Beating Frustration - Part 4

Transcript

Hello everyone, thanks for joining with me on another "Helping You Become" podcast. I pray it's a blessing for you. Well bless the Lord, it's great to be with you
today. Thank you for your company. I do want to get moving into part four of our
study on beating frustration before it beats you. So turn in your Bibles please to Ezra chapter four.

Father God, thank you for your goodness. Oh dear me, Holy Spirit, thank you for leading us and guiding us into the truth of your word and Lord Jesus, thank you for our salvation. Lord as we look to your word today, Holy Spirit, thank you that you guide us and steer us into the revelation knowledge that you want birthed in our hearts and minds and I pray that every person hearing this message receives a special blessing of you today Lord, and I ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Here's to chapter 4, talking about frustration, talking about your plans and your purpose. The Holy God has imparted into you plans and purposes. Divine intervention from Himself into the world through you. Yes? I'll say that again because that's really strong. Divine intervention for the world, into the world, through you. God's intended desired result for your particular environment, for your workplace, for your family, oh for your area, for your suburb, for your church. God's intended result day by day by day by day by day, unfolding every day hourly sometimes. And it's being delivered into these environments through you and I.

So, Ezra chapter 4, looking at frustration, looking at some of the things that come against your plans and purposes from God, that divine intervention. What happens when the enemy wants to hinder that? Verse 4, "Then to Samaritans, the people of the land continually weakened the hands of the people of Judah and troubled and terrified them in building." Oh, they just hassled and harassed them, and threatened them if they're going to be terrified. There's probably threats involved there. And they hired counsellors against them to frustrate their purpose.

Now, remember that word frustrate? In the Hebrew, it means several things.
I'm just turning back here in my notes. It means to disappear, to cease, to be
clean gone, We would say in our western world, at an end, brought to naught,
or brought to nothing, to fail. So the role or the task of frustration is to cause
to disappear, to make cease, to cause to fail, to bring to zero your plans and purposes. The plans and purposes were frustrated.

In verse 5 of Ezra 4, "All the days of Cyrus King of Persia. So we see back over chapters 1, 2, 3 and up to chapter 4, Cyrus King of Persia made this decree, put it out there that we're going to go and the people of Israel are going to return and build the temple. They staffed it with nearly 50,000 people. There was an enormous amount of wealth and riches, gold and silver and beasts, animals, oxen, donkeys, enormous resources went into this. They get back to the site, nearly 50,000 people.

They were worried and afraid of the local inhabitants. They built an altar to the Lord. They sacrificed burnt offerings and sacrifices. They pushed through the fear.
They pushed through all of that. And they started a beginning in chapter 3 verse 8.
They started to turn soil, we would say, in the earth -moving world. And so they
started the building construction project. And then chapter 4, the Samaritans and the inhabitants of the land that were coming against them, they were unsuccessful.

So they tried to join them. And that's a kicker point. It really is. We see that in
Scripture in Ezra 4, in verses 1 and 2. "They came to Zerubbabel, the governor,
and to the heads of the fathers of the houses, and said, 'Let us build with you, for we seek and worship your God as you do. No, you don't. No, you don't. They were worshiping a different kind of God or, you know, they said, we worshiping the same God, but they were calling him the God of land and blending him
in with all their other gods.

So the steps of firstly restoration, you get back on track and, you know, they return to build the temple. Then there's provision, support, ideas, enthusiasm, passion and direction, which happens then this, And what does that mean? The start of momentum. Momentum starts to build for your project, for your plans, for your purposes. Fear comes. What if I fail? What if things go wrong? We all get bad thoughts. We all get bad feelings.

With me, with radio, some 20 years ago, nearly. What happens if no one wants to listen to my program? Oh, dear me. That really worried me, fleetingly. I thought, well, hang on, God's called me to it. That's really not my problem. I'll just make the program, we'll put them out there, see what happens. And you know, our program's gone all around the world for decades, well nearly decades. It's certainly over 15 years we've been international as well as around Australia domestically. So it's very important that we keep us a real strong, godly perspective of the purpose and the plans that he's called us to.

Start to look at our program, our plans, our purposes through God's eyes, not ours, okay? Without Him, and because God will always call us to do something that we can't do. He doesn't call us to do something that we can do. I believe after some 35 plus years of ministry experience, and I've seen this a lot, I don't think God calls us to do something that we can do. He calls us to do something that we can't do without Him, yes? He calls us to do something we cannot do without him. He demands to be a part of it. He desperately desires to lead us and guide us.

Remember, we are co -labourers together with God. We are co-labourers
together with God. It's not, you know, he's a co-labourer together with me. You know, this is what I'm going to do when he can help. I might let him help. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. And sometimes that's how we approach our Christian life, Christianity.

