Bill Johnson - How Childlikeness and Creativity Defeat the Enemy
Thank you, thanks. You’re nice; you are nice. This couple was shopping, and they had gotten separated. The wife was calling her husband to find out where he was. She says, «Honey, where are you?» He says, «You remember when we got engaged? We went to that jewelry store and got you a ring, but there was another one that we liked so much. It was so much bigger and so much nicer.» She starts to tear up and says, «Yeah.» He replies, «Well, I’m at the coffee shop right next to that. I’m just trying to advertise for Lamb; that’s all I’m trying to do.» I saw another one, I think it was last week, that said, «It’s my wife’s birthday this week. She’s been leaving jewelry catalogs all around the house, kind of leaving hints.» So, I bought her a magazine rack. If that guy is you, go to Lamb; that’s all I’m saying. They will fix you, I promise.
Grab your Bibles and open, if you would, to the book of Zechariah. Those of you who are a regular part of the Bethl family here locally know that I’ve been doing quite a bit of repeating this summer, spring, and summer, and I’m going to continue, although some of this will be a bit new today. How many of you have figured out we are in a war? Amen. Some of you are sitting next to someone who’s clueless, so you need to elbow them and say, «We are in a war!» Or maybe I caught you off guard with the question; that’s probably what it was. How many of you realize we’re honestly in spiritual warfare? Yeah, there’s no question. In fact, there’s never been a time in my life when it’s been more intense, and I would say probably ten times more than any other season of my life has been in the last two years.
Now, our strength in spiritual warfare is no greater than our ability to control our thoughts. Our effectiveness in spiritual warfare is no greater than our ability to control our thoughts. In 2 Corinthians 10, probably the greatest chapter on instruction for spiritual warfare, there is this phrase: «taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.» Imagine being in a natural war and you have the number one terrorist on the planet opposing you, and you take that person captive; he’s now a prisoner of war. But what happens if you take that captive, a prisoner of war, and you turn him into a soldier for the same cause as you? That’s what it means to take captive renegade thoughts to the obedience of Christ. It means that which was not warring against me is now warring for me. It means when you have that little thing going on in your head where you’re arguing with somebody and you’re angry with them—turn it into a prayer of blessing for them, and you’ll disarm the enemy. You will actually use a thought that was supposed to be used against you; it will now be used for you.
God has strange ways of winning wars. You know, anytime you send a choir out into battle—they don’t have weapons; they just sing and have instruments—and you send them into the heat of battle, that’s an unusual way to go to war. Unless you don’t like the worship team. The Lord showed up and would deliver, and powerful things would happen. How about the time He had Moses lift his hands up, and Aaron and Hur just held up an arm? As long as their arms were up, they won. Or what about the time the prophet was surrounded by an enemy army? The Lord blinds them all, and the king says, «Can I kill them?» He says, «No, feed them.» So, he brings them into this big banquet, and then it says that army just decided not to attack Israel anymore. That’s a strange way to win a war. I’m not saying feed your enemies; your demons—yeah, it breaks down.
The Lord has unusual ways of leading us into war because the way a war is won is through relationship and trust, through obedience. It’s the raised hands; it’s the striking the rock; it’s the proclamation here; it’s the natural obedience to whatever God says to do that brings about the triumph and the victory. Did I tell you where to open your Bibles? No? Yes? No? Ze—some of you heard it; some of you didn’t. Zechariah 1 is where you should be. Hurry and get there, and we’re going to read. Let me start by saying you’ll see the number four, and you’ll see the word horns. Four horns in Scripture often represents something that is global—north, south, east, west. It’s a global thing. Horns represent strength, authority, and power. So when it talks about four horns influencing the earth, it’s a global demonstration of demonic power that enslaves people in wrong thinking.
