Sonship Series

Mike Connell

Sonship & The Supernatural (1 of 3)  

Mon 26 Aug 2019 « Back to Top

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The whole of creation is eagerly awaiting! The earnest expectation of the creation is the manifestation, or the unveiling, of what God has been doing over thousands of years of history.

The highlight of what He is doing will be the revealing and unveiling of what He's doing in us - the revelation, not just of the Son of God, but of a family of sons and daughters.

Men and women are 'sons', just as men and women are 'the bride'. It is a language used to describe a certain kind of relationship.

Introduction

I want to share a message called: Sonship and the Supernatural. Then I want to talk in the next session on: Sonship and Heart Transformation; and then tonight I want to speak on: Sonship and our warfare - what our warfare is about, where the warfare is, and then the nature of what comes against us.

If you want to move in the supernatural, you will be involved in spiritual warfare. If you don't know what you're up against, and how to fight, you will become defeated in that; so we want to pray and minister to people, and also impart to people. Tomorrow I have some other messages. Tomorrow night I'll speak in the spirit of might. I want to particularly impart to people that you start to carry the deliverance and anointing and the power of the spirit around your life, and you begin to nurture that anointing and grow and explore, breaking into new territory. Amen.

Main Message

Our theme scripture is Romans 8:19 - "The whole of creation is eagerly awaiting". Now if you ask most people what they're waiting for, they're waiting for Jesus to come back again, but the Bible doesn't say that. It says: the earnest expectation of the creation is the manifestation, or the unveiling, of what God has been doing over thousands of years of history. The highlight of what He is doing will be the revealing and unveiling of what He's doing in us - the revelation, not just of the Son of God, but of a family of sons and daughters. So when we use the word 'son', it's a non-gender term, as far as we're concerned. Men and women are 'sons', just as men and women are 'the bride'. It is a language used to describe a certain kind of relationship; and I want to explain just what that is, as we look at it, so we don't get sort of "ooh, that's not about me", or "I'm being excluded", or something.

I want to just talk a little bit about God's design - the way God has designed things to work. We see the pattern through the Bible is one of a father/son relationship. In Numbers 14:21, when God has brought Israel out of Egypt, He's wanting to bring them into the land, and they all fell short of the promise. It was a generation that never entered into what God had prepared for them; and even though they failed, God said this: "they will not enter the land, but nevertheless, nevertheless as truly as I live all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord". So the exit of the people from Egypt, their journey through the wilderness of preparation, and their entry into the Promised Land, is a prophetic picture of God's work in the church, and of us entering into a great supernatural legacy that Jesus purchased for us.

He said: "even though that generation failed, nevertheless the earth..." So it's not just about the land - it's the whole earth - "...shall be filled with the glory of the Lord". In Habakkuk 2, he says: "the whole earth shall be filled with knowledge of the glory of the Lord". We're living in an electronic age, where now it can be known. The church needs to start to rise, and step up into it. So when it says: "the glory of the Lord", what does it mean? The glory of the Lord is very simply: the goodness of God, His nature and virtue - manifested in a tangible way. Every time you saw the glory manifest in the Bible, it was manifested in something that could be seen, or felt, or experienced. The glory of God... Moses said: "show me Your glory", and God said: "I will make all My goodness pass before you" - and then He describes what that looks like...

The nature of God, the power of God... He describes first His power, and His unlimited resources; then His ministry towards people. So God is very clear that the earth shall be filled with a manifestation of His glory; and that glory will be manifested through His sons. When God designed the earth, He designed it to fill it with His glory and goodness; and He had many ways He could show His glory. He's shown it through nature; so when you go to nature, you feel connected somehow to God. You go and see the vastness of the oceans, there's a connectedness seems to come to the Lord. We’re starting to touch the glory. You've seen aspects of it; that you look at the vastness of the stars and you start to see the vastness of God. You start to look at the beautiful designs in nature and creation and think; you start to see the magnificence of God, but this is nothing compared to what He has planned to unveil and reveal.

This is the thing we can catch: we are the centre of His attention! We are the centre of His attention! So God's plan to manifest His glory - it began in the beginning, and it's never changed. He planned to manifest what He is like through a father/son relationship. It's not to do with gender; it has to do with function, and the biblical understanding of the function of a son, in relationship to his father.

We'll just look first of all, at the word 'father'. So when we think about father, of course for many people there's emotional things come to mind that aren't that pleasant. But when the Bible is talking father, it's talking about these: it's talking about a source of life. It's talking about the author or originator, the supplier of life. So from a Bible perspective, everything originates from some source. The father is the source; the father is the author of life. The mother nurtures the life and brings it forth, but the father is the one who authors life. He is the source. That's where life comes from; it comes from the father. So when we're thinking about God as a Father, then we're thinking about an originator. He is the source, He is the supply; and in Exodus 34, where God reveals, He reveals that He is unlimited resources. He is the unlimited one.

When Jesus ministered in the power of the Holy Ghost, He had unlimited resources available to Him to minister; so the Father is one of unlimited resources, unlimited resources, unlimited supply. A father fits certain functions. For example, a father is the source of our identity. You take the name of your father; so if you have no relationship with a father, you struggle with identity. The father is the source of identity. Notice when Jesus comes up out of the water, the Father speaks to Him: You are My Son. You belong somewhere; your identity is in Me. The devil's first attack on Jesus was on His identity: to shift His identity away from revelation by His Father, to performance in ministry. Many people in ministry struggle, their ministry is their source of identity, so their life is tied up in it, and they use people to build who they are. That's not fathering! That's not even true ministry. That is actually spiritual trading; I'm trading, to get something! We have to be free and cleansed from the defilement of trying to find out identity in things external, when it must be found inside the Lord. If it's found in something outside you, then it's never going to be stable.

Father is a source of purpose. One of the things the Father does is, He has a purpose; the word I like to use is the word 'assignment' - fathers give assignments to their sons and daughters. A purpose is a very general, broad thing - it's like a broad, big plan. Assignment is: this is what my job is; this is what I've been given to do. So purpose could cover what everyone's called to. We're called to the purpose of: changing our community, evangelising, sharing the gospel; but specifically, you have your own assignment, and that becomes very, very important.

A father is a source of provision. If God is the source of my identity, then my life is wrapped up in Him, and nothing you say or do changes who I am, because I'm secure in Him. He is my Father. I belong somewhere. So if you don't like me and reject me, that's okay, I still belong somewhere. If your identity is found in a relationship with an eternal spirit being, God Himself, then the security comes into your heart. When your identity is attached to the things outside you, inherently it's unstable, because they change. We think that church will be a certain kind of thing. It's a bit of a horror when you're a pastor, and you find it isn't quite like what you expected, and the people that loved you and said 'hooray' today can boo you tomorrow, and turn on you, just like that. But you see, it hurts very deeply when we don't understand: our identity is in our Father; and it's not to be found in the ministry, how big it is, how spectacular it is, or anything else related to it. Our goal is to honour our Father in the calling, just as sons honour their fathers.

A son is called to honour his father, and we'll show the ways that he honours him, in just a moment. So that's fatherhood. Fatherhood is under attack. Fatherhood's been under attack for such a long time. The Bible talks about sons, and our concept of a son is very much: they're just someone you raise up, and they're male, and they're a bit of a nuisance. They go out of home; but the biblical concept of a son, the word literally means it's the word 'ben', meaning: to build the father's house. So the biblical concept of a son is this: he is the extension of the father. The father works through his son to extend himself; and he works through the son as his representative - a delegated representative.

So a son always is the spokesman for the father, and advances the father's business. You see that in the mandate that God gave Adam: that he would subdue, have dominion and he would be fruitful and multiply. The dominion mandate is that God's Son would represent what He's like in the earth. That's what made the betrayal so big. He literally gave up the mandate, gave up the authority, and gave it into the hand of his Father's enemy; so from a biblical perspective, he brought immense shame on the family name - dishonour to his Father, shame on the family name. It would need another Son to restore the family honour, and to reconnect the lost children back to their Father. And once you start to catch these concepts, you'll see them everywhere; they're just unmistakeable!

You re-look at the scriptures, and there they all are, just exactly what it is. It's about God's heart; that He might restore His original purpose: sons and daughters, in relationship with Him, representing Him in the earth, extending His kingdom. And as soon as you lose any of those aspects, you then distort what ministry is all about. You begin to have something that does not represent the heart of God at all. So it tells us for example (in Luke 3:28), that Adam was the son of God. But God's thinking is not just to have a son. His thinking is to have a corporate son; so in the Book of Exodus it says Moses' message to the Pharaoh was, concerning Israel: let my son go, that he may worship me.

So God started with a son, but He had in mind a corporate son, which was Israel the nation; but beyond that, He had in mind the church, His son representing Him, and expanding His kingdom in the earth. So there's a progressive development, from one son in the Book of Genesis, through to a corporate son. First there's a family; then there's a corporate son - a nation. It's a nation of people. Now you understand when He talks about you; it should be a Godly nation, a holy nation, a royal priesthood - it's all about sonship. It's just the language of sonship; and the theme of sonship is everywhere. The whole family on earth draws its name, or its nature, from Father in heaven.

So you can understand then, that all of the movement that's currently taking place with the homosexual agenda, and the transgender agenda - all of it is an agenda to attack and destroy the design of God; so people are so confused, and they're actually in total rebellion against the order that God has set up to establish blessing. As soon as you remove 'father', you've lost your source of identity, then identity becomes confused. You'll find this warfare that we're seeing today is an old warfare. It actually goes right back in history, and it's always been there; it comes out of a demonic spirit with a particular agenda.

So John 17:3-6, Jesus' last words in prayer, before He gives up His life on the cross - "this is eternal life: that they may know You, the one true God; and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have glorified You on earth. I finish the work You gave me to do. Now Father, honour me, glorify me, put honour back on me with Yourself, with the honour I had with You before the world was. I have manifested Your name to the men you've given me out of this world. I have declared to them, or made known to them, Your name, and I will declare it, so that the love with which You love me may be in them, and I in them". Amazing revelation there!

