Bill Johnson - Love Versus Fear
Wow, not a good day. Well, I’m so excited about that children’s album. They keep putting out cool stuff—baby powder, colored powder and all. It’s just all beautiful. So, I encourage you to watch the original video. I think in the leaders' advance this week, Eric had the suggestion that we play both, because I think it would minister so deeply to leaders all around the world. Our goal is just to encourage. Wow, I’ve got a couple of things that I thought were funny. I don’t mean to brag or anything, but this is like the fifth end of the world I’ve survived.
I think that’s funny. I’ve got another one: I don’t mean to brag, but I finished my 14-day fast in three hours and twelve minutes. That’s a good one. I like that. I saw this last week; it said there should be a calorie refund for everything you’ve eaten that you didn’t think was that good. Was it as good as you expected? I thought that was perfect; I’m in for that one. I like this one: I hate salad for dinner—mostly croutons and tomatoes. Really, just one big round crouton covered with tomato, sauce, and cheese. Fine, it was pizza. It was peace. I ate a pizza. So funny. Every successful person consumes a substantial amount of coffee.
All right, let’s open our Bibles to Isaiah 51 and we’re going to start there. Isaiah 51, here’s what I’m going to do. I want to talk to you about love versus fear. Everything you hear and receive into your life gets filtered by love or fear. Everything that flows from us is affected by love or fear. Our reactions to all the issues around us either take place out of love or fear. They’re the two defining elements of a person’s life. Oftentimes, what we recognize is happening around us—those who are motivated by love—will pick up on the good news and see the hand of God at work. Those who are controlled or manipulated by fear will always recognize the works of darkness. It doesn’t mean that recognizing the work of darkness means you’re motivated by fear, but those are still the end results.
So, what I want to do is talk to you about this issue of fear. The reason is that it’s the number one command in Scripture. It’s repeated more often than any other: do not fear. When the Lord repeats a command as frequently as He does throughout this entire owner’s manual, it’s because He’s exposing or revealing the number one tactic that the enemy uses to disengage us from our life source. He can’t cut me off from my life source in the sense that I have a relationship with God, but it’s the same way that you can have a dislocated arm where you no longer have full use of it. He wants me to be out of function, out of my role, out of usefulness, and fear does it. Fear is where we actually agree with the enemy, and anytime you believe a lie, you empower the liar.
What the Lord does is expose the tactics of the enemy. I’d prefer to focus on God; that’s really boring to me and it’s unappealing—I don’t like it. But Paul does say he doesn’t want us to be unaware of the devil’s devices, so it’s important that we realize the tools that he uses. When the Lord says do not fear, He’s never saying it to expose what we’re doing wrong. In other words, it’s not a shame deal; it’s not, «Look at you, you’re blowing it again.» What He’s doing whenever He says do not fear is opening up to us that within reach is the grace to be victorious over fear. It’s never a command like, «Go take care of this.» It’s always a partnership. When He gives commands, He empowers us to do what we previously couldn’t do. That’s the nature of grace—grace enables, grace empowers.
So when the Lord says do not fear, He’s merely saying, «Okay, right at this moment, there is within reach the capacity, the grace for you to deal with this that has come against you.» Having the experience of fear, the emotion of fear, is not a sin; partnering with it is embracing it as though it were truth. I mean, there’s a difference between facts and truth. There are things that are true that aren’t truth. You know a doctor’s report? Don’t pretend it’s not there. A doctor’s report is earnest, they’ve discovered something wrong. Denial won’t help you; he knows what it is. But then there’s coming to the truth that deals with the fact that Jesus has already taken care of that.
Here’s the cool thing about promises. Bob Hayes, when he was with us here, I think a month ago, made a comment that has really got me stirring, and it was something to this effect: whenever God gives us a promise—wait here, look at it this way—God is outside of time; we are in time. Whenever He gives us a promise, it is already done in His realm. It’s already a finished, completed thing. So what we do is we pray, we obey, we cooperate, we do the things that He’s assigned first, because we actually are used by the Lord to help bring the release to the breakthrough that we prayed for. Sometimes we have a role in seeing breakthroughs; sometimes our only job is to observe.