All right, let’s read this passage, and then I’ll see if we can make some sense of it. All right, verse 18: «Then I raised my eyes and looked, and there were four horns.» And I said to the angel who talked with me, «What are these?» And he answered me, saying, «These are the horns that have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.» Then the Lord showed me four craftsmen, and I said, «What are these coming to do?» And he said, «These are the horns that scattered Judah so that no one could lift his head, but the craftsmen are coming to terrify them—to cast out the horns of the nations that lifted up their horn against the land of Judah to scatter it.»
Let’s read these verses again. I want you to think with me as we go through this because it’s almost like the Lord is saying, «When in war, create.» Let’s read verses 20 and 21. «Then the Lord showed me four craftsmen, and he said, 'What are these coming to do? ' And he said, 'These are the horns that scattered Judah so that no one could lift up his head, but the craftsmen are coming to terrify them.'» It’s a very unusual way to win a war—to raise up artists, craftsmen, skilled laborers, skilled workers. It says these horns—these four powers or authorities, these realms of darkness—have been released to, number one, scatter the people of God, and number two, scatter them so that they can no longer lift their heads.
Sometimes we are separate not because of division, but because we’ve just not fought to be together, especially in this season—very unusual season. The Scripture says, «Don’t forsake the assembling of yourselves together as is the habit of some, especially as you see the day drawing near.» What is it saying? As you see things intensifying in the earth, do what is not natural for you. Go against the grain, and fight to be together. We are members of a body; all of us—we are members of one another. While there are times when we are forced to stand alone, that’s a season; it’s not a lifestyle.
There are times we’re forced to stand alone to fight something that seems like on our own. The best we know how just to prove our own faithfulness to the Lord, but we are joined together—members of one another. The enemy works to separate and to scatter to cause a loss of identity. If there’s anything happening in the world right now, we’ve got men who don’t know they’re men; they think they’re women. We’ve got women who don’t know they’re women; they think they’re men. People say, «Well, Bill, we’ve got to show compassion,» and I believe we have some troubled people we just need to love and serve. I’m just tired of seeing the church show compassion to demons. We don’t go easy on the powers of darkness and then call that compassion. We’ve got to know where to fight, where to stand strong, where to embrace, where to love, where to be patient, and where to be kind. God is giving the church a backbone right now.
So here we’ve got this unusual story where the Lord says there are these powers released into the earth, and it’s global. If I’ve ever seen something that was out of order, demonic, and global, it’s right now. I’ve never seen the nations in the same turmoil all around the world as is happening right now. I do believe this is a right-now word, so I’m going to ask you, with that kind of certainty and intentionality, to listen to this very simple exhortation. That global insanity sponsored by so many different movements and political leaders has an opponent it can’t stand up to, and that’s the people of God coming into their authentic selves to give creative expression to who God made them to be—art, artisans, craftsmen.
I don’t believe it’s just referring to those who carve wood or paint beautiful paintings or sing beautiful songs or dance or act. Those are the arts, and they are highly valued by us, but there is an artistic expression that a single mom needs with that one child that’s different from the rest, and to be able to communicate well to that child to bring that child to their place of destiny needs grace, wisdom, and an artistic flair. It’s the lawyer who has a case he doesn’t know how to win but knows he must, and the Lord gives him creative expression ideas. It’s the accountant who has a challenge in helping one business prosper and gets that insight. There’s that artistic flair that comes out of fellowship with the Lord that is in great need.
I plan to read out of several books to you today. I don’t always do that, but I really felt strongly today that’s what I needed to do. Irwin McManus wrote a great book called *The Genius of Jesus.* In that book, he quotes from a book called *Breakpoint and Beyond, * published in 1993, in which they did studies on children, genius, and creativity. Here’s what they found: They studied 1,600 children ages 3 to 5 years old. They retested the same children at the age of 10 and then again at the age of 15. What they found was that among the 5-year-olds, 98% of them were creative geniuses. 98%. When they retested the same children five years later, 30% at the age of 10 were creative geniuses. When they retested the same 1,600 students at the age of 15, they found 10% were creative geniuses. The author of that particular book concluded that non-creative behavior is learned.