So we see then that one man (Adam), the son that God put into the earth, betrayed his Father over to his enemies. When Jesus had His encounter with the devil, the devil showed Him the kingdoms of this world, and said: they have been delivered to me. The word 'delivered' is 'betrayed', and Jesus never denied it. Adam's action was a betrayal of his Father, to sell his own Father out to his Father's enemy was a massive betrayal. It requires now a son who'll be loyal and obedient, even to the point of death, to restore the Father's honour. So now you get a new glimpse on that scripture, John 3:16 - for God so loved the world, He gave His only Son. So to restore His plan, God introduces His Son into the earth. It's always about the Son; and the Father and Jesus revelation there is that the relationship He had with His Father is the one He purchased for us to have.

Most believers, as far as I can see, do not experience the love of the Father for them, the way Jesus experienced it in His own life; but He purchased it for us! I want to show you three things which are part of the sonship design...

#1) It says - "He said: this is eternal life that they may know you, the one true God; and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent". The word 'sent is the word 'apostello', meaning: to commission someone to go into a hostile territory, subdue an enemy, and then establish the culture of heaven - the ways of heaven on the earth, hence Jesus' message. What was His message? The kingdom of God is here, now. There is another realm available now for you. But to access it, you have to admit: I was wrong, I've been doing life wrong. I need to change the way I think, to come into agreement so I can enter an experience - and of course, that's a lifelong transformation process.

So there are three things that stood out to me very strongly about Jesus' sonship, which is also our sonship. Number 1 is intimacy. Intimacy is that sense of deep closeness; of knowing, and becoming known. Intimacy is a lifelong journey of growing in the knowledge of God. The source of that is the Holy Spirit Himself. In 1 Corinthians 2:14, it tells us that no man knows the things of God, save the Spirit of God. We have been given the Spirit of God, that we may know the things freely given. So we need the Holy Spirit, to help us to deepen in intimacy with God as our Father. We need to have revelation of His Fatherhood, and learn how to step into and engage Him as our Father, with all that that means.

So the first issue that God calls us to is intimacy. This is eternal life! Eternal life is not just some gift you get in a bag. Eternal life, He says, is about knowing. Knowing is the word 'to be intimate'. It's an intimate connection. The word can be used tp describe two people in sexual intimacy, in marriage. It is an intimate union. That's where life comes from. It comes from the joining, not from just: I said a prayer one day. See, we're on a journey to deepening intimacy with God. Whatever you think you know of God, there is much, much, much more. Paul said: I count everything done that for the excellency of knowing Him.

Hello... I thought he already knew Him? No, no, no. He's saying that there's so much to know of God - we must make it our life pursuit to be intimate with Him. Prayer firstly is about intimacy, coming near to God. Of course, if you've got blocks and barriers in your heart, these will be blocks and barriers to intimacy; blocks and barriers to knowing God; blocks and barriers to representing Him as a son. So Number 1 is intimacy, and God is seeking intimacy. John 4:24 - "the Father seeks those who will worship" - that means 'to kiss towards' or be intimate with Him, from their spirit, without hiding anything. The words 'spirit and truth' - truth means without concealing or hiding anything. In other words, God wants us to become vulnerable.

Adam experienced intimacy in the Garden; he was intimate. The presence of God means the face of God - he had face-to-face connection. When we fall on the inside, then we remove ourself from connection. Have a think what Adam did... First of all, he covered himself, meaning he was trying to cope with the shame that he had. Secondly, he got busy doing, he got into the trees. People get very busy, because they've got a lot of brokenness and undealt-with stuff - and they fill it up with church things, and every other kind of thing, instead of actually coming into the face of God, and facing Him, and coming near to Him. Then the third thing that he did, which is a horrendous thing, is: instead of loving his wife, he blamed her! When people are afraid, they then tend to react, and blame, and accuse, and distance themselves from other people. So we see all of those things. Jesus came to restore and heal all of those, and bring us back into intimacy again.

#2) We're called also to represent the Father. So a son, one of his primary roles, apart from relationship; which Jesus said, in things like this: I do nothing, except what I see the Father doing. I haven't come to do My own will. I've come to do the will of My Father. In other words, He was driven by the Father's agenda, because He represented Him. If you hire a lawyer, you expect the lawyer to represent you; not just say: well, wait a minute, I've got a plan of my own. No, you're paying him to represent you, so you don't want him to bring his own plan. You want to bring the plan that benefits you. So we're to be a representative, an accurate representative.

Here's a question to ask: do I represent what God is like, as a Father, to the people that I work with? How well do I represent His Fatherhood? God is love; therefore am I patient and kind? Does the fruit of love, and no agenda, come out of my life when I work with people? Or is my life built like the world - transactional; I leverage people to get what I want, it's always with an agenda? Of all the things I've seen break the hearts of people in churches, it's leaders with agendas, that actually use them to get something, and then drop them the moment they can't get that. It is horrendous, because it misrepresents the Father. That's the only thing that got Jesus angry in the New Testament - the misrepresentation of the Father. If that got Him angry, it should get us disturbed too - unless we don't have the same value system He has. We get angry about other things; we get angry about all the wrong things. He got angry about one thing, and that was that His Father was misrepresented; and the people that were God's family were abused, and taken advantage of. That's what got Jesus angry, in the two situations, where it referred he was very angry. Ooh, it's getting really quiet now - it's probably someone you know!

So we're called to represent Him. It says in Hebrews 1:3, He was the express image of the Father. In other words, when you see Him, you see what the Father is like.

John 40:9 - "if you've seen Me, you've seen the Father".

John 1:18 - "No man has seen the Father, but the only begotten Son of the Father, who is intimately acquainted with Him, has declared Him or made Him known."

So you notice here in Verse 6, as he's finishing his prayer, he said: "Father, I have manifested Your name". I've shown people what You're like. So in other words, a key part of being a son is not just intimacy; it's actually expressed by your lifestyle, and relationships, what God is like as a Father. You can't do that without revelation - that comes from intimacy. So intimacy and representation go hand in hand. It's the same Holy Spirit who helps you do that. The representation of the Father in your life is actually the fruit of the Spirit flowing. It comes out of connection with the Holy Spirit. Intimacy comes out of connection with the Holy Spirit.

Now in order for us to represent the Father, guess what must happen? There must be an ongoing transformation of our life, a healing and restoration of our heart, so we become more and more like what He is; beholding Him as in a looking glass, the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image by the Holy Spirit. It's not about self-improvement; it's not about willpower; it's not about trying harder. It's about surrender to the Holy Spirit, and allowing Him access to the broken places in our heart and life, that we have desperately covered, defended, and are now dysfunctioning in our life, and stop us representing the Father. It's an ongoing, lifelong journey, letting the Father, letting the Spirit access your heart.

Otherwise, the broken parts, that you've tried to hide, will overload. People who are bleeding, pour their blood on other people, who didn't do anything to cause it. Some people are dripping blood everywhere - it's on the carpets, it's on everyone they meet; can't be mistaken! It says in Romans 8:29, that His purpose, His express purpose, is to conform us to the image of His Son. So God has designed a plan to shape you up, and it's unique to you. God knows exactly what you need now, to pull up to the surface the things in your heart He wants to change. If you're listening, then every situation you experience is a growing opportunity. It's not about all the things other people did. It's about you representing the Father, and growing.

A lot of people are upset about what everyone else is doing. When you're like that you're out of control, because your focus is in the wrong place. Focus should be on the Lord, and the Father, and what He's doing; and then if people do dumb stuff... Listen, people do dumb stuff! They do dumb stuff because they're broken. Even if you're nice to them, they still do dumb stuff. That's why dumb stuff happens in the church; it even happened back there in the Garden of Eden - with the perfect Father, it still happened. Why would we think it's going to be different? So God has a plan and a pathway for you; so that then means that my journey to wholeness is in my Father's hands.

I just need to start to become more aware of what is happening in my heart, and what the Holy Spirit's trying to get me to do. If I've got so hard in my heart that I'm not listening anymore, then you know I'm going to have a lot of pain come. Many people have a lot of pain, and if you look at it, and start to think and pray about it, you find it's recycling pain. It's the same dumb stuff happening over and over- different faces, different places, different things; but if you could label it, it's the same stuff - because it's in you, and God's trying to change you. That's why "all things work together for good" - so long as we're called, and responsive to God. Otherwise it doesn't work for your good - just makes you more angry! That helpful for you? So transformation is always by the power of the Holy Spirit - but it also requires our cooperation.

3) The third thing is our assignment. Notice what Jesus said... Now He hasn't gone to the cross yet, but He could say: "I've honoured You". I've brought honour to You on the earth. That was His whole purpose - I'm here to honour My Father. Sons honour their Fathers, because, if you honour your father and mother, apparently there's a blessing goes with it. What I've found when I counsel people and their life is not going so well, I always check: did they honour the father and mother. I found they didn't. They've got unresolved baggage, and so they've got problems.

So notice what He said: I brought honour to You. How did He honour the Father? Through intimacy, through representing Him. He said: I've finished the work You gave Me to do. In other words, He had an assignment given to Him. Jesus had an assignment, a specific assignment His Father gave. Now if you're a son, you need to think: what is my assignment; who are my assignment? Where has God positioned me, and planted me? What has He called me to accomplish; and who will help me in the training process? Church is to help train people to become sons, so they can fulfil an assignment. Now here's the thing: every assignment God gives, requires the power of the Holy Spirit. It requires the supernatural power of God. If it didn't need the supernatural power of God, then He could just get an unsaved person to do it.

