Bill Johnson - How to Maintain Peace and Avoid Stress and Anxiety
In some ways, the greatest enemy of our hearts is busyness, and I don’t mean busyness as having a full schedule—I mean the busyness of the heart. Jesus probably had as full a schedule as anyone ever had, but he maintained that peace of heart that enabled him to recognize his still small voice. It is possible to live free of anxiety and stress; Jesus illustrates it. He’s headed to the cross, and he’s giving thanks. We’ll look at that a little bit more later, but the point is, as both Paul and Jesus illustrate, something that’s almost profoundly scary in how they modeled life while going into the most difficult situations possible. They did it not just as survivors, nor just to stay positive, and with that whole stiff upper lip attitude, but as overcomers. They went into a hellish situation and came out absolutely glorious because there was a way to think. I’m not talking about mind over matter; I’m not talking about just mental exercise, but about a perception that comes when we see what Jesus sees. We need to see the way he sees.
Peace is a huge part of God’s economy for us as believers. I’ve talked to you even in recent weeks and months about this issue for me. Whenever I feel anxious and stressful, I ask myself the question, «Where did you leave your peace?» Because I had it; it’s mine—it’s my possession. So I just need to find out where I dropped it. I back up and go, «Oh yeah, I was feeling stressful there.» It was that phone call I received this morning. It might not have even been a bad one, but my reaction to the information or to that situation led me to become anxious. I embraced a lie; I embraced inferior information over the word of the Lord for my life. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but it happened nonetheless.
What I have to do is repent my way back to where I left my peace: repent, confess my sin, pick it up, and realize it’s my permanent possession. Peace in the kingdom is profound because peace is not the absence of something; it’s the presence of someone. Peace is actually a person—the abiding presence of the Spirit of God in my life. I’m not saying I can drop him or leave him behind in the sense that he abandons me, but my felt awareness of him can get laid aside in the world. Peace is generally understood as the absence of something, like noise, war, or conflict. In the kingdom, you can be in the middle of all those things and still have peace because peace is a person. So I repent my way back and embrace peace once again, using that as my lifestyle.
Now, one more or two more comments before we open the scripture—although you already have it open, right? Philippians 4? You’re so good! I’m in your life to teach you patience; that’s why I’m here. The other side of this issue that we’ll read about in a moment is the amazing purpose in prayer. Prayerlessness is costly; it would probably be worth studying the costs of prayerlessness sometime. But let me give you two things right now: in Scripture, it says you have not because you ask not. The implication in that verse is that prayerlessness creates lack. We often think of lack as being God’s sovereign will for our lives, but it’s not; it’s just lack filling the void left by prayerlessness. Amen, Bill! That’s a very good point! Just keep it up; stay encouraged.
The second price I’ll mention about prayerlessness is Jesus taught, «Pray so that you wouldn’t enter temptation.» He said, «Make sure you maintain prayer in your life so that you don’t enter temptation.» The implication is that if I am prayerless, I will face temptation for which I have no grace. It doesn’t mean I am prone to sin; I may resist the temptation, but the problem is that prayerlessness created a battle I didn’t need to fight. Prayerlessness put me into a conflict, a war of wills, of decisions. Let’s just say I win; I make it through—I don’t do what I was tempted to do. The problem is that because I was prayerless, I attracted that situation into my life that was completely unnecessary. If God designs for us to face a battle, it’s only because he’s already given us the tools to win, and he wants to punish the powers of darkness. It’s never so that we would fall or falter; if he allows the battle, it’s only that we get to enforce his purposes on the earth. But many battles that people face are brought on by prayerlessness. I’m just here to encourage you.
Philippians 4! Let’s read some scripture together—we’ll start with verse 4. «Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!» I remind you, Paul writes this from prison; he’s giving us tried-and-tested truths from his own experience. «Rejoice in the Lord always.» I don’t know if you’ve ever looked it up, but that word always means always. «Again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for nothing.» That’s one commandment I have obeyed 100% of the time because everything I’ve ever been anxious about came to nothing. Maybe that’s not what he meant. «Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.» There’s a picture painted for us in this part of Philippians 4 of a military guard protecting a person’s heart and mind. The heart is the place where thoughts come from, the mind itself. That military guard is there because of the previous verse—pray over everything with thankfulness.
