torecall the victories because
there's another battle in thefuture for your kids.
And so getting them tounderstand and recall like the

(10:56):
Psalmist has done in 77 and manyother Psalms, recalling the
victories is, is teaching yourchildren how to fight.
Recall the victories that Godhas given you and you will
fight.
The last thing is their motivein the fight.
That also has to be addressed.
You go to first Samuel chapter15 and God has had his fill with

(11:18):
the Amalekites and theirattacks.
Tell Saul, I want you to go outand I want you to destroy the
Amalekites.
Saul goes out, he has the fight,he's winning, but he spares the
King of the Amalekites and hekeeps their best livestock.
For himself.
Man, There's this old sayingamong Christian Knights in the

(11:39):
battle.
Non nobis dominion, non nobis,not to us, not to us, but to
your name be the glory.
You got to teach your kids thatwhen you're in the battle and
you win the battle, you got towrite it down.
And you got to write it down toglorify God because we have to

(12:00):
fear the Lord, your God, as itsays in Deuteronomy, hold fast
to him, take your oaths in hisname.
He's the one to praise.
He is your God who performed foryou those great and awesome
wonders that you saw thosevictories in these battles that
you experienced.
Don't do it for your own selfgain.

(12:22):
Do it for the glory of God.
And when you have that abilityto, to fight, well, you've got
something.
I'm not, as I've said in thispodcast, I'm not a psychologist.
I don't understand all of themental health things, and there
are great people that understandit better.
But I think when you see how theenemy is trying to break trust

(12:45):
and remove peace, it hassomething to do.
with the fact that the secondleading cause of death among
young men in America is suicide.
Clearly that's a loss of peace,an extreme loss of peace.
It's a sadness.
And I'm not saying that, thatevery, that this learning to

(13:06):
fight, you know, necessarilycures all mental health.
It doesn't, but boy, it is areflection of the society.
It is something that It has tocause us to say, wait a minute,
we've got to teach our kids howto fight in this kingdom.
And Exodus 17 is a great storythat teaches us exactly how to

(13:29):
do it.
The ultimate battle for theheart and soul is a fight for
identity.
Our king invites our kids toknow who they are, what to
believe, and where they belong.
Until next time, let's rememberthe words for theirs is the
Kingdom of Heaven.