Rabbi Schneider - When Under Attack
Beloved, I believe there's a supernatural unction, a supernatural mandate and anointing on my life for breakthrough. And I believe the unction for breakthrough that Father has placed upon my life could be imparted unto you. And I believe that through these teachings there's an impartation that will flood your life and propel you into greater breakthrough. First of all, in the spiritual sense, also in the material world. We see an example of how to get breakthrough from the life of David. We began that when David was anointed king, immediately, the Philistines when they heard of it, they attacked him. The truth is, is that when you are moving forward in Hashem, when you're moving forward in the anointing, when you're moving forward in your faith, in your walk with God, when you're moving forward in your ministry, you should understand that the enemy will respond to that and he will try to stop you by attacking you.
And the Lord allows the enemy to respond because there's something about you and I engaging with the enemy and overcoming the enemy's attacks, there's something about us engaging and fighting that causes us to become mature sons and daughters. You see, somehow father has ordained that you and I come into full sonship. And when I say full sonship, I'm speaking both of daughters and sons. That there's something that is required for you and I to enter into the fullness of sonship. And what is required for you and I to mature as sons and daughters is that we fight the enemy and overcome. So the Lord ordained that we would have an adversary.
Think about Jesus what happened when He was anointed by the Holy Spirit at the Jordan River. Most of us know the story. Yeshua goes to the Jordan River, He's immersed by Yochanan, John the Baptist. And as soon as Yeshua comes out of the river, the Holy Spirit descends upon Him in the form of a dove and the voice comes from heaven that says, "You are my beloved son and in you I am well pleased". The people that were there, John the Baptist, heard the voice saying, "He is my beloved Son. This is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased". The point is, is that this is when Yeshua was anointed and called into ministry.
Now, what's the very next thing that happens? The Spirit of the Lord leads Jesus into the wilderness where Yeshua has to combat the devil for 40 days and 40 nights. And it's not until after Yeshua faced the devil and overcame Him in the wilderness that Yeshua's ministry began. In other words, the Lord ordained that before Yeshua's ministry began, He would first have to face the assault of the devil and overcome him. This is why the scripture says that Yeshua was led into the wilderness by the Spirit of God. And then after Jesus faced the devil for 40 days, the Bible says He came out of the wilderness, listen, in the power of the Spirit. He was empowered as He clung to Hashem, as He clung to Father God and resisted the devil's attack in the wilderness.
And so this fight that we're in is part of God's plan for our life. And I talked about that last week in great detail. You need to listen to that message. And I don't often say that. I also said last week that when David realized he was being attacked after he was anointed, he didn't give up his kingship. He didn't say, "Well, it's not worth it. Because if I'm King". Because David had just been anointed king. David didn't say, "Well, it's not worth it. I don't want to be king, because if I am, the Philistines will attack me. And I don't want to have to deal with that". No. Instead, what David did, the scripture says, he went down into a stronghold. So let's read it. "When the Philistines heard this, when they heard that David had been anointed king," reviewing, "when the Philistines heard this, that they had anointed David king over Israel, all the Philistines went up to seek out David". Why were they seeking him? To kill him. To destroy him. "When David heard of it, he went down to," listen now, "the stronghold".
I ended last week's broadcast by talking about the fact that when you and I are moving forward in the anointing, the enemy will respond. He'll try to stop us. And I shared a personal example with you last time that in my own life. The enemy will respond, he'll attack to stop us. And you and I need to be careful. To, number one, recognize that what is happening is an attack of the enemy. Whether it's in our circumstances, something goes wrong, or we come up against a wall, or whether it's in our dreams at night, or whether it's our mind starts having all kinds of wrong thoughts, we need to realize what's going on, we need to realize it's not just something that's going on randomly or in the natural world. We need to realize that we're under attack. So when David heard of it, when he realized he was being attacked, he went down to the stronghold.
So I want to talk about what it means to go down into the stronghold. But before I do, I want to give you one more example of something that happened in my own life in relation to this. I was overseas in Africa a few years ago, preaching the gospel. And as I sat in my little room there, getting ready to minister that day, I noticed that every thought, beloved one, that I was thinking was wrong. My thoughts were wrong about every single person, about every single circumstance. My mind had been bent by the enemy. And I realized what was going on. The enemy was attacking me. He was trying to stop me because he knew I was about to release the gospel, and thousands of people were about to get saved. This is what happened to David. I want to encourage you, don't be ignorant of the schemes of the adversary. When you're moving forward in God, the enemy will come against you. You need to realize what's going on. You need to stand in your place, you need to hold your ground, and you need to go in to, like David did, the stronghold. "When David heard of it, he went down to the stronghold".
