Rabbi Schneider - Where Do Thoughts of Fear, Worry, and Anxiety Come From
Jesus said, "He that overcomes as I have overcome shall sit down with me on my throne even as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne". What did Jesus overcome? Well, beloved ones, as soon as he started his ministry what happened? It says that the Spirit led him into the wilderness where he did battle with the devil for forty days and forty nights. The Word of God is very clear that our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and forces of spiritual darkness.
You see, beloved ones, I am also a pastor. And what I've found pastoring people is that many of God's people are being oppressed with demonic forces of darkness. Many were coming for help. In fact, so many were coming and asking for help that I had to look to the Lord to figure out another way to help them since the people that I had trained to minister what I call freedom and deliverance were overwhelmed with so many people requesting their help that we couldn't accommodate them all. We were having to book people out for help a year in advance. And it was in this time of grieving in my heart where I was saying to the Lord, Father, what can I do? So many people need help and I can't tell them we can't see you for a year. And it was during this time that the Holy Spirit birthed in me and breathed in me, I believe, a divine strategy, a divine tool to put in the hands of God's people so that they, beloved, could deliver themselves from the powers of darkness.
You see, Jesus is called the Great Deliverer. He came, the Scripture says, to set the captives free. And we're in this war. We're in this fight. And so what Jesus wants to do, get this now, is he wants to empower us, and train us, and teach us, get it now, how to fight the powers of darkness for ourselves. We can pretend that we're not in a war but beloved, to do so is just willful ignorance, because the Scripture specifically says we are in a war. Paul said in Ephesians, 6, our struggle, he said, he was speaking to believers, is not against flesh and blood but against forces of spiritual wickedness.
The authors of Scripture in the New Testament tell us that our adversary. He was speaking, when he said our, he was saying to us as Christians, he said, our adversary, the devil, is roaming about looking for someone to devour. And so it's important that we don't hide from this reality; that we live in a world, beloved, where Satan and demons dwell. That's why as soon as Jesus began his ministry he began to set people free that were dealing with demons.
I encourage you to get this entire series. This is now the fifth part of the series. I've already done a lot of foundational teaching the reality of demons. People often times hear the term demon and they come up with the concept and they reject demons because the concept that they have of demons is a wrong concept. A demon, beloved, is simply a spiritual force of darkness that has divine intelligence and personality. And we defined this in some of the earlier episodes. I also talked about the strategies that demons use to gain entrance. In other words, how can a demon gain influence over a person's life? How can a demon get lodged in a part of a person? I defined the difference between possession and occupancy. And I explained, beloved ones, that a demon cannot possess God's people, but a demon can occupy space. And a demon can inflict torment.
I want to show you now, and again you need to get the entire series on this, but I want to move forward now, as I'm talking about demons occupying space, and I'm gonna begin to take us down a journey now that deals with the mystery. And the mystery that I'm referring to is what role did demons play in sickness. In other words, is sickness caused by demons or is sickness just something simply that can be medically and scientifically explained and demons have nothing to do with it. I'm sure that even many of you that are under the sound of my voice right now probably in your heart of hearts don't believe that demons cause sickness or can cause sickness.
Many people say that the Bible when it was written and it began to talk about how demons cause sickness, many people believe that they just didn't know any better 2,000 years ago in the days that the Bible was written. And they attributed supernatural causes to physical problems only because they were ignorant. I'm sure again, beloved ones, many of you probably think this, that you know, when the Bible speaks about somebody in the New Testament being afflicted with a demon some of you think it really wasn't a demon. It was just an unscientific community and they didn't realize it was simply a medical problem. They were just superstitious.
But the question that you need to ask yourself right now is this. Is the Word of God true? And does the Word of God accurately record Jesus's words? Because we read in the New Testament that Jesus would deliver people or heal people from their sickness, and some of those times Jesus said the source of the sickness was a demon. So you need to really ask yourself right now the question, do you believe God's Word, because you can't have it both ways. You can't say that no sickness is ever caused by a demon, and at the same time say you believe the Bible, because Jesus said in the Scripture that certain times when he was helping somebody physically, someone that was sick, he said that the source of their sickness was a demon.
So you either need to receive and accept the Word of God as the Word of God or instead what you're doing is you're saying the Bible really isn't the authoritative written Word of God. And I want to encourage you, Jesus said, the words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit and they are life, and there's no reason for you to doubt that the Word of God, the New Testament is an accurate, historical record of both what Jesus did and what he said. So knowing this now, we're gonna look at a few Scriptures in the Word of God. We're talking about how demons occupy space. They can occupy space in our mind by causing our mind to be obsessed with worries, and fears. To prove this to you, most of you that are watching right now consider yourself Christians. And I'm saying that demons can occupy space in human beings. I'm not saying that we're possessed by demons. I'm just simply saying that they can intrude into our space.
