CHAPTER 11
That Bad Dog

There are three obstacles to the revolution of love in our hearts, and possibly the worst one of all is the bad dog!

But let me explain. Revival is not for the world, though certainly it profoundly affects the world. It is new life for the church. And there are obstacles to personal revival. We all know, for example, that Satan is an enemy. Does not the Word say, "Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, like a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour"? (I Peter 5:9).

And what must we do with the devil? Certainly he must be refused. The ground we have given him, knowingly or unknowingly, we need to retrieve and put in the hand of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is often best to take back that ground audibly in a deliberate act of the will. It is a spiritual law that God makes real to you what you say in faith.

There are oppressive attacks of the enemy as well. That is when he needs to be resisted, and indeed, he will flee from us.

And if one encounters demon possession, as is more and more frequently the case in these days, then the promise is clear: "These signs shall follow them that believe: In my name they shall cast out devils" (Mark 16:17). When one is positive that the case is actually demonic possession, repetitious commanding is sometimes necessary to dislodge the enemy. In one case Jesus kept saying to the enemy, "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit." (See Mark 5:8 in the Amplified New Testament.)

Also, to avoid complications and transferences, workers should be careful to send the conquered spirits to the abyss. I:n the case of the Legion, the swine ran down a steep place into the deep (abyss in the original).

But Satan is not the only enemy of revival. There is sin. Sin is the transgression of the law. It is the failure to do good. And all of us are guilty.

And the remedy? First of all, there is the confession of that sin to God. The word confess means to "say the same thing." If we are confessing our habit of lying to God, we certainly do not say, "Oh God, forgive me for being naughty." Instead we must say, "Oh God, I am a liar, please forgive me."

Further, we have not committed the sins in packages. They have been committed one by one, and as much as is possible, we ought to confess them one by one to God. "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (I John 1:9).

There are times when confession to God is not enough. Sometimes we must confess our sins one to another. "Confess your sins one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed" (James 5: 16).

In the event that some may wish to hide behind the word "fault," which appears in the King James Version, we hasten to add that the original word is "sin."

Confessing one's sins to another brother is not a papal practice. It is instead an act of humility which often kindles the spark of revival. Obviously if I have stolen ten dollars it is not enough to confess that sin to God, who will certainly forgive. I must also return the money in repentance to the one from whom I have stolen. Restitution when possible is yoked with repentance and confession.

A Filipino businessman was angry with his pastor. He had run for city council and lost by less than 500 votes; he blamed his pastor for not supporting him wholeheartedly. Eventually the relationship became so cool that he left the church in which he had come to know the Lord.

He found himself unhappy in his new house of worship and eventually drifted back to his old pastor. But the association was tense. Then at a convention at which they both were delegates they found themselves at an altar of reconciliation. They tearfully forgave one another and were reconciled. Not surprisingly, revival broke out in their church and God used them in other parts of their country as well to spark revival and spread the flame. Such is the power of confession.

But there is a more deceitful enemy than either Satan or sin. It is the ogre "self." All too often he is unrecognized and for that reason all the more deadly. It is the old man. The flesh. The carnal nature. There are many names for the big "I."

There is a story which is appropriate. Whether or not it is true does not really matter. An Eskimo, so we are told, was talking to a missionary and he confided, "I have two dogs inside me." The missionary was startled. "What are they like?" "Well," replied the Eskimo, "one is bad and one is good." "But what do they do?" "They fight." "And which one wins?" The Eskimo was quiet for a moment and then he answered very honestly, "Sometimes the bad dog wins; and sometimes the good one. It all depends on which one I say 'sic 'em' to."

The flesh is the bad dog.

The Bible teaching is clear. "Our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin" (Romans 6:6). The bad dog is already crucified.

Speaking of himself, Paul expressed it another way. "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).

Any way you look at it, the bad dog has been dealt with by the cross. The bad dog in us was nailed to the back side of the cross when Jesus died.

But even though this is an indisputable theological fact, we continue to fight a losing battle to this enemy within. Every imaginable form of selfishness, pride, self-righteousness, sensitiveness, immorality, resentment, bitterness and hatred is present in the lives of professing Christians. Far from being revived we wallow in defeat. And what is the answer? Petting the pooch and saying "Nice doggie" will hardly do. Tying him up will not help. He always breaks his leash at the most inappropriate times.

No, the dog must die - as adorable as he may sometimes seem. "Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:11).

But how can it be done? A missionary friend in Guatemala once shared with me a priceless gem of spiritual wisdom. He said, "The Holy Spirit has come into the world to make real all that Jesus has purchased for us on the cross."

In that instant I understood more clearly than ever before. The preaching of the cross is the power of God for saved people (I Cor. 1:18). Thank God.

And exactly how is the bad dog put to the death? "If ye through the Spirit do mortify (make dead) the deeds of the body, ye shall live" (Romans 8:13).

By the Spirit. Of course.

And when I begin to deliberately and audibly say, "By the Holy Spirit I now crucify," naming the particular manifestation of self, the Christ-life becomes a reality.

Some try to cast out or confess self but it cannot be done. When one dear missionary was asking God to forgive her selfishness the Holy Spirit stopped her. He said, "Stop praying like that. Self cannot be forgiven; it must die."

And we might add, so resilient is this bad dog that he has to be reckoned dead every moment of every day.

Sometimes we misapply a remedy because we do not see the problem clearly. To the Africans we explained it this way. There once was a man who had a motor scooter that wouldn't start and a donkey that wouldn't work. So he purchased some gasoline and picked up a huge stick. Going over to the donkey, he tipped its head back and poured the gasoline down its throat. Then he seized the stick and gave the motor bike a good pounding. His remedies were right but his applications were wrong.

Sin must be confessed; Satan must be resisted, renounced and sometimes cast out; and self must die. To try to cast out self, for example. or crucify sin, is to misapply the divine remedy.

And as we are emphasizing especially here, the bad dog must die.

Deliver him over today.

Then pray for the release of God's purity and love. It will be a spiritual explosion. The revolution of love. In a word, revival.

Chapter 12