Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / Gary McKibben: Resist The Devil, Trust God's Sovereignty In Life’s Trials
Transcript
- 0:03Welcome to Worldview Matters.
- 0:05Discussing controversial issues.
- 0:07Discerning current events.
- 0:10Defending biblical Christianity.
- 0:13No topic.
- 0:14Off limits.
- 0:16And now, here's your host, David Fiorazzo.
- 0:20Brothers and sisters in Christ, thank you so much for tuning in to another episode.
- 0:25My favorite pastor from Ireland, from Belfast, is back with us, Pastor Gary McKibben.
- 0:29I want to give the websites before we get into a very important topic on spiritual warfare, not giving the enemy a foothold and just resisting him.
- 0:40When we have trials and things, we tend to be overwhelmed or discouraged.
- 0:44The enemy will try to use that.
- 0:45So we're going to talk about a very important thing, what's going on in our lives.
- 0:48But VictoryChurchBelfast.com.
- 0:51VictoryChurchBelfast.com.
- 0:55I also want to direct you to his sub stack, which is Pastor Gary McKibben.
- 1:00On Substack, his Facebook page is the church name, Victory Church Belfast, and don't miss his YouTube channel, Pastor Gary McKibben at Victory.
- 1:09So it's P-R, Gary McKibben at Victory.
- 1:12Brother, thank you so much for your time and for connecting with us today.
- 1:16You too, and thanks for having me back on, David.
- 1:19You're most welcome.
- 1:19I'm interested to see how this conversation goes today.
- 1:22Yeah.
- 1:23Well, you know, Holy Spirit's going to lead, right?
- 1:25Yeah.
- 1:26But you've been busy.
- 1:28You've been writing.
- 1:29You've been preaching at church.
- 1:31I'm sure you've got a lot of ministry going on there at your church, but you're also getting ready to unleash a brand new book within the next couple months.
- 1:41Tell us about that.
- 1:43Yeah, so I've been writing this book called Echoes of the Beast.
- 1:47And the concept behind it is that if we look how history parallels with Scripture, and basically if we go right back to the beginning, we can see the echo of the end.
- 1:59And the closer we get to the end, how that becomes clearer, the voice becomes clearer, the system that has developed...
- 2:08basically the beast system, becomes a clearer example the closer we get to the end.
- 2:13You know, we talk about things like the 10 Kings system, we talk about how that is being modeled right now by the technocratic group Praxis that Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, JD Vance and all are involved with.
- 2:26that they're building their first city, Atlas, or they're looking to build their first city, Atlas, in California.
- 2:32That is a throwback to Plato's writings of the Ten Kings of Atlantis, and they're looking to develop the technocratic system.
- 2:40So we talk about all this stuff in the book and how it gets clearer, but it's also...
- 2:46It's also, it's not just what is unfolding prophetically, but also how we as Christians stand in these times, because spiritual warfare, persecution, tribulation, I believe we all see that.
- 2:59I don't believe we see the great tribulation, but we all see, or maybe on a personal or corporate level, are experiencing some extent of that right now.
- 3:08Wow, it sounds wonderful.
- 3:10So we will have you back, Lord willing, in a couple months, whenever that's getting ready to be released, and we'll talk about the book.
- 3:19You've also got a conference coming to your church, and a couple friends of the podcast, along with yourself, are going to be there.
- 3:25Pete Garcia, Alex Newman, the Alex Newman, and Gary Wayne.
- 3:30Tell us about the Last Days Conference, brother, and will that be live-streamed?
- 3:36Yes, it will.
- 3:37It may be live streamed.
- 3:38We're still making this decision because of the laws here right now.
- 3:42So there are certain laws coming in in terms of YouTube and censorship in the UK.
- 3:48And that applies to where we are in Northern Ireland.
- 3:51So if it's not live streamed, it will be.
- 3:55uploaded shortly after.
- 3:57So because I'm not sure what everybody's going to say, in fact, I think we may be censored on what I'm going to say.
- 4:02So we're trying to be as wise as serpents and as harmless as dogs with this.
- 4:09Isn't that frustrating?
- 4:10I mean, it's frustrating to me.
