I was Fighting my Battles without My Greatest Weapon | Ben Fitzgerald

I'd already had people pray for me at the Baptist church, and nothing worked. And what I started to do is I started to tell God what he said. I started to use the scriptures as a weapon. And I believe today in the modern church, many of us are fighting battles without the correct weapons. In fact, I would say this: a lot of the common church today, they go through ups and downs in their emotions. They go through lots of deliverance. They go through many cycles of sin, and they are simply there commanding, "Get out of my life," or like, "Help me," and they're not fighting at all with a weapon in their hand. They're, they're almost in a sense, naked in the battle.

Well, let's turn then to Isaiah chapter 54, and I'm going to start this with a testimony. And as I was praying, and as I flew here, uh, one of my team sent me a picture, and it relates exactly to this message. Um, when I was 10, before we read, just have your finger in Isaiah 54. When I was 10, uh, my father, I shared it last year with you here, my father committed suicide, and I found him dead. I don't think I shared this part. When I found him, I touched him. The reason I knew he was dead immediately, just like that, was because his head was ice cold. And as I touched him, I had a fish in my hand. There's a deeper story behind that, how God restored something for me. The last words my father ever said to me were, "Catch me a fish." And so God restored this fishing, let's say, fishing for people, when I finally got saved at 20. But when I was 10, I touched my dad, and into my right arm, I felt the presence of something enter my body. Now, I don't know what it was, and I certainly didn't know what it was then. U, I was 10. But I felt some dark feeling come upon me, and I ran. When I ran out of the house, um, I saw my mother. I ran past her and I screamed, "Dad's dead." And she yelled at me. She said, "How dare you say that?" And the last thing I remember hearing as I ran up the street is I heard her scream because she walked into the house and she saw him. And so from that point on, I lived with a remarkable amount of fear.

This might surprise some of you, um, especially the front row who know me. And by the way, for me to even be here, I was saying to God today, I don't know why I'm here. I don't know how I get the privilege of speaking and ministering and representing you amidst so many amazing men and women of God. Um, these people are heroes to me. And I thought about this just the other day, like, I used to watch Charles Stanley's church, and I used to watch Bill, and I used to watch, like, when YouTube first came out in Australia, by myself, all these men and women of God preaching, and I was like, "How do they know God so deeply?" And so even for me to share this with you, I just feel so raw and, and so humbled to even be in the room with all of you and such heroes of the faith. And so I was thinking a lot about that today. But when I got saved, this might surprise them, but I was terrified of everything. I was filled with fear. I was afraid of public speaking. I was claustrophobic. Um, I didn't want to get on a bus. I used to ring the bus bell. You know, they have those bells to, to emer, to stop now or whatever. I'd ring the bus bell and get off the bus within five minutes because I'd feel like the bus is crashing in on me. I was filled with extreme fear.

But I'd just been saved. In fact, I got saved very powerfully in my house at 4:15 in the morning. I was born again. I never prayed a sinner's prayer, so to speak, but the Lord talked to me for 45 minutes. And in some, the conversation with him, I somehow, I don't know if I became a Christian then, but I said, "I'll follow you." And someone gave me a little Gideon's Bible, and I just started devouring it, like four hours, five hours a day. But I was, um, placed into my mom said, "You should go to this Baptist church." And so I went there, and they're really amazing people, and they were kind of Pentecostal, sort of a mix. And the guy that entered my life loved the Bible, and he was a plumber, and he used to, he was really on fire for God. He'd say occasional cuss words, honestly, but he was on fire for God, and he was a plumber, you know? And so, um, he, he was very on fire, an Aussie, real Aussie battler kind of guy, like, you know, "Mate, pick that up for me." And a real strong guy. But he would say to me, him and his friend, they said, "We will teach you the Bible." And so one of his friends' names was Melli. And Melli said, "If you come to church, and if you clean the windows of the church with me, we'll get it done in four hours instead of eight. And the second part of the day, I will teach you the Bible for four hours." And so every week, I would go to the Baptist church, clean the windows, tell him all my problems because I'm a brand new Christian. I'd smoke the cigarette and put it out before I'd go in the thing. I'm like, two weeks old, three weeks old in the Lord. And I'd go in there, and he would just teach me the word of God. And I would tell him, "Hey, why do I have so much fear? How come I'm a Christian, but my mind is extremely tormented by fear?" And he would say to me, "You need deliverance. You, you need freedom." And I'm like, "Okay, how does that happen?" And they gave me a few things. They gave me like, back then we had cassettes. Do you remember those days? Yeah. Some, some people now, you tell them about that stuff, and they're like, "What's a cassette? Is that like an island of Spain?" And so they have no idea, this generation. And so we had cassettes, and someone gave me a Derek Prince cassette, and I just had one, and I played it, finished it, played it, finished it, and you know, they click. I'd play it over and over. And it was, he'd go, "The Bible says you can be free of demons." And I'm like, "This is amazing. I can be free." Even the guy's voice is making me feel free, you know? Like he was just very peaceful. And, and I'd go to sleep listening to him going, "First, you need to renounce the spirit of sin." And I'm like, "Okay, I renounce it." You know, on my bed. I was just doing my best. And, and it wouldn't go. Nothing really, let, nothing really worked. But he'd go, "You are oppressed by an evil spirit." And so I would get into that, and I would renounce things, and it was good. It was good. But it didn't click fully. I was like, "I renounce it. Get out of my thoughts." But the fear got worse. I didn't realize that I was dealing with a spirit that wasn't in my spirit because you're born again, but in my soul, here, in my head, in my thinking, for years, that came into me when I touched my dad. Do you see? So I didn't realize why did I have so much fear in my life? My mother was very bold. My friends who are Christians were very free, and I was petrified. So I wasn't the kind of person I am now, stopping everybody, sharing the gospel.