It’s frustrating to try to figure out what season you’re in, because the only way I know is to try something, and if it doesn’t work, then I go, «Oops, apparently it’s the other season.» Because there are two basic options. One is violence—the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. When that season is going on in our lives, it’s because the Lord is emphasizing our authority. He’s wanting us to come face to face with how He has equipped us to be continuously victorious over the powers of darkness. But there’s another season, and you can’t do both at the same time. The second season says, Jesus said in Mark 10, unless you receive the kingdom as a child, you cannot enter it.
So in one season, you’re violently taking; that’s the expression of faith. But in the other season, you’re in a place of rest where it’s brought to you. You can’t do them both at the same time; you get a whiplash, you hurt yourself. In the second season, the emphasis is not your authority as a warrior; the emphasis is on your childlikeness that receives an inheritance. It’s something that’s done for you. These promises, though the Lord has given us to really steer us, empower us to deal with the fear issue, actually come in both realms. They sometimes come as that commissioning or that compelling charge to pray with fasting, to make the decrees, to fight the fight, to fight the good fight of faith, to do whatever is necessary to see this fear issue defeated so that you can stand in absolute confidence.
But other times it’s a grace thing; it’s just a grace thing. It’s always grace, but it’s a grace thing in that it’s sovereignly released to you as a gift. You didn’t even fight for it; there’s no work involved. Both are necessary. So anyway, that’s kind of what we’re going to look at today. I want you to look at Isaiah 51—did I take where to turn? Yes? No, some of you heard me, some of you didn’t. Isaiah 51, I’ve got a couple of passages here, three actually, that we’re going to read to try to identify why the enemy has had such a focus in that area. Because if I understand why he’s made a priority of promoting fear, then it will help us to have the resolve to keep insulated from things that we’ve been vulnerable to.
All right, Isaiah 51, verse 12: «I, even I, am He who comforts you. Who are you that you should be afraid of a man who will die, or the son of man who will be made like grass? And you forget the Lord your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth. You have feared continually every day…» Go back to verse 12: «I, even I, am He who comforts you. Who are you to fear?»
That’s an interesting approach to fear. You would think that the Father would come and pat us on the back and massage our egos and say, «Oh, here, I’ll take care of everything for you; everything’s fine.» He actually stands before us and says, «I’m the one who comforts you. Have you noticed my size? Who do you think you are being afraid? Who do you think you are? Did you actually think it was about you?» Sometimes we need a wake-up call like that that isn’t the sympathetic pat that we thought we were going to get. Instead, it’s the jar into the reality: Oh, when I choose fear, I’m choosing the inferior over the absolute manifested presence of God who is here to defend me in any and every situation. Fear is embracing the inferior. Who do you think you are being afraid?
Look at Isaiah 54. Isaiah 54 is a great verse. I fear that verse 13 is a prayer that I’ve prayed over my own children and still do. I’ve been praying for probably 39 years: Verse 13, «All your children will be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children.» Verse 14: «In righteousness you will be established; you will be far from oppression, for you shall not fear.» Look at that phrase: «You will be far from oppression.» Why? Because you won’t fear. What is oppression? Oppression is that moment where we make agreement with a lie, and we invite the atmosphere of darkness to influence our thoughts and values. It’s actually a cloud of darkness that comes when we believe the lie. Yes, Bill, it’s a very good point.
Here’s an interesting thing: fear oftentimes starts off—not always as a spirit of fear; sometimes it’s just a simple emotion. How many of you know you can work yourself into fear without the devil being 100 miles away? We don’t need him to be stupid; I don’t know how to speak for yourself. So some sins we always think are spiritual, but actually, oftentimes they start in the natural realm. The extreme example of this in Galatians 5 actually refers to witchcraft as a sin that starts as a sin of the flesh. That’s just bizarre. I mean, here’s this cultic involvement, the demonic—all this world swirling about a person who’s involved in witchcraft. The scripture says it starts off as a sin of the flesh.