The assignments God gives us cannot be done without the supernatural power of God. There's nowhere that God commissions someone to do something, without giving supernatural ability to do it. Why would we think we can do it today, in a world of today, without the supernatural power of God? Why would we neglect the supernatural? If you're going to represent God - is He a supernatural God, or not? If He's a supernatural, then don't hide who He is! It's like I'm embarrassed of what God's like, so I'm going to dress it up a little bit, so I won't tell you all about Him. You might get upset by what He does... because He's a mighty deliverer! But we better hide that in a corner, because it might upset someone.

Do you understand, the church has moved so far away from what it's supposed to be doing. It's got to return again to the original design - intimacy with the Father, being transformed to become more and more like Him, so we build a community where it's safe to be open, and let the Spirit of God bring healing and deliverance; where there's a plan in place for people to be healed and restored and built, so sons and daughters can find their assignment, and do it. So you need the power of the Holy Spirit to be intimate. You need the power of the Holy Spirit to change. You need the power of the Holy Spirit to fulfil your assignment.

Jesus began His assignment saying this: "the Spirit of the Lord is upon Me". Why is He anointed? So He can do His assignment: proclaim the gospel, connect people to God, to heal the broken hearted. He just announces His assignment: set people free, connect them to the Father, release them from their bondages... When Jesus commissioned the disciples, Mark 3:13, He called them to be with Him, that He might send them to: preach the gospel, cast out demons, heal the sick. Why do we only just take the one little bit: preach the gospel? Why just narrow down, and take away two-thirds; take away the doing part, just have the preachy bit? In Matthew 10:1, when He sent the apostles out, He anointed them and appointed them, and gave them authority and power over demons; and to heal sicknesses, commission and preach the gospel, minister the gospel.

In Luke 10, you see the 70 disciples - same thing; then In Mark 6, now He sends it to the whole church. Anyone who believes can minister and move in the Holy Ghost, because that's divine design. 1 Corinthians 12:7 - "now the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every person". See - it's given to every person! Why? Because it's God's design, that every son, every daughter, move in the power of the Spirit; because the challenges you face cannot be met. There are needs that cannot be met without the power of God! There are people in your church who cannot be set free without the power of God! There are people sitting there, harassed by demons, who need the power of God! Why hold back on ministering to their needs? Or is it because I want to use them to build something?

Come on, you’ve got to understand: this is the heart of God, for His people to be freed! We cannot just avoid those things, because we feel uncomfortable, or we've got our own bondages. So churches replace the power of God so frequently; they replace the ministry of the Holy Spirit. To replace means to make a substitute for something - instead of this, we have this. We're cheating people, when we do that! If you think about the first revelation of the church - it was the House of God, the place of His presence, and the gate of heaven. The gate is the place where authority is given to make judicial decisions that affect the governance - it's a place of governing authority.

The church has replaced deliverance with counselling; so we counsel instead of delivering people with demons. Counselling is okay; but you can't counsel demons - you've got to get them out! Instead of 'anointing' on people, now there's 'charisma' - it's all about the charisma they carry. Instead of apostles and prophets, we've got administrators trying to run the church, and build the thing, and keep it all safe. They kind of hold it all together, because that's how they're wired; but an apostle or prophet will say: no, we've got a mission, come on. We need to grow people up - come on, mature, grow up! The Prophet says: come on, there's the blockages, let's get rid of the blockages! It's what God is saying. The Minister is saying: you can't do all of that kind of thing! Yes, we can - because it's what God wants! In the 5-fold ministries, apostles are first, then prophets, then teachers... but a 'minister' is a fair way down!

Instead of faith, there's reasoning; we try to reason everything out, we teach people so much, that in the end, their heads fall, their heart is empty - no faith. Faith is of the heart and Spirit. Instead of having family, we have organisation - it breaks the hearts of people. They're looking for family. Why? Because God is a Father. Sure, we need to be organised; I've got a big family, and you have to get really organised. You need organisation, but that doesn't take away that it's family. Family has to do with bondings, and connectings, and the way you relate to people. That's why it talks about 'brothers' and 'sisters' and 'mothers' - all of this is the language of family. Why is it taken out of the church?

When there are broken hearts everywhere, they desperately need to know what family is like; they come to the church... oh no! We call God 'Dad', but what is this? Is this a family? Think about it. Instead of worship, we fill it with entertainment. I love everything being presented nicely and well; but there's no substitute for true, intimate worship in the Spirit. There's got to be those things. So it's a challenge for us, isn't it? A Challenge! Instead of fathers, we have leaders; and its great to have leaders - a father leads, but he's a father too, and that's different, because fathers are concerned about their son's identity. A leader wants to get the vision done; but a Father wants to see the kids grow up, fulfil their course, discover their course... there's a big difference, isn't there?

So the needs of people cannot be met without the power of God. The church needs the supernatural. It needs this, why? Because there are people that need healing; there are people that need deliverance; there are people who need a breakthrough, and provision; there are people that need connections - they need favour on them, in their business. There are people facing challenges that need God to give them breakthrough, and I go round the world, and I see God doing these things everywhere; but not so much in the western churches. The western church has drawn back from the power of God - afraid of the unusual, afraid of the unexpected, trying to control it all. It's not going to work! It isn't working - we need the power of God! The Power of God brings breakthroughs!

I just got a text on my phone the other day - a woman who'd been suicidal, depressed, and under counsel for two years. In one meeting, the power of God hit her, and boom, she we set free! No problem - it's all gone! Another person in the meeting, and they were addicted to marijuana, had been on it for years. Addiction... boom, the power of God hit them, and that's it - addiction has gone! Now they're free! Now they can start to grow the journey of connection, and intimacy, and healing, and so on; because that's what caused the problem in the first place. We need the power of God!

Now there's a contending for the power of God. Maybe you've prayed and stepped out and things didn't work out. Don't let that stop you! Learn to find out what are the factors. You've got to ask questions, and Jude says: "we must contend for the supernatural". You have to contend in prayer. Jesus spent 40 days in prayer, fasting, solitude, meditation, warfare, surrendering to the Holy Ghost... then He returned in the power of the Spirit. So these things have to come back into our lifestyle again. There is a contending for miracles! If I want miracles to happen, I have to position myself, and grow in my faith for these things; and if there are setbacks, to not worry about the setbacks. Learn how to start to build the atmosphere in the church, build the atmosphere round my own life, strengthen my prayer life, feed myself om things that will grow my faith; and determine that my ministry will have supernatural in it - that wherever I operate, the supernatural will be there.

If you don't make that decision, there'll be no fight in you. There's a spirit assigned to shut down the supernatural everywhere - to shut you down; and not just shut you down, but take lots of other things off you as well. There is a spirit assigned to do that very thing. You must understand, that when you say: "the church needs to have the supernatural" - you're declaring war straight away! No man who is a soldier of Christ entangles himself, so he can please and honour his master. It's as simple as that! There are entanglements in our life, that sometimes we need to get rid of; but it starts with saying: God, I'm not happy with how it is. I look, and I see what the Bible says. I want the church that I'm part of - I want that to be full of power!

I want my life to be full of power, and I will pay the price to pursue it. I'll pay the price to pursue it! What would that look like? It would look like: prayer; it would look like: fasting; it would look like: time meditating in the miracles, meditating in the word of God; it would look like: making connections with people that can inspire faith; it would look like: getting testimonies constantly, so your faith is being lifted; it would look like: taking risks regularly - to step out, pray for people, try things, push the boundaries out, and not withdraw. It may look like: you go out on a missions trip, and go to a Third World nation where they are hungry for God, and start to stretch out, so you break out your own expectations; then come back, and you're enlarged in your spirit, and you realise: what have I been tolerating? What have I been putting up with? How could I settle for that?

I've just been in a meeting, where I laid hands on a woman who had a gallbladder removed; and the gallbladder was creatively put back in her body. I saw her body shake and move; I could feel her hand under mine moving; and I looked at her, and she started to smile. She said: the gap has gone, the place there where it was taken out is full again. You see, God does things; we have to pursue it! Will you pursue; or have you settled for so little, because that's the common thing. You say: God, I don't want to be like that; I want to be a man, a woman, approved of God by miracles, signs and wonders. I will commit to pursuing God, to become intimate, to let Him work in my heart; and to embrace that, my assignment must be filled with the power of God. That's about every believer!

When I was a young Christian, I was able to bring the presence of God into the classroom in a way that shifted everyone's educational outcome. I saw people get saved! People coming were touched by the presence of God. I was very young, didn't know anything - but I was able to do it, because I did what God showed me. What about you? You could do that. You're called to do that. You're called to be the gate of heaven, for heaven to be released. Have you drawn back from that, because of the pressure, or disappointment, or just the lack of nurture? Make a decision: I will not stay drawn back. I am going to press on for miracles, press on for the supernatural, press on for breakthroughs in my life, press on for my ministry to grow in the power of the Holy Ghost. Say 'amen' to that!

Closing Prayer

Why don't we just stand right now; why don't we just begin to pray in the spirit. Won't you lift your hands. If there's a place you need to repent, because you've accepted so little, maybe you just need to say: God, today I just repent. I repent in my heart of settling for little. I repent in my heart of not representing You well. I repent in my heart of not being intimate with You, of neglecting the altar of the Lord, so there's no fire on that altar anymore. Lord, today I come to You. I say: God - fresh fire on the altar, fresh presence and power on my life. Holy Spirit, come. Lift your hands, begin to pray. Let's hear us raise our voice to the Lord, start to cry out to Him, let's cry out to Him!

Father, we cry out to You, we cry out for a fresh move of Your Spirit. We cry out for the fresh power of God. We cry out for the fresh anointing of the Holy Ghost. We cry out for a fresh encounter with You. We cry out for our hearts and lives to be stirred. Oh Lord, touch us, touch us in the place we've become embittered. Touch us in the place we've struggled with disappointment. Touch us in the place we've compromised and tolerated. My God, touch us today! Let Your Spirit come on our lives today! Help us today Lord. Help us today, pour out Your Spirit upon our lives! Come on, let's give the Lord a great clap shall we? [Applause] Thank You Lord! Thank You. We honour You Lord.

