John Bevere - Why You Feel Stuck

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You know we've been talking over and over again about discovering your specific calling and that if you seek God diligently in faith, what's God going to do? He's going to give you a glimpse. Yeah, remember a glimpse? I was just looking in my file this morning at the glimpses that God gave me in 1981 and 1984. Literally, in 1981 and 1984, I'm reading this morning about things I am doing today.

Wow, it's amazing! Yet, if you would have said to me that God would raise you up and send you to the nations of the world by writing books, I would have laughed you out of the room because English was my worst subject. I couldn't even write a paper, let alone a chapter or a book, and yet that's how God has raised us up. Often, the very path we believe we're going to take is not the path we end up on. I remember when I was working for my church, I was striving and striving and striving. Then one day, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, "You just thought of another way that I'm going to raise you up and send you to the nations." He said, "You just thought of another way; I'm not going to do it." That day, He told me, "You will not be able to figure out how I'm going to raise you up because this is a walk of faith, not a walk of sight."

See, God sees Joseph; He sees a young man who is going to obey Him. What does God do? He gives him glimpses, gives him two dreams about leadership. Joseph had no idea that between that dream and the fulfillment of that dream was a pit—"pit" stands for "preachers in training" by the way; um, it's an acronym for people in training. I should say that because we all go through those pits. Then there would be ten years of slavery, and then there'd be two years in a dungeon. It'd be so hopeless that you'd think you'd never get out of it. David has a prophet come, the senior prophet of the whole nation. You're the next king of Israel!

David has no idea. I mean, he sees it all coming to pass, thinking, "Oh man, God is doing this just right." He gets asked to the palace to be a minstrel, then to be Saul's armor bearer, and then he gets invited to the king's table to eat with his sons. Then he is given the king's daughter for a wife. David thinks, "Come on! He's just setting me up. He's going to hand that throne to me; the prophecy is going to be fulfilled." What David doesn't understand is there will be 14 years of hell—living in deserts, living in wildernesses, having to go to the Philistines in exile, unable to see his family, unable to see the people he grew up with, unable to enjoy the customs of his nation—all because of his boss that God put him under. But yet, that was the road traveled for him to develop the character to be a good shepherd in Israel.

If you look at John the Baptist, God announces his calling to his dad before he's even born—he's still in his mama's womb—but he's in the wilderness for thirty years, training for a six-month ministry. Can you imagine that? Training thirty years for a six-month ministry? Remember, he's six months older than Jesus, and when Jesus comes along, he says, "I must decrease so that He may increase." Six-month ministry. You look at Moses; Moses knows when he's 40 years old that he's the one to deliver this nation. Yet it wasn't for another 40 years that he was on the backside of the desert. Why does God do this? That's what we're talking about.

Well, I want to read something from 1 Peter 1:6-7. I think I'll put it up on the board. "So be truly glad." Is that established? Glad? "There is wonderful joy ahead." Now remember, the fulfillment of anything God promises to you for your calling is joy. There's joy wrapped up in that package. So if I were to wrap up a gift, and you were to open it up, joy would be involved in that gift—fulfilling your calling. There's joy! Remember lesson number two, alright? "There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you must endure many"—now I want you to underscore that word—"many trials for a little while." Now, a little while to God can be two, three, four, five, or six years. Remember, a day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as one day. So, what that means is basically, 40 years is what? An hour! Okay, so a little while to God, 15 minutes could be six, seven years.

"For a little while, these trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold, though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials"—again, emphasis on "many"—"it will bring you much praise, glory, and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world." An aspect of fulfilling your calling that we have to talk about is that these many trials, the many trials strengthen your faith and build your character so that you can handle the position that God is calling you to. I remember, let's go back to my time in the church. I was driving the van. Before I became the youth pastor, let's go back to that time.

I remember that the pastor and his wife; my job for four years, or actually three and a half years, was to take care of their personal responsibilities, their children at school, giving their kids swimming lessons. I was picking up the guest speakers—that's how I was picking up T.L. Osborne. Well, they liked the job that I did so much that their executive assistant position came open, which was more of an administrative and secretary role. They said, "Oh man, we're going to put John in that role. We're losing our existing person; we want him to be in that role." So, they moved me into that role, and I did a horrible job. I just didn't have the gift set to be a good Administrative Assistant. I'm just not a secretary.

