John Bevere - How to Identify and Overcome Intimidation
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Hey everyone, welcome to the first lesson of Breaking Intimidation. I’m so excited about this course! Let me tell you about it. First of all, this is a book that I wrote years ago called Breaking Intimidation. I fought this spirit for years, and when finally it got exposed and I was free forever, I said, «God, please let me write a book and expose this thing so people can be free,» and He permitted me to do it. So how do we begin? First of all, countless men and women battle intimidation, yet the sad thing is they battle the symptoms, the side effects, instead of going after the root of intimidation itself.
So I want to ask you some questions. We want to locate where you are at. Do you find yourself at times wanting to say no but end up saying yes? Do you feel guilty when you say no? Now ask yourself these questions. Think about different situations that you’ve been in. Do you find that when it’s time for you to produce, you struggle? You think, «Wow, when it wasn’t time for me to produce, when I was in my 'practice' time, everything went great,» but then it’s time for you to bring forth fruit, and you struggle. Do you avoid confrontation with certain individuals? Do you find yourself avoiding certain people out of fear? Do you feel paralyzed, not knowing what to do or lacking the strength to do what you know needs to be done when action is required? These are symptoms of someone under a spirit of intimidation.
Let me explain it to you like this; this will give you a visual. Can you imagine an absolutely gorgeous house? In this house are beautiful furnishings, very expensive furnishings, but there’s a problem: there’s a hole in the roof. As long as it’s not raining, everything’s great. But then all of a sudden, here comes this huge storm. What happens? You guessed it, the carpet is soiled, the furniture is ruined, the drapes are ruined. So you spend all this time pulling out the carpet, removing the soiled furniture and drapes, replacing the carpet, the flooring, whatever it is. You put in brand new furniture, and right around the time you expend all this energy to do this, another storm comes and ruins everything you just did, and you begin the process all over again. What’s happening now? If this continues, you’re eventually going to deplete all your resources and energy, and eventually you’re going to give up and say, «This is my lot in life.» Well, if you had just fixed the roof, we would never have had this problem again. This is what people do when it comes to intimidation: they keep dealing with the symptoms, the symptoms, the symptoms; they never ever close the roof.
I will never forget how I learned this lesson. I struggled with it for years, but it took a real encounter with the Holy Spirit to expose it to me. I’ll never forget the year was 1990 or 1991. I was in a church of about 600 people in the Midwest part of the United States. The Spirit of God began to move in the meetings. We were only supposed to have four days of meetings, but suddenly it became something amazing. On that Sunday service, we did Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday morning—a move of God began in that church, and the pastor said, «You just can’t leave.» I said, «I know,» and so we ended up going for 21 services. People traveled from as far as 90 miles away to attend these services. Every single night, that church was packed.
I’m telling you, the anointing to preach in those services was amazing. I was like a man on fire every single night. There were people getting delivered; one lady, who was a New Age witch, got completely set free and supported Messenger International for over 20 years. It was mind-blowing—the salvations, the backslidings. But then, about the end of the second week of the meetings, I was just preaching along, and all of a sudden, without even thinking about it, I turned around. Now, on the platform, there were about 35 people because the church was so packed that all the musicians and singers had to stay on the platform. Right in the middle of the message, I just turned around and said, «There’s sin on this platform, and if you don’t repent, God is going to expose you, and you’re going to be removed.» My head thought, «What did you just say?» Now you have to understand, this has only happened two times in 35 years of ministry. But I remember, in that moment, my head screamed at me, «What did you just do?» My heart said, «Everything’s good, this is God,» so I kept preaching.
Well, we went into the third week of meetings, and I was preaching again. It was very prophetic. I was preaching out of the overflow, and all of a sudden, I turned around again and said, «There’s sin on this platform, and if you don’t repent, God is going to expose you, and you’re going to be removed.» Suddenly, my head went, «Did you really just do that again?» and my heart said, «It’s okay, it’s okay.» So the next night, I walked into the pastor’s office, and the youngest elder walked in. He looked at the pastor in front of me and said, «The praise and worship team is a little depressed tonight.» Now you’re probably laughing, but I had no clue. I looked at the young elder and asked, «Why is the praise and worship team depressed?» He looked at me and said, «Because they think you are being too hard on them publicly. They feel if there is sin on the platform, you should go to the person in private and address it there.»
He then walked out. Right then, a barrage of thoughts began hitting my mind: «What are you doing? Suppose there isn’t any sin on the platform? Everyone in the congregation is going to wonder who it is and what they did. Or what if there is sin on the platform, and the person repents privately, but it never gets exposed? Everyone in the church will still wonder who is in sin; you’ll create more damage in this church with these foolish moves you just made than all the good that God has done in all these 20-some services.» All these thoughts were firing through my mind and were interrupted by the pastor saying, «Well, let’s go out to the service.» So we prayed and went out to the service.