Now to prove this to you, I know that some of you that are watching right now have been even recently, lately you've just been living very fearfully. You're obsessed, some of you, with thoughts of fear, thoughts of worry, and thoughts of anxiety. So I want to ask you a question, if I'm talking to you right now. If the truth about you is that you have been obsessed with thoughts of fear, anxiety and worry, I want to ask you a question. Where are those thoughts coming from? Is God the author of fear, and worry or anxiety? Or does fear, and worry, and anxiety come from a different spirit? You can't explain fear, and worry, and anxiety just by a test tube of chemicals. No, it's a spirit.
So the point is, if you find yourself often times just tormented by fear, and anxieties, and worries, and fretting, what that means is that there is a force of darkness, get this now, that has, get it, invaded your space. It's invaded your thinking. It's invaded your mind. Now that doesn't make you unclean. It just speaks about the reality of the war we're in. In the same way that when Jesus went into the temple 2,000 years ago, he had to drive out the money changers; they had invaded God's space.
Listen, I'm trying to help you. If we just run away from this because it makes us uncomfortable, then there's not any help for us because we have to know thy enemy before we can defeat him. And to bury our head in the ground and pretend that this isn't real is a sure recipe to continue to live with the same problems that you've been having because as the Scripture said, our fight is not against flesh and blood but against principalities and forces of darkness.
So if we're gonna win the fight, we have to realize that we do have an unseen enemy. We need to recognize when he is the one that's responsible for some of the things that are hurting us in life. And when we recognize that there is a devil, that there are demons, that we are against spiritual darkness, then we can begin to put on the spiritual armor, as Paul tells us in the Word of God, and begin to dislodge them and drive them out of our space, drive them out of their occupancy because they're just squatters. They have no right to be there. But they don't just go away. We need to stand up and make them go away. And I'm going to teach you how to do that, beloved ones, as I continue our journey in this series together.
So with that said, I want to show you now some examples how in the Word of God we see that certain instances of sickness had Satanic origins. Now I certainly want to be very clear about this. I don't believe that every sickness is caused by a demon, because reality is we live in physical bodies that wear out. And a lot of the things that happen in our bodies are simply the result of aging, and so on and so forth. So I want you to be very clear. I'm not saying that every sickness is caused by a demon. But I am saying that in certain instances illness is caused by demons and I'm gonna show you some examples of this now in the Word of God.
Let's begin with the Book of Luke today, beloved ones, chapter 13, verse 10 through 16. I'm reading from the New American Standard version. I want you to hear the Word of God: And He, speaking of Jesus, was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And there was a woman who for eighteen years had, had a sickness caused by a spirit. Now listen, it doesn't get any clearer than this, does it? That for eighteen years this woman had, had a sickness, get it now, caused by a spirit. I mean it's just, you can't get around that.
So we have to ask our self the question once again, is the Word of God true and accurate or is it not? Of course I'm here today, beloved, as one that's proclaiming the Word of God the same yesterday, today and forever. Jesus said his words were Spirit and life. And so we see here again that in this instance there was a sickness caused by a spirit. Continuing on: and she bent double, and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, He called her over and said to her, Woman, you are freed from your sickness. And He laid His hands on her; and immediately she was made erect again and began glorifying God.
But the synagogue official, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, began saying to the crowd in response, There are six days in which work should be done; so come during them and get healed, and not on the Sabbath day. But the Lord answered him and said, You hypocrites, does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the stall and lead him away to water him? And this woman, a daughter of Abraham as she is, get this now, whom Satan has bound... Here was a woman that was sick. Jesus's explanation was that it was a spirit. And now Jesus says in verse 16, it was Satan that had her bound, he said, for eighteen long years, should she not have been released from this bond on the Sabbath day? And so very, very clear instance in the Word of God.
Do you know, I recently was on a mission's trip preaching the Gospel in Uganda? And the first day that I was there I began to exercise very authoritative power and authority over the realm of the demonic in the people's lives there. I just began to take authority over Satan, over demonic influence and demonic powers, very strong. I felt the unction, I felt the authority on me as I was taking authority over the devil in that place to bring the kingdom of God into their lives and into the atmosphere. The next day, beloved, when I went to preach, I preached at a pastor's meeting first in the morning.