I can feel His presence is here. Holy Spirit, I just release a fresh activation. For every person here, I stir again the gift of God to start to flow in power. Father, today what You started, Lord continue it through the day until we become charged with passion, charged with fire, charged with a desire to serve in a new way, charged with faith to go back and hold altar calls, the power of God touch us, in Jesus' name.

Sonship & Heart Transformation (2 of 3)  

Mon 26 Aug 2019 « Back to Top

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What the world is waiting for, is the manifestation of the sons of God, who are in intimacy with their Father, who accurately represent their Father - having a servant heart, an honoring heart, and a powerful anointing.

Jesus said: "I've finished My work". He finished the things that the Father gave Me to do.

Part of being a 'son' means that we need to accurately represent the Father. "When He appears, we shall be like Him". You and I are on a journey of transformation, that should be ongoing.

The heart is the...
1. Center of your identity.
2. Focus of God's attention.
3. Focus of Jesus' ministry.
4. Center of the boundaries and borders of your life.
5. Center of faith.

Introduction

It's great to be here with you, and have people that are hungry for these things. It's stirring, and we need to be stirred, don't we? We need to be really stirred up inside; so again, we're going to go back, and just start off by just referring to that first scripture we started with, which is the theme: what the world is waiting for, is the manifestation of the sons of God, who are in intimacy with their Father, who accurately represent their Father - having a servant heart, an honouring heart and a powerful anointing. Sons who understand their assignment, and stay within the boundaries of that, and don't mess around with someone else's.

That's why Jesus said: "I've finished My work". He finished the things that the Father gave Me to do. There were still lots of people weren't delivered, still lots of people weren't healed - but that wasn't His assignment. He was assigned to certain ones; He came to the nation, so everyone who came to Him, He ministered to them and healed them. Those who didn't come to Him, He empowered His disciples to carry on the same work.

Main Message

This time I'll talk about: Sonship and Heart Transformation, because part of being a 'son' means that we need to accurately represent the Father.

1 John 3:2 - "now we are the sons (that's children of God, meaning we haven't fully grown to maturity) and it does not yet appear what we shall be. But when He appears, we shall be like Him".

So that speaks to me, you and I are on a journey of transformation, that should be ongoing. If you are not continuing in personal growth, you are stagnating. If you are stagnating, you're living out of yesterday's experience and anointing. We cannot stagnate! We must continue to grow in God; and the growing in God comes by intimacy. So intimacy opens up the parts of our heart where we're blocked, because those are the parts where you're lonely, are bound, are locked up. Those are the parts where love doesn't enter, and love doesn't flow - and we bring those things into our marriages, into our churches, into our leadership... So as leaders, we should model then, that we're on a journey of transformation that will go on all our life; and it will only go on as long as you cooperate; let the Holy Spirit have access, and you are a willing participant in it. If you're not willing to participate, then you'll find yourself allied with a spirit that controls, and shuts down the supernatural, and also steals legacy and other things. I'll talk on that tonight.

I want to focus on the heart; and transformation of the heart. So why is it then, that the heart is so important? I want to give you a number of reasons why the heart of man is so important; and we're going to look at some heart conditions. and why it gets like that; and then the journey or the process of getting out of that place.

So first of all, why is the heart so important? Most churches are concerned with behaviours, but behaviours are the fruit that point to a hidden root. So whatever you see happening outside reflects something from the inside; it is the fruit. The behaviour is the way we do life and relationships, and that flows out of something within us. So even if you take yourself somewhere else, you'll still manifest the same kinds of things around you, because if they're in you, they'll keep producing fruit. So God's interest is always on the root, never just on the fruit. He is not worried about the funny behaviours, and the weirdness that we get up to. He's more concerned about the transformation of the heart, because if you've got the heart, you've got the person. So let me share with you several reasons why the heart is so very important.

When did you last hear someone preaching on the heart; or how the heart gets into bondage, and how to recognise it's in bondage, and how to minister healing to the heart? The church has become motivational. There's nothing wrong with motivational, but if the heart isn't transformed, then it's like wheel-spinning - you get revved up, but you can't go anywhere, because you soon run out of steam. You still go back to the old patterns, the old things, because the structures of bondage are still in place. It's like a riot in a prison camp - at the end, when it's all over, you're still in a prison camp. You're not free! That make sense? A lot of stuff that goes on is like that!

Everyone's ay-ya-ya-ya-ya; they go: I love all of that, give it to me, pump that music up, lets it get it going, I love it all! But it's got to go deeper than just that. It's got to go right into the heart. I love it, it's highly expressive! Anyway, let me give you some reasons why the heart's so important...

#1) The heart is the center of your identity.

Proverbs 23:7 - "as a man thinks in his heart, so he is."

The way you think about yourself determines the identity you'll live out. When we got born again, we received a new identity. We've got the identity; but we still live out of the old, because we haven't yet been changed in our thinking, in our heart belief structures yet. So the person who's rejected, after they've come to Christ, still struggle with rejection; until the truth of their acceptance is established in the heart, and they can say: I am accepted, I am a child of God - I know it in my heart. So the heart is the center of your identity - who you are. As you think in your heart, so you are; and it says: "a man's heart is like water, it answers to the heart". In other words, just as you see your reflection in the water, so you see a man's heart - you'll see what they're really like. We get caught up with what's external, with the giftings and abilities of people, or the appearance of people, all the external trappings - and we get overwhelmed with that, and fail to look at the heart. Pastors and leaders must look at the heart of people. We must become heart specialists, because that's the thing that God is interested in.

#2) The heart is the focus of God's attention. 1 Samuel 16:7, where Samuel is sent to find a new king who will rule Israel; he went to the house where David's father was, and he got all the sons out, and the first one comes out alive - He's tall and good looking. He said: this must be the king; but this is what God said to him. He said: I have rejected that man; and the word 'rejection' is a very strong word, meaning: I have utterly set that man aside as not qualified for this role. Now the prophet, he looked a good man, but to God... and then He said this: "for man looks on the outside, but God looks on the heart". What God saw inside him, in his heart, was pride and arrogance - someone He couldn't use as king.

They brought all the sons out, and he thought: this is the one, this is the one, this is the one... and then he gets to the end... what the heck, what's going on here? But God had told him there's a son, so he says: is there anyone else here? They said: oh yeah, there's David, but we've got a problem with David. You know, there's a real question about how he was born, and there's a whole shame around his life; and actually, we don't really include him in the family. We've put him out there where he's in danger with the wild animals, because actually we don't really see him being part of the family. He said: bring him in. They brought him in. He said: that's the man; and this is what God said to David: "this is a man after My own heart".

So God has a heart, and this is what He said about David. See, we know David, lots of things about David that you know - you look at the failures and mistakes, and all the things; but God looked on his heart. So what was there about his heart, that God says: this man, I really love. He's a man after My own heart, who will fulfil my will in this generation. So David, what it means to be 'a man after the heart of God', means: his pursuit, in worship, was to discover the desires of God. Most people pursue God to get something; but he pursued God to find out what God likes - and when he found out what God likes, he totally overturned the whole religious and worship structure of the day; transformed it.

Moses had established the pattern of worship. He got it on the Mount. He was shown what to do. He was given the pattern on the Mount; and there's this young upstart who comes along, and he says: we're changing it all! You've got to have some pretty strong authority to be able to change something that's a historical tradition for the church's worship. He got rid of the whole lot, except the ark; and then he established 24 hours of worship, singing, praise, prophetic ministry. He stepped, because he saw God's heart; he saw way into the future, what God had in mind, what He really wanted; and that these things were all just symbols - they had no power in them, whatsoever.

He saw that what God wanted was Spirit worship, and so he brought it out of the age of grace. He reached past the cross, and brought it back into his age, by revelation. Now that's really something. So before, it was silent, and only one man went; but now everyone's got access, and there's worship, there's music, there's trumpets, there's noise, there's dancing, there's laughing, there's singers... Let's look at it, and you see that it's expressive, and it's passionate, and he's in it. He fought and won; and he's in it, they're jumping up and down... and that's why his wife hated him, because she looked at it, and she despised him: kings don't behave like that! You're supposed to be a king; you don't behave like that!

He said: "I did it to the Lord, and I'll do worse than that - you can't stop me". You can't wet blanket me! I did it to the Lord. So you see - he's a man after God's heart; and God says, in Acts 15 - "I'm going to restore what was taken away, this tabernacle of David". David had a passion for the heart of God. "One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will seek after, that I dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life; to behold His beauty, and to enquire in fellowship with Him" - because I want to know His heart, and then implement it for the generation I live in. If you're looking back at where church has been, you're looking in the wrong direction. We've got to look into the heart of God, and be intimate with Him, and find what is it.

I want to be a man after Your heart, and change what needs to be changed! The old system of someone, they're doing all the ministry - it's gone! It's history! It was never God's plan. He's got a five-fold ministries: apostles, prophets... empowering people to rise up, and carry the power of God; to go out and do something - change the community, pray for people! Get the creativity of God, design things, bring things into the earth! It's a whole new day. You've got to break out. Some of us are still back in Moses' tabernacle and we should be catching the heart of God. It's reformation time, revival time, a change time! Catch the heart of God! So God's attention is always on the heart, because God has a heart too; in His heart, or His motivations.

3) The heart is the focus of Jesus' ministry. If you think of Jesus' ministry, when you look at His teachings - they're all concerned with the heart. He said: you heard it said that you shall not commit adultery - that's actions. He said: I'm telling you something different. He said: it's bigger, and beyond that. He said: if you even look on a woman with lust in your heart, then you've committed adultery - I want your heart pure! In the Old Testament, it said: don't kill people. He said: listen, I'm telling you now, when you've got anger and hatred in your heart, you've got the roots that cause the thing to happen - I want your heart to be free of anger. So everywhere He went, He dealt with the heart.