I remember the first time at Barrel Hills Baptist Church. In fact, they have a, um, band there that my friend who's the senior pastor leads, called Sons of Kora. They're a wonderful band. They just play Psalms. And so they really love the scriptures. But I remember they asked me to read Ephesians chapter 3. And I read it, and even my mind got the, the phrasing wrong. And I'd read like verse 15, then verse 18, then verse 17. Like I was really oppressed. Thank you for the clock, by the way. I was wondering when that's going to come up. Thank you, Lord. That saved you guys. What he just did then. Um, so, so it just came up now. So, I was really still oppressed and not free until I got the best advice I've ever been given. And I want to start this message by saying this sentence to you: The greatest three words in spiritual warfare are, "It is written." They are the greatest three words in spiritual warfare. It's not, "Come out." And then the demon goes, "Ah, I'm not coming out." It's like they learn that in hell. They all get the same sheet. "Say this. Say this. Say this." You know, I've done so many deliverances, guys. I can tell you exactly what they're going to say. They all say, "I'm not coming out. I have a legal right to be here." It's all garbage. We are the ones who give them this, like we almost give them a jury in a court case, and all sorts of stuff. The authority of Jesus, there is no legal right. It says He disarmed the principalities and powers. Everything that they do, especially to a Christian, is illegal. It doesn't have the right to be there. And so I was born again. I wasn't trying to live in sin. I'm God's kid. But I had this deep oppression, extreme fear, problems with, I was seeing the walls move of my bedroom. And my mother, it was my mother, my praying mother, who gave me the greatest advice. She said, "Ben," she said, "even if the walls are moving, the word of God is greater than those moving walls." She said, "The word of God is more of a reality than what you're seeing with your eyes." And somehow the revelation of that clicked in me. And she said, "What you need to do is," she said, "you need to go through the whole Bible and find out what God says about deliverance, and that God has set you free." And I did this. I'd already had people pray with me at the Baptist church, and nothing worked. And they were great. They weren't praying with unbelief. They were real amazing people. I'm not saying that to knock them. Again, I'm coming from those roots. I'm a Pentecostal. I still love that church. And they asked me now to preach there. They're real crazy. They want me to preach there. I don't know why, but they, they, they're really precious people, but they didn't understand one element of the name of Jesus, the authority there. They just didn't get it at that time. I think they have it now. And I didn't know it either. Derek Prince was the only guy that seemed to know it. So I started going through all these verses. "You will not have to fight this battle. Stand firm and watch the deliverance the Lord shall give you on this day. The Lord shall go before you." I got all the way from the Old Testament, many, many verses that I don't need to live an oppressed life of, obviously the ones we know, right? Second Timothy 1:7. "God did not give us a spirit of..." but of power, love, and a sound mind. So that one meant a lot to me because I'm like, "I have an oppressed mind." Then I realized, Jesus, you wore a crown of thorns that my mind would be delivered. Right? So I started to get in the word, and what I started to do is I started to tell God what he said. I started to use the scriptures as a weapon. And I believe today in the modern church, many of us are fighting battles without the correct weapons. In fact, I would say this: a lot of the common church today, they go through ups and downs in their emotions. They go through lots of deliverance. They go through many cycles of sin, and they are simply there commanding, "Get out of my life," or like, "Help me," and they're not fighting at all with a weapon in their hand. They're, they're almost in a sense, naked in the battle. And I realized in many battles that I fought, I was naked. I didn't fight with God's word. You know what I would do? I would phone a friend, and then I would, "I'm going through this. I feel hopeless." And I'd phone my friend, and then I'd try and, you know, I break that lie. I command the lie out. Those things are, are wonderful tools, but I never replaced it with the truth. I never took something that is eternal and spiritual and upholds the universe. I never put God's authority on the picture. I put mine. I put my desperation. You know, call, phone a friend, eliminate a few options. Sounds like "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" But I, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't take the sword. I would use other options. "I need to have a coffee with you." "Why?" "I'm just having a hopeless week." And I realized in this particular time, my mother had the wisdom of God that the word of God is living. It is active. It is sharp. It is a def, it's a total defeat to the devil.

