John Bevere - Breaking the Chains (Stop Tolerating Sin Today)
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I asked the first question: when did you fall out of love with Jesus? We just read chapter 17, and it’s a real eye-opener. As a matter of fact, the first person who read the manuscript said to me, «It really clicked for me when I heard what the famous evangelist said to you in prison.» Here’s the story: I had never met this man; he was the most famous person in the world for all the wrong reasons. He was in jail because he had committed fraud, and in the fourth year of prison, he read the first book I wrote and requested that I come visit him. I’ll never forget walking into that penitentiary. He looked at me, grabbed me by the shoulders, his eyes were clear, and he said, «Did you write it or a ghostwriter?» I said, «No, I’ve gone through a wilderness, but not nearly like you’ve gone through.» He said, «We have so much to talk about, and we only have an hour and a half.»
I remember him sitting down, and the first words out of his mouth were, «John, this prison wasn’t God’s judgment on my life; it was His mercy.» He said, «If I had continued to live the way I was living, I would have ended up in hell forever.» I remember when I got comfortable with him, I asked the first question: when did you fall out of love with Jesus? He said, «I didn’t.» I remember I got a little upset; my walls went back up because I really didn’t know this man. I’d only spent 20 minutes with him. I said, «What do you mean you didn’t stop loving Jesus? You committed adultery,» and I named the woman he committed adultery with. «In 1983, you were arrested and prosecuted in 1990. Are you telling me that in those seven years, you loved Jesus?» He said, «John, I loved Him all the way through it.» He saw the confusion on my face, and that’s when he said, «John, I didn’t fear God.» I went, «What?» He said, «I loved Jesus, but I had no fear of God.» He added, «There are millions of American Christians just like me; they love Jesus, but they have no fear of God.»
You see, the Bible says in Proverbs 16:6, «By the fear of the Lord, one departs from evil,» not by the love of God. One departs from evil by the fear of the Lord. I see the fear of God and the love of God as two very important forces that keep us on the narrow road. The love of God keeps us from legalism; the fear of God keeps us from lawlessness. Jesus is going to look at a multitude of people one day, and they’re going to say, «We did wonderful things in Your name,» and He’s going to say, «Depart from me; I don’t know who you are,» because you practice lawlessness. The fear of God protects us from being one of those multitudes that look at Jesus and say, «Hey, I confessed you as my Lord; I went to church.»
Whoa, wait a minute, I don’t want to hear Him say that. You don’t want to hear Him say that. What keeps us and protects us from walking away from God and into evil is the fear of the Lord. When I look at our world today, it’s getting crazier by the moment. We are on an exponential curve going up; we are getting crazier and crazier. People who are supposed to be brilliant, smart educators, people of wisdom, are making statements that make you go, «What?» It’s because they keep pushing God away. They are alienated from the life of God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and now their wisdom reflects that of a human being who says, «God, I don’t want Your rule over my life.»
We have pushed and pushed and pushed God away. What happened was that leader, even though he was preaching under the anointing and people were getting saved, pushed God away and turned to his own wisdom, and that wisdom cost him dearly. But in the process, God opened his eyes, and now he’s a man on fire for Jesus. It’s so important that we understand that it’s by the fear of God we depart from evil, not by the love of God. The love of God draws us to Him, but the fear of God repels us from evil. There are two forces that we need to have very active in our lives to protect us.