I remember the final straw that broke the camel's back was when my pastor had a big television appearance that he was supposed to do, and I forgot to tell him about it and he missed it. He said, "Hey John, what was I supposed to be doing an hour ago?" and I went, "Oh no!" So what happened was they loved Lisa and me so much, and they loved me, they realized, "Hey, we put him in a position to fail. We put him in a bad position." Well, my job of picking up the guest speakers was already taken; I raised up another man to take that job. They said, "Gosh, we got to find somewhere to put John." So, they put me in this position where I reported to a woman who reported to a man who reported to the pastor. So, I went down three levels, okay? I reported directly to the pastor; my office was there were three offices in the executive office—mine, his, and hers—and now I'm way in another part of the building working for a woman who works for a man who works for them, and that man wasn't even in their area so I was in pain—I was in pain! I remember during this time period I was really on edge.

I was yelling at my wife, yelling at my baby, whose name is Addison, who was only nine months old at the time. I was mad at my friends, yelling at them. I was just like yelling at everybody. I was mad at everybody; I was mad at everything. Everything was just going wrong, and I'd never been this way. It was the first time in my whole life I'd ever been so angry and got angry so easily. So one day I was out praying and I said, "God, where is all this anger coming from? What do I bind and cast out of my life?" And that's when I learned that you can't cast out flesh; you have to crucify it. The Lord spoke to me that morning, and I'll never forget, He said, "Son, look at the wedding ring on your finger." I looked at my wedding ring, and He brought this scripture to my attention. I looked at my wedding ring and it was a different ring Lisa gave me later, but it was a gold ring, and He said, "Does that look like pure gold to you?" and I said, "Yes, it does." He said, "Is it pure gold?" I said, "No, it's not. It's 14 karat gold."

Now 14 karat means 14 parts out of 24 parts is gold, and 10 parts out of 24 parts are impurities—copper, zinc, nickel. He said, "It looks like pure gold though, doesn't it?" I said, "Yeah, it looks like pure gold." He said, "If you put that ring in a furnace, and you heat up the furnace to 7000 degrees Fahrenheit, what happens?" I said, "Well, the gold liquefies." He said, "Then what happens?" I said, "Well then all the impurities will come to the surface." And the Lord said, "They appear, right?" I said, "Yeah, they appear." He said, "They were in there the whole time, right?" I said, "Yeah, they were in there the whole time." He said, "You keep saying, 'Where does this anger come from? Why do I keep getting angry so easily? Why am I offended with everybody?'" He said, "These are impurities that have been in there and I've brought you into my furnace of affliction, Isaiah 48, and this furnace is causing these substances to appear—this anger to appear. Now you can blame everybody; you can blame your wife, blame your pastor, blame your friends, and if you do, the impurities will go right back down. Or you can say, 'God, this is my problem,' and I'll take My big ladle and scoop off the impurities." I realized right then that my faith, which is much more precious than gold, was being tested by fire.

I remember during this six-month period—it was actually an 18-month time period—at one point it got so bad that I was walking into the church offices. They had 450 employees at one point, and I remember one day I just couldn't. I got up in pain; I went to bed in pain. I ate breakfast in pain, I ate lunch in pain, I ate dinner in pain. I mean, you know when Jeremiah said, "My pain is perpetual," I understand that. I lived in pain. I remember one day I closed the door in my office and just put my head between the corner of the walls and I said, "God, why do I hurt so badly inside?" And God spoke to me and said, "Because you're dying. There is always pain in death." Then He said this to me that day, "Do you want to know how you're going to know when you're dead?" I said, "How do I know when I'm dead?" He said, "When you don't hurt anymore." He said, "Deaf people don't hurt." I said, "God, would you please kill me quick?" That was what I went through.

But then remember, I said I wanted to become the youth pastor, right? Well now I'm a youth pastor and everything's great for six months just like last time. Oh, I'm loving it! We had a youth television program; the church had never had it before but God put it in my heart. We raised the funds with the youth, not the parents of the youth—the youth gave to it. We had Saturday night at 10 o'clock on a station that reached 4 million people in Central Florida. Man, everything's rocking! But I remember there was a young man in my youth group, and his dad was my boss; he was the Executive Administrative Pastor of the church, and I'm preaching on holiness and dying to yourself and printing these messages.