Remember one time I preached in a Catholic church. They asked me to preach there. In fact, the priest asked me three times. He had three interviews with me before he said yes. It was his idea to begin with. Then we met and talked, and then he was like, "I need two more meetings with you." And so anyway, I went to that church, fasted three days, nothing at all happened. I said, "God wants to baptize you in the Holy Ghost and fire." They loved it. They clapped. They loved me. They said, "We have cake out in the room, out in the side." And I, it was great. But I sat there miserable in the hallway because I'm like, "I fasted three days and nothing happened here, God, at all." And, uh, one little lady, Filipino lady, came in Melbourne, Australia. She came to me and said, "Excuse me. Um, would you pray for me?" And I was like, "Yes, one person to pray for." I touched her on the head, and before I finished even praying for her, she was on the ground screaming violently, violently. And I said, "You get out of her in Jesus' name." And then somebody came out with the cake, with the food, and looked what's happening. And so I took the woman who was manifesting into the cake room, and I said, "God is moving." And I said, "Other people in this room, you have demons in your life. You have unclean spirits. You have sin in your life. Get right with God." Next minute, ah, there's people everywhere. It was amazing. I was so happy. It was so good. I, I was [laughter]. And then it got so the spirit fell so heavy that they called the priest. They rang him. He came into the meeting, came swinging his beads in the meeting because literally, and I said, "You don't need him." I said, "It's working. God's working." You know, but he was a sweet guy, but like, he came in like this. I said, "Watch, watch, get out." And he's like, "Wow, this is powerful." You know, and one lady, I remember she, her eyes were black, and she was like screaming this tall. I mean, these are the kind of demons it takes five people to hold a person that big down. And she's like, "It's going to kill me." And, and I said, "Get out of her right now." And she's thing came out. And then later, she's like this. She goes, [gasps] she goes, "Thank you. Thank you. I can't believe it." And all these people who got free of demons, that guess what? God baptized them in the Holy Ghost. But this woman is in a ca, in a Catholic church. Well, it became a charismatic Catholic church that day. But it, this woman, she said to me, "Can I?" She said, "Sir, can I tell you something?" I said, "Sure." She said to me, she goes, "When you said, 'In the name of Jesus,' she said, 'Something happened, and I saw who you are.'" I said, "What do you mean?" She goes, "You were covered head to toe in armor." She didn't know Ephesians 6. She did not know this Bible verse. She said, "You were covered head to toe." She said, "The armor was gold." And she said, "When you said, 'In the name of Jesus,' she said, 'The sword in your hand went with fire into the demon in me.'" She's seeing this whole thing. And I was like, and by that point, I'm, I'm feeling, you know, through the room. I'm like, "Yeah, I bet it did." Like, I'm feeling so amazing about who I am, you know? Like, wow. Yeah, tell me more about how I am in the spirit realm. You know, what else do you see? Any angels with me or what? You know, you know how we can be honest. Let's just be honest. Sometimes we're so, like, it's tough these days to get encouragement sometimes. And so I was just encouraged. And I, I felt so good. And then she goes, "But sir, you also had a problem with your armor." I go, "What do you mean, a problem?" She goes, "In the side of your armor, I have a big hole." And then I was all that encouragement. And I said, "A big hole?" And she goes, "Yeah." She goes, "I could see right into it." And then straight away the Holy Spirit said, "Pornography." And I knew it because every six months I fell into porn. I've said this, I believe I said it last year, Dr. Randy, the greatest gift apart from knowing the goodness of God in a whole new dimension that I received from Bethel Church, I knew God in a whole another way through the ministry of Bill, Papa Bill I call him, and all of the leaders there. The greatest gift they gave me was they denied me being a pastor when I was going to become one. Mark Brooks and their team said, "We will not appoint you or anoint you as a pastor because your calling is too precious and you have not yet dealt with the root of sexual sin." And they denied me being a pastor, and I had to wait a whole another year until I was completely delivered from a 20-year addiction in one moment. In one moment. [applause] And they, they denied me. It's one of my greatest. It's, I, I cannot, I love preaching about it because it's the greatest thing that happened to me at Bethel Church that I was denied being a pastor. And so I knew back then, even that although I was anointed and although I had the authority of the word of God, I wasn't pure, and so I had an open door. And so I lived my life, much of my life, like this, oppressed, shame, terrible thoughts, oppression. And it wasn't until I got to Bethel, sorry, let me finish that story first. I, I didn't, I need to go backwards there. I jumped a story. It wasn't until I got to Bethel, though, that I really understood this is a sword that is to be declared over my life and the lives of people I'll minister to. It is living. It's not a Bible. It's not a book. And we look at this and we go, "This is the scriptures." The Holy Spirit showed me one day. It's like, it's not the scriptures. This is everything. Someone said, "It's..." Did you catch that? This is not a book with writing. Someone said it. It was, they, it was a living, alive word that was heard at one point, and it became the book. Do you see? So these aren't like, "Oh yeah, that's the writing, and then there's the Rhema." No, these were Rhema words. This is spirit and life. Everything God said is life. And so it clicked in me later on. But I used to live this extremely emotional, in and out of freedom. I'd have things broken off. Someone would do deliverance on me. They break off curses from me. All that stuff was good, and, and it's right. It's not wrong. But I never learned to use, to replace it with truth. So I lived in such brokenness. And I, I know that tonight, I just felt it so much all day. There's people in this room. You love God, and, and you love the, the word. You, you love your Bible, but you ring your friends, and you, you go to others, and you get prayer, and you might have faith in that. That's not wrong. It's not bad. But you haven't taken God's word to a root level of actually seriously wielding it as a sword. You haven't taken it to many of the battles that you're facing. And because of that, you get a bit of a breakthrough when they pray, "I feel my," or you're able to confess something. You feel, "Someone understood me. I feel the comfort of the Lord." Very good. But the enemy knows that something wasn't replaced. There was no truth installed in the heart. And so what I did was, when I was oppressed, I installed the Bible in my heart in that Baptist church. And here's what happened. I took James as the last verse, James 5. And I went to the Baptist elders, and I says, "With oil." I said, "This verse says, if you anoint me with oil, God will heal me. God will deliver me." They said, "Yes, and we believe it." And they organized a meeting. And the following Sunday, they prayed for me and they anointed me with oil. And I sat there after going through all the Old and New Testament. I was like, "Okay, God, I'm ready now." Because I, I couldn't sleep properly. I couldn't get on a bus. Couldn't speak properly. Tormented by fear. And it was the same fear that caused my dad to commit suicide. So, it wasn't small. The devil was like, "You're going to die. You're going to commit suicide. You're going to kill yourself just like your father did." And I was oppressed like that. And it was so bad, I'll be a bit more vulnerable. It was so bad, Dr. Annie, that one night I had my girlfriend drive me to the same hospital my father was in, Dax House, Geelong, where they put needles in him, and they strapped him on a CAT, with a CAT team on a bed, and they injected him with lithium, and they basically put my father into a catatonic state for months on end. I drove, as a Christian, a brand new Christian, to the same place, shaking like this at 2 in the morning because I couldn't stop these tormenting thoughts, pictures, everything, visions, everything's falling on me. And I went to ring the bell, and Jesus spoke to me at the front door of where my father started his journey which ended in death. Jesus said this to me. He said, "Ben, this is not the journey I have for you. My word says you can be free." My word. And I took that, and I backed out of the thing. And that's when I found the book of James. That was the last one I found. So they anointed me in the Baptist church. Nothing happened. I stood there with faith. Nothing happened. I bawled my eyes out most of the day. I was just in this state of extreme anxiety. I'm like, "I've done everything. I've gone through more verses than I, I can, you know, I, I just know now that the word of God says I will be delivered, but I'm not."