Continuing on now, how do we go into a stronghold? David was going into a physical stronghold. I'm talking about taking the physical and helping you understand that really, this is about something spiritual. And I left off last week by sharing with you, I've noticed in my own life that when I am up against a big burden, when I'm carrying something great, I will transition into my prayer language. And what's really interesting about this is that I started using my prayer language before I even knew there was such a thing. No one had ever taught me about it. I was not schooled in it and not read about it. But what I noticed was that as a very young pastor, when I became particularly burdened about something that was going on in the ministry, I would just begin to speak to God from the depths of my soul in a language that was not English. And this is called tongues, it's a personal prayer language.
But before you get thrown off, let me share with you. I want to bring comfort and understanding if at all possible to everybody right now. First of all, a lot of the teaching about tongues has been, in my view, incorrect. Tongues is multi-dimensional. There are many different types of tongues. For example, when we see in the book of Acts 2 that when the Holy Spirit first fell upon the church, those first speak in tongues. We know the story. together in Acts 2 in what's called the upper room. They're in the upper room, the day of Shavuot or Pentecost had come, which was the day that God revealed His glory to the children of Israel at Mount Sinai 1,500 years earlier. So it's just interesting showing the connection between the Brit Chadashah, the New Testament, and the Hebrew Bible. The same day the glory appeared on top of Mount Sinai 1,500 years earlier with Moses and the children of Israel to that same day.
Now the Spirit of the Lord appears in glory again as they're gathered in the upper room. So here they were in the upper room recalling how Father God, how the God of Israel had manifested Himself in fire on top of Mount Sinai 1,500 years earlier and wrote His law on the tablets of stone. As they're thinking about that in the upper room on Pentecost or Shavuot, suddenly, a tongue of fire comes upon each one of those 120 believers and then He fills them with the Spirit, and they begin to speak with tongues. But notice the tongues that they spoke in were known, not unknown, but known languages. They began to speak in languages that they had never learned. Why? Because there were people that were gathered in Jerusalem that spoke many different languages. And the Lord wanted the gospel of Messiah Jesus to be proclaimed and heard by everyone that was there. In other words, He wanted the people that were there that didn't speak Hebrew and didn't speak Aramaic, He wanted them to be able to hear the gospel. So He gave those first 120 believers that had just been filled with the Spirit a supernatural gift to proclaim the gospel in a tongue that they had never learned. But the tongue that they spoke the gospel in was actually a real language.
Now, what's interesting is that many times people are using Acts 2 as a template for what should be everybody's experience. And so the teaching is, and I'm not trying to cross the sanction here, but the teaching is, is that the evidence of being filled with the Holy Spirit is speaking in tongues. And they use Acts 2 as their reference. But what happened in Acts 2 is not what is actually happening in the contemporary church. Because in the contemporary church, when someone says that they were baptized in the Holy Spirit and began to speak with the tongue, that tongue is not an Acts 2 tongue, because the tongue they're speaking in isn't a known language most of the time, but rather it's a prayer language.
And so there are several different types of tongues in the New Testament. There's a tongue that is a supernatural ability to speak in a language that you've never learned, number one. Number two, there's a tongue that is spoken about in the book of Corinthians that is an unknown language, it's a supernatural language that's to be used in a corporate gathering. And when that tongue is used in a corporate gathering, there needs to be an interpreter in the gathering to translate what was just spoken. That's the second use of tongues. But the type of tongues that I'm talking about is not either of those. It's not the tongues in Acts 2, which is a known language. It's not a tongue that someone stands up in a corporate worship services and begins to speak in a tongue, then somebody else stands up and interprets. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about something different.
I'm going to the book of 1 Corinthians 14. I'm reading in verse 4. Paul says this. "One who speaks in a tongue edifies himself". So we're talking about something entirely different now. We're talking about a tongue that is for the benefit of the believer. You see, every other gift of the Holy Spirit is a gift for the body. But the gift of tongues to the personal prayer language is not for the body, but it's for the gift of the individual for the believer. So this is what Paul said. "One who speaks in a tongue edifies himself". See, you edify yourself when you speak in a tongue. And then he goes on in verse 5, he says, "Now I wish that you all spoke in tongues".