If you look at the nature of thankfulness, I don’t think we could overemphasize it. I’m not sure it’s possible to exaggerate the power of thankfulness. Jesus, on the night in which he was betrayed, took bread, broke it, and gave thanks. He’s about to be betrayed by Judas, and he’s about to be forsaken by all 11 disciples with whom he is now breaking bread. He’s about to experience the most gruesome death anyone has ever faced—not only because of the crucifixion and the scourging, but because of the weight of sin itself that came upon him. You know what it is to sin and feel guilty and shameful—multiply that by billions of people with millions of sins on one individual. When the soldiers came to kill the three on the cross, they didn’t have to kill Jesus because he was already dead. Why? Because of the weightiness of sin. It’s why he cried, «God, why have you forsaken me?» Because at that moment he became sin and was forsaken by the Father. The two thieves had to be killed because theirs was just crucifixion; I don’t mean to make light of it; I’m just saying the weightiness of sin—he became that which the Father despised, which was sin. But he did that so that we could become what the Father delighted in, which was the righteousness of God. It was an exchange.
So in that moment, which was his most difficult moment—in all of human history—he broke bread and gave thanks. I’d like to suggest that these difficult moments throughout scripture are the moments where he sets an example, providing a model for us that can and must be followed. That thankfulness, regardless of circumstances, helps keep us connected to Life Source. In a very practical way, maintaining thankfulness keeps us sane when things are not going right; it keeps us connected to the good.
We have this interesting passage; I want you to look at it again: 6 and 7, and this time we’ll read 8. «Be anxious for nothing,» verse 6, «but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And here’s the result: and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.» Verse 8: «Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report—if there’s any virtue and if there’s anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.»
What do we have here? We’ve got two verses that give us instruction. The first one is to pray over everything with thankfulness; verse 8 says to think on these things. Those two verses sandwich the promise, and the promise is that his peace will protect you, but it comes with responsibility given to you and me on both sides. The first has to do with prayer, and the second has to do with what we choose to think about. Whenever we worry and become anxious, we’re being drawn into faith in the inferior. The enemy is trying to lessen our awareness of our significance. Again, I’m not talking about self-worship or any of that nonsense—I’m just talking about… you get the knock on the door from that lawyer and you find out you own a great estate and have $10 million in the bank. Even though you have not yet eaten a meal from your newly discovered resources, you walk out of that apartment with a different attitude. You’re conscious of something you had no awareness of moments earlier. Yet it’s been in that account for you for months—they’ve been looking for you! You had their resources all this time but lived completely unaware of it.
When you live aware of the significance of the moment you’re in, the significance of the investment of God in you, putting the Holy Spirit in you—what did Jesus say? «You can blaspheme the Father, you can blaspheme the Son, but don’t blaspheme the Holy Spirit.» What is he doing? He’s describing to us the tenderness, the fragile nature—I’m probably not saying any of that right, but you get the point of the Holy Spirit. That’s the one God trusts us with. He’s so confident in his work in us that he put the Holy Spirit in us. You can tell how much someone trusts you by what they entrust to you. So when the Holy Spirit is given to us to make us into the image of one who is glorified at the right hand of the Father, there is a purpose in the assignment, and it’s more than singing songs on a Sunday night.
It’s more than going to work tomorrow and just making a wage and paying your rent and eating; it’s more than that. It’s the effect that your awareness of his assignment over you has on how you carry yourself. Again, it’s not self-serving; it’s not trying to attract people to somehow worship or glorify or do that nonsense—I don’t like that at all. But it does say: arise and shine! In other words, stop sitting there waiting for something else to happen. You don’t need five more prophetic words to act on what God’s already said. Get up and shine! He didn’t say reflect, he said shine, because light is within you!
Well, I don’t know what that means. Well, then figure it out! Don’t sit there ignorant, especially since he’s given us a resource manual that instructs us on how to do life. I can tell you number one: righteous acts of the saints are the righteous clothing, and they are the radiance of God himself that shines into the lives of humanity. So it’s shifting from a self-serving lifestyle into a servanthood lifestyle where we live aware that we have all the resources needed to be effective in serving humanity and the people around us. God takes the simple act of cash you give to the guy outside of Safeway who hasn’t eaten. He takes that act; he takes the visit you make to your neighbor who’s been sick. He takes those simple acts.
The phone call to a friend you haven’t seen in years—when they keep coming to mind, you just step out of what’s convenient and make that call. Friendship! We oftentimes think in terms of having unlimited financial resources in our possession so that we can do great things for God when he’s the one who breathes on the simple things we are capable of doing and makes them supernaturally effective. Fear, anxiety, and busyness deaden our awareness of who he says we are. I’m not opposed at all to a busy lifestyle; I live one. But what I don’t like is when I feel things robbing me of my peace.