That night, we went to church again. The evening service, a young man drove us, and drove me to get food like we do after church, and we went there, and I was just sitting in the back of his car, and he was 19 years of age. He didn't know a thing about the gifts of the spirit. He didn't know anything about that. And I stopped at the, the place with him, and he said, "How are you?" He looked over. He goes, "Do you want to go in?" I said, "Not really, Brad. I said, "I just can't do this anymore. I can't live this way anymore." And he said, "Let me pray for you." And I was like, "Okay." And I just leaned back like that. He goes, "God, please help him. Please." And as soon as he prayed, this happened within like three seconds. My goodness, I just felt a big shift of the anointing right then. I just felt that. Some of you are going to be radically delivered tonight of all your torment that it's been years. The sword of the spirit's going to cut it away. But God's not only going to cut it away, He's going to go and put a sword in your hand. All right? I'm going to explain this to you in a second. I'm going to go through these scriptures and show you how clear this is in a minute. So, he prays for me, and all of a sudden, I'm like this. My mouth opens like that. I didn't know, I didn't try to do this. And a hand, a white hand with shining light, went into my throat like that, and went up out of my throat. And I grabbed the door and threw up for 45 minutes or so. And I didn't even know, like, I've never been to some deliverance throw-up thing. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what, what's happening. I just went, "A hand went into me like this," and I went, and I opened, and then he's like this. The guy was, oh God. He didn't know what to do. He had no idea. AND I WAS LIKE, AND SOMETHING'S COMING OUT OF ME. And he's, I think he was screaming as loud as I was, you know, he didn't know what to do. Ah. And then I came back into the car, and I felt like five minutes. It was nearly 45 minutes or so. I came back in the car. I sat, and I went, and I saw next to me a man in white robes sitting on the chair right next to me in the car. Right there next to me. And completely, in one moment, I was delivered from every demon spirit that was in my life since my father's suicide. Every bit of torment. Every demon spirit, it was gone. It was completely gone. And then I walked inside to this Baptist thing, and I somehow, the gift of faith when I got free, something happened to me. I walked into the thing where they're eating, and they were praying for a guy in there with a busted neck, and I, and I just, I pushed them out of the way. I was like on a conveyor belt. I just pushed them, and I said, "Let me pray for him." And I said, "Get out, spirit. Get off his neck." Or something. I was just like brand new. And, and his neck cracked. He was completely healed. And then I knew, I realized, I was like, "There's authority. This is authority. This is what we were made for. The word of God is true. Everything written there is the truth. This was a big lie. This was a lie since I was 10. This lied to my dad. This lied to me. This lied to my sister. This lies to many people." And I realized this is the truth. This is the truth above all truth. There's nothing that is greater than the word of God. And I was like, "Thank you, God. I stood on this book, and you answered me, and you didn't lie, because I made this book not a great book to read. I made it my sword. I made it my only option." And the devil, you don't outpower him. You don't go, "I command you to get out." You don't outpower Satan. You out-truth him. It's the word of truth. All the authority sits in that book. It sits in the spoken word and the written word of God. And I got it. I finally got it.

And so then, as I got older in the Lord, as I kept watching pornography though, and then eventually went to Bethel, shame came back in, and then condemnation came back in. And again, I fell under the same cycle that many of you are under. "I need to call somebody. I need prayer. I need encouragement." And I stopped using the old tool. I read it. I didn't use it. There's a big difference. There's a massive difference. There's a big difference in saying this: "God, I thank you for today. I bless this day. I pray that you'd be with me." And then praying with faith, "Father, use me, and I expect to see somebody and that you'll meet, get me to meet." There's a difference even when we pray. There's a substance that comes from using this as a sword. And I realized even after I got set free of pornography years later and became a pastor, my mind was oppressed once again with a spirit of condemnation. It would even come out in my preaching because once I became a pastor, whatever's inside you, it comes out. And I used to have to really pray against it. Like, "Get all condemnation out of me. Let me minister the truth of your word to the people. Let me love them. I don't want to minister Ben. I want to minister You." And I would really fight for that. But still, I'd get off the pulpit, "Oh, you're a terrible preacher. You're not the good. You're not good at theology." All this condemnation until once again I had the revelation of what is written in the scriptures. Let's read it. Isaiah 54. It's a familiar verse, but we'll start there. Verse 17. Am I preaching to anybody tonight? Good. Verse 17. So, what was I underneath? I got again under a spirit of condemnation. What does that mean? Daily torment. Having to fight off negative thoughts all the time. Okay. Ring your friend. Gets a bit better. Goes worse again. All right. What does it say? Verse 17. "No weapon formed against you shall prosper, and every tongue that rises in judgment, you shall..." What does it say? Condemn. Then it says, "This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness comes from Me," says the Lord God Almighty. And I realized once again, the word wasn't there. I wasn't there to get a prayer break condemnation off me. The word gave me a sword to not only get, when I get condemned, to not only go, "Okay, I understand how to defeat this," but to actually condemn condemnation back. So, I started to use it when I get condemned and oppressed, I'd say, "No, no weapon formed against me shall prosper. In fact, I condemn condemnation. I condemn you with the sword of the spirit. I come against all your lies. You are the condemned ones, not me." And I begin to use it as a sword in the very area that I was in bondage. What is it for you tonight? Maybe you're in bondage with your marriage, and you're like, "We have tried counseling. We've sat at a chair. She's gone, you know, I need to forgive him. I need to forgive her. She does this. She hurt me that way. He hurt me this way." You've sat there for six months, but you've never taken this sword and gone, "You know what we're going to do? Let's join swords and let's take this to the devil's neck. Let the, let's put this to the neck of unforgiveness. Let's put this to the neck of humility." Or let's read the scriptures and let us be perfected by love and use it as a sword to take this pride out of our own lives. But we don't do that often. We read it, but we don't use it. And so tonight, God wants to greatly exhort us to use it.

