Jentezen Franklin - Overcoming 4 Barriers To God's Blessing
Turn in the Bible with me to the book of Zechariah. I wanna go to Zechariah 1:17. I'll begin reading with verse 17. "Again proclaim, saying, 'Thus says the Lord of hosts: 'My cities shall again spread out through prosperity," my cities, the cities of Israel, will spread out, notice that, through prosperity. A Bible word. "The Lord will again comfort Zion, He will again choose Jerusalem.' 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?' So he answered, 'These are the horns that have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.' Then the Lord showed me four carpenters or craftsmen". The King James says carpenters.
"And I said, 'What are these coming to do?' So he said, 'These are the horns that scattered Judah, so that no one could lift their head; but the craftsmen," or the carpenters, "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". It's really something when you read these verses and you see what's happening in Israel, even as we're speaking. Same ancient spirits trying to scatter and destroy. But this is one of the powerful insights and visions that Zechariah had, and it starts out as soon as God spoke prosperity over the nation and over the city of Jerusalem, which is a type of the church, and over Judah, which is the righteous seed, a type of the Christians, the believer. God spoke prosperity to the nation, and as soon as God did that, instantly the prophet saw, in a vision, four horns of resistance arise.
Horns are always symbolic of unbridled power. And in this case, it's Satanic power with two objectives, number one, to scatter Israel, to divide families, to divide people, and to decimate. And then secondly, so that "to so depress, and discourage, and defeat that no man could lift up His head. And these four principalities, these four demon spirits assigned to the people of God to keep their heads down, to oppress, to depress, to defeat," and listen carefully, "To stop from spreading out". When I read the spreading out part, I thought about going to all the world and preach the gospel. The spreading out. And what I'm gonna share with you this morning is not something that I read somewhere, I'm sharing this with you because it is what I have seen God do in this church.
We had to confront these four horns that I'm gonna talk about. And whether you're building a business, or building a family, or building a career, or building a dream, or building a church, you will encounter the resistance, especially if it's something God has put in your heart to build. And that's why it talks about the spirit of the carpenter. Four carpenters came to the rescue when they were under attack because the carpenter has got to come and help. It's a beautiful picture of Jesus Christ. And the prosperity, the scripture said, was given to spread abroad, spread abroad the nations. And let's say spread abroad the kingdom of God and the good news of Jesus Christ.
And when you think of the word prosperity, don't just think of money. But I want you to think of a prosperous marriage, a prosperous career, a prosperous family, prosperous work, and dreams. God wants His people to be productive and fruitful. And he said, "I've decreed prosperity, a breaking forth, a spreading out, a breakthrough, a spreading abroad to do more, to grow more, to expand more". And Jesus, the Son of the carpenter, is part of that under the New Covenant. And I believe the four horns are the four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And I'm sending today, and I'm coming today in the spirit of the carpenter to talk to you from my heart. Just when the horns were pressing them down, Jesus Christ and the spirit of the carpenters showed up to rebuild the nation, rebuild the homes and the families, rebuild what was once great that had been demolished.
The first horn I wanna liken and call the spirit of lack. Because if you're gonna build something, sooner or later you will come in conflict with the spirit of lack. We have to do our work, we have to do our part, we have to be excellent at what we do. But as soon as you start to lift up your head, and God gives you a vision. I know it happened to me when I came here, and Cherise when we came here. I was 28 years old when I became pastor of this church, and Cherise is seven years younger than me. And we were really kids. We did not know what we were doing. We just had a vision, we just had a dream for this church called Free Chapel. It felt right, it lived up to its name, it felt free. And it felt like something, God had a special assignment on this place.
And I remember those days, I remember pulling up into the parking lot on Browns Bridge Road of that building. And I also know that as soon as we started growing, the spirit of lack began to challenge the vision that God had given me and the leadership for this church to keep up in the same place, to keep us on the same level. The spirit of lack can even attach itself to families. And for generation after generation, they never break out, they never get out from under the horn that causes the family to stay down. And I'll never forget one thing that really happened to me. For ten years, our television ministry struggled, and for ten years, it was in the red, and for ten years, it bumped along, it had downs, and highs, and lows, and it was no consistency. It was always a challenge.