When He stood up to announce His ministry, He said: the Spirit of the Lord is upon Me; He's anointed Me to proclaim, to preach the gospel to the poor, or reconnect people to My Father and then to heal their broken heart - because if you don't heal their broken heart, they can't build intimacy in relationship. They must have their heart healed, because they're shattered and broken. Why would you just overlook the pain and struggles that people have, and not be willing to engage in healing them?

Matthew 15:18 - "out of the heart flow the things that defile a person".

It's not things outside you that defile you. You think: oh, I better avoid that. No, no, no. It's not about avoiding things; it's about being clean on the inside, so the things outside you don't defile you. Jesus showed it with the leper. He showed physically what it looks like. He found a leper, the leper came to Him; and it was advanced state of leprosy, totally unclean, totally defiling. It's a highly infectious disease. His thinking is: but what's in Me is more powerful than that, and so He touched him. No one touched them. You didn't touch a leper. To touch a leper, you're ceremonially defiled, and you run the risk of being a leper yourself. That didn't worry Him! He said: what's in Me is stronger than that. Boom! Touched him. Connected to him, because His big pain was disconnection in the heart. Then he got healed as well. So when you start to look at this, you'll see that Jesus is always concerned with the heart - what motivated people. So we've got to be concerned with the heart as well.

4) Let's just give you a few more reasons why the heart's so important. The fourth thing is, the heart is the center of the boundaries and borders of your life.

Proverbs 4:23 - "guard your heart diligently, for out of your heart flow the issues of your life".

The word issues is the word 'borders', or 'boundaries of the territory'. In other words, the limitations of your life are determined by what you believe in your heart. If you have poverty in your heart... no matter what you have, you'll always see poverty. Here's another reason why the heart is important: because you interpret life from your heart. You see it with your eyes, but that's just signals. You interpret it with your heart.

In other words, when people say and do things, they just said and did something; but it's you who decides what that means - because you judge it in your heart. So in Matthew 7, he said: don't judge. Learn not to judge. Be an observer, not a judge. You've got no idea really what's going on. He said: if you become a judge, then you're just going to start to reap things in your life, because it's in your heart. The judgements you have in your heart will be a cycle that you'll keep reaping in your life. That's why patterns keep forming - because there's judgements in the heart. He said: first get the beam out of your own eye, then you'll see clearly. In other words, what's in our heart stops us seeing clearly. We just don't see people; we see them through what's in our heart.

So if someone just ignores you, what does that mean? It doesn't mean anything. Maybe they didn't see you. I don't know what it means. You won't really know unless you actually ask them, and we jump to conclusions and judgements about what it means; and we don't engage the person to find out, because our heart has got the judgement and the offence in it already. So if you've got offence in your heart, people will offend you all the time. If you're offended with your father or your mother, you'll be offended by authority figures all your life. You won't even see possibility that you could be wrong. You will interpret their actions always in terms of what's in your heart.

That's why your heart's so important. That's what is the cause of so many problems in marriages. We miscommunicate; and instead of asking for clarification, we jump to conclusions about what that might have meant - out of what's in our heart. Our heart then defiles the relationship. That's why it says to 'guard your heart'.

Hebrews 12:15 - "beware, lest you fall from the grace of God, and a root of bitterness springs up".

Where does it spring up? In your heart! Bitterness springs up when you've allowed offences to accumulate - you become angry, resentful, and then bitterness is there. When people are bitter, they don't even know why they're bitter; they're just negative about everything. They've long ago lost what caused them the problem, but the fruit of bitterness flows out of their life, and it says that it poisons every relationship.

It doesn't matter whether you're a pastor or not. It's got nothing to do with the role you play. It's got to do with your heart. If your heart's bitter, bitterness flows everywhere you are. You see why the heart's so important when you try to counsel people in marriage, or counsel people in life. If you just try to deal with behaviours, and don't deal with the heart you'll never get lasting change. They'll be inspired, but they won't change.

#5) The heart is the center of faith.

Proverbs 3:4-6 - "Trust in the Lord with all your... Heart!"

Trust is an issue of the heart. If you have experienced betrayal or disconnection in the earliest years of your life - say, if there was no bonding with a mother, then you've never learnt to trust, because the first bonding that would have formed trust has not been formed. So suspicion and distrust become the thing that grow in your heart, and affect all relationships.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart" - so trust is an issue of the heart.

"Lean not on your own reasoning or understanding; in all your ways be intimate with Him and He will direct your ways".

Romans 10:10 - "a man believes with his heart".

So faith, the faith for miracles, is in the heart. Also, unbelief is in the heart, so where people have been rejected, and they come to a conclusion: I'm not good enough - it's hard for them to believe for any miracles for themselves, because inside their heart is conflicted with what the word of God says. The heart needs to be healed. The word of God is sewn in your... Heart! It can bring forth fruit, or not bring forth fruit, depending on the condition of your heart.

Most people, when they hear that Parable of the Sower and the Seed, put themselves somewhere. They never think: I might be the wayside; no, I'm here in church... and I wouldn't be the rocky ground. No, no, I'm here every week! I wouldn't be the thorny ground, no, no, I'm serving in the church. Isn't it wonderful how we hear: 30, 60, 100, and think: I'll just be modest, I'm 30-fold. So we put ourselves in there, not really thinking that actually: in one part of our life, we may actually be really bearing fruit, but another part really barren, hard, hard ground - and often that's in family. It's the heart. It's really important.

I will just give you one more scripture... In the last days the condition in the earth, of hardness of heart will be so great, that God has to send a revival to turn the hearts of the children to the fathers, and the fathers to the children. He would not send an end time move like that, unless there's a major issue with hearts - disconnected relationships in marriages and families. It will be so great, that it will need a revival to repair the damage! Elijah had to confront what was the substitute for the reality of God's spirit and love, which was a controlling power. So whenever the heart is damaged, if we don't get it healed, we will come under a controlling spirit, and we will become controllers.

So the heart is where you experience and carry the presence of God.

Ephesians 3:16-17 - "His prayers will be strong, strengthened with might in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your... Heart, by faith"

Our spirit is joined to the Lord, but the manifestation of His presence, where we feel Him, is in our heart. But if your heart has got walls, then you don't feel the presence of God. You know He's there by faith, in your spirit, you're born again; but you don't feel it, because the feeling of God is in the heart. The emotions that you feel are a reflection of your heart speaking.

Romans 5:5 - "Now the love of God is shed aboard... out of our hearts."

Where is the love of God felt and experienced? In your heart - and it flows from your heart, if you have revelation of it. So all ministry should be flavoured with the revelation of the love of God, not with agenda to be important. So your prophesying, if there's no love in it, is like 'clanging', because people feel: I see what you're doing, but actually something's missing. I don’t feel the love. I see what's done, but I don’t feel the love. The love is the heart part in it.

The love is the investment of the heart. This is one of the reasons relationships break down - we don't feel the love, because the heart has become hardened by all kinds of things: disappointments, and griefs, and setbacks, and other things; so the flow is reduced.

#6) The heart is the place where sin, or faith, is conceived. In Matthew 5:28, we saw that adultery is conceived in the heart; and finally, the heart is the center of your motivation. Your motives are the motives of the heart. Hebrews 4:12 it talks about the word of God being sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the diving asunder of soul and spirit, and the intents and motives of the heart. So the intentions that drive you, the motives that drive you, really come out of what's going on in your heart.

If you don't connect with your heart, how will you know what really moves you? That's why we've got to be tender in the presence of the Lord, and allow Him access to our heart, so He can show us the places where actually, there's a hidden agenda behind a lot of what we do - so we can represent Him accurately. God has no agenda except to love you. His love is a gift to you, but we kind of get caught up with this thing where actually, I've got a leverage in here, I want to get something, that's why I'm doing this, and this, and this. That's what makes it all political, and it makes it something missing in it - and you can actually feel it.

One of the things I've loved about coming to Asia, and I love about Asians, is they're acutely sensitive to anyone who has an agenda. They just feel it, like that. And what's given me ability to be there, is just to love people with a pure heart - so it's given me access to, and favour with, people. I have access, there's two or three family dynasties that pretty well run Taiwan financially. I have access to two of them as a friend. They will come to me, because there's nothing they have, that I want. I just want to be their friend, and love them, and help them. I would never - it would offend me to even consider the money issue, because that would wreck the relationship. I'm here to love them, and to help them, because they have an influence in society. If I can help and empower them, they will touch people I could never reach. But you understand, you can't have an agenda if you're going to do that. The only agenda is to love the people, and empower them, and heal them where they need healing. There's got to be that purity around it, and that's why we're to grow, mature and love.

The Bible talks about many different heart conditions. I encourage you to look at them, and discover some of them. The most obvious one, is the condition of a broken heart.

Psalm 147:3 - "the Lord heals the broken heart and binds up all their wounds". So Jesus came to announce that He healed the broken heart, but the heart can be broken. The heart can be fearful. The heart can be bitter, very bitter. The heart can be very hard. The heart can be angry. People that have got anger in their heart... they're just angry all the time. They don't even know why they're angry. They stir it, they're like a ball just waiting to go off. Just a little thing will set them off, because there's a whole lot of unresolved offences in the heart.

A heart can be numb or disconnected. This is the condition that many men are in, but also many women who have been traumatised. For example, Tamar in the Bible, when she was sexually abused by her brother, the Bible tells us this: she remained numb, and devastated in the house. That's the word 'numb' - a disconnected heart. A disconnected heart is where you've had so much pain, that you have literally shut down engaging the pain, as your way of dealing with it. Instead of getting it healed, you've buried it; but it's buried alive, and the consequence is you become hardened and don't feel anymore.