Oh dear me. It's our discovery. It's not our decision. All right? Now decision is involved. That's very important. Discovery is involved. That's very important. But we need to continue on and investigating this person of Jesus Christ who makes us successful in the next world. And we also need to keep investigating the principles of Jesus Christ contained in His Word that make us successful in this world, the plans and the purposes, the principles and the person of Jesus Christ.

And then we have the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit. We need to understand these sorts of things and think them through from the perspective of how am I appropriating myself into the plans and purposes of God, His divine and for this area through me, delivered through me. And if we can start to think like this, if we can start to approach our day -to -day matters and our day-to-day affairs like this, then I think we're positioning ourselves for number one, a greater flow of favour.

God will just send people across our paths all the time, all the time, all the time. I'm experiencing this in two or three different areas at the moment. And we've gone from one or two visitors in a particular area, a fortnight, to five or six or seven a week, to now four or five a day, just as the Lord has been slowly increasing and blessing this particular aspect of things.

So fear comes along, momentum gathers, fear comes along, what if we fail, but then after fear, watch out for the possible dilution of the plans and the purposes that God has for you. Watch out for the dilution of that from within. Through, and I say from within, from wrong people entering your life. Be very careful of a change of direction from within, from new people that have come along. They may not be entirely new, they may have been with you for a year or two, okay?

But suddenly, they want to start to change direction. And these sorts of things are very interesting. We see this in our own country, in Australia. I grew up in New Zealand and spent the first, you know, 26 years of my life in New Zealand, and now I've spent the next 35 years of my life in in Australia. And we see a strong Christian country that now is full up with what in my view, in my opinion, is a somewhat ungodly parliament and in lots of ways we're damaging ourselves from the inside out with our ungodly policies, policies and legislation that goes against the Word of God.

The more disobedient man becomes, and this is an observation that I've made over the years, the more disobedient man becomes with regard to our obedience to the Scriptures and our submission to the Word of God and the principles of Jesus Christ, the more disobedient we become, the more we want to legislate our disobedience. And that's very, very damaging, very concerning. The more we legislate our disobedience, the more we bring to pass Romans chapter 1, where they did not acknowledge God, neither did they or reverence Him, and they didn't worship God, they didn't acknowledge Him as God, and He ultimately watched them go down the path of social destruction where they finished up with a completely, you know, reprobate mind. So the whole thing just went pear-shaped.

Now Matthew 1225, I think this is very relevant to some of the situations going on the planet at the moment. I'm a believer at the moment, my current position is that the period from 2020 through to 2040, oh dear me, it concerns me a great deal. The debt levels around the world, particularly in the western country, in all countries, but I think the western world is really going to hurt over the next, or that 2020 to 2040 period.

The rise and fall of empires, We're going to see all sorts of problems, inflation, the supply chains damaged from the pandemic. We've got the vaccination people against the anti-vaccination people. We've got the anti-climate change people against the climate change people. We've got the left versus the right in politics and the extreme left and the extreme right, becoming more and more and more extreme.

You know, all of this, it takes us straight back to Matthew 12, 25, "Every kingdom
divided against itself is brought to desolation." And this is a real concern, and I think it needs to be a concern for all of our Christian family across all of the churches globally. We need to band together.

We need to be recognised because of the love of God, the powerful love of God that is holding us together. And Paul said, "You be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God for Christ's sake has forgiven us, or has forgiven you."

There's Galatians and Philippians that talks a great deal about us being held together in the love of God, not bickering and fighting and all of these sorts of things, because the planet is subject to this very strong, some, you know,
spirit of division and separation, just to keep people apart and to keep them
opposed to each other.

We need to be some kind of a force that lowers the momentum of all of that, that calms all of that down and starts to bring people together. Yes, there can be robust debate, but we need to be gracious, and that's very important, particularly when it's Christian to Christian, when it's amongst our covenant brothers.

So we see in Matthew 12, 25, every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and in Ezra chapter 4 where they said, "Oh, you know, let us come along. We will help you build the project as well. Let us build with you, for we seek and worship your God as you do."

No, they didn't. And if Zerubbabel and the elders of the fathers of the houses of Israel had let these people in, they would have been destroyed from the inside
out. Remember if they can't beat you, if fear doesn't work, if stopping the resourcing and the gathering together of the workforce to do the work, and this is what happened in Ezra chapter 1 and Ezra chapter 2, Ezra chapter 3, put together enormous resources, human resources, the staffing of it all.

The money, the funding, all of that. Everyone came together and they started the project and if they can't stop that and outright stop the momentum from moving forward, that forward momentum, then they'll try and join you. So if your life is constantly being frustrated and they hired counsellors against them to frustrate their purpose and plans all the days of Cyrus, then obviously you have progressed.