I actually bought the book because I wanted to study this for myself—the one that Irwin McManus quoted. It said what happened? Here’s the crazy part: 10% of the 15-year-olds were creative geniuses; 28,000 adults were tested, and only 2%. So, from 98% to 2%, non-creative behavior is learned. It says, «Our proficiency in expressing our creativity gradually drops off as we learn to accept others' opinions, evaluations, and beliefs.» What we have seen in our work with adults is that the 5-year-old creative genius is still lurking inside, waiting to break free.
Now, if there’s any group of people on the planet that should be able to tap into that, it should be those for whom Jesus says, «You are free indeed.» Liberty and freedom actually allow us to live unencumbered. Yes, by sin, of course, but many people are free from sin and their habits, but they’re not free to think creatively. They’re not free to think according to their design. We’re all designed uniquely; that’s the whole point. What they find among senior citizens, especially those who are very close to the end of their days here on Earth, is that the number one influence or a high level of influence in their life is that of regret—regret for making decisions throughout their lifetime that were shaped by the opinions and values of what others expected from them.
In fact, we were designed to be unique. There is a uniqueness where people fight to be unique, and they just cause problems and draw attention to themselves. That’s not unique; that’s just stupid. But there is an authentic you that needs to be creatively expressed. I believe that part of what is being addressed in this unusual passage in Zechariah is that the Lord’s answer for this terrifying movement that covers the earth—the four corners of the earth, this oppressive thing that separates the people of God to the point where they can’t even lift their heads anymore—there’s no courage to face a challenge or a problem in the hour that we live in. The discouragement has gripped them so deeply that their eyes are cast down. How did it happen? It happened by these four horns and powers that brought about a global movement of insanity, and the answer of the Lord is for craftsmen—the same global release of people that refuse to bow to the insanity of the moment and stand up in an authentic expression of who Christ is in us.
Why would that so disarm the powers of darkness? How is it that people coming into artistic expression—yes, it may be painting or singing, but it may also be the way you intentionally live in raising your children? It’s the way you form sentences; you work hard to use the best words. You put in the effort to be excellent in what you do, writing those notes for people. You have the grace to write notes, and you take the time to think of the wording so that you could bring life into that moment. That excellence seen in that moment is actually divine wisdom, and it imparts life. It doesn’t just tickle people’s ears; it truly inspires them and encourages them for life.
I heard of one soldier who died in the Iraqi War, and in his wallet was an encouraging word that his class had given him—that his eighth-grade classmates wrote encouraging words for him and each student got one of what the others thought of them. It was all encouraging words. He had that folded up in his wallet as an adult—something he got in school because it was an encouraging word. Sometimes those words shape the future. It’s the excellence, the intentionality.
One of the things that has moved me deeply is the story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. All these kings would come and sit at his feet, but for some reason, the Queen of Sheba had access to his inner workings at a level that none of the others did—at least it’s not recorded. She would sit there, and you can imagine her traveling from Ethiopia all the way to Israel with the entourage, resources, and army—people there just to care for this person of royalty. She comes to him, and the Scripture says she asked him all the hard questions. The Bible doesn’t list the questions or his answers; it probably says it exists somewhere else. What we need to know is already in there. But anyway, I would have loved to have seen those questions. When it was all said and done, she said, «I thought it was an exaggeration when they told me about your wisdom, but the half wasn’t told me. Your wisdom is far greater. Your servants around you—I’m putting it in my words now—but the servants around you are better off than the kings elsewhere because they get to sit at the feet of this kind of wisdom.»
She was stunned. The Bible doesn’t list what it was he said, but it does provide a list of something strange. She was moved by the stairs that went from his house to God’s house. She was rocked by the clothing of the servants. She was moved deeply by the place settings. These are all everyday things. See, great wealth isn’t needed for artistic expression; just intentionality. It’s in us to push beyond what is just acceptable and normal to push beyond into realms of excellence, so we literally go from glory to glory.
