Transcription
Hey everybody, welcome to lesson three. It's so exciting. We're talking about breaking intimidation.
Now, to really set this message up, I need to spend a little time talking about gifts. God has gifted every single one of us supernaturally. It's called charisma. If you look in the Greek, grace is the word *charis*. If you put an 'm' and an 'a' on it, you get charisma. Charisma is the ability of God that He places on your life, and it causes you to be able to do things in extraordinary ways.
And so, some people are gifted. Like when I look at a brain surgeon, I'm thinking, how can anybody have hands that, you know, that meticulous and not make mistakes? I look at somebody who paints and I'm like, oh my gosh. I look at a teacher who teaches a fifth-grade class and I'm thinking, you have an extraordinary way of captivating young minds. I think of somebody who is a leader, how the ability they have to get people to all move in one direction. I mean, I could go on. An architect, how he can think of these magnificent designs. God has placed gifts on every single one of us, and those gifts are what the spirit of intimidation goes after. And you're going to see this over the next couple of lessons.
So, let me ask you a couple of questions. Number one, are you operating in your supernatural gifts? I want you to do an honest assessment. Number two, do you feel like fear has held you back from obeying God in certain areas of your life? So, if we hold this place of authority that we talked about in lesson two, why are so many ineffective? This is what we want to address here in this lesson.
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All right, Paul, in his first letter to his apprentice Timothy. Now, when Paul writes to Timothy, Timothy is pastoring the church in Ephesus, and history tells us that was a pretty big church. And Paul writes to him and says in First Timothy 4:14, "Do not neglect the gift of God that is in you." Now, the word gift is *charisma*. So, that endowment of God that gives him the ability to go beyond his natural ability is being neglected.
Now, let's look at the definitions of the word neglect. It means to disregard, it means to discount, it means to ignore, underestimate, overlook, undervalue. While these are really powerful words, and I want you to meditate on this. So, what Paul's saying is, do not disregard. Listen to that. Do not disregard the gift that is in you. Do not discount it. Do not ignore the gift that is in you. Do not underestimate or undervalue the gift that is in you.
Now, let me make a real important statement, and I want you to listen carefully. Timothy was a very godly man. In fact, I don't find anybody that Paul brags about more in the New Testament than he does Timothy. He wrote to the entire Philippian church. If you read it later, Philippians chapter two, verses twenty to twenty-two, and he says, "I haven't found anyone anywhere who has a heart for Jesus and for his people like this young man, Timothy."
So, there's a misconception that people have. They think, "If I'm godly, automatically the gift of God that He's placed in my life will function and operate." No, no, no. I was living very godly when I was in that church in the Midwest, but that gift went completely dormant. That gift to preach. Here it was, all these services before. I am like preaching like a house on fire. And all of a sudden now, for those two services, I can't even keep a thought. I'm the same man. It was the same building. It was the same, you know, anointing, but it had gone dormant. It was inoperative. I couldn't keep a thought because of intimidation. Are you following me?
So, Timothy was godly, but that doesn't automatically stir up the gift. There's kind of two extremes sometimes I see in the church. People that pursue power to the neglect of godly character. And then this is what Timothy leaned towards: people that pursue godly character to the neglect of power. We need to have both. The Bible says that we are to pursue godly character and desire intensely spiritual gifts. So, God wants us to not pick one or the other. It's not an either/or, it's a both. He wants us to live godly, and He wants us to function in our gifts.
But intimidation, you know, if Satan can't get a guy by getting him to sin, like he did with Judas and Adam, then he'll go after him in the area of intimidation to stop that gift from being productive in this life. Man, it's really important that you understand that.
So, Paul writes that in the first letter. But then, in the very second letter, right in the beginning, I mean, he does the introduction and goes right to the point. He says, "Therefore, I remind you to stir up the gift of God." So, he wrote him in the first letter and said, "Timothy, don't neglect the gift. Don't underestimate it. Don't undervalue it. Don't overlook it." But then he writes him right at the beginning of the second letter. You've got to remember, this is the last letter Paul wrote on Earth. He said, "Timothy, I'm going to remind you again, stir up the gift of God which is in you."
