John Bevere - This Is How to Push Through Resistance
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Hey everybody, welcome to Lesson 11! Wow, we’re almost at the finish line of the multiplication course. In th+is lesson, I want to talk to you about the hindrances to multiplication, and we’re going to examine that third servant, whom we identified as Larry. What kept him from multiplying? Well, the first thing he said was, «I knew you to be a hard man.» So, error number one is that he didn’t know the character of his master. Then he said, «I was afraid.» His ignorance of the master’s character, his misperception of the master, caused him to be afraid. This happens with many people; when we don’t know God intimately, we end up in fear and, consequently, don’t multiply. Now, this isn’t the case for everyone, but it is the case for many.
You know, there’s a story I want to relate to you about knowing God that I think is quite interesting. Years ago, I traveled to Hawaii from Denver to speak at a conference; it was a leadership conference. I remember after the eight-hour flight, I was sitting at the pool waiting for my room to be ready, and there was a woman dressed up, like I was, waiting for her room. We got to talking, and I found out that she was there for a different conference that was meeting at the hotel. We kept conversing, and she asked what I did and why I was there. I said, «Well, I’m here to speak at a leadership conference; I’m a minister of the Gospel.» When she heard that, she immediately began her discourse about her knowledge of God. She started telling me all about God, and I could tell within just minutes, wow, this woman doesn’t know God!
So she kept going on and on, and I was saying, «Holy Spirit, what do I say to her?» God gave me an idea. I let her finish her discourse and said, «Hey, do you see that man sitting over there across the pool?» She said, «Yeah.» I said, «Let me tell you about that guy. He’s a vegan; he doesn’t eat anything with eyes. Secondly, he’s training to be a U.S. Olympic swimmer. He loves skydiving, tennis, racquetball, and he loves painting.» Then I said, «Do you see the woman standing over there by the hot tub?» She said, «Yeah.» I said, «That’s his wife, and she’s about ten years younger than him.»
Now she’s looking at me a little puzzled. «Why did she just pour out her heart in her discourse on God, and now he’s switched the subject to the guy across the pool?» Her curiosity got the best of her, and she said, «How do you know that guy? Is he here at your conference with you?» I said, «No, I’ve never met him.» All of a sudden, her expression changed, and there was almost a look of concern on her face. She was thinking, «Okay, is this guy a stalker? Is he an FBI agent? Is he CIA? How does he know so much about a guy he’s never met?»
I saw her concern and bewilderment, and I immediately said, «Oh, that’s what I believe about him.» She looked at me, and I said, «You just told me all this about God, and I happen to know God, and almost all of what you said does not line up with the Scriptures in His Word that He gave us in order to know Him. Just as you made up your belief in God, I made up what I believed about that guy. But you want to know why most of what I said about that guy is not true? Because I’ve never taken the time to get to know him. I don’t believe you have taken the time to get to know the true person of Jesus Christ.»
Well, you know, our conversation kind of diminished after that, and she soon afterwards got up and left. But I’m sure it left a lasting impact. It showed her, hey, there’s a good chance I really don’t know who God is. There is an invitation for all of us to know God intimately, but that invitation does come with parameters. Paul the Apostle says it like this: our relationship with Jesus is like a man leaving his father and mother and cleaving to his wife. He said the two become one. This is actually an illustration in Ephesians 5:32 of the way Christ and the Church are one. God gave us an illustration we see every single day of how our relationship is to be with Him, and that is the marriage of a man and a woman.
Let’s talk about that. When a woman walks down an aisle in a wedding dress, she is actually communicating something significant. She is saying goodbye to about 3.9 billion guys—yeah, she’s saying goodbye to every guy on the planet. This is the one and only man I am giving my entire heart and life to. Well, that’s the way we enter into a relationship—a true relationship—with Jesus Christ. This is the way we come to intimately know our Creator. Listen to the words of Jesus: this is Matthew 16. If you truly want to follow me, you should at once completely reject and disown your life, and you must be willing to share my cross and experience it as your own as you continually surrender to my ways.
For if you choose self-sacrifice and lose your lives for my glory, you will continually discover true life. But if you choose to keep your lives for yourself, you will forfeit what you try to keep. The only way to know Jesus is to lay down our life. Knowing God is not a one-time event but a continuation of day-in and day-out serving, loving, and laying our lives down for Him, just as a husband and a wife should do with each other.
So, if you want to talk about the real key to knowing God, it’s found in holy fear. Proverbs 1:7 says, «The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.» The knowledge of what? Knowledge of science? Knowledge of Scriptures? No! Proverbs 2:1-5 tells us it’s the beginning of knowing God intimately. God says when you cry out to know Him, when you search for Him with all of your heart, when you search the Scriptures trying to find Him, you will understand the fear of the Lord, and you will find the knowledge of God. We would say that today we would come to know God intimately.
I don’t want to scare you by saying the fear of the Lord, because when people hear that term, they think, «What, scared of God? God hasn’t given me a spirit of fear.» No, you’ve got the wrong fear. The fear of the Lord is not to be scared of God; you can never be intimate with somebody you’re afraid of. It is to be terrified of being away from Him.
So, the first definition of the fear of the Lord is to be terrified of being away from God. The fear of the Lord is to venerate Him. That’s a big word. What does that mean? It means to revere, honor, and respect Him more than anything or anyone else. That is what we saw in the statement of Jesus; we put Him above everything. Our lives are not even our own anymore; they belong to Him.
This means we will hold Him in the highest esteem, and we will embrace His heart’s desires as more precious and valuable than our own. It is when we end up loving what He loves and hating what He hates. What is important to Him becomes important to us; what is not so important to Him is not so important to us. This holy God-fear puts us in the position to have an authentic relationship with Him.