- 4:11I've had videos pulled off YouTube, still have a channel, but the powers that be declare what violates community standards.
- 4:20And over there, we're not familiar with maybe the kind of laws you guys have.
- 4:25Is there less of a tolerance to biblical Christianity?
- 4:29Yeah, I would say so.
- 4:30And there's less of a tolerance on major subjects.
- 4:34So for instance, if I talk about Islam and things like that, and how that interacts with Christianity in the West, you could, well, on the lesser extent, you'll receive some sort of censorship or a ban.
- 4:50On the larger extent, you could have someone visit your
- 4:53premises or knock on your door, someone from the authorities.
- 4:57So again, it's a wisdom call.
- 5:00We want to get the stuff out, but it might not be live.
- 5:03Okay.
- 5:04Well, that gives people a good idea of information that needs to get out there.
- 5:09And the enemy, the enemy is behind this.
- 5:12It is part of spiritual warfare, silencing the truth.
- 5:16But we're going to talk a little bit about that when we jump into your article, Open Doors.
- 5:23And I want to mention, I already mentioned your Facebook page.
- 5:26Great.
- 5:27Anything else before we jump in, Gary?
- 5:28Because I'm excited to see what God's going to do with this topic.
- 5:32You ready?
- 5:32Yeah.
- 5:33Yeah, I'm ready.
- 5:34Okay, I love the first scripture, Ephesians 4.27.
- 5:37I quote this a lot because I seem to remember the word foothold.
- 5:44I look at that as don't give the devil or don't give the enemy any ground.
- 5:48And there's a word topos or topography.
- 5:52But we're going to talk about how...
- 5:54We sometimes do give the devil a foothold, but this whole article, just give us an overview before we dive in and just take some of the points you're going through and we'll just walk through it.
- 6:05Yeah, of course.
- 6:07So I believe that as a Christian, we are...
- 6:12on the dartboard of the enemy, and we are targets.
- 6:15And as such, he is always looking for a foothold.
- 6:18Now, if we look at that in terms of demonology, there's a demon that is correlated with scripture called Baal Flagor, mentioned in Psalm 91, also a transliteration of Baal of Peor of Numbers 25.
- 6:32It's one of the ways in which the enemy gets a foothold.
- 6:35This is called the demon of the gap.
- 6:37create a gap.
- 6:38And that can be through any sort of scenario.
- 6:41It can be through a circumstance.
- 6:42It can be through tribulation or persecution.
- 6:45And what I cover in this article is the recent prognosis that we've been given from my wife.
- 6:53So she has a genetic condition in terms of her vision.
- 6:58And we've noticed for the last
- 7:01lot of years, a major deterioration.
- 7:04We noticed things around the house, you know, bumping into things, breaking glasses.
- 7:10And we also noticed that she had already instinctively developed coping mechanisms.
- 7:16You know, she can't pour herself a cup of coffee or a cup of tea without burning herself.
- 7:20So she's developed coping mechanisms for that.
- 7:23And I realized that certainly as our walk in ministry, there's been
- 7:30many a strategy against us spiritually, but one of the major strategy patterns that I've noticed is that us as a family tend to be attacked and the attack intensifies very much in, in, in, in line with my wife.
- 7:48So the prognosis is that she's losing her sight and she's scheduled, well, we've got an upcoming discussion,
- 7:58double cornea transplant in the hope that that will restore some site or at least stop further deterioration.
- 8:05Mm-hmm.
- 8:07In regards to all of this, I noticed the strategy and the pattern of things.
- 8:11I remember when she was in an accident, a car accident, and how there was a spiritual attack that sort of overlaid from that.
- 8:20I remember when she had a severe allergic reaction, she went into anaphylaxis.
- 8:27And off the back of that, she developed a condition where her body was covered in 70% of burns.
- 8:32And then the spiritual attack happened.
- 8:35Continued on from that.
- 8:36And what I mean by that is that for me in my life, before I was walking with the Lord, I'd always put my wife on a pedestal.
- 8:46And don't get me wrong, I believe that we still honor our spouses, but I put her on such a pedestal that she was above everything.
- 8:55She was above my relationship with God.
- 8:58Even at that point, it wasn't really a relationship with God.