Now, you must understand, every night we walked out on that platform, it was almost like God was waiting for us. It was magnificent. The presence of God! I walked out onto that platform, and everything seemed dry in me. I thought, «What’s going on? I don’t want to preach. I don’t feel like preaching; I don’t want to be on this platform.» We went through praise and worship, and the pastor introduced me. I walked up to the pulpit and thought, «Boy, I don’t feel like I’m supposed to preach; I don’t have anything to say.» I started preaching a really nice message out of the Book of Psalms. It was the nicest message I preached in all the services, and I remember, while I was preaching, I thought, «This is horrible.» In my head, I was thinking, «I want out of here. Where’s the back door?» I ended that message in about 30 minutes; it was the shortest message we had in all the services. I closed the service, and to be frank with you, I was angry at God. I thought, «God, you didn’t show up tonight. That was a pathetic message, and nobody will want to come back tomorrow night. In fact, I really don’t want to come back tomorrow night.»
So I went back to where I was staying and went straight to bed. I actually didn’t even want to pray; I was so upset with God. This was pure immaturity. Believe me when I say this would never happen today because I’ve learned so much about the faithfulness of God. I went to bed and thought, «We’ll talk about this in the morning.» The next morning, I woke up feeling as if there was a sack of sand laying on top of me. I remember, heavy is an understatement—I felt so heavy. I got up and tried to praise God, but it felt so thick, like praising God in the middle of a lead balloon or something. I thought maybe I should read the Bible, so I got my Bible out and started reading, but it was so dry you could light a match on it. Then I thought something’s really wrong, so I found a field and prayed loudly until I almost lost my voice. That lasted over three hours; I stayed in that field for over three hours. I thought, «Okay, tonight’s going to be amazing.»
I went back to the service that night; we prayed in the pastor’s office, and I walked out onto the platform—and it was worse than the night before, worse! I remember thinking, «God, please let somebody else preach tonight; I am not fit for this.» Much to my disappointment, when the pastor introduced me, I got up and started to preach again. This time, it was worse than the night before. Thoughts raced through my head: «Why did you just say that? Where are you going? This is horrible; this message makes no sense.» These were the thoughts going through my head while I was preaching. Suddenly, I thought I couldn’t go another minute; it was like seven minutes into the message. I just screamed, «Stop!» and everyone in the church kind of woke up and looked at me. I said, «Hey guys, I don’t know what’s going on, but there’s something wrong. Can you all pray with me?»
That church was so amazing; God had ministered to them so much over those 18, 19 services that they just stood up and erupted in prayer. Within minutes, I heard the voice of God for the first time in over 24 hours. I mean, the heavens had been brass! I remember hearing the Holy Spirit say, «You’re intimidated by the people on the platform behind you, and because of this, your gift to preach has gone inoperative. Break their intimidation and preach what I’m giving you to preach.» All of a sudden, scriptures started flowing through my mind at a rapid rate, like an automatic machine gun. I started preaching those scriptures, and it was the most powerful service we had in all 21 services. After that, I gave the call and said, «All of you who are under intimidation and want to be free, come down!» I mean, 400 people ran to the front! They were all the way back in the aisles; it was so packed. And they got free!
I’ll never forget, about two months later, the pastor called me and said, «Hey John, the praise and worship leader was committing adultery all 21 services. One of the singers was committing fornication with a girl in the congregation. She confessed it; he repented and we restored him. The praise and worship leader left, and one of the guitar players was getting plastered drunk every night after the services. He left the church. He said, 'John, it’s been a little tough, but our church has never been in a better place and our worship has never been stronger.'» That incident opened my eyes to this message you’re about to receive. In the next seven lessons, we’re going to walk through scripture. We’ll see what causes God’s people to go inoperative in the gifting that He has placed on their lives; we’re going to expose this spirit, and we’re going to break it if need be in your life. I am so excited because I know the freedom I experienced when God set me free.
You know what’s really sad? As I said in the beginning, most people deal with the symptoms. They go to a counselor, and the counselor teaches them how to cope with the fear, the depression, the hopelessness, the confusion. These are symptoms of an intimidating spirit. Many counselors will say, «This is how you cope with it,» and they’ll almost put a band-aid over it. Now, there are many great counselors who are Spirit-led and don’t do that, but I’m saying many do. Then there are others who think, «Okay, this is my lot in life; I’ll just keep living with the hole in my roof.» Others go into isolation because of intimidation. God doesn’t want any of those scenarios for you. God wants you free! He wants your gift operating; He wants you building the body of Christ and enjoying life! That’s what we’re going to do in this course.
So, Father, in the name of Jesus, I pray for everyone watching, everyone going through this course. As we continue our journey through the next seven lessons, Holy Spirit, I ask that You would come upon them, illuminate their hearts, open their eyes and ears, and may freedom come into their lives forever, in Jesus' mighty name we pray. Amen! I’ll see you in the second lesson.