Transcription
And I remember hearing the Holy Spirit say, "You're intimidated by the people on the platform behind you, and because of this, your gift to preach has gone inoperative. Break their intimidation and preach what I'm giving you to preach."
Hey everyone, welcome to the first lesson of Breaking Intimidation. I'm so excited about this course. Let me tell you about this. First of all, this is a book that I wrote years ago called Breaking Intimidation. I fought this spirit for years and years and years, and when finally it got exposed and I was free forever, I said, "God, please let me write a book and expose this thing so people could be free." And He permitted me to do it.
So, how, where do we begin on this? Well, first of all, countless men and women battle intimidation. Yet, the sad thing is, they battle the symptoms, the side effects, instead of going after the root of intimidation itself. So, I want to ask you some questions, alright? We want to locate where you're at. Do you find yourself at times wanting to say no, but you end up saying yes? Do you feel guilty when you say no? Now, ask yourself these questions, alright? Think about different situations that you've been in. Do you find when it's time for you to produce, you struggle? And you think, "Wow, when it wasn't time for me to produce, when I was in my quote, practice time, everything went great. But then it was time, when it was time for me to bring forth fruit, I struggled." Do you avoid confrontation with certain individuals? Do you find yourself avoiding certain people out of fear? Do you find yourself paralyzed, not knowing what to do, or not feeling the strength to do what you know to do when action is required? These are symptoms of somebody under a spirit of intimidation.
Let me explain it to you like this. This will give you a visual on it. Can you imagine an absolutely gorgeous house? Alright? And in this house is beautiful furnishings, very expensive furnishings. But there's a problem. There's a hole in the roof. So, as long as it's not raining, everything's great. But then all of a sudden, here comes this huge storm. And what happens? You guessed it. The carpet's soiled, the furniture is ruined, the drapes are ruined. So, you spend all this time to pull out the carpet, pull out the soiled furniture and drapes. You replace the carpet, the flooring, whatever it is. You put brand new furniture in. And right around the time you expend all this energy to do this, another storm comes and ruins everything you just did. And you begin the process all over again. So, what's happening now? If this continues, you're going to eventually deplete all your resources and your energy. And eventually, you're going to give up and say, "This is my lot in life." Well, if you just would have fixed the roof, we would never have had this problem again. And this is what people do when it comes to intimidation. They keep dealing with the symptoms, the symptoms, the symptoms. They never ever close the roof, so to speak.
You with me? I will never forget how I learned this situation. I struggled with it for years, but it took a real encounter with the Holy Spirit to really expose it to me. I'll never forget, the year was 1990 or 1991. I was in this church of about 600 people in the Midwest part of the United States. The Spirit of God began to move in the meetings. We were only supposed to do four days of meetings, but all of a sudden, it was crazy amazing what happened. On the Sunday service, we did Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday morning. A move of God began in that church. And the pastor said, "You just can't leave." I said, "I know." And so we ended up going 21 services. People traveled from as far as 90 miles away to come to these services. Every single night, that church was packed. I'm telling you, the anointing to preach in those services was amazing. I mean, I was like a man on fire. Every single night, there were people getting delivered. One lady, she was a New Age witch, got delivered, completely set free. And for over 20 years, supported Messenger International. It was mind-blowing the things that were going on, the salvations, the backsliding people.
But then we were in, oh, about the end of the second week of the meetings. And I'm, you know, I'm just preaching along. And all of a sudden, without even thinking about it, I turn around. Now, on the platform is about 35 people because the church was so packed, all the musicians and the singers had to stay on the platform. And right in the middle of the message, I just turn around and I say, "There's sin on this platform, and if you don't repent, God's going to expose you and you're going to be removed." And my head thought, "What did you just say?" Now, you have to understand, this has happened two times in 35 years of ministry. But I remember what, at that moment, my head screamed at me, "What did you just do?" My heart said, "Everything's good. This is God." So, I kept preaching.
Well, we went into the third week of meetings, and I'm preaching again. It's very prophetic. I'm, I'm preaching out of the overflow. And all of a sudden, I turn around again and I say, "There's sin on this platform, and if you don't repent, God's going to expose you and you're going to be removed." All of a sudden, my head went, "Did you really just do that again?" And my heart went, "It's okay. It's okay."
So, the next night, we walked into the pastor's office. The youngest elder walked into the pastor's office. And he looked at the pastor in front of me and said, "The praise and worship team is a little depressed tonight." Now, you're probably laughing, but I had no clue. And I looked at the young elder and I said, "Well, why is the praise and worship team depressed?" And he looked at me and he said, "Because they think you are being too hard on them publicly. They feel if there is sin on the platform, you should go to the person in private and address it in private." And he walked out.
