The New Year is still fresh but for some there is already a struggle.
I want to encourage you to keep on keeping on. You can do this. But while we are still here in the spirit of this brand-new year there is something that need to know that. You have a killer in the camp, and perhaps you didn’t know it. And a killer is a person or thing that kills. Kill means “to cause the death of”…but another meaning of kill is “Put an end to or cause the failure or defeat of (something)”…and it’s this definition that we focus on today.
A killer is one who if he is not dealt with, will defeat your your ministry or cause it to fail. As in your family, your church, your friendships, your relationships, your marriages, and your spiritual life, and have you wondering what in the world happened to you!
He’ll pick your pockets, strip you down. He’ll scam you and take everything that you have and leave you with nothing in 2023. If you don’t kill him, stone him to death. Can’t let him survive! Can’t give him no life…kill him! ”
Community, this morning I’m so sad to say that some things need to be killed. It needs to be dead and buried. It has to be put in the grave with dirt covered over it; to not do so means another wasted year because you just cannot travel right when there’s a killer in your camp.
Some Christians do not know this but when the Lord is blessing you, when you break free in 2023 and began to move in the right direction that Satan will plant a hypocrite, a liar, an adulterer, a traitor, a thief or someone immoral in your camp to infiltrate. He always does; he always want to hinder progress; especially on a spiritual level
They kill everything they touch; they cause it to fail; they kill churches and organizations and anything that has God in it. The only way to stop it is to expose it and kill it; can’t play around with it. Community, we can be doing so good. Those of us starting out on the good foot in 2023 can be making good spiritual progress. I mean we can be winning in our warfare against Satan. We’ve got our minds straight and we’re walking in the right direction. We can be walking with the Lord ourselves but we need to make sure that everybody around us in our camp is walking with the Lord also; that they have the same mindset that we have.
Community friends, it’s not enough to do right yourself, you have to make sure those in your camp are doing right also. It’s like hanging around a thief, a person who steals — if they get caught with stolen goods in your car, even though you didn’t steal anything yourself, not only will they go to jail, you will go also. If people rob a bank, and you didn’t participate, but they are riding in your car with stolen money, you are an accessory to the crime and you will do some time too
! Many people are behind bars today, others are on death row, yet others are in their graves because they had the wrong people in their camp. They didn’t do anything themselves. They were innocent, but because they failed to distance themselves from wrong people it led to their demise. Let me say in love today: we are to love everybody. That’s the mark of a true Christian (1 John 3:14); and we are to fellowship with everybody around the person of Jesus Christ because that’s what Christian family does.
And as much as lies within us, we are to be a peace with one another (Rom. 12:18); we may go to church together, sing together, worship together; but that don’t mean when it comes to our personal spiritual lives that they have to be in our circle.
We have to be careful. We don’t have to invite everybody over to our house to eat dinner. We don’t have to hang out together, when it comes to our personal spiritual lives we need to make sure that the people we connect with or become friends with have the same mind that we have.
Those who love the Lord the way we do and have the same agenda we have, because if not we can bring a killer in our camp! The children of Israel were to conquer Jericho; but God told them to not take the brass and the iron from the city because it was cursed (Joshua 6:18); Achan took the cursed things and hid them in the ground in his tent (Joshua 7:1). Israel went to war against the Amorites, and they chased the Israelites in defeat.
Joshua and the elders fell to the ground in grief asking God why did he bring his people across the Jordan to be destroyed by their enemies? God told Joshua the reason for their defeat was because there was sin in the camp (Jos. 7:11). At God’s command Joshua and Israel stoned Achan and his family and burned them with fire (verse 25). Community, 2023 is before us. If we are losing our battle; if we can’t seem to get off the ground; if we find ourselves sinking and our prayer life hindered; look within your circle — maybe there’s a killer in your camp.