Let me put this in two different ways: I’m going to call this two sides of the same coin—the peace and also my adoration for him. My adoration—my times of really not saying much in prayer but being engaged in deep adoration of him—that’s the strength of my prayer life. That is the anchor. I believe in prayer; I believe in contending. I believe in all the stuff, and I do it, and I love to spend the time. But you know what? The adoration, the affection for him does more to change my awareness of his presence, of his purpose, and of who he’s made me to be. Everything shifts in that tender place of adoration.
Whenever I seem to lose my peace, it’s because I’ve lost my adoration. I’m no longer in awe of him. What happens in fear? We see a problem and become afraid. You can’t awe two gods at the same time; only one can be in the position to affect how I think, what I value, how I reason, and how I anticipate. My awareness of purpose—those things are defined by where my affection is anchored. In those moments where I lose my peace, I have to find out where I left it. For me, I’ll stop and think, «Man, I feel so anxious. What happened to my peace? Where did I leave it?» Because I left it somewhere. It is mine; it’s my possession.
It’s like my phone. I can lay it down if I want to. I say, «Where did I leave it? Where’s that piece of mine?» I go, «Oh, I remember! It was when I got that phone call. Instead of moving into trust, I moved into fear.» When I did that, I received fear, and I exchanged it for my peace. So you don’t just go pick it up; you actually repent your way back to finding it. «God, I actually feared something above you. I wasn’t aware of it; I just got stupid. Forgive me for being anxious and for exalting a problem over my awareness of your promise.» In those moments, you become re-engaged with peace—the atmosphere of heaven itself. In those moments, the affection of your heart becomes ignited for the one whom you will never exhaust the resource of adoration in your soul because every time you turn your heart towards him, he just moves ever so slightly, and you see something brand new about him. You’re locked into that place of adoration.
The challenge with our faith is not our inability to hear God’s voice; it’s our willingness to hear other voices. There are so many opinions, ideas, and ideologies competing for our attention and ultimately our affection. Whenever the Lord performs a miracle, a healing, or something extraordinary in our lives, he’s always trying to anchor our affections into a world we cannot see. When you see cause and effect, you see someone’s ear that is deaf—someone prays, and something unseen comes and opens the ear. They can now hear. What’s happening? The Lord is awakening our affection for a world we cannot see. He’s teaching us, training us on the superiority of the unseen. Paul anchored into that when he said, «What you can’t see is eternal. What you can see is temporal.»
There’s a constant; it doesn’t have to be a conflict, but we often live in a conflict between those two realities when they should be joined together in partnership. It’s not that the natural is an evil commodity and the supernatural is great. They are supposed to function together. If I can use Israel’s analogy as they went into the Promised Land, it’s supposed to be that Israel works naturally to plant crops, and God breathes on them so they multiply, increasing the size of the harvest. The natural is supposed to cooperate with the supernatural, and you and I are the agents that connect the two.
Both hope and hopelessness are contagious. Decide what kind of influence you want to have on the world around you because both are contagious. Faith comes from hearing God’s voice. Everybody in the room can hear God’s voice. You wouldn’t be saved otherwise. That conviction that draws us to him, where we confess, repent, and turn our lives to him, is only because it’s a response to hearing his voice. We unfortunately, as achievement-centered people—especially in the Western world—emphasize our ability, or in this case, our inability. Instead of emphasizing our inability or weakness in hearing God’s voice, it would be wiser for us to emphasize his ability to be heard.
If you’re talking to someone who has difficulty hearing you, you raise your voice; perhaps you wait until they’re looking at you. You do something to ensure that you are heard. You take on the responsibility to ensure that you are heard. If you and I know how to do that as people in this human race, then certainly God knows how to do that as our Heavenly Father. He makes certain that he can be heard. The issue, then, is not ability as much as it is willingness.
In some ways, the greatest enemy of our hearts is busyness. And I don’t mean busyness as having a full schedule; I mean the busyness of the heart. Jesus probably had as full a schedule as anyone ever had. He had people pressing around him, constantly trying to get close, trying to draw from him, asking questions, and following him wherever he went. They followed him out into the wilderness, where there was no food, forgetting about their own needs to eat and drink; they were just with him. So if there’s anyone who knew what it was to have demands put on him, it was Jesus. But he maintained that sense of personal peace, that peace of heart that enabled him to recognize his still small voice.