I wrote a few things down. We have made Bible reading bigger than Bible believing. We've made reading this book, and this is kind of like, "I've got to read my Bible." You know, honestly, I read super slow now because I realize I can read it and I just forget, and then I don't have any sword to take out of that battle, to take out of what God spoke to me. Now, though, when I read it, I'm, I'm slow. And so when I take things from the word, I'm like, "Man, that's so powerful. That is profound." And God puts faith in me, or I'll be able to quote verses. I remember recently I was in a precious church of a dear friend of ours, uh, here in, in, uh, Texas. And, um, I was down there in Texas with Pastor Mike, and he was speaking last year, and he talked about the revival they're seeing down in the south of Texas. Really amazing. A lot of young people and students are being set free. And he invited me to speak, um, down there with them. And I went there, and deliverance broke out in this church. I have a very big church, four or five thousand people. And, and demons started coming out everywhere. As I just preached, I, I said, "God wants to deliver people of hidden sins." And, and so maybe 60 to 70% of the church started coming forward. Demons are coming out everywhere. It was wonderful. And me and my team were really busy. There he is. Pastor Mike's right there. It was precious, wasn't it? How God moved. And, and we're just busy. And all of us, and all their team, we're all praying for as many people as we could. And then one girl, she came to me, 14 years old or so, with a little boy about this tall. And the girl was holding him like this. And she goes, [gasps] like that. She goes, she goes, "Help him. Help him." And I'm like, "Okay, yeah, I'll pray for him." And this, you got to imagine, like, big church, people are crying out to God, repenting. There's husbands confessing sin. Wives, they're crying together. I remember seeing people sitting together just weeping, forgiving one another. It was very profound how God fell on the place. And, um, and so anyway, they, they brought this boy to me, and as they bring the boy to me, the girl is frantic. And I find out later this is the sister of the boy, but she's holding him like this. "Help him, screaming." And I was like, she is more, looks more tormented than him. Until he went like this and looked up at me. And this boy, this makes me so mad at the kingdom of darkness. And I believe righteous wrath is actually godly. This made me so wrath-filled at Satan, at demons. I couldn't believe it. This 10-year-old kid or so, he's like, and his eyes just fully black, fully possessed. Now, I've done a lot of deliverances. You can ask our team and Jean-Luc and others who know me that we do a lot of deliverance. This was probably one of the strongest spirits that I've come up against. When you feel the weight of their kind of, I don't know how it works, but they do have powers, principality, there's some kind of weights they have. And I felt that thing in that kid. And if it wasn't for the Bible, nothing would have happened. Because honestly, when I looked at that boy's eyes, I lost all my faith because I couldn't. I just saw he was like this. And she's holding his arms. And then she said, "Pray for him. Please pray for him." I put my hand in his head. I said, "I command you, demon, get out of him now in Jesus' name." And the demon just threw him to the ground. Just ignored me. I just threw him to the ground. Completely ignored me. And, and I fell down with him. And I'm like, "I command you to get out." Thrashing this boy. Do you remember this, Pastor Mike? Thrashing this boy. And, um, and, and the kid was getting worse. And, and now I'm like on the ground. Now there's a whole group of people in church who know the boy. And now his mother comes, and his mother's a precious woman. Now the father comes. Now there's about 10, 15 people going like this. And they're all crying. They're sticking their hands out going, "Please God, please." Now I'm thinking, "This is a serious situation. Everybody knows about this boy." And, and I'm sitting there with no faith. And as I sat there, the Bible gave me faith. The Bible spoke to me. I thought immediately of the boy that Jesus cast the demons out of the father. He couldn't get him out. I thought of that boy. And then I heard the Holy Spirit say, "Anoint with oil." James 5, same verse that delivered me. And so I said, I go, "Quickly, quickly." And in mega churches, it's amazing because when you go quickly, there's like 50 people that come. And, um, everyone has earpieces and stuff, you know, like it's so cool. It's really good. I love preaching. If you have a mega church, I'm happy to come. So, but, but they all have earpieces and all that, you know. So, they're like, "Get him some oil. Who's got the oil?" And they're finding oil. And I'm just sitting there kind of holding the territory going, "Get out. You're going to leave him." The second they put that oil in my hand, that verse of James just burst out of me like a sword. Like a sword. Like what Jesus did with his mouth when he said, "Get out. Your daughter's healed right now." That's the living word of God. That's the sword. That wasn't something written on a page. These were alive. And that life of the word came into me. And I flipped the boy over. Sorry, Pastor Mike. You don't know this part that I said. Don't ever tell the family this. But I said to the boy, "This is going to be violent, but this demon's going to leave you, son." And I called him son. It was all by the spirit. But I felt the spirit take over my mouth. I said, "This will be violent." And I didn't know why. And I said, "Satan, you know this verse, get out of him. James 5 or whatever, you know." And I said, "I command you to leave." And then just threw him. And then he fell as dead, just like the Bible. He fell as dead. Even the screen died when I said that. He fell as dead. He went like this. And then the little girl, 14-year-old girl, she got on him. The mother got on him. The father got on him. They're all weeping over him. And I'm like, I'm trying to check. Is he good? Is he okay? And then the kid, he's like, and he was completely delivered. And here's what I found out. That demon, complete deliverance, full deliverance. It was the top five greatest miracle I've ever seen in my life. But he wasn't delivered because Ben Fitzgerald has some kind of special faith. He was delivered because the word of God checkmated the enemy. And the word of God in your life is what you need to start using to renew your mind against the things of anxiety, or the fact that your son isn't saved. You need to take Acts 16. "I bind him to the cross. I thank You. Me and my whole household shall be saved." I thank you for what is written. What is written is what is promised. This is not just Bible. These are all the yes and amen promises that you and me need. And I'm surprised that we so rarely fight with what should become a daily sword.

