The Enemy That Is Me: BREAKING FREE From Your Carnal Nature and Living Out Your God-Given Potential

By Paul Schippel

You are at war, and you will fight this war every day for the rest of your life. It will cost you everything your carnal flesh desires. Within the pages of this book, you will discover:
 What the attitude is of a truly repentant heart
 How to walk in complete victory over the forces of darkness
 How to walk in victory agains

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Schippel
• Release date: Sep 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9781943106523

Paul Schippel

Paul Schippel is the founder of Prodigal Church USA, which was birthed from his first book From A Prodigal Church to A Prodigal Nation. He received his B.A. in Biblical Studies in 1998, in Fort Myers, Florida, where he also runs a successful construction company. He continues to teach Bible prophecy and personal growth proclaiming an Old Testament God in a New Testament age.

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A great read, love the way it brings out the humanity of Christ and how it correlates to our own humanity. What a great help this is to my walk with the Lord.

MARCELLUS STEWART

IT Professional Public Safety

City of Columbus, Ohio

I read the whole book. Outstanding. Very well written. Who is this guy? For a layman (even for a pro), probably one of the best books I’ve read.

CRAIG A. MAYER

DDS, PA

Chairman of Deacons

McGregor Baptist Church, Fort Myers, Florida

"This book will challenge and encourage you on how to overcome the carnal enemy within and spiritual enemy we face every day.

KRYSTAL CERBONE

ESE School Teacher Florida

CLF Ministries Child Development

THE ENEMY THAT IS ME: Breaking Free from Your Carnal Nature and Living Out Your God-Given Potential

Copyright © 2019 by Paul Schippel

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, email author at email address below and type in subject line: Attention: Permissions Coordinator.

Paul Schippel

North Ft. Myers, Florida

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Publisher Information:

Storehouse Media Group, LLC

Jacksonville, Florida 32258

https://www.storehousemediagroup.com/

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The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

THE ENEMY THAT IS ME: Breaking Free from Your Carnal Nature and Living Out Your God-Given Potential / Paul Schippel —1st ed.

ISBN- 978-1-943106-51-6(Paperback)

ISBN- 978-1-943106-52-3 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019940719

Printed in the United States of America

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to Reverend Jerry T. Holt, his lovely wife Fayetta and their family who forever changed my life.

EPIGRAPH

There is no form of sinfulness to which you are addicted which Christ cannot remove.

-- Charles H. Spurgeon --

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I met my Lord and Savior in the summer of 1975 in Antioch, California, in a quaint little church pastored by a man I will never forget—the Reverend Jerry T. Holt. He and his lovely wife Fayetta took me inside their home and loved me right into the arms of God, and they forever changed my life. God bless you, Pastor, and thank you for being obedient to the Lord.

I also want to thank with heartfelt sincerity my family and friends who encouraged me and put up with me in this work: Mark Decker, Brian Haag, Patty and Gus Westerland, Tim Schippel, David Schippel, and my beautiful wife Karla Schippel.

I am not the man I want to be, but by faith, I will become the man God intends me to be.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: Word Became Flesh

Chapter Two: The Enemy We Call Me

Chapter Three: True Reflection

Chapter Four: Corrupting the Image

Chapter Five: No Greater Love

Chapter Six: The Plain Truth

Chapter Seven: The Disease Called Sin

Chapter Eight: Spiritual Wickedness

Chapter Nine: Faith Is Power

Chapter Ten: The Likeness of Sinful Flesh

Lucifer’s Throne Series: Coming 2020 Preview

About the Author: Paul Schippel

Introduction

I wrote the Enemy That Is Me with the sincere hope that it might introduce believers to the real enemy that wars against their soul on a daily basis. This enemy is relentless in its attack against you, and its constant desire is to see you fail. It shows no mercy or compassion for your weakness, and it thrives on your faults. It feeds on your laziness and mediocrity and grows fat on the weakness of your mind.

This enemy desires constant pleasure; it wants to do what it wants to do with no boundaries or limitations. It does not want to obey. It cannot be told no. Its main desire is to control and follow its own path with no accountability.

The enemy also works hand in hand with the forces of darkness to feed your carnal desires, and it will consume and destroy anything and anyone who stands in its path. With an insatiable lust for more, it keeps pressing forward until it wins the battle for your heart, mind, and soul.

Your destiny is to wage war all the days of your life against this enemy whose one and only purpose is to drag you into the pit of hell and separate you from the God who loves you. Your choices mean total victory or total defeat.

It’s up to you; choose life, or choose death for it is you who must give account for the path you follow. You must not and cannot let sin reign in your mind or carnal body. If you do, you surrender your will to be obedient to sin.

Through grace and mercy, we have been provided a way of escape over the flesh through Jesus Christ and a total surrender to God. God demanded perfection from Christ in His fleshly form to become a sacrifice for sin. Through that sacrifice of living a sin-free life, Christ was able to pass the victory over the flesh onto all those who surrender their will to the Father through Jesus—no excuses, no one to blame, full accountability for personal choices and decisions made.

As you read this book, you will understand how human Christ actually was. He was stripped of His divinity and tempted in all points just like you and me. He suffered the same temptations, desires, and fleshly thoughts. He was not given a free pass or special favor just because He was the Son of God. If anything, it was worse for Him because He was God’s Son. You can guarantee Satan worked overtime to influence Jesus’ every carnal desire while He was in the body of the flesh all the days of His human life.

In this book, we get a glimpse of His own personal struggles against sin. He was in the world that He created, which had now become corrupt because of sin.