Now, that word "stir up" is the Greek word, which I will not pronounce, but it means this: to rekindle a fire or to revive something. So, when you revive something, that means it's dead. So, the gift of God in Timothy was not operating. Okay, I'm not saying it was dead, I'm saying it was completely inoperative. And Paul is saying, "Rekindle it. Stir it up. Agitate it. Get it moving." Okay?
So, again, I want to make this really important statement because you've got to understand, the gift of God in your life doesn't automatically work. Sometimes it has to be rekindled. Sometimes it has to be agitated. Sometimes it has to be stirred up. Okay? So, we've got to ask two questions. Question number one: What causes the gift of God to go inoperative in our life? Question number two: Is this, how do we stir it up? How do we agitate it? How do we rekindle it?
All right, those two questions are going to be the remainder of our course, and it's going to take a lot of in-depth probing and searching to answer those two questions. So, the first question we want to answer right now is, what causes the gift of God to go dormant? I've already said it over and over, but here's the scriptural evidence of it. Paul says, "Therefore, I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying out of my hands. For because, for or because God has not given us a spirit of fear." Did you hear that? "A spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind."
Another words, what Paul's saying is, your gift is dormant because you've got a spirit of fear that you're allowing to operate in you. Now, the Greek word for fear is the Greek word *deilia*. Now, that word is actually better defined by the word timidity. In fact, the NIV has, "God has not given you a spirit of timidity." So, what Paul is saying to Timothy is, the gift in you is not operating because you're under a spirit of timidity, or can I say like this, intimidation.
Now, we're connecting. We're connecting with this word. So, let me give you some definitions of intimidation. It means to discourage, it means to coerce, it means to suppress. The Oxford English Dictionary says, "to force or restrain someone from action."
In this specific incident, Timothy was intimidated by the probably older people in the church because he was a young man. And I don't think in those days we respected young people the way we do today. I think it was kind of like a hierarchy. If you're a certain age, you are the man, you know? You understand what I'm saying? All right. And here's Timothy, he's really young and he's pastoring this church. And that's why Paul had to write to him in that first letter and said, "Don't let anyone put you down because you are young." That is 1 Timothy 4.
So, intimidated believers lose their authority in the spirit by default. Consequently, their gift, God's ability in them, lies asleep and inoperative. If you look at Elijah, Elijah was a man of great power. I mean, if you read the miracles that God did through that guy, it was mind-blowing. And in First Kings chapter 18, he confronts the king, Ahab. He confronts the nation. He confronts the 850 false prophets. Boldly confronts them. And God answers him by fire. The whole nation sees, "Oh my, my, this guy is of God." And then, do you know what happens? He has the whole nation execute those 850 prophets. Then he prays. Now, you've got to remember, there's not been rain for three and a half years. He prays, and here comes a rain that is so heavy, it literally almost floods everything. Right? And the hand of God then comes on Elijah, and he outruns the king's chariot. That all happens in 24 hours. I would call that a really good day of ministry.
But before the day's even up, King Ahab tells Queen Jezebel what Elijah had done. She sends a message to him and she says, "So let the gods do to me and more also if I don't make your life like the lives of one of those prophets by this time tomorrow." In other words, this is what she said: "I'm going to kill you in the next 24 hours."
Now, when she says this, you have to understand where. Well, let me say it like this. Spirits remember, intimidation is a spirit. Spirits are like surfers. I want you to get an image, okay? Surfers need what? They need a wave. They can't do anything without a wave. Demons need a wave, and you know what that wave is? It's called words.
So, when that woman, because she's got a massive spirit of intimidation that she operates in. In fact, I mean, I'll get into it more in the next lesson. She was accused of even being a woman who operated in witchcraft. And I'm going to show you, witchcraft isn't a broom with a woman and a word on the end of her nose. It's witchcraft is so much more real in our world than you can even imagine. But this woman releases a massive spirit of intimidation. And you know, when Elijah hears her words, you know what he does? He runs for his life. He runs down the entire nation. He goes all through, all through Israel, all through Judah, and goes to the very southernmost city of Israel, and that's called Beersheba. Leaves a servant in Beersheba and he goes a day's journey into the wilderness, sits under a tree, and he wants to die.