What I found out later was the mother was profusely crying. Please correct me, Pastor Mike, if I'm wrong about this. She was profusely crying because that is the first time her son got off the ground and hugged her for the first time in years. You know why he didn't hug her? Because the, the boy was an orphan. He didn't know his parents. He doesn't know his real parents. And a spirit of rage entered that boy. And the word of God delivered him. The word of God gave me the faith I needed in the moment. If I hadn't have had those verses, if I didn't know what is written, I would have been going, "I command you," and trying to get myself into faith that it wasn't working. And sometimes you just have that gift of faith come on you. And other times God expects you to put stuff in that He can have a library and resource to pull out at any time necessary for you to fight with in the battles that you go through. All right, let's turn to a few more verses. I want to say one more thing before we do, though. So remember, Bible reading has become more important to some than Bible believing. The Bible is meant to be daily bread, not cake for special occasions. All right? You need to read it every day. You need to absorb it. It will challenge you. It will change you. It will deliver you. And if you're a minister in this room, statistics came out recently that many ministers only read the Bible between 15 to 30 minutes a week. Shame on us. I'm not putting shame on you. I'm saying shame on that concept. Shame on us for thinking that we can sharpen a sword against the armies of hell 15 minutes a week, and we watch the rest, the rest of it's all filled with YouTube and Instagram reels, and then we wonder why our churches don't grow. We wonder why. I'll tell you right now, the fastest growing church in America is Philip Anthony Mitchell's 2018 church. It started, it started in 2020, and it's 20,000 people in less than five years. Do you know why? Because all he preaches is sermons on repentance, leaves sin, and he uses the Bible. He says the Bible says that the sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God. People first were like, "Wa, he's kind of harsh. He's kind of so strong with the Bible. He's, he's preaching so much Bible." Yes, that's the problem. The problem is we've been 15 minutes. Yeah, I read it occasionally. And there's no sharpness. There's nothing changing us. It's got to change in the church of America. It's got to change in you. You've got to love this book. You've got to give your life to this. I don't just believe that we give an account to God for the way that we did miracles. I believe we give an account to do we love the one of John 1 that says, "In the beginning was the Word," and that is the same man. If I love Him, then I hide my life between the covers of this book, and I, if I meet God, and He changes me.

And what it does is, I've noticed people get delivered of demons. I've done so many of them. Then they go back, their emotions go up and down. And my mom, when I got delivered, she told me the best advice. She said, she just had so much good wisdom because her husband committed suicide, and she had no one but God. All she had was her Bible. So every day she looked up every promise of hope that God could give her, her dreams again, that God would give her heart's desire, that God cares for the widows. She found the Lord here. And because she found Him, because she knew Him that way, she took it as a sword. And she told me this, Ben. She said, "Ben, when those demons leave you," which they will, she said, "Once they're out of you," she said, "they're going to come back." And she said, she didn't give me a sheet. I love sheets. She didn't say, "You've got to make sure you keep renouncing." I love all that. It's cool, but you know what she said to me? The best advice, she said, "But it's all going to be a lie. The cassette is now out of the cassette player. The demons are gone from you." She said, "Stand with your Bible. Stand on the word of God." And guess what? One week after I was delivered, the same spirits of anxiety came back. And I said, "No, I have been delivered. The word of God has set me free. I belong to Christ. My mind is Christ. I am God's. He has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind." And then from that point, I began to deliver others.

Turn to Hebrews 4, chapter 4, real quick. Is this helping anybody tonight? I know I'm getting very fiery, but the reason I'm getting so fiery is because I don't, we have a deliverance mantle, let's say, in Awakening, but I don't want people to be delivered. I want people to be delivered and then put into the army. I want you to have a sword in. Don't fight without a sword. Don't ring 50 people before you go to God's word. Find out what God says about your husband backsliding. Find out whether God says migraine headaches that came from your mother or grandmother are the will of God for your life. Find out what the Lord says. And instead of going, "I feel that it's not God's will," so I just break that off, and clapping, and I love all that stuff. I love the things that we do. We snap over. I love it. It's not wrong. But for some reason, some part of it doesn't feel solid to me. Do you know what I'm saying by that? It doesn't feel like it grounds me in something. Now, I might be delivered, but that testimony of deliverance and what is written in the word is daily. It grounds it, puts me down again. It sets me firm again. And I know my.

own heart. I can be swayed within a few weeks or a few months. If I don't read the scriptures, I can start to drift. This thing drifts first. Not the heart, actually. This thing starts to get different when I don't put the word of God in me. Hebrews 4. You ready for this one? Another familiar verse. Verse 12. You ready for this? You know this one. The word of God, does it come up on the screen? No. Okay, it's gonna come up in your Bible. Good. We don't need the screen. For the word of God, say this with me, is living and powerful.

