Transcription
Do you find yourself in situations where people ask something of you and you know in your heart you should say no, but to maintain peace, you say yes? See, Jesus never said, "Blessed are the peacekeepers." A peacekeeper is somebody who will maintain compromise to maintain peace. He said, "Blessed are the peacemakers." A peacemaker is somebody that will confront, if need be, to have true peace.
[Applause]
Okay, welcome to Lesson Four, and we're going to go to our foundational scripture: "For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind." The word fear is better translated timidity. So listen again: God did not give us a spirit of timidity, a spirit of intimidation. So the thing I want to emphasize here is that it is a spirit. Intimidation is not a weakness of mind, it's not a weakness of character, it is a spirit. The Greek word for spirit is pneuma, which is the same word used for Holy Spirit, human spirit, or demonic spirit in the New Testament. So it's clear, it is a spirit. And a spirit cannot be dealt with in a positive attitude sense. It has to be dealt with in the realm of the spirit. If you deal with it in the realm of just being positive, you're going to cover it up. You're going to, you're going to cover up the symptoms, cover up the spirit, but it's not going to be dealt with. In other words, let me say it more like this: You can have a tree that produces fruit, and you can kind of cover it up by picking all the fruit, but if you don't sever the root, the fruit's going to grow right back on that tree. So you have to deal with intimidation in the realm of the spirit.
All right, so here are some questions I want to ask you, and I want you to think about these. Why would people who are intelligent and physically strong struggle with intimidation, often from someone or something weaker than them? What about men and women who always get their way? They may hold, they may not hold a position of authority, yet it seems that they always get what they want. Do you find yourself in situations where people ask something of you, and you know in your heart you should say no, but to maintain peace, you say yes? See, Jesus never said, "Blessed are the peacekeepers." A peacekeeper is somebody who will maintain compromise to maintain peace. He said, "Blessed are the peacemakers." A peacemaker is somebody that will confront, if need be, to have true peace.
All right, so let's go back to Elijah. We started talking about that in the last chapter. Here's a guy that confronts the king, the false prophets, the nation, the queen. Makes a statement, which I said she had a massive spirit of intimidation. That massive spirit gets launched at him. Instead of him going back and confronting her and dealing with the spirit in her, he runs for his life. He goes all the way through the nation, sits under a tree, and wants to die. Now, we need to talk about this. This is where I want to focus in on. He sits under that tree and prays that he would die. Now, let's stop and think about this. Elijah is confused, he's depressed, he's hopeless, he's lost his vision. These are the symptoms, this is the fruit growing on the tree. You can go to a counselor, and if that counselor is not spirit-led, he can help you pick off the fruit of hopelessness, pick off the fruit of depression, pick off the fruit of loss of vision. But, but if you don't sever the root, the spirit of intimidation, that fruit will eventually just grow back. And this is what Elijah did not do, and this is what I battled over and over and over. Can I tell you honestly? I'm going to be a little transparent. Before I got saved, I never fought depression. After I got saved and went into the ministry, I fought depression like crazy. I remember times sitting in my hotel room, the first seven years of my ministry life, and I remember one time just sitting in a hotel room in Minnesota, sitting and staring at a spot in the wall for 20, 20 minutes, and thoughts going through my mind: "Why do you travel? Why do you leave your wife and kids? Why don't you get a real job?" Literally, I would have thoughts like that, and I would be so depressed. I would have to just make myself go forward because I didn't understand what I was battling. I thought it was, I was battling depression. So I'm like praying, I'm like, "God, please fill me with your spirit. God, please, you know, give me joy." Instead of dealing with the spirit.