So, here's a guy that just the day before, the day before, confronted the nation, confronted, I mean, the false prophets, the king. And now he's running for his life. And so he's laying under this tree, and an angel appears to him, and the angel gives him two cakes and says, "You better eat this because you've got a really long journey." So, Elijah eats the two cakes, runs 40 days and 40 nights as far as Horeb, the Mountain of God, that is Mount Sinai.
When he gets to Mount Sinai, God speaks to him and says, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" Now, I want you to stop and think about this. Elijah has not heard the voice of God in over 40 days. And the first thing God says is, "What are you doing here?" I mean, God, are you schizophrenic? You sent an angel, you gave him two protein bars of manna for 40 days and 40 nights, and then you ask him what he's doing here when he gets there? No, God is not schizophrenic.
So, what's going on here? God saw that Elijah gave up. He quit. And that's why he laid under the tree and wanted to die. And so, when God sees that you've given up and you've said, "I quit," God will send you to a place to minister to you. And so, God says to him, "What are you doing here?" And Elijah gives this big sob story. I mean, this is really funny. He goes, "Oh, God, he says, I am the last one left. The people, they have forsaken your covenant, they've torn down your altar, they've persecuted your prophets, and I'm the only one left." Right?
God completely, totally ignores his sob story and says, "Go out and stand on the ledge." So, here comes the wind, the earthquake, the fire. And then the Lord speaks again for the second time, and he says, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" And you know what Elijah did? He did the sob story again. He said, "God, I'm the only one."
And so, you know, God completely ignores that sob story the second time. And you know what God says to him? Listen to this. "Then the Lord said to Elijah, 'Go, return your way on the wilderness of Damascus. And when you arrive, anoint Hazael as king over Syria. Also, you shall anoint Jehu the son of Nimshi as king over Israel. Now, listen to this carefully. And Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel Meholah, you shall anoint as prophet in your place.'" In other words, "I'm replacing you. Remember, place of authority. You shall anoint Elisha as prophet in your place. You gave up your place of authority, Elijah. I'm going to put somebody in there that won't."
If you don't believe me, listen to it out of the NLT. "And anoint Elisha, son of Shaphat from Abel, from the town of Abel-Meholah, to replace you as my prophet." If you continue to read, you will find out that Elijah spends the next four years training up this young man, Elisha. Elijah's real focus now is to train up his replacement, the person who's going to finish the job. See, what God was saying to Elijah is, "Why did you run from her? You confronted the king, you confronted the false prophets, you confronted the nation. She's the ringleader. I mean, she's really got the one, the spirit in her that's running this whole mess. I mean, those prophets were on her payroll, they ate at her table. But you didn't go at the root of what was causing the whole problem for my nation of Israel. So, I'm going to get somebody in there that is going to take care of her."
And you know what God says? He says, "It shall be that whoever this is." This is verse 17. "And it shall be that whoever escapes the sword of Hazael, Jehu will kill. And whoever escapes the sword of Jehu, Elisha will kill." If you go into Second Kings, you'll find out this guy, Elisha, he's bold. He doesn't back down to anyone. I remember one time in Second Kings, the king sent a messenger to say, "Elisha, are you going to die?" And when the footsteps got to the door, Elisha said, "Oh, there's the messenger who's going to see bread in town by this time tomorrow night, but he'll be dead and won't be able to eat it." Do you know that guy was trampled? The messenger. I mean, nobody intimidated Elisha.
And if you read Second Kings carefully, you'll find out that Jehu, which by the way, Elijah never anointed him, he let Elisha do it. Jehu and Elisha were the ones that destroyed Jezebel, Ahab, and their kingdom, their dynasty, and the spirit that was behind it.
Let me tell you something. God has called you to a place of authority. That place is very significant. I don't care if you're in full-time ministry, if you're in the marketplace, education, I don't care if you're in healthcare. God has called you to a place to build a kingdom, and He's given you an authority in that place. Don't give it up to intimidation. We'll continue in the next lesson.
And let me say this in closing. You can lose your place of authority. Again, that's the goal of intimidation. If we are to overcome it, it needs to be dealt with in the realm of the spirit. That's what we're going to talk about in the very next lesson.
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