I’ve been reading this part of a book. I think it was *The Way of Life*, a book I wrote. I was reading part of a chapter to my wife while I was in the dining room, and she was in the kitchen. I teared up while I was reading through this because this storyline moves me deeply. I was reading to her about this. Just imagine what it would have been like to be the woodworker who built the stairs. You know, Solomon is talking with his team, and he says, «I’ve got an idea for these stairs. I want to build from my house to the house of God.» They say, «Well, there’s a guy in town; he’s the best woodworker there is. He knows woods, grains, stains, and he knows this stuff; he’s the best.»
So they bring him to Solomon. They knock on his door and say, «The king wants to see you.» The guy is terrified, but he enters the palace, and Solomon says, «Come with me.» They walk over, and he says, «I live here; the house of God is there, and I want stairs that go from here to there. I was thinking we could take it something like this, and maybe these kinds of colors involved and these kinds of woods.»
So here’s the craftsman, the artist. He looks and says, «Yeah, what we could do is that the grain of this wood mirrors the grain of this wood so beautifully, and we could use this stain here and this stain.» They talk together and come up with this plan for the stairway that goes from his house to the house of God. Some time later—we don’t know if it’s weeks, months, or years—the craftsman hears the story that the Queen of Sheba came to town, she saw your stairs, and she said, «There’s a God in Israel.»
Why? Because wisdom touched the mundane. See, anybody could throw a lot of money at something, put gold on the toilet seat, and call it excellent. That’s not excellent, but something was done with intentionality. It may be that you walk to your car today, and the plastic cap came off the lid of somebody’s water bottle they didn’t notice. You just pick it up. You don’t take an Instagram photo to let everybody know you picked it up; you just pick it up because it’s what you do.
It’s the fact that there’s intentionality. Every place that I go into, I want it to look better when I leave; I want to make sure that I’ve done what I can to leave a mark of excellence and beauty. In my personal quest for wisdom, I’ve come to the conclusion that three terms represent wisdom for me most clearly: creativity, excellence, and integrity. Those three words are woven throughout the book of Proverbs.
So here we are, a people that I believe the Lord is trying to awaken—the five-year-old in us, the five-year-old that knows how to dream without the limitations or distractions of adulthood. Why do you think Jesus said we had to become like children? Is it possible He was looking for that authentic, creative expression on earth? You may ask how that’s eternally significant. It’s significant because when you become who God designed you to be, it reveals a perfect father to an orphaned planet, a planet of orphans. It awakens something in them.
How in the world could a release of creativity help to stop the insanity that seems to be global? I don’t have a good plan, except this one. This one says He answered the four horns with four artists. He answered the four horns of demonic torment, division, and depression; His answer was to release the craftsmen—those who could prophetically illustrate He’s a perfect father. He’s got a perfect design. You can discover who He made you to be, not who somebody else is.
I was moved by a story I borrowed from Brian’s book, *The Beauty that Saves the World.* Listen to this story: A thousand years ago, Prince Vladimir the Great, the pagan monarch of Kiev, was looking for a new religion to unify the Russian people. To this end, Prince Vladimir sent out envoys to investigate the great faiths from the neighboring realms. When the delegation returned, they gave the prince their report. Some had discovered religions that were dreary and austere; others encountered faiths that were abstract and theoretical. But the envoys who investigated Christianity in the Byzantine capital of Constantinople reported finding a faith characterized by such transcendent beauty that they did not know if they were in heaven or on earth.
This is their report: «Then we went to Constantinople, and they led us to the place where they worshiped their God. We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth, for on earth, there is no such vision nor beauty, and we do not know how to describe it. We only know that God dwells among men; we cannot forget that beauty.» They saw a cathedral.
I mean, my goodness, how much was Robert Schuller criticized for building the Crystal Cathedral so many years ago? Nobody bothered to find out that he gave a million dollars a year to missions after that building was constructed. It was just the extravagance. Because it’s so easy, especially in a time of war, to say, «What we don’t need is art. What we need is to be serious.» Yet, there’s something about the artistic, playful approach to life that disarms the powers of darkness.