- 9:02And then whenever I came into that relationship with Jesus Christ and I, I realized that what he was doing was bringing her off the pedestal.
- 9:09And I actually, my love for her increased.
- 9:13Because she could never, when someone's on a pedestal, they're always going to fall.
- 9:17They're always going to find that they never live up to the standards that you put them on.
- 9:22But in Isaiah 25, verse 4, there's a scripture that tells us that the blast of the terrible ones blows against the walls.
- 9:30Now, this sort of hits to me that in Isaiah 26, verse 2, we're told that our salvation is like walls.
- 9:38So I picture it like we're behind a structure, say a house.
- 9:44But what happens is that anything that we put up above the parapet, above the walls, is going to be blasted without storms.
- 9:52And that's an access for an open door.
- 9:55So the strategy that I noticed with Kelly, my wife, is that
- 9:59you know, it wasn't just the one thing that happened.
- 10:03There was, this was kind of the open door.
- 10:06You know, I would see her go through something.
- 10:08And I think most of us, and I know you can relate, would rather it was us than a loved one.
- 10:14You know, you, you care so much.
- 10:17And I think that sometimes it's harder to watch the one that you love suffer than it is for you to experience suffering.
- 10:25And,
- 10:26I realized that this is the open door, you know, that this is an, a strategy of attack.
- 10:31Whenever I've seen her attacked, I can then relate that there's going to be a continued, um, onslaught because the enemy doesn't attack you in singular fashion.
- 10:44Instead, what he likes to do is overload your plate.
- 10:47And one of the things I liken it to when I was a teenager, um,
- 10:53I worked part-time in a hotel as a waiter, and I was the worst waiter you could ever imagine.
- 11:00I got told off because it was a fancy hotel, but I was coming from school and I was eating off the plates.
- 11:07Or I got told off because I'm watching everybody.
- 11:10And you know how they...
- 11:13A great waiter will put a plate here, plate here, plate here, and they carry all of these plates out.
- 11:19And then they would tell me off because I'm carrying one just like this.
- 11:24And I realized that that relates to our spiritual life, that the enemy wants to overload you so that you are carrying all of these things.
- 11:33But 1 Peter 5, 7 says, cast your curse upon the Lord.
- 11:37Amen.
- 11:37Now, if you take that in connotation with 1 Peter 5, 8, that says the enemy walks around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
- 11:45I put the two together and I think, well, hermeneutically speaking, he's going to devour those that are trying to carry the struggle on their own.
- 11:55You know, when my wife got her diagnosis or prognosis of what was the likely outcome here, the next thing I know, we had a business issue come up that was quite harsh.
- 12:07And then we had some family things and then we had some issues with relationships with friends or whatever.
- 12:16And all of these different things come up at once.
- 12:20And then it was the funny thing.
- 12:22It was the inconsequential thing that for me, you know, it's probably about the 15th thing on top of the plate.
- 12:31But it was the inconsequential thing for me that I saw as the her that broke the camel's back.
- 12:37And it was literally I was putting up a mirror.
- 12:41drilled in, hit a heat in like an oil pipe, and oil started squirting out of the... Oh my goodness.
- 12:48Yeah.
- 12:49And I was kind of going, oh, can anything else go wrong?
- 12:54Because all of this is in the space of a couple of days.
- 12:57And, you know, I'm worried about my wife.
- 12:59And then you have ministerial things where people are just, I think when you're in ministry, sometimes people...
- 13:06They don't see it.
- 13:07Sometimes you're not seen as being human.
- 13:09And sometimes people just want an answer for their issue.
- 13:13And we're getting hit with all of this.
- 13:16And I just felt completely.
- 13:20Heavy, like over, like just, you know, Lord, I just need a break.
- 13:24I just need a minute.
- 13:26And it was actually turning to Kelly and I'm listening to her.
- 13:30And she says to me, no, the Lord is telling us to die to our flesh.
- 13:36And I went, yeah, but I'm cross, I'm angry, I'm frustrated.
- 13:41And she says, exactly.
- 13:43We're to die to our flesh.
- 13:44We're not to be cross.
- 13:45We're not to be angry.
- 13:46We're not to be frustrated.