Well, he comes up to me one day and just starts crying. He just said, "How can I live the life you're preaching? My mom and dad do this and that at home!" He walked up to my wife and said that, and my wife went, "Oh no—this is John's boss!" Well, that man tried to destroy me, and for the next 18 months, this was another 18-month period. A "little while" can be 18 months; it seems like forever when you're in it. I remember that man determined to destroy me. He drove a wedge between me and the pastor; I didn't meet with the pastor at one point for four months, couldn't get to him because he had told the pastor lies about me that weren't true. He told me lies about the pastor that I don't think were true, and he was just driving a wedge.

I remember I was spending hours praying every day— I mean hours—just to keep a great attitude, right? Employees would walk up to my wife at the church and say, "Why doesn't he just put your husband's name on this, like he forbade praying in the choir loft, which is where I went every lunch to pray because I was on a fast, like, God, what's going on? There were all kinds of things that he did, and he was determined to destroy me. Finally, he got me to the point where I was going to be fired on that Monday. It was a Friday, and I had the first meeting with the pastor in four months, and the pastor's two brothers said, "John, you're going to be fired on Monday; you just need to brace yourself." On Sunday morning, the pastor got up and said, "There's going to be a big change in the youth group; I need to meet with all the parents on Tuesday night," and I'm sitting there on the platform, knowing the brothers told me I'm fired. I remember walking into that pastor's office and the pastor looked at me, and he was alone. He was supposed to be there with that guy, and they were going to fire me. He said, "God sent you here; you're not leaving." I remember God delivered us in that very hour.

I remember that man, six months later—I was out of town. Everything he had been doing got exposed. Everything he was doing could have led to prosecution and years in jail, but the pastor had mercy on him and just filed it away at a lawyer's office. But these are some of the things that I went through, and what I couldn't understand was that I wasn't being productive. I wasn't being fruitful. It seemed like, yeah, a lot of youth were getting ministered to in our youth meetings but I was like, "Why do I have to live like this with all this adversity and hardship?" I'm sure Paul must have thought that too; he's got these Jews that are following him from city to city trying to destroy him. But yet he said, "God, take it away from me," and God says, "Don't you realize My grace is sufficient for you? My strength is made perfect in your weakness." What I didn't understand was that God was developing character in me that was going to enable me to handle the calling He placed on my life.

I'm firmly convinced that when God called me back in the mid-80s, if God would have put me—well, back in the early 80s—if God would have put me when I really believed I was ready, because I used to tell people I was ready. I mean, Jesus is coming in 1988; I've got to get out to the nations! I literally said that, and I was ready in 1985 and 1986. I remember a lady named Marilyn; she was one of the guests in our church, and she looked at me and said, "Just go start your ministry; just go down to the Caribbean like T.L. Osborne and Daisy Osborne do; just start your ministry." I thought, "Yeah, that's what I need to do." I realized that if I hadn't been led by the Spirit and hadn't allowed God to bring me through these times of refining and trials, what He has done through Lisa and my lives right now would have destroyed me. I would have been full of pride; I would have been full of myself. I would have been doing things in my own strength because if you can get something accomplished in your own strength by manipulating and creating an Ishmael, then you'll keep doing it instead of allowing God to do it.

The thing is, as people with callings on our lives, do we want God to be doing this, or do we want to be doing it? Let me tell you, when I was trying to birth my Ishmael, I was asked to go to the Philippines right before I became the youth pastor, okay? Right at the very end after T.L. After I said no to T.L., I was asked by another ministry to go to the Philippines. I remember God gave me the money 45 minutes before the flight left. My wife and I made an agreement; the minister, it was a big organization, said, "I'll pay half your ticket to the Philippines. You pay the other half, and you go over there and preach for my guy." I remember I said to my wife, "I'm putting it on the credit card, but back then if you turned in the ticket, you got full credit. I promise you I'll get on that plane unless God gives us the money."

And so for one week I was, like "Okay, God. Okay, God. Everybody knows in my church I'm going; you're going to do something." I went to the wealthiest guy in our church; he was a guy who owned two jets. I said to him, "I'm going on a missions trip to the Philippines; would you drive me to the airport?" He said, "Oh, I'd love to!" I remember the morning I was going on that trip to the Philippines. I opened the door, and there was a Bible school student standing there. I said, "No, no, you're not supposed to take me; the other guy's taking me." He said, "Oh, he couldn't do it last night; he asked me to take you." I was like, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to go to the airport with this guy, and I'm going to have to get a cab home because I can't get on the plane." So, we're driving to the airport, and he's talking to me all about his Bible school experiences, and I'm like, "I'm not even there; I'm going through it." I remember getting to the airport; he said, "Let me come in with you," and I said, "No, I don't want you to come in with me." He said, "Come on, let me," and I said, "Okay, I didn't want him to watch me get in a cab and go home."

