Rabbi Schneider - Ordained to Fight
You see, when the Lord, beloved one, gives gifts to the body, the gifts that He gives are not just for the individual that has received the gift. But the gifts that God gives individuals are meant to be ministered to the body. And so again I believe. And when I say I believe, that's not even strong enough a word because I heard the Lord literally say to me, "The gift of breakthrough is upon your life". What He actually said to me was, "The only gift that you have is breakthrough".
And I shared about that in last season on this topic. And what happened was I was alone in Colorado in the middle of the mountains. And in my sleep one night, the Spirit spoke to me and said to me audibly, "The only gift you have is breakthrough". And when I heard Him say that beloved, it really grieved me. I mean, because I felt like well, "Lord, what about all the other things that I'm doing? The preaching and the teaching and the evangelism? Because you just said to me, 'The only gift you have is breakthrough'". And as I just sat before the Lord and waited on Him and looked to Him for understanding as to what was going on, I feel He brought clarity to me and said, "No, I've anointed you to teach. I've anointed you to preach and evangelize. But the unique gift that I have on you that very few people have is the gifting of breakthrough". It's an empowerment to break through walls that have not yet been broken through.
And I believe that because His gift of breakthrough is on me, those of you that are receiving from me are receiving the word of the Lord through my life, and their spirit in the word that will generate breakthrough, beloved one, in your life. Whether it's in your circumstances or whether it's in the internal realm of the spirit, which is the most important of all. And so once again, we're calling this series spiritual breakthrough. This is the first episode of Season 2. Now, we're using as our primary text for this series the example from the life of David that's found in What had happened was David had just got anointed king. Now, anointed means that there's an indument of the Spirit that has come upon us. And indument of God's presence, power and authority.
And so David had just been anointed king. And as soon as the enemy (the Philistines) heard that David was anointed, they immediately began to seek him out to attack him. And so the foundation that I laid in Season 1 was that you should anticipate and expect the enemy to come against you when you're moving forward in the anointing. It happens when we first become believers, because the enemy sees that we've entered into the Kingdom of God, and so he tries to stop us. And it happens as we continue to make strides forward in Hashem. So we need to become soldiers and recognize that part of walking with God is walking through spiritual attack. Because too many of us are like ostriches that want to put our head in the ground, pretending that there's no such thing as evil.
Remember that old, you know, saying years ago? I hear no evil. I see no evil. It's like, no evil is real. And the devil is real. And the Bible says that our enemy is prowling about looking for someone to devour. Paul said that we struggle. And when he said "we," he wasn't talking to the world. He was talking to those that were born of God's Spirit in the book of Ephesians. He said, we, you and I, struggle not against flesh and blood, but against forces and powers of spiritual wickedness. We're in a fight. And so we need to adopt a soldier's mentality. Because too many of God's people think that being a Christian is just being a do-gooder. You know, like Johnny Appleseed. Being a believer is much more than being a do-gooder, it's understanding spiritual reality and it's knowing how to fight.
You know, at the end of Paul's life, right before Paul was about your breath his last, Paul said, "I have fought the fight". We're in a fight. And just as David was attacked by the Philistines that were a symbol of the powers of darkness that come against you and I, and yet he was able to overcome the enemy by recognizing what was going on, going down into a spiritual stronghold, a secret place in the Lord where he fellowshipped with the Lord and look to the Lord to get a strategy and to get empowered to respond. Just as David overcame by putting the right spiritual strategy into effect, you and I also, beloved ones, will overcome the enemy and will rise because of the attack higher into the realm of God's light.
You see, the Lord has ordained that His sons and daughters have to fight in order that we would ascend into the light. In other words, sometimes we ask, "Well, why did God create the devil"? Sometimes people can't admit the fact that God is somehow responsible for the fact that there's a devil. Some of you even when I'm saying it are kind of like flinching: what is he saying? But think about it. If God is all-knowing, if God knows the end from the beginning, didn't He know that Satan that Lucifer was going to fall from heaven down to earth and torment mankind when He created Satan? The Bible tells us that Satan used to be, you know, an Angel before the Lord. But somehow pride arose in his heart and he ended up trying to exalt himself above God. And as a result, God expelled him from heaven. And one-third of the angels followed and now they're on earth tormenting men.