Many people can't feel things, because their heart is hardened. I prayed for one pastor's wife, she hadn't felt love in 40-plus years; and the reason was, her father rejected her and wanted only boys, so she made a decision she would have to shut down the emotional side of herself, and compete with the men. In doing that, a spirit of death came around her - shut her heart up, and all her life she never felt anything, until we got her delivered and healed - and then she felt lots of things. Then actually her identity came out; because this is the word I had... I said: what I see is that you're in a cave, hiding. I cannot see the real you - and she tried to avoid me of course, like crazy, but I said to the pastor: I'm coming to your church, and I don't need to preach; but I'm going to meet your wife. We're going to talk.

So I helped him with his process of getting her free, and it changed their marriage completely, it changed her. She's just like, radiating with life! Another person I can think of now, and her mother had a terrible miscarriage; incredibly painful, traumatic. So when she got pregnant again, she'd never been healed, because then that faith moved. In other words, what you do is you murder your heart, so while we need to hold the word of God, it's got to be in the heart; and if the heart's wounded, then heal the heart, then put the word in. Don't just, out of will power, try to do something to try and overcome something that really needs healing. So what she did was, she put a wall round her heart, so she wouldn't be hurt in the next pregnancy by a possible loss; but here's the consequence: her daughter experienced deep rejection, deep disconnection and would not bond with her mother; and so the mother and daughter were hostile to each other, all their lives.

She said: I have never been able to work out why I had the conflict. Now I get it. I'm angry from the womb at being rejected. I need to repent and forgive. I never realised that. Isn't that amazing? I actually love all of this stuff, because everywhere I go, people's stories are so interesting. and nothing's like what it appears to be. What you see is not real; it's just the outward thing. What you've really got to see is the heart. When you see the heart... sometimes I've just cried with people, what they've gone through is so sad. How could people still survive all of that?

The church, they've got them sitting in the church every week, needing healing, needing a ministry to the heart. Heart transformation; so the hidden roots in the heart produce external fruits and behaviour, and you need to deal with them. God's plan for transformation starts on the inside. So how does God change us? Religion will try and change you externally, by forming a culture, or a pressure to conform in a certain way; so you'll find when there's religion, or a religious spirit, it will always try to control you to perform, and reject you if you don't play the game. You can never really be you. You have to conform; and so of course, you're lonely all the time and you're pretending, and you have to live within this thing.

But when God changes us, He changes from the heart. He wants truth in the inward parts. David wrote: "You delight in truth in the inner parts" - not lies, not cover ups, not pretending. God wants truth in the inner parts. So how does God change us? Number 1, He solves the power problem by putting a spirit in us, so we become born again; meaning: God's spirit joins to our spirit, internally we have a power source, and that power source is called the Holy Ghost. When He's in our heart, He says: you know what? I want to reveal to you, over and over again: you're a child of God! The Holy Spirit bears witness, that we are the children of God. He tells you: you're a child of God. You're accepted, you're loved, you belong.

You've got a father who loves you, cares for you. He's got a plan for your life. He puts the power, He puts the identity, on the inside; shifts it now, this is who I am, I'm totally transformed. But there's an outworking of that. The other thing He says, in Ezekiel 36, "I'll put a heart of flesh". So He puts in a new spirit - that’s the Holy Spirit - but then He puts a heart of flesh, because it was stony before. It didn't believe God, didn't want God, rebelled against God... it was stony, in that respect; but after we've come to the Lord, our heart has become changed towards God - not completely healed, just changed in its orientation. We now have a tender heart, we actually want to please God. People want to please God - they just don't know how. The Holy Spirit helps us how.

The heart however, is still in a damaged condition, and it needs transformation. If you transform the heart, you transform the person; but it cannot take place without the anointing of the Holy Ghost, and your willing participation. This is a life journey of transformation on the inside out. We get hung up with all the mistakes and failures and things, get condemned. The devil accuses you, tells you're no good... this, this, this, all that sort of stuff. God's not even worried a toot about that, because He already paid the price, for all of it to be forgiven. He just wants your heart! If your heart is towards Him, then even if you're up and down, it doesn't make any difference. He's still helping you all the way. You've just got to find where the heart is.

Capture the heart, and you've got the person. He wants your heart. That's why He said: love the Lord with all your... heart. Well, here's a question: if your heart has been shattered, how can you love Him with all your heart? You can love Him with the part you're conscious of, but the other broken bits are going to need to be healed, and repacked, restored. That's why David said: "unite my heart". It's all fractured. I've got little bits over here that are hurt, and I buried them there; and another bit hurt, and I fractured that one off there. Another bit over here, and I've got all these parts in my life, all these things in my life, and I've just buried them all here. Now I've got a pile of pain! But in my heart, in the core of me, I love You, and I want to serve You; but the other stuff caused me to malfunction.

So God says: it's okay, I accept your love. Let's just walk the journey. You be committed to pursuing Me, and being intimate, and allow Me access; leave Me to do the work with your heart. Isn't that amazing? So how does God do the work with your heart? Well, He just engineers a few circumstances, and you suddenly hear yourself - now where did that come from? And if you'll just stop, and go quiet a little bit, and listen, the Holy Spirit will tell you exactly where it came from - a wounded heart somewhere, an offence in the heart, anger unresolved, resentment unresolved. Everyone is trying to change the world around them, and they don't change themselves. Change yourself! You want to change the world? Start with yourself. Change your own world.

So God heals the broken heart; and the word 'broken' means to be shattered into pieces. It means to be crippled or quenched, so when our heart has been wounded by events in life, it becomes shattered, or crippled, or unable to function. In the spirit that's what it's like: your leg is broken, and you're dragging it behind you; and they say: why won't he run, I don't know why he won't run. Why won't you run? In this church, you need to run. Run brother! It's like putting a pressure to do something that they can't do. They're powerless to do it.

The woman that was bowed down with a spirit of infirmity, it said she had no power to stand up! She had a demon on her. That's where a lot of Christians are, they've got demons riding on them, having access into the wounds and the brokenness, and they're hunched up, they can't go anywhere. They need healing and deliverance. That's what His ministry was: heal the broken-hearted; deliver the captives. The word 'wound' means literally to be an idol. An idol is a substitute for God that you end up serving, and become angry with. So when you've got a wound in your heart, you end up serving it. It controls your life, because now, you know what'll happen?

Instead of wanting to love people, now I'm going to hold myself back, and I've got to guard myself. You might hurt me, so now that what's governing my life is a pain in my heart, and the spirit driving it is the spirit of fear, rather than actually the love of God. That's why He needs to deal with these things; we want God to touch those areas. Lord, touch my heart, heal my heart, whatever it is. Jeremiah makes the complaint, in Jeremiah 6:14 - "they've healed the heart of My people lightly, saying 'peace brother, peace' - but there's no peace!" There's war in the heart, and the people need healing. In your ministry, do you have a process for healing the broken heart? Do you have a process for setting the captives free?

Is there a process in place? Do you celebrate that this is part of everyone's journey; or do you allow them to come in, take them through a little bit of a program, connect them in, take the money, and them get them serving... but their hearts are still broken, and there's no process to heal them, and restore them? We need to be committed to do that, because that is Jesus' ministry - and you don't want to have people broken. If your children are hurting, you know what a mother does? They run; oh they fuss over them; get them, and bind them all up, and hug them, and reassure them. They do something! A church is a mother to God's family. We need to do that; heal them, and bind them all up.

So there are many ways that people can have a broken heart. It's many; but it's either things that happen to us; or things that are withheld from us break the heart. Things that happen to us; or things that are removed; or that we need for life, and they are withheld. Rejection will break the heart; abandonment will break the heart. Abuse will break the heart - sexual abuse, emotional abuse, abuse of any kind shatters the heart, causes wounding; it varies from person to person. Being bullied, being hated just because of who you are - all of these things break the heart; being in an unstable, unpredictable, unsafe environment will break the heart. Going from loss and grief break the heart. Betrayal breaks the heart. These are things people have happen to them.

Controlling relationships break the heart, and cause people to feel deeply rejected. Sometimes in some families, it's not what was actively done; it's just because of various reasons, what was needed was withheld, and that was what broke the heart. We have certain needs that we're born into this life with: love and acceptance. When people are not loved and cherished, it affects them. They begin to make conclusions about why I'm not loveable. If acceptance is withheld, because for example, you're a woman or female, rather than a male - this affects your whole identity. So you understand then, if there's a lack of nurture; even a simple thing like being prematurely born, and then put in an incubator for a while - that will affect the child.

Being separated from a mother affects the child. I know, I've gone through both of those. It affects you deeply, because the bonding that should have happened doesn't happen. The nurture that should have happened, doesn't happen; and then you're affected, and wounded, and come to conclusions about yourself, and life. Demons use all that to manipulate and torment you. Lack of touch and affection affects people - lack of just affection, just a hug and a touch. Some families don't touch or don't hug; it affects the child. It's one way that love is communicated, just through touch and hugging.

A lack of affirmation (this is one of the major ones) - a father's role is to affirm and speak into the sons and daughters. When that's withheld, they don't know what to believe about themselves, so they believe the lies of the devil - that there's something wrong with them, they're not good enough, never good enough. Then they get angry, and then you've got rebellion going on, and you don't even know why it's there; but there was a withholding, of what would have nurtured the plant. You know, I have trouble with plants! I don't know what happens, I have them one day, and then they're dead. I don't know what happens. Somehow they die, and so I don't even bother now, it's just too hard for me. I'm just not into it - but you understand, they didn't die because it was a bad place or anything. They're in a lovely place and lots of sun, it's just the thing they needed wasn't given. They didn't get the water.

Simple - so you can hurt people if you don't give them the right things. Lack of welcome, just the lack of celebration; just a child unwanted, and then being unwelcome because of some shortfalls or whatever, or difficulties - all of that has dramatic affect on the heart of the child. So these are some of the ways that people get hurt, and Jesus came to heal it. He came to heal it! Do you realise that one of the things Jesus took for us was a broken heart?

In Psalm 69 it tells us: "Reproach has broken my heart. I sought for comfort and there was none, for help and no one would help".