- 13:49And I'm then thinking, well, you're the one going through this, and here's me unable to cope.
- 13:55And so the article that I wrote was based on this, the idea that.
- 14:00I think that the enemy looks for a certain way in with each and every one of us.
- 14:05And the strategy ends not to differ that much.
- 14:10So the strategy pre me coming to a relationship with Jesus continued, has continued since then.
- 14:17It's the same way, you know, attack my wife, attack a loved one, and then overload his plate till he thinks he can't cope anymore.
- 14:25And, and,
- 14:27it's been amazing.
- 14:29You know, one of the things that I realized in the midst of this is that, you know, I've been crying.
- 14:34I just need a minute to breathe.
- 14:36I just need a minute to process.
- 14:38I just need a minute to figure things out, but to actually listen to Kelly, who's been turning around and saying, it's okay.
- 14:46What else does God want us to do?
- 14:48What else do we need to do for ministry?
- 14:51And I'm literally, I went back about half an hour from taking a funeral.
- 14:57And,
- 14:58It's it's and she was with me and it's watching the witness of someone else that sometimes encourages us.
- 15:05And I think this is this is also sometimes why you're in a relationship, you have a spouse is that you're you're partners in that and.
- 15:15Like I said, I think that this strategy is not unique to me, not unique to individuals.
- 15:22I think the same strategy is applied across the board.
- 15:25Attack a loved one.
- 15:27Make the individual shake and tremble.
- 15:31and then see if they stand in the process.
- 15:35And I'm reminded of Hebrews 12, 25 and 26, that says that in the end, talking about the end times, there will be a great shaking, a shaking of heaven and off earth.
- 15:47But we're to hold on to that which remains.
- 15:49And I am so thankful in the midst of any spiritual battle I've been in, Kelly's been the one that says, right, go read, go pray, go worship.
- 15:56Go read, go pray, go worship.
- 15:58And yeah, so that's the overview of the article.
- 16:02So...
- 16:03Okay, there's a lot I want to follow up on.
- 16:07First of all, perspective.
- 16:09We all go through this.
- 16:10Some people maybe haven't yet, but you will if you live long enough.
- 16:15Your wife's name is Kelly.
- 16:17I want to encourage our audience listening and watching to pray for Pastor Gary and his wife, Kelly.
- 16:23It's a hard trial for anyone to go through.
- 16:27and especially if you're in ministry, because you will get hit harder.
- 16:30And I want to just review a couple of the points.
- 16:33The enemy does look for an access point, and he will find a way, because he wants to discourage you, and he'll use life's trials.
- 16:42In the article you talk about he's got a much larger strategy than what appear to be isolated trials, and you say—
- 16:50You know, physical illness, emotional exhaustion, pressures, and discouragement follow oftentimes in succession.
- 16:58So that's what—a lot of people can relate to that.
- 17:01And you said what began as a physical affliction seemed to ripple outward into every area of family life.
- 17:09And, of course—
- 17:10ministry too.
- 17:12So there's a lot of scriptures we can go to.
- 17:13We can trust God.
- 17:14I think of, you know, how Paul, you know, asked God to take away his thorn in the flesh and God responded, my grace is sufficient.
- 17:23I think about that.
- 17:25I think about how, um, there's another verse when I'm overwhelmed, Lord, lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
- 17:31It's getting your eyes back on the hills and the mountains from, from where our help comes.
- 17:36Um,
- 17:36But I also want to quote, you got the end of Hebrews 12, and I couldn't help but think, well, let's sandwich this a little bit.
- 17:44Let's go back to Hebrews 12, 2, and fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
- 18:01Gary, we were talking before we got on the podcast, talking about my wife, talking about your wife and our situations.
- 18:08And oftentimes we need that reminder.
- 18:11Life is very short.
- 18:13We will be redeemed.
- 18:15We are redeemed.
- 18:16We're being redeemed.
- 18:17And we will ultimately be redeemed, delivered, you might say.
- 18:21And we have an incredible hope to look forward to.
- 18:25Before we jump back in your article, there's some great points through it.