What is witchcraft in its basic form? It is the want to be in charge and control your environment so that you remain in charge; it’s the absence of trust in God. It starts as a sin of the flesh; it becomes supernaturally empowered and eventually becomes very demonic, becomes a stronghold of the demonic. Does that make sense to you? The same is true with fear. Oftentimes fear just starts with, «I got a bill in the mail that I didn’t expect, and I don’t have money for…» You can start feeding into that thing, and pretty soon, in no time at all, you’re buried in fear and worry, anxiety—all the junk that all of us face. Every one of us deals with this stuff, and so we get buried in that thing, and it actually invites the spirit realm to come in and reinforce it. It becomes a much larger battle than it was when we were just dealing with our own discipline.
One more passage I want you to look at is in Philippians chapter 1, and then I want to talk to you for a little bit. Philippians 1 is one of my favorite passages on the subject of fear. Verse 27 says, «Let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of your affairs, that you stand fast in one spirit with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel.» Here’s the verse: «Not in any way terrified by your adversaries, which is to them proof of perdition, but to you of salvation.»
Now think through this verse; this is really powerful. «Not in any way terrified by your adversaries"—which is to them proof of eternal judgment. So think through this: every time you and I are victorious over a fear issue, what is broadcast on the PA of Hell, of the powers of darkness? It is pending doom, absolute eternal judgment, and they try to get you to fear so they don’t have to think about what’s coming. I’ve got some really good news for you: every time we are victorious over the fear issue, what happens is the enemy—all the powers of darkness come face to face with the fact that they are eternally doomed, and there is no solution. That’s what the victory over fear does: it pronounces it, it announces it, reminds them what is coming their way. No wonder the powers of darkness work so hard to get us into fear, both to dislocate us from our sense of effectiveness but also to erase from their thinking what they are facing. That’s amazing!
Here’s the deal: fear absolutely kills us; fear absolutely messes us up in the worst possible way, because it connects us to a lie. So I’ve got just a series of questions; I have to make this brief in this service, but I have a series of questions. Here’s the first one: What are you doing pertaining to the fear issue, pertaining to the temptation to entertain negative thoughts that cause you to become weak and fearful? How many of you have become so fearful of something, so anxious over something that you couldn’t get it out of your mind? You couldn’t stop thinking about it all evening long, into the night; it kept you up at night. How many of you have lost sleep over thinking stupid things?
All right, so we know you know how to meditate. Now we just need to change the subject that you’re focusing on. Are you going to feed yourself on that which kills, or are you going to feed yourself on that which gives life? It is a choice! There’s this strange thing I’ve noticed creeping up in me. Everyone saw it lift up its ugly head—this strange thing about predicting something wrong so that you have a confidence that you know what you’re talking about.
Did that make sense? If it didn’t, don’t worry about it, just flush it. But if it made sense to you, it’s just not right; it’s not right! People do it all the time in the church; they prophesy tragedies coming and this and that so that they appear discerning when tragedies come. Was that the goal? To be discerning or to actually affect the course of history? If you want to affect the course of history and you see something negative coming, start praying so that you can change what’s coming! It’s the same thing with fear. You know, people—Jackie had a statement years ago that really rocked me—she said, «How would you treat a friend who lied to you as often as your fears do?» That was a joke—a bad joke, but it was a joke.
So here’s the question: What are you doing? Turn to 1 John chapter 4; it’s probably the most well-known passage on fear for many of us. 1 John chapter 4, starting in verse 17: «Love has been perfected among us in this, that we may have boldness in the Day of Judgment.» That’s an amazing thing, because as He is, so are we in this world. But I’d love to bring that subject up again, but not today. «There is no fear in love. But perfect love casts out fear because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.»