The Lord can obviously speak dramatically through circumstances. I’ve seen it—unusual coincidences, so many ways that he communicates, and sometimes he uses words. But he speaks, and often it’s that still small voice. It doesn’t mean if it’s loud around you, you can’t hear the still small voice; it just can’t be loud inside of you. Maintaining and protecting peace—one of my, perhaps, greatest life verses was given to me by a friend 45 years ago, and it was out of Isaiah—excuse me, out of Proverbs chapter 4, where he says, «Watch over your heart with all diligence because from it flow the issues of life.»
Watch over your heart! We used that as a model; Benny and I did, in raising our children, because we would actually bring correction in response to attitude instead of just behavior. Because if you can catch some things in attitude form, you can actually prevent wrong behavior. The Lord is inviting us into that kind of self-examination in a healthy way. «Watch over your heart with all diligence; from it flow the issues of life.» Making sure that I maintain not just right attitudes, but I protect that peace; I protect the peace that seems to welcome and respond to the slightest nudge, the slightest movement of the Holy Spirit when he speaks to me.
Our life depends on his voice. Now, I want to emphasize for those who may not know us well enough: his voice will never contradict his word, but his voice is what makes this come alive. We need the voice of God; that’s where he activates what’s on the page into becoming flesh in us. We need that activation of his voice. «Man should not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.» We live literally by the voice of God. Everything is upheld by his voice, by his word. Our need to hear from him is an ongoing, continual thing, and protecting that peace is what ensures that we will always be hearers of his voice.
What’s the number one command in the Bible? It’s to not fear. Why would that be the number one command? Because not learning to not fear is what trips us up in our capacity to hear. Anxiety and fear dull our ability to hear. We speak of ourselves, «It’s so hard for me to hear from God.» No, no, no, that’s not true; you’re just listening to too many other things. It’s the word that Ben read earlier before the offering: «Be careful what you hear,» because whatever standard you set, it will be measured to you.
So when I entertain wrong things in my hearing, I’ve welcomed more wrong things to follow. When I develop an ear for whatever God is saying, it actually increases the flow of his voice in my life. But here’s the thing we have to remember: we were designed to hear from God. Some people will say, «Well, I pray, and all I sense is his peace.» That is his voice! Sometimes all you need to know is he is present, and he is peace. We don’t always need new concepts and new insights; what we need is the stability of a relationship that says all is well. In that heart-to-heart connection, we discover the heart and mind of God for a given situation.
But number one: we were designed to hear from the Lord. There are probably thousands of things we were designed for, but I want to address three, focusing mainly on the third. The second one is that we were designed for a seamless relationship with God. We were made in his image for the purpose of relationship. Everything he created, he said was good; but when he created people, he said it was very good. Why? Because here is the opportunity for him to fulfill his particular dream and desire: to join with his creation in an intimate way that can’t be found in any other part of his creation.
Yes, sin messed it up, but Jesus came and fixed the mess. Sin threw obstacles into that seamless connection, but Jesus came, removed the obstacles, and restored the capacity for a seamless connection. That’s right! Let me speak of marriage for just a quick moment. In Genesis, when God formed Eve from the rib of Adam, he made this statement: «I will make a helpmate for him.» I don’t know how it happened, but it would be interesting to see how, through church culture, that helpmate has taken on a subservient role—a second-class citizen— instead of what the Bible actually says. The word helpmate God uses to describe himself with Israel at least 12 times, and I think it might be 13. God says he is Israel’s helpmate—not a second-class subservient role!
Completely different than how we’ve understood it, the word helpmate basically means one who is fully qualified to stand face to face to make up for anything lacking in the other. One who is fully qualified! All the women got happy on that one! «That’s what I’ve been saying! I knew it!» Fully qualified to stand face to face, making up for whatever might be lacking—God with Israel. The point is that man and woman became one, illustrating in human terms the design of seamless function.
Ephesians 5 uses some fairly graphic language in its original language to describe this: «Yeah, it’s marriage, but I’m not talking about that; I’m talking about you and Jesus in the church.» The point is that we were designed, once we’re born again, for a seamless heart-to-heart connection with God. The reason the Lord deals so vigorously with fear and then all of its relatives—bitterness, jealousy, and those things—is because those things throw a wrench into the seamless connection. It’s not about rejection from God; it’s that those things interfere with design, interfere with capacity, and interfere with the airwaves, so to speak. It’s not seamless like it was intended to be, and it’s repentance that continually keeps us in that seamless connection to sense, feel, and live aware of the heart of God.
