I Went To The Enemy's Camp (And I Took Back What He Stole From Me)

purpose for living you won’t have anything to

live for!

People without pupose turn to Drugs,

They fill their lives with alcohol or

meaningless relationships,

And some become work-a-holics,

Because they are trying to find

something...anything to fill the void that’s

inside of them!

But God made man to find fulfillment in Him

and Him alone.

Only He can fill the void within us and yet so

many people today refuse to believe He even

exists!

IV. The Church Has Been Ripped Off...

The world has been ripped off and fooled into

denying the very One who can set them free!

But I’m not just talking about the lost this

morning!

We’ve got church folks in here who’ve lost their

sense of purpose!

We’ve been ripped off by the enemy,

And the fires of our first love for Jesus have

been quenched!

Yeah we still love the Lord!

We still come to Church!

But we’ve lost all the energy and passion that

we once had to serve Him?

Well I’ll tell you this morning your zeal and

your intensity didn’t just dry up.

It didn’t just evaporate into thin air!

Satan steals the hot embers, and the end result

is you get ripped off! Amen?

Some might say well when I got saved I was an

energetic teenager, but now I’m too old to serve

the way I did when I was younger!

That’s a poor excuse if I ever heard one! Amen?

The Bible says in...

2Co 3:18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

That means that we as believers reflect the

Lord’s glory and we are being changed into his

image with ever-increasing glory.

We are constantly being perfected and moving

from one degree of glory to the next! Amen?

That means that we should be getting better

with time!

Not slowing down and giving out!

Church there’s no end to the power that God

wants to exhibit in your lives.

The bible has no retirement plan.

We are in His service here and we’ll be in His

service there.

We have a purpose here on Earth and we have a

purpose in His Kingdom!

It’s not God’s will that we burn out and give up!

And if that happens it means that we dropped

the ball!

It wasn’t God!

God is more than able to keep His fire burning

in the hearts of His people.

And He’s more than willing to keep us sharp

and intense.

We need to be honest with ourselves this

morning and admit what has really happened.

And what’s really happened is we’ve been

ripped off!

God gave some of us the gift to serve others but

we quit serving!

Some of us were given beautiful voices but we

won’t even sing in the choir!

Some are called to preach but never follow

through!

Some of us are natural born missionaries yet

we’ve never even been out of the state let alone

the country!

There was a stirring inside of some of you last

week or last year or 30 years ago,

But then you got discouraged,

Somebody let you down,

Something went wrong in your church,

You tried to walk in your calling, but somebody

criticized you,

And soon you let the dream go thinking that the

calling wasn’t real!

Well I’m here to tell you this morning You got

ripped off!

And not only did you let the thief rip you off!