I wanted to quit so many times. And you know why? The spirit of lack. The spirit of lack kept saying, "Look. Look how much, look, look. You're not as, you're not, it's not doing anything. Nobody's gonna help you. You're not gonna be able to sustain this". And so, we had brought this property that we're on, the 150 acres that we're on now, and we were building this sanctuary, this building right here. And the beams were up, and some of the pouring was up, the cement slab, here in Gainesville, for those of you who are joining us at all of our campuses, the slab was all that we had in here. And I walked into the other building where there's a little studio, you could call it a studio, it's just a room with a high, we didn't have a lot of money to do that when you're doing a 24 million dollar building program right here. And we had paid that building off, and we were wise. We knew we could afford it and had all the financing. But just hear me a minute.
So, I walked into the studio over there, which is a little room. And I sat down, and at the time, we had equipment that was ten years old. Every camera. And there was duct tape everywhere I looked. They didn't know, you know, we were just getting ready to turn the cameras on, and I was going to do some in and outs for some TV shows. And I'm sitting there, and I look, and I see duct tape on this camera, I see duct tape on that cable, I see duct tape on that machine, I see duct tape on a tripod holding the camera. And then I looked and the TV director guy, the guy who did everything, 'cause he had to do everything. We didn't have much of a staff. We had a lot of volunteers. And he had a big roll of duct tape on his belt that he had clicked on to his belt. And it felt like I heard the Lord say, "Do you know what kind of faith you have? You have duct tape faith".
That's why you see some duct tape here, and duct tape there, duct tape everywhere. I felt like Old MacDonald. Duct tape was all over the place. And it just hit me wrong that day. And the Lord, kinda, impressed me. "You know, you don't even see anything beyond this because you think that I can't do it all now". Now, I'm reminding God, "I'm in a building program trying to obey you". You know, like when you have a need, I'm trying to preach to you. I'm telling you, the Lord wanted us to spread abroad to the nations of the world, but the enemy came with a spirit of lack, and something hit me, and I prayed about it for several days. And the Lord laid on my heart a message, and I told the director, I said, "We're not going in the studio. We're going over".
And I got, right in this area, right here that I'm preaching to, all you folks in this main area right here, about where the break is back there, maybe a little bit down, there were no seats, there was no carpet, there was nothing but a cement floor and these big walls. No windows, anything. And I told him to set up those two, and he had extra tape that day. "Set up those two". And we filmed a message, and I told the people. I said, "I don't know what else to do. We're in a major building program, our television ministry is not doing what we need to do, and I don't have the money to pay. And I'm not a beggar. I'm not gonna beg. I won't be on TV. And I can't promise you a Cadillac if you give to this ministry either". But I said, "If God speaks to you and you believe that we should be on TV, I need your help. Help".
That's all I said. And do you know, in 30 days, we received, we had never had anything like this happen, 1.3 million dollars. And we bought the cameras that we needed. And I heard the Lord, and I looked in that camera, and I said, "God told me that He was gonna take the duct tape off of this ministry". And I wanna tell you, He did that day. And it has never come back on us for the glory of God. I'm glad that we kept spreading abroad. Come on, somebody. I'm glad we didn't give up. I'm glad that right when I didn't have enough, God had more than enough. And He's telling some of you, "Don't you let the spirit of lack make you put your head down". If God's giving you a vision to spread out, and to increase and enlarge, you need to say, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want".
I'm not telling you something I read in a book. You're sitting in a miracle. This is a story to you, it's a miracle to me because I watched God break duct tape. And you know, the second horn that we encountered was what I'm gonna call the spirit of limitation. If the spirit of lack can't stop you, gotta push on through that one. Keep believing God, and work hard, and pray for wisdom. But the second thing that we had to break through was the spirit of limitation. The spirit of limitation says, "I know God can supply the need, but He won't do it for me". He'll do it for others, but He won't bless me. The spirit of limitation puts a ceiling on your life. You can go this far but you can't go any further.