Jump down to verse 20; it’s all in the same thought: «If someone says, 'I love God, ' and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he can see, how can he love God whom he cannot see?» The whole point is that when we confess we have a spiritual experience, a reality in the unseen realm, it has to be measurable in the seen. How we treat the natural world actually illustrates and exemplifies what we are claiming to have happened in our own personal lives. So if I say, «I love God, » but I don’t love people, then I’m lying.
All right, so what is he saying here? Perfect love casts out fear. I’ve only had half this equation settled in my thinking in recent years. Anytime I’ve made reference to this verse, the emphasis has been on making sure that I’m in a place to receive that loving touch from God. Why? Because that love gets up here; it’s true, but it’s only partially true. Why? Because the scripture says perfect love—the word perfect there is the word complete. Love that has been made complete casts out fear. When he goes on in the discussion, he talks about us loving people. So in other words, I have to give away what I’ve received in order for it to be complete. It’s only that kind of love that casts out fear. It’s not just my experience on a prayer line or through a fire tunnel; it’s the experience I’ve had with God that has been translated into how I treat people.
Here’s the bottom line: What are you doing? What are you doing pertaining to the issue of fear? What are you doing? The scripture compels us: serve somebody! Stop waiting for another conference; stop waiting for another prophetic word; stop waiting for another person to come and massage your ego or help sympathize with the tragedies that you’ve faced. At some point, we have to stop being impressed with the size of our problem and our deliverance begins at the moment we’re no longer impressed with the size of our problem. That’s the challenge for every one of us.
Some of you say, «Well, you don’t know what I’ve gone through.» No, that’s true, and if I did, I would probably buckle or be as challenged as your strong guy. I wouldn’t ever want to discount that; I’m just saying none of us want to stay there. So let’s get out. And the way you get out is you find someone to serve that’s worse off than you. Love has to become practical; it has to become demonstrated. So what are you doing? What are you thinking? What are you thinking about? Because if I’m fueling the lie, I’ve agreed with the liar, and tragically I’ve empowered the liar. He only comes to kill, steal, and destroy. So when you empower the liar, there’s always loss and destruction as a result.
So there has to be a point where you find the scripture, a word of promise, read the Bible till He talks to you, and when you find that verse of scripture, memorize it, write it on a card. You may have to pull it out 50 times, a hundred times in one day, and quote it, pray it, declare it, sing it. But just take some responsibility! Take some responsibility for the very fact that the enemy is intimidated by your success, and he hopes to dislocate your effectiveness by causing you to fear! That’s what he’s doing. He does not want to be reminded of eternal judgment; that’s why he has targeted you and targeted me to fall into this issue of fear.
So, taking personal responsibility, what are you doing? Serve somebody! What are you thinking? Think what God says! Paul wrote us in the most horrific situation possible. Here’s a guy who writes: «Everywhere I go, people want to kill me.» That has to affect your approach while traveling. He says, «Everywhere I go, they want to put me in chains.» He’s got this group that follows him; they just want to kill him. I mean, they stoned him; they’ve done all this stuff, tried to kill him. He says, «39 lashes, » I forget how many times the guys just, you know, he’s got some reasons to be depressed.
And here he is in a prison; he’s in a hole in the ground—think about where he was at in Rome—and he writes this letter that says, «Rejoice! Again, I say rejoice.» He found how to beat the fear thing! He found something powerful! Anyone can rejoice when they have joy, but the Kingdom—you rejoice to obtain joy! You actually cause your thought life, your emotional body, and your physical body to align with what God has made available. And in that yielding, in that sacrifice, in that obedience, comes a release of profound joy. Fear can’t connect itself; it’s like you become Teflon; nothing sticks!
So the question is, what do we think? What do we pray? You know, Jesus said, «Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.» There’s a profound picture of exchange. When you pray, if you don’t leave refreshed, you probably weren’t praying; you were complaining. Because the whole point of prayer is that you’re supposed to get His heart, and He’s going to take yours. He’s gonna take your junk and give you His good, and that’s the exchange; that’s the deal of prayer. So if you walk into His presence and walk out as frustrated as you were when you went in, you might want to think about how you’re praying.