You know, there is a man of God that I highly, highly respect. He impacted literally hundreds of thousands of people's lives, maybe millions, probably millions. He's in heaven, I'm sure his reward was great. But he had a vision of Jesus. And in this vision, this was decades and decades ago. In this vision, Jesus was speaking to him from scripture. Okay, so, so now, in other words, the guy saw Jesus in the vision. Jesus said, "I want you to open your Bible too." And I, and Jesus began to teach him out of that scripture. Right? And in the middle of Jesus talking to him about that scripture, a demon came in the vision. And he said, the demon was about half the size of a man, and it said it was green, and it kind of had animal features and human features, and he said it was slimy. And he said the demon was going, he said, "As soon as that demon came in the vision, it was like a mute button went on Jesus." And he said, Jesus was continuing to talk, but he said, "I couldn't hear what he was saying." And he said, "I said out loud, Jesus, I can't hear what you're saying. Please tell that demon to go." And Jesus just kept talking from the Bible. And he got frustrated. And he, he looked inside, and he heard the Holy Spirit say, "You're the one with authority. I gave you the authority. You command that demon to leave." See, Jesus, Jesus is at the right hand of the Father, and he, he entrusted to us his authority. That minister looked at that demon and simply said this: "I command you in the name of Jesus to leave." The demon left. And he said, it was like the mute button went on, off, and he could hear Jesus speak again.
See, this is the thing that I wrestled with. I wrestled with this over and over. I would be in the hotel rooms, I would be saying, "God, what sin have I committed?" I would be confessing everything. If I talked to my wife harshly, my kids harshly, I confessed every sin I could think of, even sins I didn't commit, I confessed them in case I might have thought them. And yet, the heavens above me seemed like brass. And I will never forget when God showed me the reason I couldn't hear his voice is because it was like that vision that minister had. I was tolerating that intimidating spirit. And the reason I was tolerating it was because I didn't know what it was. And that's why I wrote a book, and we're coming out with a course, because I don't want you to put up with that spirit, not even for a moment. Because heaven has a lot to say to you, and what you need to hear from heaven is important to you being successful in your calling.
And so, let me say this. Jezebel's got this spirit working in her. This spirit is attacking Elijah, and, and that spirit, that spirit was released by her. It's called witchcraft. Let me read this: 2 Kings 9:22. "Now it happened when Joram saw Jehu..." Joram is the son, I believe, of Ahab and Jezebel. "...he said, 'Is it peace, Jehu?' So he answered, 'What peace, as long as the harlotries of your mother Jezebel and her witchcraft are so many?'" Now, when you hear the word witchcraft, automatically we go to the woman on the broom with the wart on the end of her nose and the big pointed hat. No, that is not, of course, that is a very small segment of witchcraft. Witchcraft is something that means simply this: control. When somebody tries to control your life, that is witchcraft. Paul prayed this, or he said this to the Galatian church: "O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?" Now, they were not put under potions and spells. What happened is some self-appointed teachers came in and tried to put the law back on them. They tried to control the Galatian church with their law teaching. So witchcraft is when somebody assumes a position of authority over you that they don't have. That position of authority. It's when somebody tries to control you. That is witchcraft.
So again, Elijah's confused, he's depressed, he's hopeless, he's lost his vision. These are some of the symptoms. What do you lose when you yield to a spirit of intimidation? You lose peace. I remember having no peace in those hotel rooms, crying out to God. You lose your confidence. I didn't want to go preach, I wanted to fly home and get another job. I'll be really honest with you. You lose your courage, you lose your endurance, you lose your heroism, you lose your resolution, you lose your security. This is all that you lose when you come under a spirit of intimidation.
You know, I'll never forget the time I preached in a church on a Sunday morning. It was a magnificent service, amazing what happened. So many people got saved in that service. It was a big church. And I remember, I'll never forget this, in the hotel room that afternoon, nobody said anything to me. The only thing I heard was just great reports from the pastor, from, um, his team, the worship team. I went back to my hotel room that afternoon, and again, I'm fighting depression like crazy. I want to quit the ministry, I want to get a real job. I'm going through all this. I don't even want to go back to the church that night. I am so depressed. And I remember I walked into the church that night, and I taught on authority, spiritual authority, for about 60 minutes. And at the end of the service, the pastor looked at me and said, "Man, you don't know how right on you were tonight." I said, "Why do you say that?" He said, "Because a very prominent couple in my church, the wife called me this afternoon, and she said, 'Pastor, I know you're not going to put up with this man's preaching any longer, and you're not going to let him minister in our church again.' And she said, 'Pastor, it was in the South.' She said, 'And Pastor, I'm going to stay home tonight and I'm going to pray against that man.'" And I looked at the pastor and I said, "And you said what to her?" Well, he said, the pastor just looked at me and said, "I just told her to trust God." I said, "No wonder I fought what I fought all afternoon in my hotel room. Why didn't you confront her?" See, nobody said anything negative to me. That woman, who she and her husband had a place of authority in that church, she said, "I'm going to pray against him." And the pastor didn't stop her.