And I heard a story one time and saw a program one time about an elephant trainer. And he had this huge bull male elephant with large husks, mighty and strong. And he had a rope, just a rope around its massive leg. And the rope was tied to a cement block that was about from here to that piano over there. And he said, "This trained animal, this massive, strong, powerful elephant will only walk this far, and the moment he feels the tug on his leg of that rope," he could break that rope any time he wanted to. And he said, "There came a moment where mentally, that elephant accepted, 'This is the limit. I'll never go any further than where I am right now.'"
And that is exactly, that second horn is a horn of limitation. But every once in a while, you just start accepting the limitations on life. You stop... to start settling. You start saying, "Well, I've gone this far, and you know I didn't think I'd get this far so, and then now, now, there's a, you know, I don't think I can go. I don't think I can do that. I don't think I'm capable of that". But every once in a while, you gotta push on the limitations. Faith never settles. God said, "Spread abroad," not "Stay where you are comfortable and safe and sure and secure".
So, when I did that, and I pushed on the limitations and I preached that sermon, once of the first letters that we got was from a 73-year-old woman who sent a letter, and she addressed it and said, "Please get," wrote a little note. "Please tell that preacher that little preacher, that I went and got $1,000, God told me to go get a $1,000 bill. And tell him I hope he never uses it. I want him to put it on the wall in his office to always remind him that if God tells you to do something, the resources are already there". This is that $1,000 bill. You don't hear me. This is, we still have not used it. Because my God is not El cheapo, He's El Shaddai. And He will provide. And every time I see that in my office on the shelf, I realize nothing is impossible with God. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. If you believe it, give Him a praise.
Come on, push on the limitations. Push on the spirit of lack. It can't hold you. Is this helping anybody? I've come in the spirit of the carpenter. I've come to tell you, you can build it. I know the spirit of lack will try to tell you you can't. I know the spirit of limitation will tell you others could, but you can't, and you better stay where your rope tells you you can go. But nope, we're going to new territory. I see open doors. I see key people coming into your life. I see the favor of God coming on you. And you're gonna pull the stake out of the ground, and it's gonna be a elephant gone wild. This is in the book of Acts. The Apostle Paul said, "I wanted to come to your city, but Satan hindered me".
The third horn, notice that. But Satan hindered us. Come on, Aaron. I used him in the first service, and I said I wasn't gon' use him in this service 'cause I didn't think about it when I called him. You stand over there. But I wanna tell you what it was like. We started breaking through the spirit of lack. God began to supply our needs. And then we started breaking through the spirit of limitation, that second horn. And then it was like a hindering spirit. And I don't know how to describe it, but Cherise, you'll remember this. And still, to this day, there are hindering spirits. It's like we knew we had momentum going with us, and we would try to go, and it was like, it wasn't like no, he's big and intimidating. But, it's not like he... it was grabbing us and just throwing us.
But it's like a trip. It's like a little sucker punch. It's like a little, it's just a hindering spirit. And it's like we would try, and we would... Okay. You go sit down. That's a big devil right there, I'mma tell you what. Do you know what I'm talking about? It's uncanny the hinderings. But I'm here to tell you the enemy can hinder you, but he can't stop you. The enemy can try to, but don't you let it make you put your head down and just say, "Well, it must not be God's will". No, press on through the hindrances. All Satan is authorized to do is hinder, not to stop your family from being built back up, and you doing what God's called you to do.
Here's the other one now, this is the last one. He's a devouring spirit according to Malachi. And once you take ground, he comes back and tries to devour the harvest, devour the harvest. He's a devouring spirit. And take back the harvest that God has given you. But my Bible said, "No weapon formed against you". Hindering or devouring.
Spirit of lack, spirit of limitation, here comes the spirit of the carpenters. And we're coming to build up what the enemy's tried to destroy in our nation, in our families, in our church, and in our own personal lives. And I feel this thing. There are people that are discouraged, and your head's been down a long time. But I've come in the spirit of the carpenter to tell you, you don't have any problems. All you need is faith in God. When you have faith in God, nothing shall be impossible unto you. Somebody shout like you believe it.