His strategies are different from ours. Sometimes when we think it’s where we need to be most serious, the most intense, sometimes it’s the time we need to go to the park and take a nap. I mean, it’s different than you think. He knows how this thing works.
Can I read another story? I’m going to read from a book by Peter Gray called *Free to Learn.* Learning, problem-solving, and creativity are worsened by interventions that interfere with playfulness; they are improved by interventions that promote playfulness. In one experiment, the researchers presented real physicians with a case history of a difficult-to-diagnose liver disease. The case included misleading information, which created a barrier to identifying the relevant information and arriving at a correct solution. Mood manipulation was accomplished by giving some doctors a little bag of candy. Thank you, Jesus!
A little bag of candy before presenting them with the problem. Those who got the bag of candy arrived at the correct diagnosis more quickly than those who didn’t. They reasoned more flexibly, took into account all the information more readily, and were less likely to get stuck on false leads than were those who had not received the candy. A positive mood improves creative, insightful reasoning; the particular type of positive mood that is most effective is a playful mood.
In experiments conducted in England, they found that young children could solve logic problems in the context of play that they seemed unable to solve in a serious context. Four-year-olds in play easily solved logic problems that they were not supposed to be able to solve until they were 10 or 11 years old. Subsequent experiments showed that to a lesser degree, even two-year-olds solved such problems when presented in a clear, playful manner.
These are studies that are fascinating and unique to me. They are not what we base life on, but they help to give some background behind Jesus’s command to become like children. It’s an invitation for thinking freely. We just heard about the whole liberty and freedom thing—to be a people who are unencumbered in thought.
My prayer—I’ve been feeling this in my own soul, my own journey in the last several months, especially the last couple of months, but I think it’s been longer than that—is this burden, a desire to dream differently, to dream differently, to creatively think beyond what I’m accustomed to. You get accustomed to a certain level of dreaming, whatever your capacity for imagination and dreaming is. I’ve been feeling the need—I’m too stuck, I’m too stuck, I need to dream bigger. It’s been in my heart and mind. I come back to passages like this. I’ve been reading a number of the minor prophets over and over again, and I keep coming back to Zechariah Chapter 1.
The answer was craftsmen. The answer was craftsmen. When in war, create. There’s something about that artistic flow—not just painting and singing, but the artistic flow, the approach to life that makes you the life-giver at work, the one who’s always got the encouraging word. That makes you the person that always remembers to send that thank-you note that others seem to forget.
It’s just the little tiny, intentional parts of life that actually become the building blocks of life. My dream is that we could tap into the mysteries of God that He says in Scripture have already been given to us. My dream is that we tap into what would become the solutions for humanity. I just had contact with a guy a week ago, a week and a half ago, who read my book *Dreaming with God*—this partnering to dream again is what we’re talking about but with a little different language. He was painting houses for $14 an hour, and the Lord dropped an idea in his mind. He developed it and just sold the company for $460 million.
He said, «I have another idea.» You understand, we’re not talking about, «Here’s your quick way to get wealthy.» It’s not about that; it’s about He has things reserved for those who will ask. It may be like the furniture polish people I wrote about in that book who were trying to find some non-toxic way to polish furniture or strip it; I forget now, but they were refinishers of furniture but couldn’t find a non-toxic option.
He wasn’t willing to lower the quality of his work, so he was going to use toxic ingredients if he had to; he wanted non-toxic instead. His wife got pregnant; she used to work at the office with them and ran experiments. She got pregnant, stayed home from work, and he would come home at lunchtime. When he came home for lunch one day, she said, «Do these letters and numbers mean anything?»
She quoted off these letters and numbers. He said, «That’s a chemical formula.» He said, «Say it again,» so they wrote it down. They developed a non-toxic furniture polish, then sold the company to a major corporation, and now their heart is mission. Now they travel the world in missions and pay their own way. The point is it may be a melody to a song; there may be no financial anything to it, but it’s something that brings joy to your heart or to your children.