So, he comes in, puts my bag down, and the Bible school student said, "You know, last Wednesday night, I was in bed, and I knew about your trip. God kept me up half the night saying that I needed to pay for half your ticket because you didn't have a thousand dollars, and you needed a thousand dollars." I said, "Okay." He said, "I finally got to sleep that night by saying, 'God, if you arrange a miraculous way for me to hand it to him, I'll do it.'" He said, "When that guy asked me to take you last night, I about fell out of my bed. I'm here to tell you that you have your thousand dollars; get on the plane!" I literally called Lisa from the plane. So, I'm on this plane to the Philippines, and I'm just reading. I'm reading the Bible, and the Bible says, "There was a man sent by God whose name was John"—that was John the Baptist—and the "sent by God" jumped off the page. The Holy Spirit said to me, "Do you want to be sent by John Bevere, or do you want to be sent by God?" I said, "I want to be sent by God." Yeah!

And you know what the Holy Spirit said to me? He said, "Good, because if you send you, you'll go in your authority. But if I send you, you'll go in My authority." Now, do you know what I started noticing all throughout the gospels in the book of Acts after that? I noticed what statements they said about John the Baptist. "He speaks as one with authority; he doesn't speak like the scribes and Pharisees." Well now wait a minute, here's John; his dad's a priest. He's supposed to go to school with Gamaliel and learn under the greatest Bible teacher of their day in Jerusalem. All of his friends are going to Gamaliel's school, and God says, "Go to the desert." Wow! John thinks, "No, no, you mean I'm supposed to go study under Gamaliel?" Desert? No, all my friends are getting diplomas; they're getting their doctorates. They're going to become pastors of churches—desert! And he goes to the desert, and the Bible says, "It came to pass when Caiaphas was high priest and Annas were high priests." All of these priests were doing their thing, and "the word of the Lord came to John in the desert." Wow! And he spoke as one with authority.

And that's what Jesus meant when he said, "Would you go out there to the desert? What did you go out there to see? A reed shaken in the wind? To see somebody dressed in fine clothes? They're in king's palaces." He said, "You went out there to hear a prophet, a man with the word of the Lord, a man who speaks under authority." What happened was God said, "You let me send you, and you'll go in My authority." So now think about this in the business world, think about this in education, think about this in the military, think about this in athletics. What happened to my friend named Aaron? He listened to God, and now he's prospered in the realm of the PGA. He's impacted so many more people; when he won his first tournament, he did it on Easter Sunday and held a sunrise service with 2,000 people at the event. They talked about it on international TV; they wrote about it in the Sydney newspaper. I was in Sydney when he won it, and I thought, "Look at the impact." He's now operating in God's authority in the PGA.

So it doesn't matter if you're in ministry. I'm telling you my stories because this is my realm; God's called me to ministry. But if you're called to the military, you're called to science, you're called to education, you're called to raise children—whatever it is, if you're doing what God tells you, let me tell you—the enemy is going to try to get you to birth an Ishmael. He's going to do everything he can to get you out of the place God puts you. He's going to get you to try to launch yourself early because he doesn't want you going in God's authority. So that's the real key! Man, I'll tell you this is lesson nine, and if there's one that I can't over-emphasize, it's this one because you know how many people I see that are in ministry because they know they're called to ministry, but they don't have authority. They're not doing nearly what God called them to do because they went out ahead of their time. They listened to the people that said, "Hey, go out and start a church; you've got a calling on your life, just find a city and start a church," but yet they're not walking in that authority. I want to see a generation rise up that has the authority of God in them—in the medical field, in the marketplace, in education, in government, in athletics. That's the Joshua generation that I really believe is coming—the many that are chosen, not the few.

Yeah, when you look at it from the cross to the resurrection until the second coming of Jesus, yes, few will fulfill what God has called them to do. But I believe that generation—that final generation before He comes—are going to be like Joshua's generation, and I believe many are going to be chosen in that generation. I believe you guys are part of that generation. In the last lesson, that's the next one, it's really the exciting one. Okay, here's the question we're going to address: "How do I maximize my calling?" Boy, this one's going to be good! I can hardly wait to get to it!