Now, right then, a barrage of thoughts started hitting my mind. "Bav, what are you doing? Suppose there isn't any sin on the platform. Everybody in the congregation is going to be thinking, 'Who is it? And what did they do?' Or what, what if, what if there is sin on the platform and the person repents privately and then it never gets exposed? Everybody in the church is going to be thinking, 'Still, who's in sin?' You're going to create more damage in this church by these stupid moves you just made than all the good that God has done in all these 20 some services." And all these thoughts are just firing through my mind. And, and, and they get interrupted with the pastor saying, "Well, let's go out to the service." So, we pray. We go out to the service. I'm on the platform now. You have to understand, every night we walked out on that platform, please understand what I'm saying, it was almost like God was waiting for us. It was magnificent. The presence of God. I walked down on that platform and everything seemed dry in me. And I'm thinking, "What's going on? I don't want to preach. I don't feel like preaching. I don't want to be on this platform." And I remember we went through the praise, the worship. The pastor introduced me. And I remember I walked up to the pulpit and I'm thinking, "Boy, I don't feel like I'm supposed to preach. I, I don't have anything to say." And I started preaching a really nice message out of the book of Psalms. It was the nicest message I preached in all the services. And I remember while I'm preaching the message, I'm thinking, "Ooh, this is horrible." And in my head, I was going, "I want out of here. Where's the back door?" And I remember I ended that message in about 30 minutes. It was the shortest message we had in all the services. And I closed the service. And, and to be, I'm going to be really frank with you, I was really angry at God. Uh, I thought, "God, you didn't show up tonight. That was a pathetic message. And nobody's going to want to come back tomorrow night. In fact, I really don't want to come back tomorrow night." So, I remember I went back to the place I was staying and I went straight to bed. I, I actually didn't even want to pray. I was so upset with God. And this is pure immaturity, believe me. This would never, ever happen today because I've learned so, so much about the faithfulness of God. I went to bed and I thought, "We'll talk about this in the morning."
So, the next morning, I wake up and I feel like there's a sack of sand laying on top of me. And I remember, you talk about heavy, I felt so heavy. I got up and I started trying to praise God, and it was like, it was so thick. It was like praising God in the middle of a lead balloon or something like that. It was like, and I thought, "Maybe I should read the Bible." So, I got my Bible out and I started reading the Bible, and it was so dry, you could light a match on the Bible. Okay? And, and then I remember I thought, "Something's really wrong." So, I found a field and I started praying so loud that I almost lost my voice. And that lasted over three hours. I stayed in that field for over three hours. And I remember I thought, "Okay, tonight's going to be amazing."
So, I go back, go to the service that night. We pray in the pastor's office. I go out to the platform. And it's worse than the night before. Worse, worse. You heard me right, worse. And I remember thinking, "God, please let somebody else preach tonight. I am not fit for this." And I remember when the pastor, much to my disappointment, introduced me. I got up and I started to preach again. Now, this time, I'm preaching. It's worse than the night before. And I have thoughts in my head going, "Why did you just say that? Where are you going? This is horrible. This message makes no sense." These are the thoughts that are going through my head while I'm preaching. And I remember all of a sudden, I thought, "I can't go another minute." It was, it was like seven minutes into the message. And I, I, I just screamed, "Stop!" And everybody in the church kind of woke up and looked at me. And I said, "Hey guys, I don't know what's going on, but there's something wrong. Can, can you all pray with me?" And I remember that church was so amazing. I mean, I, I mean, God administered to them so much over those, you know, 18, 19 services, wherever we were at the time. They just stood up and erupted in prayer. And we're all praying. And within minutes, I hear the voice of God for the first time in over 24 hours. I mean, the heavens had been brass. And I remember hearing the Holy Spirit say, "You're intimidated by the people on the platform behind you, and because of this, your gift to preach has gone inoperative. Break their intimidation and preach what I'm giving you to preach."
All of a sudden, scriptures started flying through my mind. I mean, at a machine gun rate, like an automatic machine gun. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I started preaching those scriptures. And it was the most powerful service we had all 21 services. I remember giving the call and I said, "All you that are under intimidation and you want to get free, come down." I mean, 400 people ran to the front. I mean, they were all the way back to the back because they were in the aisles. It was so packed. And they got free.
And I'll never forget, about two months later, the pastor called me. And he said, "Hey John, the praise and worship leader was committing adultery all 21 services. One of the singers was committing fornication with a girl in the congregation. She confessed to it, he repented, we restored him. The praise and worship leader left. And one of the guitar players was getting plastered drunk every night after the services. He left the church." He said, "John, it's been a little tough, but he said, our church has never been in a better place and our worship has never been stronger."
Now, that incident is what opened my eyes to this message you're about to receive. In the next seven lessons, we're going to walk through scripture. We're going to see what causes God's people for them to go inoperative in the gifting that He's placed on their lives. We're going to expose this spirit and we're going to break it, if need be, on your life. I am so excited because I know the freedom I experienced when God set me free.
You know what's really, really sad? As I said in the beginning, most people deal with the symptoms. They go to a counselor, and the counselor teaches them how to cope with it. The fear, the depression, the hopelessness, the confusion. These are the symptoms of an intimidating spirit. And counselors, many times, will say, "Well, this is how you cope with it." And they'll almost put a mate over it. Now, there are a lot of great counselors that are spirit-led that don't do that, but I'm saying a lot of counselors do. And then what other people do is they just think, "Okay, this is my lot in life. I'll just keep continuing living with the hole in my roof." And then there's others that go into isolation because of intimidation. God doesn't want any of those scenarios for you. God wants you free. He wants your gift operating. He wants you building the body of Christ and enjoying life. And that's what we're going to do in this course.
So, Father, in the name of Jesus, I pray for everyone that's watching, everyone that's going through this course. As we continue to journey through the next seven lessons, Holy Spirit, I'm asking that You would come upon them, illuminate their hearts, open their eyes, their ears, and may freedom come into their lives forever. In Jesus' mighty name, we pray. Amen. I'll see you in the second lesson.
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