So what are you doing? What am I contemplating? One of my final verses is found in Joel chapter 3. What am I saying? Sometimes our efforts at transparency and honesty are so destructive. I mean, I want people to be honest; you know, if I ask somebody how they’re doing, and they’re having a horrible day, I’m not offended at all if they said, «Man, I’m having a rough day.» But if that rough day becomes a week, a month, a year, five years, ten years, it’s not a rough day anymore; it’s a rough life. To be honest, yeah, I don’t mind if somebody who is negative fakes it, because they’re more pleasant to be around. Just between you and me.
But in Joel chapter 3, there’s a very interesting passage, chapter 3, excuse me. He says, «Proclaim among the nations: 'Prepare for war. Wake up the mighty men. Let all the men of war draw near. Let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weak say, 'I am strong'.» The Lord, I don’t mind if somebody’s trying to encourage themselves and they just make up positive things, too. You know, «I’m going to succeed. I know I’ve failed, but I’m going to succeed.» I think that’s healthy. I don’t mind it at all; in fact, it just makes you more pleasant to be around.
But when God says, «Let the weak say, 'I am strong', » He has opened up a realm of grace, a realm of empowerment that is released to you the moment you speak what He said to speak. In other words, strength becomes the reality when it’s declared. You know, I understand there have been a lot of abuses in the confession thing. I understand that. I don’t think living in denial if you have a bad medical report is going to help it go away. I think acknowledging what’s there, but then anchoring your heart into truth—which is superior to fact—I think is the way to go. Declare what God is saying over your life; I think it’s very important. Even if it doesn’t look like it right now, declare what He’s saying. It’s just final.
So I believe in transparency; I believe in honesty. But God is declaring something to a group of people that are afraid. Now Gideon had his army at 37,000 people, and God says, «You have too many. Tell everyone who’s afraid to go home.» How do you know if you’re in the 10,000 remaining? 22,000 or whatever it was went—"You weren’t afraid!» «Hey, can we take that test again? I was fine with 33,000 right here, but now, you know, two-thirds of the army just left. I wasn’t afraid until suddenly it’s facing me and I’m starting to go there.» You know, that’s the time He let everyone who was afraid go home. This time He doesn’t do that. There are times when Israel—God knew that they would not have the courage to face the enemy, so He took them the long way around because He knew they’d turn around and go back to Egypt. If the Lord actually leads you into a battle, it’s only because you are thoroughly equipped for victory. You are thoroughly equipped with Israel.
Here’s an important thing to remember. As Israel’s going into the Promised Land, the Promised Land is a picture of breakthroughs of taking possession of increase and breakthrough and maturity, growth in this kingdom lifestyle. As Israel’s going through, they were only attacked when they were close to another victory. This represents the cities coming through as they’re approaching the enemy that occupies it: «Oh no, we don’t want to lose them.» So they attack. We interpret the attack as «We’re doing something wrong.» No; it’s affirmation: you’re close to a greater victory! You’re great; you’re closer to greater inheritance, to greater breakthroughs, to greater maturity, to greater impact on history and the course of humanity. And all these things are right at him; why? Because the devil’s nervous!
So here’s an army that didn’t have the privilege of going home when they were afraid. This is—you don’t get to go home; you’re going to use a different tactic, and I want you to declare your own strength and watch it become a reality. Honestly, some people in this room are actually only a declaration away from victory, waiting for someone else to prophesy, waiting for someone else to lay hands. The Lord is saying, «I’ve put My word in your mouth; declare it. Just declare: 'I’m strong! I’m strong! '» The enemy says, «You don’t look strong to me.» «Yeah, trust me, I’m strong! It’s not human strength; I have the spirit of the resurrected Christ in me! Yeah, you killed the Messiah. The Spirit who raised Him from the dead is in me!»