If you look at Moses and the children of Israel, they knew God by how He answered their prayers; they knew His acts. But Moses knew His ways. Moses put what God desired above everything else, which gave him an intimate knowledge of God. If you look at Israel, they were constantly thinking, «God is a tyrant; He’s trying to starve us. He’s trying to kill our children. At least we had something to eat in Egypt; now He’s brought us out here into this desert to kill all of us.» They saw Him as a tyrant; this is the way that third servant saw his master. He perceived Him to be a hard man, a tyrant.
When we don’t know God, we get an incorrect perception of who He is. The thing I need to remind you of is that all of Israel was delivered out of Egypt. Egypt is a type of the world, and coming out of Egypt is a type of being born again. So here is a bunch of people that are a type and shadow of people who have been saved, but they still didn’t know the character of God. They still saw Him as a tyrant because they lacked holy fear.
This is why, when God came down on the mountain, the people all ran away. Moses said, «Do not fear, because God has come to see if His fear is in you, so that you may not sin.» God wanted an intimate relationship with them, like He had with Moses, because He said, «Hey, I brought you out of Egypt to bring you to Myself, to make you a kingdom of priests, to make you a royal nation.» But they rejected it because they rejected holy fear.
So if you really want to know God and you don’t want to end up like that third servant, you have to deny yourself, take up the cross, and follow Jesus with a joyful heart, serving Him and putting His desires above your own.
Okay, let’s continue. The second fault of that servant was unholy fear. So the first fault was not having holy fear; the second fault was unholy fear. It sounds like a contradiction, but believe me, it all makes sense. The servant made the statement, «I was afraid.» What happened? Fear paralyzed him. The love of God is the very opposite of ungodly fear.
If you look at 1 John 4:18, John makes this statement: «Perfected love expels all fear.» I will never forget the time I was in San Diego, California. I had just heard about a very well-known pastor’s son being killed; I believe it was in a car accident, and I was a bit shaken. I remember after the service, I was in the room where I was staying, taking off my shoes to change into gym shorts and go to bed, and I started thinking these thoughts: «So and so is a well-known minister; his son was electrocuted and died. So and so is a well-known minister; his son died in a car wreck. This other minister’s son just died in a car wreck. So and so was a very famous minister; he had three of his children die; he buried three of them.»
I’m telling you, this overwhelming fear started gripping me. But in the midst of that, God, in His mercy, spoke deep in my heart and said, «Son, any area that you have fear is an area you have not submitted to Me; you still own it.» I was shaken by that, and I thought, «Oh my goodness, I own my sons! I have taken possession of our four boys!»
I remember jumping up in that room and screaming my oldest son’s name out: «Addison, he’s not mine! Austin, he’s not mine!» I ripped right through the boys' names and said, «God, they’re Yours! Lisa and I are stewards of these men that belong to You, but devil, you’re not killing my sons in Jesus' name!» You know what? The fear of losing my sons left that day forever. I have never fought it, not even for a moment since. Why? Because I gave them to who they belong to! God’s perfected love casts out fear.
What is the greatest love? To lay our life down. When we truly lay our life down for Jesus, fear is expelled. Let me say this again: any area of fear is an area that you have not submitted to the cross. Paul the Apostle addresses his son Timothy, his son in the faith, and says, «Timothy, do not neglect the gift that is in you.» The word neglect means to overlook, to regard it lightly, to not think about it, to ignore it. That’s what that third servant did. However, the third servant saw his master as a tyrant.
This is a case where Timothy saw God as a loving father, but yet he was still neglecting his gift. Not all people who neglect their gift fall under the category of the servant who saw his father in the incorrect light. There are people that actually love God, but they overlook and neglect the importance of the gift of God in their life. Paul had to write to Timothy twice about this and say, «Timothy, that gift of God in you is dormant; you need to stir it up.»
That word stir up means to revive back to life. It means to fan it back into a flame, like a fire just about to go out. You blow on it and add some wood, and all of a sudden it goes back bright again. Our gifts can lie dormant; that God-given ability in you can be dormant and inoperative. Why? Paul said to Timothy, «Because of a spirit of intimidation.» I am not going to take the time to talk about this, because I have an entire course called «Breaking Intimidation» and an entire book called «Breaking Intimidation.»
There were times that I would get up to preach, and I couldn’t preach myself out of a bag. I was so confused! I preached like a wild man yesterday, so free, so fun, so full of joy. Tonight, I could barely keep a thought. What’s going on? What sin did I commit? When in reality, I came under a spirit of intimidation! God hasn’t given you a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind.
This is what Paul said: «Stir up the gift of God that’s within you; it’s being overlooked; it’s not operating!» Stir it up! So some of you may have a correct perception of God, but you, like Timothy, are causing your gift to be inoperative. This is so important. Remember what Paul said: «Woe is me if I don’t steward the gift of God well!» Why? Because God gave you that gift for others to benefit from, and if you don’t operate in that gift, then that means what He intends for others will not happen.
I hope you’ve got something out of this. It’s so important that we recognize our gifts and not neglect them because of intimidation or fear, whether it’s a fear of not knowing God’s character or a genuine fear of just failing and not succeeding. So many people think they’re going to fail before they ever begin. The fear of failure is a robber; it robs people of the gifts that God has given you. Hey, I love you so much, and I hope you receive this from a church dad who truly has a heart for you and wants to see you succeed.
The next lesson? Oh, it’s the best! We’re going to talk about the enhancer of your gifts. We’ll see you then!