And as I got ready to go preach in that pastor's meeting, my heart was just really aching. And I felt actually pain going all the way down my left hand. It was so painful, my left arm, it was so painful, beloved ones, that I couldn't even hold the microphone in my hand as I was ministering to those pastors. I gave it to one of my team members. And I didn't even finish the message. After that, I went back to my hotel room. I thought if I laid down that maybe, you know, the pain would go away because I had to preach in a few more hours that night. I'm laying in bed. The pain in my heart, beloved, it's not any better. I still feel the pain down my arm.
And all of a sudden as I'm laying in bed crying out to God, what am I gonna do? All of a sudden it occurred to me that I was being attacked by our enemy because of the authority that I was exercising over him. And listen, as soon as I realized that, I took authority over the powers of darkness that were causing the pain in my heart and down my left arm. And as soon as I realized that this pain in me was being caused from the realm of darkness from Satan, immediately it left. I went back that night, beloved, and I want to tell you, we saw something like I've never seen before. Over a crowd of 8,000 people, as I took authority over the devil, demons started manifesting everywhere as so many people got set free. I'm gonna show you a little clip about that right now.
Beloved ones, it was like the Book of Acts. So many were delivered and set free. Now I want to continue, and I talked about how demons can be the source of physical problems, how I myself was being inflicted with pain from a demon. And once I exercised authority over that demon, the pain left. I showed you in Africa just now the same phenomenon. And I want you to understand that what you just saw in Africa, that might seem so far away from you. In other words, you know, that was so extreme, but don't make the mistake of thinking that, you know, that may happen in Africa, but it can't affect me. Because it may affect you not in the way it affected people in Africa, but again as I said earlier, fear, worry, doubt, anxiety even physical pain sometimes can be the result of a demon wanting to inflict pain.
Jesus said the devil has come to steal, and kill and destroy. Here is an example in the Word of God how demons can not only occupy space in a body, but how they can occupy space in a mind. Listen now as I read from the Book of Matthew, chapter 17, verse 15 through 18. I know this is uncomfortable, but please stay with me. This is the Word of God. Hear the Word of God, beloved ones: Lord, the man's father cried, Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is a lunatic and is very ill; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water. Now this is an example of someone hurting them self, someone inflicting pain on themselves. How many have ever heart of someone or know someone that inflicted pain on themselves? What's happening with many of the young people today is they do what's called cutting. They cut themselves. What's behind that? Why do they cut themselves?
Beloved, it's a demon that is inflicting pain on them. And that's what was going on here with this demon that was throwing this man's son into the fire. And the man continues in verse 16. He says: I brought him to Your disciples, and they could not cure him. And Jesus answered and said, You unbelieving and perverted generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him here to Me. And Jesus rebuked him, get it now, and the demon can out of him, and the boy was cured at once. Again, the man's father said in verse 15, he was a lunatic and the cause of the boy's lunacy, the cause of his mind not working soundly, beloved, was a demon.
Now listen, this is a sermon, this is a message that is meant for victory because as soon as you face the devil, get it now, he has to flee from you. As soon as you face Satan and the demons that are part of his army, they have to run, because Jesus said, all authority in heaven and earth has been given unto me. And so I'm sharing these things with you. I don't want to make you afraid. I want to equip you and give you the courage and the spiritual understanding so that you can recognize the enemy in your life. Recognizing him you can then stand out to him. Jesus said, I've given you authority over all the power of the enemy.
In the broadcasts coming ahead over the next several weeks, I'm gonna teach you simple commands that you can exercise over the devil that will break his influence and his power off of you, that will cause his demons to scurry. And what's gonna happen is you're gonna be propelled, beloved one, in to greater victory. So don't be afraid. The Lord said, be not afraid. Be strong and courageous. David said that the Lord had equipped him for battle and trained his hands for war. And that's what I'm doing for you, beloved.
Father, I speak blessing over these children of yours. Father, strengthen us. I declare that not one of them will run from the battle, but those that are listening will hear my word, Father God, as coming from your Word, the words of God. And that Father, they'll receive it. And Father, that you'll strengthen them, and teach them, and train them by it. For your Word says, Lord, that the violent men, spiritually violent men, those that have spiritual resolve to take all of you, are the ones that take your kingdom by force. God bless you, beloved ones. God's got great things ahead for you and I. Jesus said, to he that overcomes I will grant him to sit down with me on my throne. In Jesus's name, I love you, and Shalom.