John Bevere - Symptoms of Intimidation (How to Recognize and Overcome)
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Okay, welcome to Lesson Four. We’re going to go to our foundational scripture: «For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind.» The word «fear» is better translated as «timidity.» So listen again: God did not give us a spirit of timidity, a spirit of intimidation. The thing I want to emphasize here is that this is a spirit. Intimidation is not a weakness of mind; it’s not a weakness of character; it is a spirit. The Greek word for spirit is «pneuma,» the same word used for «Holy Spirit,» «human spirit,» or «demonic spirit» in the New Testament. It’s clear that it is a spirit, and a spirit cannot be dealt with merely through positive thinking; it has to be addressed in the realm of the spirit. If you deal with it simply by being positive, you’re just going to cover it up. You’re going to cover up the symptoms and the spirit, but it won’t be resolved. In other words, let me put it this way: you can have a tree that produces fruit, and you can cover it up by picking all the fruit, but if you don’t sever the root, the fruit is going to grow right back on that tree. So you have to deal with intimidation at the level of the spirit.
All right, here are some questions I want to ask you, and I want you to think about these: Why would people who are intelligent and physically strong struggle with intimidation, often from someone or something weaker than they are? What about men and women who always get their way? They may not hold a position of authority, yet it seems they always get what they want. Do you find yourself in situations where people ask something of you, and you know in your heart you should say no, but to maintain peace, you say yes? See, Jesus never said, «Blessed are the peacekeepers.» A peacekeeper is someone who will maintain compromise to keep the peace. He said, «Blessed are the peacemakers.» A peacemaker is someone who will confront, if need be, to achieve true peace.
All right, let’s go back to Elijah. We began discussing him in the last chapter. Here’s a guy who confronts the king, the false prophets, and the queen. He makes a statement that I said reveals a massive spirit of intimidation. That spirit is launched at him. Instead of going back and confronting her and dealing with the spirit in her, he runs for his life. He travels through the nation, sits under a tree, and wishes to die. Now, let’s focus here. He sits under that tree and prays that he would die. Let’s think about this: Elijah is confused, depressed, hopeless, and has lost his vision. These are the symptoms—the fruit growing on the tree. You can go to a counselor, and if that counselor is not spirit-led, he can help you pick off the fruit of hopelessness, depression, and loss of vision. However, if you don’t sever the root—the spirit of intimidation—that fruit will eventually grow back.
This is what Elijah did not do, and this is what I battled over and over again. Can I tell you honestly? I’m going to be a little transparent. Before I got saved, I never fought depression. After I got saved and entered the ministry, I struggled with depression like crazy. I remember times sitting in my hotel room during the first seven years of my ministry. I recall one time sitting in a hotel room in Minnesota, staring at a spot on the wall for 20 minutes, with thoughts racing through my mind: Why do you travel? Why do you leave your wife and kids? Why don’t you get a real job? Literally, I would have thoughts like that, and I would be so depressed that I had to force myself to push forward because I didn’t understand what I was battling. I thought I was struggling with depression, so I prayed, «God, please fill me with your Spirit. God, please give me joy,» instead of dealing with the spirit.
There is a man of God whom I highly respect. He has impacted literally hundreds of thousands—maybe millions—of lives. He is now in heaven, and I’m sure his reward is great. He had a vision of Jesus. In this vision, which was decades ago, Jesus was speaking to him from scripture. The man saw Jesus in the vision, and Jesus said, «I want you to open your Bible to…» and began teaching him from that scripture. In the middle of Jesus talking to him about that scripture, a demon appeared in the vision. The demon was about half the size of a man; it was green and had animal and human features. He described it as slimy. As soon as that demon appeared in the vision, it was as though a mute button was pressed on Jesus.
Jesus continued to talk, but he couldn’t hear what He was saying. He exclaimed, «Jesus, I can’t hear you! Please tell that demon to go!» But Jesus just kept talking. He became frustrated and heard the Holy Spirit say, «You’re the one with authority. I gave you the authority. You command that demon to leave.» See, Jesus is at the right hand of the Father, and He entrusted His authority to us. That minister looked at that demon and simply said, «I command you in the name of Jesus to leave.» The demon left, and it was as if the mute button was switched off, allowing him to hear Jesus again. This is the struggle I wrestled with repeatedly. I would be in hotel rooms, asking God, «What sin have I committed?» I would confess everything. If I spoke harshly to my wife or my kids, I would confess every sin I could think of—even sins I had not committed—just in case I might have thought of them. Yet the heavens above me felt like brass.
I will never forget when God revealed to me that the reason I couldn’t hear His voice was because I was tolerating that intimidating spirit. The reason I tolerated it was that I didn’t know what it was. That’s why I wrote a book and developed a course; I don’t want you to endure that spirit not even for a moment. Heaven has much to say to you, and what you need to hear from Heaven is crucial to your success in your calling.