Why does Paul want everybody to speak in tongues? Because it's a gift that can edify you. And so I believe that the ability to have a prayer language is not the initial evidence necessarily of being baptized in the Holy Spirit. I don't believe you have to speak in a prayer language or in an unknown tongue to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. Because I believe there are examples in scripture where someone was baptized in the Holy Spirit and they began to proclaim the gospel in their known language. But I do believe that the gift of tongues is a prayer language, is available to everybody. And a lot of times people feel like if you're able to do it at will, it must not be real.
See, this is what happened to me. As a young believer, I noticed that when I got under an extreme burden, I would just transition into my soul, into like this low gear, if you will. I used the illustration last time it's like in the old cars. If you were going up a steep hill, you could put the car in low one or low two, it would bring the transmission way down low to give you much power. That's what I noticed happened to me. If I was under a burden, I transitioned down deep into my soul, and I begin to speak in a tongue. It would just automatically happen. I was carrying a burden, I needed to connect with Father about this. I needed to connect with the Spirit about this burden. And subconsciously, without even choosing to do it, I just did it. I just went down into this low place in the Spirit and began to speak in a prayer language that no one ever taught me about. I didn't even know what it was. I began to ask myself, is this what it means to speak in tongues? I wasn't sure. I thought it was. I didn't know what was going on.
And then when I realized that I could do it at will anytime I wanted to, I thought, "Is this really real? I mean, if it was God, wouldn't it have to be Him starting it within you, and you'd only be able to do it when he was bubbling up from within you? But you can do it anytime you want to," I said to myself. "How do you know if this is God or not"? And so I began to lose confidence. I thought, "Maybe this isn't God. Maybe this isn't really tongues". And then as time went on, beloved, I came to the deep conviction. And now I feel like I know, no, this is my prayer language. I can use it anytime I want to. And I find that when I'm really burned about something, I go into my stronghold oftentimes, which often is this place of using my prayer language.
So I want to encourage you today. Be open. Be open to this. If you just hear something in you, if you've never done this before, just begin to speak out what you hear. And don't question it. Don't say this isn't really real. Just go with it. Just begin to... I don't want to say practice it, because that sounds like you're performing. But what I want you to do is get you in the habit of using it. Because the Holy Spirit makes groanings, the Scripture says, within us that are too deep for words. And that's what this prayer language is. It's the burden of the Holy Spirit in you. It's the burden of your soul being released by the Holy Spirit in the Spirit so that you could connect with God in a very deep and real way.
So number one, when we're under attack, we can go into the stronghold by using our prayer language. Secondly, beloved ones, we go into the stronghold by just getting still and quiet before God, alone with God and just begin to open our heart to Him. Just be real with Him. Just begin to talk to Jesus, whether it's out loud or silently. But go into a place where you're alone with God and just begin to open your soul to Him, just sit before Him, just rest in Him, just ask Him for help. And as you do, He's going to strengthen you and equip you for what you're going through. You see, David clung to God. When he realized he was under attack, he went into the stronghold and he clung to God. The Hebrew word for this is D'vekut. It means clinging. We need to cling to God. Because when we're not clinging to Him, we're vulnerable to the enemy's attacks.
Some of you have heard me share the story. Years ago, I saw so many people that said they were Christians just falling and falling and falling and failing. And it really shook me up because the Bible says we should be victorious in Jesus. And it got to the place where I couldn't put it under a rug anymore. I said, "Lord, unless you tell me why so many people that say they know you and believe in You seem to be failing and falling as a habitual pattern," I said, "How can I believe in You myself"? I said, "Lord, if you're not helping them, how can I be sure you're going to help me"? And I said, "God, I can't go any further until you answer me".
And I just remained in this place of being quiet before the Lord just waiting for Him. I had confidence that He would speak. But I was sad. And the next day as I was in this state, the Holy Spirit clearly spoke to me. And He said to me, "The reason you're seeing what you're seeing, with so many falling and failing is," He said, "because My people are not trusting Me". But when the Spirit said the word "trust," to me, the word "trust" was full of revelation and meaning with the word "clinging". He said, "My people are falling and failing because they're not clinging to Me". So I want to encourage you, beloved. We're going to continue next week. When you're moving forward in the Lord, expect an attack. When you do get attacked, don't panic, don't abandon the ship. Go down deep, go into the stronghold, get alone with God, get still with God, talk to Him, and cling with Him. This is Rabbi Schneider saying, God bless you and Shalom.