His mission was to enter the world to gain victory over the world and to restore to His creation a pure relationship back to His Father. He had to meet His enemy Lucifer, who He created, in fleshly form. He defeated this enemy so that I could also defeat The Enemy That Is Me.

Chapter One

Word Became Flesh

There is not a lot of emphasis or teaching given to the full humanity of Jesus Christ in the Church today. We have been so transfixed with the deity of Christ; we have forgotten the importance of His own personal victory over the carnal nature that He had to overcome on a daily basis. Jesus was fully human, and He faced the same human obstacles we all face every day.

Scripture does not give much insight into those youthful years, but one can be sure that His life and the way He lived would have been the same as anyone else who lived during that time. He had to become fully human with every weakness and constraint to complete the mission He had been given by His Heavenly Father.

The first chapter in the Book of Matthew provides the genealogy of Jesus Christ and lays the foundation for His humanity through Joseph and Mary all the way back to Abraham. More than forty-two generations have been recorded as to the human lineage of Jesus Christ.

It’s also important to understand that His deity (possessing the DNA of God) in no way gave Him an advantage in overcoming sin. If anything, it gave Him a greater degree of accountability. Being fully human, He also had to endure trials and temptations just like any ordinary person; He also had to learn to walk in obedience to the Law of Moses and practice all of its rituals and commandments to fulfill prophetic Scriptures.

His burden was greater than anyone else who had ever lived. Failure to live out this human mission would have led to the condemnation and judgment of the human race and it being forever lost. This is why God, in His infinite wisdom, came up with a plan to save what Adam had lost through his one act of disobedience. As a result of that one act, the curse of death infected all creation.

Christ was destined not only to bear the burdens of becoming human, but also to bear the burden of obeying every written commandment in the law and to take on the sin of the whole world to redeem mankind.

The Talmud notes the Hebrew numerical value (gem atria) of the word Torah is 611. If we combine that with the first two Ten Commandments, which were the only ones heard directly from God, that brings the count to 613.

Jesus was born fully human. God planted a perfect seed in Mary’s womb, and Jesus was conceived just like any other human. He had to be nursed like any other child when He cried, and He had to be potty-trained and taught how to eat just like all children. He surely had to go through all the same obstacles, changes, and feelings as any boy would at a given age. He had to be fully human in every way to be able to overcome the sinful nature of man so that He might become the perfect sacrifice for sin. He had His own will and could choose at any time between right and wrong.

The Scriptures tell us in Luke 2 that as He became a young man, He increased in wisdom, knowledge, and stature, and He gained favor with God and man. His parents made Him aware that God was His biological father, and He also must have known He was the second Adam the one chosen by God to give humanity a second chance. Knowing this gave Him purpose in living out His mission.

As Luke 2 points out, Jesus was all about doing the Father’s business. He was glorifying the Father through His own obedience.

Paul made this point in Philippians 2:5-11:

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God. But made himself of no reputation and took upon himself the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men. And being found in fashion as a man he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God has highly exalted him and given him a name above every name. That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth. And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the father.

Jesus lived out every human experience with no exceptions as a child and a teenager. He learned from Joseph how to become a carpenter and worked with His hands to earn a living. More than likely, He had His own place. Growing up, He also had brothers and sisters whom He might have been at odds with just like in any normal family.

According to the Torah, the age of thirty defines the moment of truth in a man’s life. This is the age when certain realities take hold, and through the acquisition of these realities, one becomes a leader. Also, the Talmud declares that at age thirty-one, a man receives the strength of character needed to pursue life goals. This is the reason Jesus began His ministry at this age. He was well-aware of what His purpose was and how He now had to complete the mission His father had put before Him.

The world at that time was not even remotely aware of what was going on in and through the life of Jesus Christ. God was fulfilling the promise He gave to Adam and every patriarch who came after Adam. Adam had infected the human race with sin and death through disobedience of the one law given by God: thou shalt not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. In his time, he was not able to understand the mystery of God’s salvation.

Jesus, who also was fully human, was destined to become the second Adam, a cure for the infection of sin and death. Jesus began His ministry like anyone else born of men so that the world could see the reality of His own humanity.

Jesus, the Son of humanity who knew no sin, went into the wilderness in humility where God’s prophet, John, was preaching repentance and baptism, so that He may be baptized for the remission of sin and lead by example.

John understood who Jesus was, and he tried to prevent him from being baptized. He declared, I have need to be baptized from you and you come to me.

Jesus responds by saying in Matthew 3:15 Allow it for now so that all of righteousness can be fulfilled.

There was no need for Jesus to repent of anything; He had walked in obedience to the Law His whole life. If He had not sinned, then there was no need to be baptized. He had no sin to wash away, but Jesus was identifying Himself here with man’s need to repent and be washed clean from the stain of sin. He was putting on full display for all mankind in every generation to follow that He identified with humanity and that God approved the baptism and repentance that John preached.

When baptized by John, Jesus also solidified Christ’s (the Messiah) mission. John was of the tribe of Levi, a direct descendant of Aaron, the high priest. Part of the duties of the high priest was to present the sacrifices before the Lord in the temple. John, who was of the priestly line, was chosen by God to present His sacrifice to the people. John’s own words were a proclamation to his generation and every generation to come after. (John 1:29 - Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.)

This is where it all began, the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. John was the one spoken about in Isaiah 40. He was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, calling people to repent and to prepare for the coming Messiah.

Jesus was now to embark