I just weep when I read it, even sharing it, that actually the treatment that Jesus received broke His heart. It's how He can heal broken hearts - he's represented our broken heart. He's taken our pain to the cross. He took all of those things to the cross.

So what would be some keys? I think the first thing is to recognise: it's a journey you take.

Psalm 84:4-6 - "Blessed is the man whose strength is in the Lord, whose heart embraces pilgrimage or the journey, who passes through the Valley of Tears, and makes it into a well. That person will go from strength to strength."

So what it's saying simply is: there is a process, we walk with God and in that journey, when we let Him heal the places of pain, they become a place we can comfort others. So whatever hurt you, whatever came into your life that damaged and hurt you - if you'll let God into it to heal you, not only will your life change, you will be empowered to help others. Someone is waiting for your breakthrough. Someone needs you to break through, to testify of the reality of the power of the Risen Christ. Someone needs you to do that; and if you will hold back, then you're not only perpetuating the pain; you're multiplying its impact, rather than experiencing healing and being able to minister to someone else.

Here's one other thought; this is something the Lord showed me. Many people look back on their family, at some of the things that happened, and it varies. For some, it's quite a happy family; for others, there was a lot of grief, and trauma, and all kinds of dramas going on. Have you thought of this: that maybe God, who could see all of this, put you into that family, to end the generational cursing in the family, to bring the pattern to an end, and generate a new pattern for the next generation. That you are actually a gift to the family - a gift from God to that family, to end the cycle of pain and start a different pattern: different fathering, different mothering, different family-building. You're actually building something different; not repeating the stuff that went on that hurt you. Have you thought of that?

You'll find it in Isaiah 61 - "that they might repair the desolation of generations". You're not called just to be healed in your heart for yourself. You're called to be healed in your heart, so you can carry the heart of God and rebuild the damage - the damage that's been done in families, damage been done in young people, the damage that's done in our society. Someone has to rebuild that; and those who let God into their heart, to heal their heart, can see clearly to heal the heart of others.

The more I've let God into my heart, the more I've wept and let Him deal with my pain, the more empathy and compassion I have for others, and the more easy it is for me to see it when I'm with people. No matter how you hide it, and you can hide it all you like, it just leaks like tears - it just leaks out. It cannot be hidden for those who have an eye to see, but if your heart is still hard, you just don't see. You can't see it. You just get people behaving and performing. How we need leaders that are healed, that embrace the journey of healing, and give permission to their people to do the same. They're not going to present an image that: I've got it all together; but rather, I'm on a journey of healing and wholeness, and I have my challenges, in my personal life and ministry.

I want you to know that God is committed to me, and I'm committed to the journey; and I'm creating a safe environment for you, to be committed to that journey. But when we cover it up, they just carry the burdens of loneliness. How can we journey? Well, we have to realise first of all, it is a journey; second, you need to ask the Holy Spirit to bring revelation to your heart - where you're broken, where you're not functioning. He will bring it. Maybe someone will yell at you, and tell you? There's lots of ways He's got of getting your attention. Maybe the problem you're having right now, you're looking at the other person, instead of saying: God, what is this revealing about me? You understand - when you're looking at someone else, you can never change your life.

You've just got to look at what am I doing: is the love of God manifest in my heart and life; or is there something else? So we need to then ask the Holy Spirit: uncover where was I hurt. Who hurt me? What did they do? How did that feel? You see, we spend all our life trying to stop feeling. Then we say: God, I don't feel you.

Hey, why don't you ask this prayer: Holy Spirit, show me where I stopped feeling and shut my heart up, I surrender control. How did I feel? How did I respond? How did this affect my life? What did I do to protect myself; because all of that I've got to undo, in order to let God in. Is there someone I need to forgive from my heart? Notice what Jesus said: forgive from the heart.

To forgive from the heart, you've got to connect to the pain. Oh, is there an easier way? No. But I've been spending all my life trying to stop the pain! No, no, now you have permission to feel it, and bring it to the cross. This time, you don't have to control it. You can let God heal it.

Is there someone I need to forgive? Do I need to break my agreement with lies, or with vows I made to protect my heart; lies about myself, lies about men, lies about women, lies about life, lies about God, lies about money? Have I agreed with things that now dominate my life - that's what runs my life: I believed a lie?

I've had people do that. I had one woman, she had her fifth miscarriage, and when we got down to the root of it, basically she hated her father, and made vows: I'll never carry a male child. Another woman, she'd gone through some terrible thing, and she so hated being a woman, she cursed her own womb, and then had major problems that went after that.

See, we do things to try and manage the pain, and they create another layer of problems. Demons access those things. Then I need to establish the truth in my heart; what is the truth? Meditate on the truth. Ask the Holy Spirit to build it into your life: I am loved. I am loveable. I am my Father's delight. I'm accepted. I am safe. My Father has my back. I've always got Him with me. You need the truth to enter your heart; it comes through meditation.

Is there something you need to put right, someone you need to apologise to, because you behaved so badly you also contributed to the problem? You need to just humble yourself and say: I'm so sorry, please forgive me. Are there patterns you need to change in how you deal with life? You understand, that's what heart transformation looks like. It's painful. That's why people don't want to do it; but it's fruit-bearing, because you change. One breakthrough will change your life!

My marriage changed when I saw I was bitter, and I realised why I was bitter, and repented and confessed it to my wife, and to the Lord, and asked for forgiveness, and it was put right. Otherwise, if we don't do these things, if we don't let God have access to our heart, how can you struggle through ministry? We need help, help of the Holy Ghost. He'll help you.

Closing Prayer

Why don't we just close our eyes, open our hearts. Holy Spirit, come. Perhaps there's some of you right now as I've just talked, I feel the Spirit of God is on you now, and you've been in a turmoil, but it's starting to clear, and actually I have an issue I need to face. You're not responsible for someone else's stuff, just sort your own out. When you're changed, everything around you changes. The people who become most angry when you set boundaries, are the ones who benefited most when you didn't have them; so change is not always easy, because people react, and try to get us back to the way we were. But you're called to be free, free to fulfill your course, free to be intimate with Father, free to have a free heart, free to be who you are, free, free in your heart and soul and spirit, free to fulfill what God called you to.

So perhaps today God's speaking to you right now and you say: God, I just need you to touch me now. I don't want to miss the moment. There's something I need to bring to you. There's something I need to let go of. It is a journey, but it starts with a step; so why don't you just make a step to the front today, and say: God, I realise my heart is aching. I just want to come and say: I'm hearing you talk into me. I want to open up my heart, and surrender control, and give You access to my heart; and to begin the journey of owning the responsibility for my own heart. I want to guard my heart, and nurture my heart, because this is what's causing the limitations on my life.

Sonship & Spiritual Warfare (3 of 3)  

Mon 26 Aug 2019 « Back to Top

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“Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and the power of His might” (Eph. 6:10). He wants to strengthen us!

“Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand the wiles (or the cunning plans) to overcome you” (Eph. 6:11).

You're here by divine design, and purpose. God has an assignment for you. You also have an adversary, who plans: how can I defeat that person, and stop him from operating in a supernatural life, and hinder him in fulfilling his assignment?

Every promotion of God brings another level of engagement that you must face; but beyond that engagement is a prize to be won.

Before David slew Goliath, he said: what's in it for me? They said: you get to marry the king's daughter, and your whole family will be free of taxes. He said: that sounds good to me - I'll take him on! After he took on the giant, he was promoted. You don't become an overcomer without a challenge to face!

Introduction

We spoke on Sonship and the Supernatural, and then we spoke on Sonship and Heart Transformation - the necessity of heart transformation. Tonight, I want to speak on Sonship and Spiritual Warfare, and we're going to look at a verse in Ephesians 6.

Main Message

Now these come out of life experience. Sometimes I won, sometimes I failed. Sometimes I got the thrashing of my life and ended up hiding in a cave. Other times, I came out, and I didn't always win the fights. In fact, I had many, many hidings until I understood what the fight was about, and then I began to get the victory.

I began to consistently get the victory, and with every setback, I was able to turn it back, and overthrow what was there, because God gave me revelation of what really the battle was about, and how to fight the battle. There's a lot I could share, but I'll try to keep it condensed around the things that will give you understanding of the nature of the warfare that you're up against.

We must understand, you have no choice in this. Your only choice is whether you roll over and come under something; or whether you'll stand up, and persevere, and take hold of what Christ won for you. That's the decision you make. You don't get an intermediate decision, well look, I'll tell you what, I won't bother the devil if he doesn't bother me – that’s not going work!

You have an adversary (1 Peter), who walks about like a roaring lion - seeking or scheming or planning how he can devour your life. You are called to resist, to make a stand in your life; but if you can't locate the warfare, and don't know how to fight the warfare, you'll be beaten every time, and you'll have cycles of issues you can't seem to understand why it happens.

Ephesians 6:10 – “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and the power of His might”.

One of my favourite declarations: I am strong in the Lord, and the power of His might. He wants to strengthen us.

Ephesians 6:11 – “Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand the wiles (or the cunning plans) to overcome you”.

How many know that there are cunning plans in place to overcome you? A lot of people don't even recognise, that you're here by divine design, and purpose. He has an assignment for you to accomplish. It doesn't matter where you come from; whatever your background, God has an assignment for you. You also have an adversary, who plans: how can I defeat that person, and stop him from operating in a supernatural life, and hinder him in fulfilling his assignment? It doesn't matter what level of spiritual maturity you have, or your walk - we all have adversaries.

Every promotion of God brings another level of it, and a different engagement that you must face; but here is the interesting thing: with every engagement, beyond that engagement is a prize to be won. That's the thing; so, we should never be worried that there's a spiritual warfare, or a conflict, because it tells us that beyond that, there's something worthwhile for us to take hold of.

Before David slew Goliath, he said: what's in it for me? They said: you get to marry the king's daughter, and your whole family will be free of taxes. He said: that sounds good to me - I'll take him on! After he took on the giant, he was promoted. Every battle of David led to promotion, promotion, promotion. You don't have great victories without great battles.