I remember Leah would have to memorize these scriptures for school. It was hard for her to remember the verses, so I created a melody for her every Friday morning. She had to quote them, and we would sit there at breakfast, singing the song together. By the time she got to her teacher, they wanted her to sing the memory verse every week because she would remember them. I can still remember some of those melodies; I won’t spare you from singing them. But the point is, it’s the touch of grace, the touch of a perfect father who has a solution and an application for every dilemma that exists. I believe God wants to set that mantle on us at a level we’ve never known before.
I’ve just been provoked; like I said, it’s been a couple of months at least of this boiling in me. I just feel this need. Let’s talk about this. As unspiritual as it may seem, it may be the most spiritual thing I’ve done in a long time because it brings you into who He designed us to be—to be authentic and powerful—creative, something that reveals I actually am the son of the Creator.
One last verse I’ll mention, and then I’m going to wrap this up. It’s out of Exodus Chapter 31. The first person filled with the Holy Spirit in the Bible was a guy named Bezalel. In Exodus 31, this is what it says: «I have filled him with the Spirit of God in wisdom; I have filled him with the Spirit of God in wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and all manner of workmanship to design artistic works, to work in gold, silver, bronze, cutting jewels for setting, carving wood, to work in all manner of workmanship.»
I feel like the Lord is saying—I don’t know about you, but I used to have a bent toward a seriousness that I thought was God. It killed creativity in me—an intensity I thought proved my devotion. It didn’t prove my devotion; it just revealed I really didn’t know what He was like. Here the first person filled with the Holy Spirit in the whole Bible is a guy who works with wood, metal, cloth, and gems and arranges them in a way that blesses God and speaks to the glory of God.
It may be you who repairs cars; it may be the way you answer the phone as a receptionist. It may be you working in the hospital as a physician’s assistant. It doesn’t matter what it is; there are ways for us to carry ourselves in excellence, creativity, and beauty. I really do want to pray because I believe I’ve longed for this for as long as I can remember—for a creative release. We’ve seen it in the excellence level of music; our artists are doing stunning work in our creative arts school.
The stuff that they do is absolutely impressive! In the tech world, they capture that and communicate the Kingdom in that environment. My brother moved back to Reading. He was at some grocery store, saw somebody outside who had a need, and wanted to go in and buy food for him. He told me later, «Your people already took care of it. It’s hard to find an opportunity around here. Your people—they saw it and went and got the food first—they beat me to it.» It was a humorous complaint.
The whole point is, now, let’s take it up a notch because I believe that the Lord wants to release insight, dreams, and pay special attention, even to the dreams you think can’t possibly be God. I’ve found that sometimes He’s talking in the strangest ways, and He’ll put His message in an offensive setting to see how hungry you are for His message.
So Father, we turn our hearts to You. We want so much to dream with God. We want so much to partner with You. We want to be used by You. We want to know what real liberty is—to return to that five-year-old who dreams unencumbered without the burdens of life’s cares. The cares of life kill creativity. Father, I ask that You’d restore us as a people. Help us to take this to another level of being creative servants to a beautiful city. You’ve gifted us by planting us here.
I thank You for our online family; You planted them in unique places around the world. I pray the same for them; there would be an anointing to create, an anointing to dream, and an anointing to face problems, knowing there is an answer. That God has a solution for this! I pray for that kind of confidence in Jesus' name.
There’s always a chance of people in the room that have never made a personal commitment to Jesus. I believe out of all the stuff we could do today, the most important by far is to give you the chance to make a personal confession of faith in Jesus. Those who believe that He is who He says He is and rose from the dead shall be saved.
I want to give that opportunity to anyone here. If you’re here and you say, «Bill, I don’t want to leave the building until I know I am saved, forgiven of sin, and part of God’s family,» if that’s you, put a hand up real quick, and I just want to make an agreement with you right where you are. I don’t want to miss you. Thanks. Okay. All right, looks like you’re all in.
All right, so Jesus, let this be a day overflowing with creative expression—all of it for Your glory! Amen.