- 18:29There's a lot in there, friends, that I'm going to touch on if Gary doesn't bring some of these things up, because I love, I want to just quote you, but share a little bit more about that, the importance of even when we're potentially being, well, I don't know if it's tempted to be discouraged,
- 18:47Because it's very natural to that's how we feel beat down or overwhelmed.
- 18:53Talk about that in our response, and God bless Kelly for saying, hey, we have to die to our flesh.
- 19:00I think that this is the whole part and parcel of it.
- 19:05And I think it's part and parcel of being in a church or being surrounded by brethren.
- 19:09Sometimes when you're in the midst of things, you will forget or you will focus, get tunnel vision on the problem at hand.
- 19:17And you need someone to come along to you and say, we're to die to our flesh.
- 19:21We are...
- 19:24I think for me, one of the biggest issues that I've seen in Christendom, and it does apply here, is a false bill of goods sold to people when they are coming into Christendom.
- 19:37Because, you know, we've seen so many churches, you know, and they take the seven ways to get rich, eight ways to a better you, nine ways.
- 19:43And...
- 19:45I'm not trying to knock any other ministry, but it gives the belief that life is about conditional success or circumstantial blessing.
- 19:57But that's not the blessings of Scripture.
- 20:00Ephesians 1.3 tells us that we have every spiritual blessing in heavenly places.
- 20:04The blessings of Scripture are the fruit of the Spirit, the temperance, forbearance, patience, love, kindness, all of these things.
- 20:13And I think when people are sold this idea that when you get born again, all persecution, all tribulation stops, it is counter biblical and it is counterproductive because we are told and forewarned that we will go through persecution.
- 20:28We will have tribulation.
- 20:30We will have problems in this world and we live in a fallen world.
- 20:34So to keep our eyes upon Jesus, like you pointed out.
- 20:38is first and foremost.
- 20:40You know, we can get, and it's probably the biggest thing I hear, specifically in the prophetic community when we're talking about eschatology and dispensationalism, people get weary, and they get weary and they're holding on and they're just clinging on with their fingernails.
- 20:55The thing is, is that when you look at Psalm 1611,
- 21:00For me, it changed my life.
- 21:02It's when you read that scripture and it says that in his presence is the fullness of joy.
- 21:07Then it makes you question yourself.
- 21:10Why am I not experiencing joy right now?
- 21:13His presence never leaves me.
- 21:15It's the fact that I'm not acknowledging his presence.
- 21:18So sometimes there's the Selah moment, you know, the moment of just sitting and saying, I am in the presence of the Lord.
- 21:24I am.
- 21:25All hell may be breaking out around me.
- 21:28I may have lost my job.
- 21:29I may have lost my house.
- 21:30I may have gone through all of this.
- 21:32But in the midst of it, I am with the Lord Jesus Christ and he is with me.
- 21:37And as such, I'll fear no evil.
- 21:39I'll fear nothing that comes against us.
- 21:42And I think that that changes everything.
- 21:44And it brings us to what is personified in Philemon 1.6, the...
- 21:52I guess, effective faith model.
- 21:54It says that we make our faith effective by the acknowledgement.
- 21:58In other words, I know that Jesus is here, the acknowledgement of everything in us in Christ Jesus.
- 22:04If we can walk through the midst of trouble and go through the time of shaking, but we realize that it's about who we hold on to and who we hold on to as Jesus.
- 22:13And that changes everything.
- 22:16And I think, you know,
- 22:19One of the things that I realized is, like I said, I kept saying to myself, I just need a minute, just need a minute to process.
- 22:26Because it was literally we got the news from the surgeon.
- 22:32And then from there, it was like 100 texts or emails about other people's issues, other people's problems.
- 22:42And.
- 22:43There was that moment where we just went, right, we need to take a breath.
- 22:47We need to actually step back.
- 22:50And for me, this is after the article.
- 22:57It was a wake-up call that ministry is not to be done alone.
- 23:01Now, we have elders.
- 23:03We have leaders in the church.
- 23:05But my mindset was not to bother people with our issues.
- 23:09Oh, my goodness.
- 23:11Yeah.
- 23:11And I think God sort of gave me what I would call a spiritual slap.
- 23:16Yeah.
- 23:18And brought me forth and says, that's not how we conduct.
- 23:20You know, you've got to share your burdens.