Turn to your neighbor and say, "The word of God is living and powerful." Your Bible is not a book. It's alive. Read it with me. Sharper than any two-edged sword. Let's read this all together at the same time. Ready? Piercing even the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. My goodness. After I begin to speak the scriptures, I condemn you, condemnation. I noticed a pattern inside my heart, in my life. I noticed that the more I would read, and not just read, but the more I'd confess, the word of God did exactly what it said it would do. So, what does it do? You're being clouded by oppression, clouded by hopelessness. You're in a very big battle in your life. Perhaps you need promises to stand on. Someone gives you a prophetic word, that's wonderful. That is still the word of God. It's the spoken word in that season. But when you read thy word, it's so sharp that what it does is it grips the part of your soul that is caught in this lie and it goes, "That's your soul. This is the Holy Spirit." It's a discerner. It takes away from you the weight of what you feel in your soul you're having to work out and carry. And I realized that the more I read it, my spirit and my soul would become clear. And even if I was still getting attacked, I could discern, oh, that's my soul. I could discern it clearly. Does that make sense to you?

Because that's what its job is. It's to go, "This is God, and this is not." So, how many of you have gone through cycles of condemnation, shame? Where else do we start? Sexual sin, whatever it might be. I used the same tool to get free of sexual sin. When they denied me being a pastor, I was like, "It worked for me there. It's worked for me in my my mental torment." I went to the Bible and I started reading Romans 6 every day that says, "I am dead to sin." And I took a sword again to an addiction. "I'm dead to sin. I'm alive to Christ. This is not me." One time a woman went to Smith Wigglesworth. She got saved and she said, "Smith, I like to smoke." And he said, "No, it doesn't matter. You've just been saved." And she said, "Yes, but I smoke cigarettes." She had to get back on a boat. And he said, "It doesn't matter." He said, "Here's what you're going to do. You're going to get up every day and every time you want to have a cigarette, speak the word of God and speak scripture. Say, 'I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.'" Every time she... "I am the I, I am, I am the righteousness." You can just picture it. Wow. "I'm the righteousness of God." It probably started that way. This is a great scripture. "I'm the righteousness of God." After two or three days, she's like this. "I'm the righteousness of God." And it went her soul, her immaturity, her lack of peace, her addiction, God's truth, the word, the freedom. And next minute, she, he saw Smith, saw her months later and she said, "You'll never believe this." And he goes, "I already know. I believe it." You know, and like he, he, I don't know if he said those exact words, but he basically said, "Yes, yes." That's exactly what would happen. That the word would deliver her. Do we need deliverance? You're going to see it in a few minutes. If you have a demon in your life, you got five minutes just to say goodbye. Give your last goodbyes to it. Just say, "It's been great. The last 10 years has been amazing with you. Um, you nearly wrecked my marriage. You've got me in all sorts of condemnation. Thanks for the journey." A lot of you are going to be delivered tonight. A lot of you have fear and mental torment, and we're going to go after it tonight because the body of Christ doesn't need fear. The Lord Jesus died and hung on a bloody cross and wore a crown of thorns that you would have a sound mind. But more than this, the Lord wants to equip you with tools. He wants your life to be hope-filled. What greater hope, what greater prophetic word can you get than somebody telling you the word of God, the scriptures?

Last verse, go to Proverbs chapter 6. Thank you, Lord. This is one of my favorite ones. Do you remember Peter when Jesus rebuked him? You remember that script story? Remember that? Can you imagine Peter's day? Peter, Peter, right before this, he's with all his friends, best friends, and Jesus is like, "Who do you say I am?" And Peter's like, "You are the Christ." And out in front of all of them, he's like, "The Father revealed this to you." Can you imagine Peter? You're like, "Yeah, really good day." And I'm here, you know, and then like literally the next two verses, five minutes later, Jesus is like this, telling the whole disciples, "I'm going to have to die. The Son of it's written, the Son of Man will go to the cross." And then Peter, the Bible doesn't say he went over and talked to him. The Bible uses the word, "Peter rebuked Jesus." Can you imagine? Like God showed me when I was reading that once. He said, "Son," he said, "Sometimes in people's lives when they have a breakthrough in one area, or I reveal a certain part of who I am or a revelation to them in in one area, what they immediately think is that they have the ability to go and have the same revelation in another area that I never revealed yet." So that they get a little bit puffed up and take their revelation into other opinions they weren't ordained for yet. And we need to be careful of that because when God reveals something to me about souls or deliverance, doesn't mean I have the right to speak on the Nephilim or I don't even know what that is really. But you know what I mean? Like I don't have the right to get up here and tell you, "Here's God's word about politics," just because I had some breakthrough in one area. But what Jesus said to Peter was particularly humbling. He said to Peter, he said, "Get behind me, Satan." So, the day went from heights of the high to the lowest of low. Um, very humbling in his friend's company. But Jesus turned around and he looked at the disciples, made sure they were paying attention. He said, "Get behind me, Satan." And he said, "For you are mindful of the things of man, not of God." And that's what some of us are. We are mindful. And Satan has his devices that get us distracted from what we have to put in in order to have the wisdom to discern what God is doing in our life. And Peter was mindful of, mind filled with the things of flesh, not of God. And then Jesus turns around and says again, "It is written." And he tells the disciples the truth and he lets the word of God have the final answer.