How good is that? You've made progress here. You've pushed through. There's people working something, doing something. There's some sort of resources involved. Obviously you've overcome fear somewhere along the line and you've gathered some momentum. Now the first few levels and the first few attempts to hinder you have been unsuccessful.

Praise God! You legend! Go get him, yeah? Now you're being frustrated. You're
thinking, man, oh man, this is doing my head in. What is going on? Yeah? Have you ever said that? I'm just so frustrated with this. We'll just keep hitting the wall.
It's just, you know, what's going on? Some key points about frustration.

Frustration comes to attack you after, other attempts to stop you have already failed. It's already failed along the way, so now the enemy has got to unleash his weapon of frustration. Frustration is very dangerous. It's a bad opponent.
But most people don't treat frustration like that.

And in 2 Samuel Chapter 13 verse 2, talking about a situation here where a person was so troubled, I'll read it in verse 2, an Amnon was so troubled that he fell sick for his half-sister Tamar, for she was a virgin and Amnon thought it impossible for him to do anything to her. Okay, so there's some things going on there, but so troubled that he fell sick.

Have you ever felt and that's a big sentence because there are there's a very powerful thing Happening around the world now in people's hearts and minds a thing called anxiety He's so troubled that he fell sick now frustration has the ability to I believe affect your health and it troubles you and troubles you and troubles you it can cause anxiety, it can cause stress and pressure because you're constantly, you know, heading up against the wall of this frustration.

You're trying to work your project through, but you bang, hit the wall again. And
there's enough of that. If there's enough of that, and if there's enough of that,
it can affect people's health. This is very serious. Yes, because Plans and purposes
and purposes and plans are lifelong companions. That which God has called you to do is a lifelong companion to you and with you and for you. I think that's really
important.

Now, yes, there'll be aspects of that which God calls you to do that you'll finish off and you'll move on to something new. That's great. That's fine. But there's also other things that God calls you to do. You might be called into the business arena. You might be called into pastoring a church. You might be called into the music ministry. You might be called into care for others and you know, foster care and things like that. Well that sticks with you for decades.

So because purposes and plans and plans and purposes from God for your life, I but I think they're virtually lifelong companions and activities and requirements, you know, these are lifelong things the Lord called me to the ministry I've been
involved in ministry now for over 35 years varying degrees of ministry, for over 35
years. Well, that's a long time. I don't just wake up in the morning and think oh,
I'm not gonna I'm not gonna serve the in the church anymore. I'm not gonna serve
in the body of Christ anymore? No, this is a lifelong commitment.

So there needs to be an opponent capable of going the distance from the devil's perspective, from evil's perspective. There needs to be an opponent that is able to go the distance with you. Always remember that anyone good or anything God is permanently hated by anyone or anything evil.

Now frustration, I believe, after 35 years of ministry experience or 35 plus years of ministry experience Lynda and I past pastoring for nearly 20 years, I think frustration is that assigned enemy to your life for the long term attack on your purpose and plans from God.

And unless frustration, and I'm not just talking about being annoyed about something, you know, because the neighbour backed over your letterbox, well no, I'm not talking about something similar like that. I'm talking about your plans and purposes before a Holy God being constantly frustrated, irritated, harassed, annoyed, picked on. Yeah?

And unless frustration is viewed and approached by us I believe unless we look
at it this way we'll keep empowering it with our words have you ever said oh I'm
just so frustrated at the moment well that just empowers the devil and tells him
that he's winning I'm so frustrated at the moment this is just so annoying it's so
frustrating and because frustrations task is to cause your purpose to cease.

To bring your purpose to zero. To cause your purpose to fail. It's vital we know
what to do when frustration occurs. So because frustration is aimed at your purpose and your plans, its spiritual presence is masked by natural events.
It has to affect the natural events to stay masked or its spiritual presence to
remain hidden.

All sorts of stuff goes on and goes wrong around us to frustrate us. Don't look at the stuff, look at the force, the evil force that's trying to drive that and attack your forward momentum behind the stuff. And when we start to approach frustration that way, bang, we can start to nail it in its tracks. Praise God, if you're frustrated, that means you've made progress. Be proud of yourself, you've made some serious progress, you've pushed through fear, you've built some momentum, you've probably got some people, some resources, some support somewhere along the line, but now you're frustrated.

Well Dear Lord God thank you Jesus for the progress that we've made to date but Lord also now please show us what to do to unmask this devil of frustration because this frustration demon I believe is a lifelong companion because your purposes and your plans are lifelong companions from the Lord.

I hope this is helping you, encouraging you and strengthening you in your walk with the Lord. God bless you. Make sure you go to church somewhere this week and remember the words of the Apostle Paul. It's so strong for such a time as this. You be kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another as God for Christ's sake has forgiven forgiven you. God bless.