- 23:23Yeah, exactly.
- 23:24Yeah.
- 23:24Yeah.
- 23:26Yeah, we are to bear one of those burdens.
- 23:27I'm learning that.
- 23:28I mean, I don't know whether it's pride, being male, being in ministry, people look at you a certain way, whatever it is, we've got to die to that and humble ourselves and ask for help.
- 23:40And that's, I think, for maybe the average Christian man, that's hard to do.
- 23:44to admit that we're weak and we can't handle it on our own.
- 23:47I want to go back to Psalm 16, because one of my favorite verses, not only what you quoted, verse 11, in his presence is fullness of joy, but going back to verse 8, I have set the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
- 24:06Another translation is I will not be moved.
- 24:09But we have to set the Lord always before us.
- 24:12And that's hard, not impossible.
- 24:14It wouldn't be in the Bible, in Colossians and other places, Paul telling us to do that.
- 24:18But I want to go back to your article, Gary, and just mention a few things, just kind of like a review and let you wrap this up because we're down to three minutes already.
- 24:26I knew it would go by fast.
- 24:28You say, you know, God's grace is greater.
- 24:30Right.
- 24:31You also said faith refuses to carry what belongs to God's providence.
- 24:37We continue to bear our responsibilities, but we surrender our burdens.
- 24:42And I want to mention what your wife said, what Kelly said.
- 24:46She said during her prayer, when you prayed together, she said the Lord is pressing on her that our greatest victory would not necessarily come through immediate deliverance, but through deeper surrender.
- 24:57So let's take that and let you wrap this up.
- 25:01Yeah, it's been something we've been talking about quite a lot.
- 25:05And this goes back into the dying to the flesh, that deeper surrender aspect that I think that, you know, you have a petition, you petition the Lord for what your need is, what you're going through.
- 25:18But I think,
- 25:19Again, going to Christianity nowadays, it's treated like fast food Christianity and people are devoid of the process.
- 25:26But Romans 5.3 tells us that the process is that we will experience persecution or tribulation.
- 25:32But in the midst of that, perseverance is created.
- 25:35Character comes from that and character produces hope and hope never fails.
- 25:40So I think in the process of it, we realize that God is developing a character that's
- 25:45in uh in all of what we go through in life and all affliction that comes against us and that is so much more important than anything else you know we want to have a character that resembles that that that is a mirror to what we read of christ's life you know we want to have that character that
- 26:04calls us into the realm of being a Christian, you know, someone who is a little anointed one, someone who is a follower of Christ that picks up the cross and follows them.
- 26:14And you said something at the start, and it actually relates to what you just read from my article there, was
- 26:20In terms of the providence of God, in terms of the sovereignty of God, that was exactly what God said to me at the start of the year in prayer.
- 26:30And I remember I was praying and I heard the words, not audibly, but in my spirit, that God.
- 26:37trust my sovereignty.
- 26:40And I didn't want to hear that because the first thought in my head was, well, that means something's going to happen this year.
- 26:47Things are going to go on and I've got to trust the sovereignty in the process.
- 26:51But,
- 26:52That is so true.
- 26:53We have to trust the sovereignty of God.
- 26:56He works all things, all things together for the good of those who love him.
- 27:01And I think that's key in dealing with any sort of persecution, tribulation, trial, or trouble.
- 27:08Trust his sovereignty.
- 27:09I think we can end on that note.
- 27:11That's wise.
- 27:11It's not always easy to do.
- 27:13But brother, I thank you for sharing this.
- 27:15Do you have a date for her cornea transplant?
- 27:17You don't have a date yet, right?
- 27:19We don't.
- 27:20We get anywhere from 24 to 72 hours notice.
- 27:24Okay.
- 27:25And they'll do one cornea transplant, and then she has two years of stitches and recovery, and then another one.
- 27:33All right, brother.
- 27:34Thank you for your time today.
- 27:35Friends, VictoryChurchBelfast.com.
- 27:39Look them up on Facebook as well, and on YouTube, PR for Pastor, PR Gary McKibben at Victory.
- 27:44Brother, we'll do this again, Lord willing.
- 27:46Thank you.
- 27:48God bless you, and as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.
- 27:52See you next time.