So the question is, if God knows everything, if He knows the end from the beginning, He would have known when He created Lucifer that Lucifer was going to do this. So God could have fixed that problem and never created Lucifer. Or He could have fixed what was in Lucifer before He created him that God knew was going to go wrong and cause him to fall. But God didn't do that. He knew what was going to happen. And if He knew it was going to happen and He created Lucifer, He must have known that he was going to fall from heaven, come to earth as an enemy of mankind, and opposing God in the world.
You see, God has a purpose for this. That's what I'm trying to help you understand, is that the devil is not an accident. The evil, the existence of evil is not because something went wrong that somehow took God off guard or somehow was not part of God's ultimate plan. Because all of history, everything that God created, including the invisible world of angels, including the devil himself, everything that God created... because He created all things, right? God created everything. Everything that God created was created for a purpose. Everything was created for a purpose. And God's entire creation is moving towards the end for which it was created. It's all serving God's purpose. All things work together for good in God's gracious overall plan over His creation.
And so the point is, is that if God did not want you and I to have to overcome evil, He would have never created evil. But the point is, beloved, we're in a war. And this is part of God's plan. You see, even as Jesus, as I said last week, Jesus' first act after coming out of the Jordan River when He was baptized by Yochanan (John the Baptist), the first thing that Jesus did after that time where He came out of the river and the Spirit of the Lord declared, "You are My beloved Son and in you I'm well pleased". And the people around heard the voice say, "This is my beloved Son, and in Him I'm well pleased". The first thing that happened was, after that, the Spirit of the Lord led Jesus into the wilderness. Who led Jesus into the wilderness? The Bible says, "The Spirit of the Lord led Jesus into the wilderness". Why? He was there to do battle against the devil for 40 days.
See, before Jesus began His ministry, first He overcame the devil in the wilderness. And the scripture says after the 40 days, He came out of the wilderness in the power of the Spirit. He was led into the wilderness by the Spirit, but after overcoming the devil in the wilderness, He came out in the power of the Spirit and His ministry began. My point is, beloved, we're in a fight. And even as David was attacked by the Philistines, as you and I move forward in our anointing, we're going to experience the blowback of the enemy. But understand we shouldn't hide from it, we shouldn't pretend it's not real. Rather we should recognize it and know it's part of God's plan that God's purpose is that we learn how to fight, that we learn how to overcome. And as we learn how to fight and overcome, we ascend the powers of darkness and the result is we are then empowered in the Spirit in ever greater ways.
So let's not pretend evil doesn't exist. Let's not look away as if it's not real. Let's recognize it is the real, we're in a war, and let's learn how to fight. You see many of the thoughts that you're having in your mind that are attacking you, you think they're just thoughts. The thoughts of worry, the thoughts of fear, the thoughts of self-rejection, the thoughts of self-condemnation, the thoughts of accusation that you have towards other people, thoughts that are depressing you. All those thoughts, beloved, listen, they're coming from the realm of spiritual darkness. Listen to what I just said. We're in a fight. And we're looking for breakthrough and we have breakthrough in the Spirit. But you have to understand if you're going to get breakthrough, you must first recognize you're in a war and you need to recognize the enemy. Thoughts of darkness are an attack on your life.
Listen to me. When you have thoughts of depression, confusion, fear, worry, anxiety, accusation, condemnation, understand that thoughts come from the realm of the Spirit. You see, thoughts have intelligence to them. When Adam and Eve fell, what made them fall? The devil planted a thought in their mind. "Did God really say to you shouldn't eat of the tree? Now, He knew that if you ate of the tree you'd become like him. He's trying to deprive you of something". See? What made Adam and Eve fall? They believed a wrong thought. And so the thoughts that enter your mind are coming from the realm of darkness or the realm of light. But many of us don't recognize that. We don't realize we're in a war. We just think that we're sad or we're depressed or we're anxious. And we just let the thoughts beat us up without recognizing that these are spiritual things and that we need to arise from within, reject them and do warfare against them. You're in a war, beloved one.
Now, let's look here and read the text today. We've read this before, but we're going to start just to give a bit of brief context here. 2 Samuel 5 beginning in verse 17. "When the Philistines heard that they had anointed David King". Now, the Philistines were a physical manifestation of the powers of darkness. See, the Hebrew Bible or the Tanakh helps us to understand spiritual reality, by understanding that the physical things that happened in the Hebrew Bible were symbolic or physical manifestations of a spiritual reality. And so when we look at the material, physical episodes in the Hebrew Bible, we need to understand that there is a spiritual invisible counterpart to them. This is why Paul said, "The things that were written in the Hebrew Bible," Paul said "were written for us believers in Yeshua upon whom the end of the ages has come".