Let me say this: Jezebel has this spirit operating in her, and that spirit is attacking Elijah. That spirit was released by her; it’s called witchcraft. Let me read this: «Now it happened, when Joram saw Jehu, Joram is the son, I believe, of Ahab and Jezebel, he said, 'Is it peace, Jehu? ' So he answered, 'What peace, as long as the harlotries of your mother Jezebel and her witchcraft are so many? '» When we hear the term witchcraft, we often imagine the woman on a broomstick with a wart on the end of her nose and a big pointed hat. That is a very narrow view of witchcraft. Witchcraft simply means control. When someone tries to control your life, that is witchcraft. Paul addressed this with the Galatian church, saying, «Oh foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?» They were not put under potions and spells; what happened was that some self-appointed teachers came in and attempted to impose the law back on them. They tried to control the Galatian church with their legalistic teachings. So, witchcraft is when someone assumes a position of authority over you that they do not have. It is when someone tries to control you, and that is witchcraft.
Again, Elijah is confused, depressed, hopeless, and has lost his vision. These are some of the symptoms. What do you lose when you yield to a spirit of intimidation? You lose peace. I remember having no peace in those hotel rooms, crying out to God. You lose your confidence. I didn’t want to preach; I wanted to fly home and get another job. I’ll be really honest with you: you lose your courage, endurance, heroism, resolution, and security. This is what you lose when you come under a spirit of intimidation.
I will never forget the time I preached in a church on a Sunday morning. It was a magnificent service. So many people got saved; it was a big church. I remember this vividly: nobody said anything negative to me; all I heard were great reports from the pastor and his team. Yet, when I returned to my hotel room that afternoon, I found myself struggling with depression. I wanted to quit the ministry and get a real job. I was going through all this, and I didn’t even want to go back to the church that night. I was so depressed.
I remember walking into the church that night and teaching on spiritual authority for about 60 minutes. At the end of the service, the pastor looked at me and said, «Man, you don’t know how right you are tonight.» I asked, «Why do you say that?» He replied that a very prominent couple in his church, the wife, called him that afternoon and said, «Pastor, I know you’re not going to put up with this man’s preaching any longer, and you’re not going to let him minister in our church again.» She told the pastor, «I’m going to stay home tonight and pray against that man.» I looked at the pastor and asked, «And you said what to her?» He told me, «I just told her to trust God.» I thought, «No wonder I struggled in my hotel room all afternoon.»
Nobody said anything negative to me, but that woman, she and her husband had authority in that church, decided, «I’m going to pray against him,» and the pastor didn’t stop her.
I’ll never forget the time I was in Indonesia. It was a massive conference. Well, when I say massive, it was about 2,000 people, so it wasn’t that big, but it was a significant conference. There were like three ministers: myself and two others from Asia. One of them was a person who did some very strange things; I mean, they used wine and anointed people’s eyes for deliverances and did all these off-color things. I remember feeling a little uncomfortable around this minister, and I was again fighting depression. I didn’t understand what it was or the symptoms of it. I told my driver, «You know, I’m really struggling; I’m fighting depression.» He said, «Man, I’ve been too.» I looked at the pastor and said, «I’ve really been wrestling in my room; I’m fighting depression.»
The pastor looked at me and said, «I’ve been fighting depression too.» I asked, «Can I ask you about this one minister you have in the conference who uses all these weird techniques? Do you feel good about it?» He said, «No, I don’t.» I responded, «Then why do you have this person ministering in the conference?» He replied that he had told the person they couldn’t do the wine stuff and the oil drops in the eyes. I said, «Okay, big deal. The spirit behind that is still operating. You may have stopped the physical, but you’re still giving that spirit a platform.» He acknowledged, «You’re right.» I asked the pastor, «Do your people or leaders ask you things, and you want to say no but say yes?» He said, «Yes.» I told him, «You need to be a leader. If something doesn’t feel right in your spirit, you need to trust that that is the Holy Spirit showing you.»
Can I tell you? That pastor was delivered from intimidation because he and I worked through this journey together. And listen to this: that church, which at the time had 4,000 members, once that pastor got free from intimidation, grew to over 100,000 members. They built an 18,000-seat sanctuary and a hospital.
Let me share another story. There was a pastor in Atlanta who had 600 people in his church and was completely controlled by his board. He could never lead anything the board wanted because they were the wealthy businessmen of the church. I came in long after I had been set free from intimidation and preached on intimidation. That pastor got so free that I thought he might have a heart attack when I prayed for him. Do you know that that church grew to over 10,000 members within five years? He went from 600 to over 10,000 members in Atlanta in just five years. He went everywhere sharing that the change in his ministry occurred when the spirit of intimidation was broken off his life.
I don’t care if you’re in the marketplace, government, or professional athletics; the intimidating spirit wants to stop the gifts within you, wants to get you depressed, confused, and hopeless so that you become ineffective in building the kingdom of God. That’s not what God wants for you. Quit condemning yourself over something you did two years ago or something you think you might have done last week. You’re not dealing with that; you’re probably dealing with a spirit of intimidation.
Can I say this? When a person sins, they know it. My advice is to repent quickly, ask for forgiveness quickly, and then move on because the blood of Jesus buries that sin in the sea of forgetfulness. It is time for you to confront this spirit of intimidation because it will blame you, telling you that you’re just not good enough, that you’ve messed up one too many times. It will try to put the focus on you. In the next several lessons, the last four lessons, we will address this issue so you never have to endure it again. We’re also going to show you how to stir that gift of God within you so you can start ministering to the people in your world. So buckle up because in Lesson Five, we’re going to kick it into high gear.