It’s possible to develop such an awareness of the heart of God that you instinctively obey. In fact, I personally think that’s maturity. It’s not that I don’t pray anymore; it’s that my prayer becomes the occasion to celebrate his kindness and love for me—the fact that he welcomes me into his presence. But there’s this thing with maturity where we develop an awareness of his voice and his heart. His introduction into the world came with this decree: «Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and goodwill towards men.» It’s always been designed that the reality of that world would affect this one.
It’s not just occasionally; it’s not just in a good revival meeting. It’s not just in that act of faith of prayer for a miracle. It’s a lifestyle: «Glory to God in the highest!» That realm of him being exalted is to affect this realm in which we live. The word peace is one of the most pregnant words in the Bible because it deals with spirit, soul, and body. It’s a word that doesn’t just talk about the absence of noise, the absence of conflict, or the absence of difficulties; it actually describes the presence of someone—it’s positive! It’s a person! It’s the permeating presence of the Prince of Peace who loves to crush the powers of darkness under our feet.
So peace resting on us is the assurance—the guarantee—that we will trample on the powers of darkness. This is the privilege for believers; the God of the breakthrough is here. One of the worst lies that the enemy has worked into culture and society is that there are actually situations that are hopeless. If there’s ever been a time I’ve seen culture—whether it has to do with elections, ecology, or the economy—there doesn’t seem to be a slice of it that doesn’t bring forth prevailing voices filled with hopelessness. I want to announce to you: in many of those situations, hopelessness is actually a demonic spirit—a power that has attached itself to the thought processes of people who, for whatever reason, have thinking void of the God who brings breakthrough.
The God of the breakthrough! And one of the greatest and worst things that could exist in the heart of a believer—and every one of us has dealt with this from time to time—is that sense of hopelessness. We look at situations, and we just don’t have that anticipation that it’s going to turn around or change. We’re going to study some scripture in a little bit, but before we even delve into this subject, I feel we should pray together.
I realize folks are watching online and on TV, and I’ll just have to trust that you’ll do the same thing in your home, your small group, or wherever you happen to be gathered, because this God of the breakthrough is here not only to bring hope to hopeless situations but to change the patterns of life that have been filled with hopelessness. Some of you feel that no matter what happens in your life, as soon as there’s a breakthrough, there’s this nagging voice, this nagging influence. Some of you have been followed by it your entire life, and I’m here to announce to you: that’s not normal, and it’s going to break today!
It’s not normal; it’s not your assignment. It is not your lot in life. Sometimes in the name of perseverance, we accidentally entertain the demonic. Sometimes in the name of endurance, we entertain things that lead us into unbelief. We had a guest here a number of years ago who made a statement that really stuck with me and I think stuck with many of us: «What you tolerate will dominate.» What you tolerate will dominate!
Sometimes we get accustomed to the small foxes that ruin the vineyard. We get accustomed to the small voices that are just nagging voices and seem to plunder the hope and the courage we were designed to carry. I believe today there’s going to be a cycle of returning hopelessness that will be forever broken for many people. I believe there’s an anointing here today to break that cycle. This God of the breakthrough—when Jesus was baptized in water, it was literally an act of violence to save humanity. He ripped open the heavens, allowed Jesus to go to the crucifixion, and released the power of the Spirit of God so that there could and should be hope in any given situation.
We will look at biblical precedent for that later on, but first, I feel we should pray. I think some of you can see it in the countenance of your parents; you can see it in the countenance of your grandparents. This thing has haunted your family line for as long as you can remember, and you’d be willing to say, «Bill, I want this thing to end today. I want this cycle of hopelessness to end today.» Hope in biblical terms is completely different from cultural hope.
We had a humorous conversation with Paul and Sue Manwaring earlier; if you don’t know them, they are some of our friends that are on staff here from the UK. He was telling us that only recently did he discover something in our language — it’s the word 'quite.' If I say «That’s quite a nice car,» quite for us is something big—it’s like «That’s really a nice car.» In the UK, when they say, «That’s quite a nice car,» they’re saying, «Boy, that’s a real bad car you got there.» In fact, he jokingly said, «Here, if you say, 'I’m quite in love with you, will you marry me? '"—if you say that here, that’s very positive, and the woman would want to marry you. But if you say that in the UK, she would look at you and want you out of her life because that was such a small thing!