So you might ask yourself, well, what do the Philistines have to do with me? They have a lot to do with you when you understand the Philistines are a symbol of powers of darkness. And even as the Philistines attacked David, when they saw David was anointed, so too the powers of darkness are going to try to mess your life up because they see that you're anointed. Even as Satan tried to trip up Adam and Eve, and did, because the powers of darkness saw God's love and failure on Adam and Eve, so too, beloved, they're going to attack you because darkness hates the light. Let's continue on. "When the Philistines heard 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. "And when David heard of it". So the first thing we need to recognize is David recognized he was under attack.
Let me ask you, beloved one. Do you recognize that you're in a war? And do you recognize when you're under attack? I mean, when my mind gets all messed up, I start praying, I say, "Lord, I know something's not right with the way I'm thinking. What is going on here? Lord, deliver me. Help me to get my thought. I'm in some kind of a war, Lord. The enemy somehow is attacking me because maybe there's an open door. Maybe there's a purpose the enemy's trying to block". But I immediately when I see that my thoughts are getting all deranged. In other words, I'm thinking thoughts of accusation towards somebody or I've... whatever it might be, I just realized my thoughts are not lined up properly, thoughts of suspicion, whatever, I immediately go to the Lord, "Lord help me. I'm under some type of an attack here". I recognize that it's not just my own mind, but it's a mind-bending spirit that is causing my thoughts to be out of alignment.
So I want you to hear what David did again. When the Philistines heard that he was anointed, the Bible says they went up to seek him out. And then it said, "And when David heard of it". I just want to ask you, are you aware when you're under attack? Father, right now in Yeshua's name, I pray for a supernatural awareness to be developed within each one of your children that is hearing the sound of my voice right now. Father, that You would wake us to recognize when we're under attack. That Father when we're under attack, we just wouldn't bear it not realizing what's going on. We wouldn't think that it just that our thoughts are messed up. We wouldn't just ignore it. But that Father that you would wake us up to recognize when we're under attack, so we could do what David did and come to you for help and deliverance.
Listen, to what happened next. "When David heard of it, He went down to the stronghold". Now, I spoke about this in Season 1. But a stronghold it's a place of defense. It's a castle. So David withdrew into a safe place. What do you do when you're under attack? The first thing that you should do, beloved one, is draw near to God. Don't try to fight the battle on your own because the flesh has no power over the realm of darkness. When we're under attack when something's wrong, when we're anxious, when we're angry, when we're afraid, whatever it might be, when we're under significant temptation, what should we do? We should go into the stronghold. Just like David did. We should go into that castle of God's presence.
The Hebrew word "stronghold" carries with the idea of a castle, a place of defense. We should get along with God and say, "God help me. I don't know what's going on here. God have mercy on me. Deliver me". Let's continue on. "When David heard of it, he went down to the stronghold. Now, the Philistines came and spread themselves out in the valley of Repheim". I want you to focus on that word for a second. That the Philistines, that's a symbol, they're a symbol of the powers of darkness, they spread themselves out. Listen again. "Now the Philistines came". Why did they come? To attack David "...and they spread themselves out".
So I want you to understand is that sometimes when we're under attack we're not just attacked on one front. But sometimes, beloved ones, and you know this as well as I do, sometimes when it rains it pours. Sometimes everything hits you all at once. Maybe your finances, your health, or your children, or your thoughts. Sometimes everything is happening at the same time. When that happens, you know what, beloved? Just recognize that you're not the only one this has ever happened to. This has happened to God's children from the very beginning. It happened to David and it's going to happen to you and I. Just withdraw into the stronghold and just cry out to God for help. Get still before God because His power will be perfected in your weakness.
When Paul was being tormented by the devil, we've read the book of Corinthians, he cried out to God, cried out to God. God said, "Paul, My grace will be sufficient for you to get through this, and Paul, my power is going to be perfected in your weakness". So just know, beloved one, as we wind up this episode, it is a natural, normal thing for us to go through an attack of the enemy. It's part of how we become strong. Now, make sure to join me next time as we continue to learn how to transform our trials into our victories, because you're about to get more breakthrough in your life.