I'll never forget the time I was in Indonesia. It was a massive conference. Uh, well, when I say massive, it was about 2,000 people. So it wasn't, it wasn't that big, but it was a conference, a big conference. And, and, um, there were like three ministers. It was myself, and the other two were from Asia. And one of them was a person who actually did some very strange things. I mean, they used wine and anointed people's eyes for deliverances and did these kind of off-colored things. And I remember I felt a little uncomfortable around this minister. And I'm again fighting depression. See, I don't understand what it is yet, the symptoms of it. So I'm fighting depression. And I remember the guy that's driving me, I said, "You know, I'm really fighting it, fighting depression." He says, "Man, I've been too." My driver was so. Then I looked at the pastor, I said, "Man, I've really been wrestling in my room. I said, I've been fighting depression." The pastor looks at me and goes, "I've been fighting depression too." And I said, "Can I ask you about this one minister you've got in this conference that uses all these kind of weird techniques and does all these strange things?" I said, "Do you feel good about it?" He said, "No, no, I don't feel good about it." I said, "Well, why do you have this person ministering in the conference?" He said, "Well, I told the person they couldn't do the wine stuff and the, and the oil drops in the eyes and, and stuff." And I said, "Okay, big deal. The spirit that's behind that is still operating." I said, "You may have stopped the physical, but that same spirit, you're giving that spirit the platform." He said, "You're right." I said, "Can I ask you a question, Pastor?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "Do your people, do your leaders do, because some of his elders in the church really wanted this person to minister. I said, "Do they ask you things and you want to say no, but you say yes?" He said, "Yes, yes." And I said, "Pastor, you need to be a leader. And I said, if something's not right in your spirit, you need to trust that that's the Holy Spirit showing you this."
Well, can I tell you, that pastor got delivered from intimidation because he and I walked that journey through together. And can I tell you, listen to, listen to this, you ready for this? That church, which at the time had 4,000 members, once that pastor got free from intimidation, that church grew to over a hundred thousand members. And that church built an 18,000-seat sanctuary. And that church built a hospital. Let me tell you another story. There was a pastor in Atlanta had 600 people in his church, and he was completely controlled by his board. He could never lead anything the board wanted because they were the wealthy businessmen of the church. He submitted to. I came in, this was long after I got free from intimidation. I preached on intimidation. That guy got so free, that pastor, that I thought he had a heart attack when I prayed for him. Do you know that that church went to over 10,000 members within a matter of five years? He went from 600 members to 10,000, over 10,000 members in Atlanta in a matter of five years. He went everywhere sharing with people the change in my ministry occurred when the spirit of intimidation was broken off of my life. I don't care if you're in the marketplace, I don't care if you're in government, I don't care if you're in professional athletics. Let me tell you, an intimidating spirit wants to listen, wants to stop the gift in you, wants to get you depressed and confused, hopeless, so that you now are ineffective in building the kingdom of God. That's not what God wants for you. Quit condemning yourself over something you did two years ago or something you think you might have done last week. You're not dealing with that. You are probably dealing with a spirit of intimidation.
Can I say this? When a person sins, they know it. And you know what I say? Repent quickly and ask for forgiveness quickly, and then move on. Because the blood of Jesus buries that sin in the sea of forgetfulness. It is time for you to address this spirit of intimidation because the way it comes at you is it will put the blame on you. It will try to say, "Oh, you're just not good enough. You just messed up one too many times." It will hit you, and that's where it starts putting the focus on you. And in the next several lessons, the next four lessons, we're going to address this so you never put up with this again. And we're going to show you how to stir that gift of God up so that you're going to start ministering to the people in your world. So put your seat belts on, because Lesson Five, we're going to kick it into high gear.
[Music]