Well, we have that kind of contrast in terminology with this word hope. The word hope culturally is a wish; it is not solid, it is not secure; it’s like, «Maybe if we play our cards right, maybe if everything lines up correctly, it’ll work out in our favor.» That’s what we hope for. But that is not the biblical word hope. The biblical word hope is absolutely concrete. It is so concrete that you’re allowed to get happy before it happens because you know it’s going to happen! It’s the joyful anticipation of good; it’s completely different!
So when we talk about hope, I feel like the Lord wants to breathe—if you can imagine this room becoming filled with smoke, and that smoke being the atmosphere of heaven—that is the atmosphere of hope. That’s how I feel he wants us to inhale the hope of another world because hope comes from the resurrection of Christ. If I could put it this way: our hope is based on the resurrection. The resurrection is our initial taste of eternity. If you’ve been born again, the spirit of the resurrected Christ has taken up residence in you, and you have already begun to taste eternity.
Hope is anchored in eternity and works back to affect every other part of life. When you try to get hope for the problems you’re facing, you’re facing an uphill battle. You try to get psychologically over this problem, over that issue, over that challenge. But when you realize that our hope is in eternity, the worst thing that could happen to me is that I would spend eternity in heaven. Alright, so it doesn’t work out? I die? Guess what? I’m forever with God! When you start working from that place back towards the situations we face in life, suddenly everything takes on perspective. People would have more hope if they were more convinced of eternity.
People would have more hope if they were convinced of eternity. Part of what I believe will happen today is the Lord will unveil the reality of eternity—that the fact we have citizenship in heaven now and that now he is working from that reality of heaven to, in fact, from heaven towards earth. All the areas of life that seem to be out of order, misdiagnosed, or poorly designed—those who feel that catastrophic failure or collapse fits them—if that’s you, stand because we’re going to pray.
If that’s you, just stand up—be bold! This is the time to change your family line’s history! I’m just curious: how many of you can see that it’s just followed you for a good part of your life? Put your hands up. Now, for how many of you would you say it’s more of a recent thing that’s happening for you? Alright, it’s maybe three-quarters followed one-quarter recent. It doesn’t matter how long it’s been there; what matters is how much longer it stays. It ends today!
Please don’t stand for prayer if you don’t want it gone, because you will be horribly disappointed in what is about to happen. This is the largest Sozo we’ve ever done. I do sincerely believe God is going to heal situations. Let me talk to you for a minute before we pray. We are about to pray to the God we’ve been privileged to call Father—Abba, Father. We’re going to pray to the one who has never lied, who has never deceived, and who has never been wrong. When he thought of this moment, he offered his son, Jesus, to make sure you and I would be qualified for hope. Jesus qualified me for hope! Amen!
He qualified you! The Bible says his arm is not short—in other words, he can reach where you are! He can reach into your situation. It doesn’t matter to me if it’s economic, if it’s relational, if it’s health-related, if it’s all the above, or none of the above. For some of you, you can’t even pinpoint what you feel hopeless about. The horrible thing about that presence of hopelessness is that everything could go right, and it still doesn’t look right. That will be broken!
That will be broken! The servants of the Lord will join with you now in partnership with heaven to see this broken! Those of you standing, I assume you’re filled with hope; if not, get your act together and get prayer because we’re going to break this thing! I want you to find someone to pray for. I see that there are some pockets of a bunch of you together—you may actually need to pray together for each other.
We’re coming against a power that has planted lies, and we’re going to break that connection to identity with that lie. Lay hands on them! Rebuke the power of hopelessness! Those of you receiving prayer, I want you to renounce hopelessness; it’s a presence that is no longer allowed to follow you around. Those who are watching on TV, we break that power of hopelessness! We break that power, that presence that has haunted and tormented! We declare that is illegal!
Revelations of eternity, revelations of heaven—let it burst forth in the soul, God! Those of you receiving prayer, it’s very important that you yield to the power of this prayer and actually renounce hopelessness; close the door! I like to declare it: «I renounce hopelessness! I close the door to that power and that presence!» It is closed now in Jesus' name! We pray for this thing to be broken off of family lines! This thing that has hovered in the background for multiple generations—we declare it ends today! It never was legal; we end it now in the name of the Lord Jesus. It never was a legal thing!
Wonderful! Now just pray for that release of hope, supernatural hope that comes in the form of presence—the presence of someone, the presence of the Spirit of God!