So here’s this challenge with fear, and something happens when you make fear your target. This may even sound like I’m contradicting some of what I declared. I believe in praying about problems, obviously. If you’re struggling with fear, pray about it! But sometimes it becomes such an obsession that we fear fear; we actually contribute to what we’re fighting against, and it becomes larger in our imagination than what it is. Sometimes, just a shift in focus—where we serve somebody, we take God’s Word into our heart. We actually think on it by choice! Put it on a card if I need to. Bring it up, remind myself of what He’s saying. I have cards and things in my computer and my iPad and my phone—just stuff to bring up all the time to remind me of what God is saying.
As we’ve said for years, I can’t afford to have a thought in my head about me that He doesn’t have in His head about me. It’s not appropriate for me to entertain anything that violates what He thinks of me and what He says. And fear does that. I’ve got this sense that what the Lord has hanging right in front of us—the low-hanging fruit, if you will—for the next season of extraordinary breakthroughs that we’ve been warming up for for a while, this realm of breakthrough that the Lord is releasing to us, right now for many of you in this room, it’s one confession away, it’s one decree away, it’s one act of service away, it’s one verse away that you memorize; that you meditate on is feeding my heart with everything that’s going wrong, feeding my heart with what God says about what’s going right. It’s just simple. He’s not looking for anyone to be heroic; He’s just looking for people to lean in the right direction.
He’s just looking for people who will embrace what He says and declare it. The Lord asked Ezekiel: «Look at that valley; what do you see?» And he said, «I see dry bones.» The Lord asked him a question. He said, «Can these bones live?» Ezekiel had the right answer: «Thou knowest.» I’m sure it’s in Old English, «Tu+ found Noah’s lord.» In other words, «I’m clueless, but I’m sure you know.» The Lord says, «Speak to it!» So I began to prophesy to dead bones. Some in this room—all of us probably in some measure—have situations where it’s just a knowledge of dry bones. It is so dead; it’s past dead; it’s beyond dead; it’s decayed dead. And the Lord says, «Say what I’m saying!» What’s what they do? Say what I’m saying; watch what I do! John the Baptist’s dad, Zacharias, and an angel appeared to him and spoke to him and said, «Your prayer has been answered.» I think it’s William Barclay, one of the Greek language specialists, translates that verse this way: «The prayer that you no longer pray has been heard.» In other words, you gave up on it a long time ago, but it’s still active before Me, and I’ve heard it.
You have reason—intelligent reason—to be absolutely encouraged, because there’s not one fear that is coming at you that does not come to you except out of the owner of the devil’s own insecurities and his knowledge of his unending doom. He’s trying to cover what he has no control over, and that is eternal damnation. You and I have the privilege of walking in absolute upright confidence in the purposes of God over our lives, regardless of what has happened. So, I want to encourage you—let’s quit, and I want us to pray together. Who’s coming up after?
You are? That’s right! Come on, and we’re going to have a ministry team down here. Once again, I know we still have people that need to receive prayer. I encourage that; I’ll go to the back door. But before we do this, I’m going to prime the ministry team; come quickly, and that’ll help us out so that we can transition fast. I really had a burden, I guess, a heart to talk about this today, both because I’ve seen so many incredible great things happen and because I’ve seen people who are really fighting through a fight. I love triumphant victory. I love it when my team wins; they’re not in the World Series, so I was having a moment of silence. But we all love when our team wins. We love triumphs! We are born for victory! We were born for this. And the crazy thing is, why contribute to our own defeat? And that’s what fear does. So I’m going to pray that the Lord puts something like resilience around every person in this room that repels fear.
So, Father, I pray that once again, perfect love would cast out, violently throw away fearful thoughts, fearful experiences, fearful things that have somehow put an anchor into our soul. I pray, Lord God, let there be a mighty, mighty deliverance, a freedom from that power today for every person in this room, every person in overflow rooms, watching online—just a sweeping deliverance of fear. But I pray beyond that, I ask, Lord, raise up an army that is known for courage. An army known for courage that actually knows their way around this subject so well that we can assist people coming to their greatest breakthroughs, their greatest days of strength. I pray all of these things for the Owner of the name Jesus. Everybody said, «Amen!» Amen, amen!