So this is what I found, guys, that if I let the word of God into me daily, the word of God begins to divide the dark from light. Second thing it does, it begins to have the final answer. It becomes in my hand the sword of the final authority in my world. What does that mean? It means my opinion goes down here, and my way of fighting this battle goes away, and God's way and God's word and fighting the battle you're in becomes the trump card of how you actually get victory. And if you do this, Proverbs tells you what else happens. And this is remarkable. When I found this verse, I was like, I could not believe this. You ready? Go down to, are you there? Proverbs 6. Okay, look at this. This is so powerful. Verse 20. "My son, keep your father's command. Do not forsake the law of your mother. Bind them continually upon your heart and tie them around your neck." Now, by the way, the the Pharisees and Jews, they, they would actually do this. They would tie it around. They would wear scriptures on their forehead because it comes from Deuteronomy 5 that they should have on their hand and head. I think it's interesting that the Antichrist will have you mark your hand and head where Deuteronomy 5 says, "You shall love the Lord your God, and you shall put these on your thoughts and and on your hand." It's exactly the same. So, the enemy wants your works and your thinking. God wants it, though. God wants it much more. So, here's what it says. Verse 21. "Bind them continually." Say that with me. "Continually." All the time upon your heart and around your neck. And now, you ready for this? "When you roam, listen to this. When you roam, they will lead you. When you wake, when you sleep, sorry, you awake and they will speak with you." And this is exactly what started to happen to me. I would read, read, read, go to bed, get up, and Bible verses would fill my thoughts. I would be in a situation where somebody's really bitter at me, and the scripture would come up, or someone would gossip. I'd find out about it. "It's more blessed." Sorry, "The B Jesus said, 'It's better to turn the other cheek. Do not resist an evil person.'" Matthew 7 would come up in me because I placed it in there. How many believers I have come to me say, "I'm struggling to forgive. I can't forgive." I get the struggle, but do you understand what is written? If you put that into you, it will divide that part of your soul. That way, God can heal that. He can restore you. When you choose to follow what is written, it matures you. And when you wake up, guess what speaks to you? The Bible. Instead of your fears, your failures, your problems, all the stuff in your world that you can't figure out. For you missionaries, this is a hard city. I live in the middle of nowhere in Europe. That's where I live. I live in here. It's, it's tough. I'm feeling oppressed. Get into the Bible. Every city that the, every single disciple went to that was a gentile city was a hard, demon-infested, false god-filled city with zero souls. Everyone was hard. Read the book of Acts. It will lift your spirit. It will start speaking to you. And then when you're with your team, you'll start speaking out of the vision of scripture. You'll say, "Remember Philip? The whole city was covered in demons." Acts 8, every single demon bowed to the name of Jesus. They had citywide revival because of one man's devotion and trust in the gospel. They will speak with you and they will lead you. And most importantly, you, my friend, will never, ever enter one battle in your future alone. Never. You will never go through anything without a weapon. And that's how God intended it. He intended. He says it in 2 Corinthians chapter 10, "The weapons of our warfare are mighty." Now, I have a question for you. If I asked you tonight, "Can you give me five scriptures on the return of Jesus and name them?" Most of us would not be able to put our hand up. I'm not saying that to shame you, me included. I did a retreat with our team and I said, "Guys, I want to know. Can, can we put your hands up if you know five verses about salvation off the top of your head?" Most of us couldn't name him. We just couldn't name him. And I realized something. It's not because we didn't read it. We all read those verses. So did you. It's because it never became this. It never became active. It never became living. Therefore, it was never put into action. It didn't change anybody's life yet. And I said, "From now on, we as a movement, we're not just going to read the Bible. We're going to quote it to each other. We're going to look like the craziest, freakiest, weird people ever. We're going to like hang out with each other and speak the Bible to one another." And our Bible reading in all of our communities has gone through the roof. Everywhere I go right now around our place in Germany, all they're doing together is they're reading the Bible. They're like, "Hey, Pastor Ben. Hey." They're like, "Guess what we're doing? We're reading." And I'm like, "That's awesome. We've been here for four hours. Amazing. This is getting a bit out of control." But they're reading the scriptures. They're and they're doing it three, four, five times a week. And what I'm seeing is this. This is starting to go like this. It's starting to go from glory, but like this, to glory. I'm watching a community mature through the written word of God because the dependency is less on men, and we're coming under our rabbi. It's more on His promises. And that's what I want to finish with tonight. I'm going to do right now two prayers. We're going to pray that God would give us an insatiable hunger and even perhaps a little bit of repentance. I don't want to ever make anybody feel you don't read this enough. That's not the goal. It's not Bible reading. It's, it's, it's knowing God. Psalm 139. "Where can I go from your presence?" "Where can I go?" I lived for years, guys, like this. "I feel His presence. Wow. I'm in, in the bedroom. Yes, God." Two months later, "I feel nothing. God, have I done something wrong? What is wrong?" What is just such an insecurity? Then Psalm 139, "Where can I go from your presence?" And it created this constancy, this constant. It puts roots in us. If you want those roots to be restored, if you want to go back to this Bible revival, if you want to use this weapon of God's light and power against your enemies and for His glory, I want you to stand to your feet right now. If that is you, praise the Lord. And could I have, um, somebody make some noise up here? That's good. I meant somebody's fingers. That was nice though. Why don't we do this? Why don't we hold up our Bibles? Yes. And why don't we say this? Say, "This is alive." >> This is alive. >> This is living. >> This is living. >> This is my sword. >> This is my sword. >> And this will deliver me. This will >> Let's say it again. "This is living." >> This is living. >> "This is alive." >> This is alive. >> "This is my sword." >> This is my sword. >> "And this will deliver me." >> And I will speak the word of God. >> Amen. Come on. Give the Lord mighty praise for His word. I'm going to try this side. That wasn't mighty. Give Him mighty praise for the word of God. [cheering] Yes, it's living. I tell you, demons hate when you know this. They are terrified of this. We're going to pray and then we're going to go after deliverance because I believe what is written that Jesus commanded us to cast out demons. First, we're praying a prayer of repentance for where we have put the word of God down. This isn't for all of you, but if you want to repent and you're like, "God, I've kind of been reading, but it's become a secondary love. It's become something that's a bit distant, and I don't use your word. I don't wield it." Put your hands in the air. And we're just going to pray if that's you. Okay? Would you just say this to the Father with me? Say, "Heavenly Father, I want to fall in love with the Bible. This is You. Baptize my heart again in a hunger for the scriptures and Holy Spirit, teach me to turn Your word into a weapon. Now, Father, I pray for them that as their hands are in the air, that there would be just that sweet grace of restoring that love for Your word and the power of the word. Thank You, Lord. Yes." [music]