You don't become an overcomer without a challenge to face, so it tells to:

Ephesians 6:10-12 - “Be strong in the Lord, and the power of His might… Put on the whole armour of God… for we wrestle not against flesh and blood”.

It's an important statement there - we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against invisible spirit beings, that are highly structured, and organised to replicate what God created in the angelic realm. God created an angelic realm, with angels of different levels and layers of authority, empowerment and assignment. The devil just looked at it, and copied it; so we have various layers and levels of demonic structure, and they all have their own assignment, and levels of authority that they work under.

It says: “we wrestle not against flesh and blood”. In other words, our conflict is not really with people; it's the invisible powers, that have access to their life, to manipulate them to do their will.

2 Timothy 2:26 – “And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will”

The devil manipulates people, to accomplish what he wants. When you find yourself in conflict, you've got to stop being in a reactionary mode to people. You've got to govern your own spirit, and learn to understand where the battle is, and what you're fighting, and how to fight, so that in the end, you win the victory.

The only one you have management over is yourself. If you can't control yourself, then you're going to be wiped out every time there's a spiritual conflict, because the devil will manipulate you in the places that he has access. Jesus said: the devil comes, but he's got nothing in Me. There's no place in Me that he can manipulate Me.

I want to talk specifically about the battle... Paul wrote about it, to Timothy…

1 Tim. 1:8 – “Timothy, war a good warfare by the prophetic word, the revelation God has given you”.

Use it as a weapon to war against invisible beings. The ministry of Deliverance is literally the manifestation of God's kingdom, bringing an exposure of the demons, and bringing them out into the open, so you see the warfare. I never hide it. I don't mind if demons manifest, not at all. Great stuff!

Let's point out what's going on here. Jesus did that. In fact, if you have a look at His ministry, it was His Deliverance ministry that caused Him to become famous. He became well known everywhere, because He had the authority to subdue demons, and they did what He wanted. He gives that authority to you. He has won the battle for you. He gave His life, for you to become empowered. You need to step up in the game!

I want you to look in the Old Testament, at a particular power that operates - an invisible power. There's a difference in realms of the spirit. Most of us are affected by mere demons, just the little, low-level spirit beings, trying to gain access, and put themselves at work in your life to destroy you; but there's other beings that run those ones, and that's the one we want to have a look at.

The Bible tells us very clearly that there is a warfare that will take place in the End Times. The last verse in the Book of Malachi, just before the Old Testament ends, it says:

Malachi 4:5-6 - “I will send the prophet Elijah (or literally, the spirit of Elijah) before the great and dreadful day of the Lord's coming and he shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the children to their fathers, lest he come and smite the earth with a curse”.

Without going too deeply into that, we see several things in there...

#1 - At the End Times there'll be significant breakdown in families, and family relationships, to the point where there's great bitterness and strife and conflict in families.

#2 - That would end up with a curse coming into the earth, because of the dishonour in the families (parents of their children, and children of their parents) - so God has to intervene.

#3 - The intervention is the anointing that was on Elijah. What did Elijah do? Elijah confronted a spirit power that affected the whole nation and corrupted the nation.

In the last days, God will put a prophetic anointing on us, empowering the church to uncover, expose, and tear down the very thing that Elijah had to deal with in his day. It was a spirit power that corrupted the nation, corrupted the governance, corrupted the morality, corrupted the worship, corrupted the family life and broke down the nation. That same spirit will be powerfully at work in the end times, but God will raise up an anointing, to overcome that spirit.

Elijah came out of nowhere. God has many people, who will come out of nowhere – anointed, because they've been in the presence of God, and they have an authorisation to start moving in the supernatural, to confront spirit beings. But before you'll do anything on a bigger scale, you've got to fight your own devils, and so we want to talk a bit about the strategy of that.

1 Kings 16:30 – “Now Ahab the son of Omri… “

Ahab was a ruler appointed by God, but it says he did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than everyone that was before him. He wasn't a good guy - he was a corrupt leader. Corrupt leadership in the nation brings corruption throughout the nation.

It says: as if it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, he did something worse. His ancestors were evil, but he does something worse! He forms an alliance with Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians; then he served Baal and worshipped him, setting up an altar for Baal, in the temple of Baal, which he built in Samaria. Ahab made a wooden image, or an Ashara, and Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him.

The king that was appointed to rule, to bring peace and prosperity to the nation, but his heart has swerved aside. He's come into an alliance with a particular woman, but it's the spirit behind that woman that is the thing we are concerned with. In the Old Testament, you see stories of people having encounters with God, and people having conflicts, but behind that, there is an invisible realm that influences it. The stories in the Old Testament are given to help unveil that spirit world.

The person that's involved in the Old Testament, by the name of Jezebel - that same name turns up with a different person, in the Book of Revelation. In the Book of Revelation, it's right there in the church, being tolerated, and bringing corruption - bringing defilement and causing people to be seduced away from God. It's not the same person; but it's the same spirit, doing the same kind of work - and God wants us to revolt against it.

His complaint in Revelations 2:20 is that we ‘tolerate’ this thing to operate. Tolerate means we're just passive, and compliant, and let it happen. His complaint with the church was not that they weren't zealous, not that they weren't hardworking, but they tolerated something that God found intolerable… and the consequence was disastrous for them!

Mostly, the reason the spirit operates is because: (1) it's incredibly deceptive; and (2) people become passive, and tolerate it operating, because they don't recognise its operation.

They become entangled with it. They become entwined in it, they come under its influence, then wonder: why have I got no power? Why does the church have no power? Why are we lacking in the supernatural? There's a very good reason - if you want to move in the supernatural, you have an enemy that is committed to oppose your operation in the supernatural. Every person who steps up, and wants to move in the supernatural, will engage a different kind of warfare they've never had before.

You might say: oh well, I just don't like the idea of that, so just leave me alone - my life is hard enough as it is. Yeah, it's hard enough, because you are tolerating things to operate, that God gave you authority and a mandate to overcome.

He said in Luke 10:19 - I give you authority. I won it on the cross. I won it for you. I have won the authority over demons. They have no power to rule you. I have paid a price on the cross to gain authority for you, to reposition you with authority, so you will trample underfoot serpents, scorpions, all the power of the enemy, nothing will harm you.

You need to believe, and stand up, and learn how to fight! But if you don't know where the war is, and how to fight... we just pray in tongues, but don't know what to do, so I want to help you with that.

Let's just look at this person here... The word ‘Sidonian’ means literally ‘to catch someone in a snare’, so the Sidonians, literally their whole nature was to catch people in a snare. The Sidonians, literally, are a picture, prophetically, of demonic spirits - assigned to catch us, snare us.

The snare of the devil - Timothy talks about it. Their whole plan is to catch you in a snare, and there's many pictures of this in the Bible, many operations of the spirit, right through from one end of the Bible to the other. This is just one glimpse into it, but you can find it at work in many different parts of the Bible. Let me give you one major example...

When the people of Israel were walking in blessing, and could not be overcome, their enemy hired a prophet, but even he couldn't prophesy against them. He said: there's only one way you can deal with this - you've got to seduce them away from God. It tells us that they then sent in women to sleep with the men, and then, as a result of that, to bring them into union with them, and with their gods.

They moved away from God and began to worship idols. That is the same spirit at work, seducing people away from the Lord through sexual sin - into immorality, and then into the worship of idols, or substitutes for God. This is an old story. It says that 25,000 men perished at that time. That's a lot of sleeping around, by many, many women.

It's actually an invasion, by the women, against a culture, intentionally set on seducing these men. Young women, married women, they sent them all in, to sleep with the men, and 25,000 died. Now these things are written for a lesson, that the spiritual conflict is real - this conflict happened, and it was blatant, it was done in front of everyone. One man was highly commended, because he wouldn't stand for it. He wouldn't tolerate it. He stood up and confronted the thing. God said: I will make that man; I will give him honour all his life.

Understand then, there are parts of the Bible where, if you look past the natural story, you see the hidden spirit realm. It tells us that this woman, and the spirit we're talking about - although we may call it the spirit of Jezebel, it is not a ‘woman’ spirit. In the spirit realm, there's neither male nor female. It's a spirit that finds an expression, in this case through a woman; but it can also express through a man; or through an organisation; or through a family; but it usually finds a person that it gains access to, to operate through, and then its desire is to do a whole number of things…

When you look at the gods that they worshipped, they worshipped the god Baal, and the god Ashtara. If you have a look at it, you'll start to see, that it’s what is happening today, on a big scale. It's an old spirit at work. Baal was a god of the storms, the god of thunder, and the god of divination. Baal was a god they worshipped, and one of the ways they worshipped was they offered, and they sacrificed their children. Their children died to please Baal. That same spirit is at work today - look at the increase in abortion!

She seduced Ahab. He become entangled with her through the marriage; she seduced him, and he sold himself to do evil. He just gave himself over to follow what she wanted, so he could gain advantage; but in the end, he lost everything. Let me just tell you what the agenda is, and you find this by just looking through the scripture, through the story.

If God refers to it, at the end in Malachi, it must be important. It must be something significant. When John the Baptist came, preparing the way of the Lord, preparing for Jesus to come, he said: this is the same spirit. “The spirit of Elijah is on him” - preparing hearts for an encounter and carrying a revival. That's the anointing God wants to release on you.

What is the agenda? There are several things...

#1 - To steal your Inheritance. The spirit of Jezebel is a power at work, that wants to steal your inheritance.

If you read the story in the Bible, there was a man named Naboth. He had a vineyard, and it was his inheritance; it was his provision from the Lord, through his family line. It was something that was handed down to him - He didn't have to work for it, it came down by inheritance. Christ has won many things for us by inheritance; but the devil wants to steal them from you. He is committed to taking everything that Christ won at the cross - your healing, your deliverance, your confidence, your identity, everything that Christ won - to remove it by deception, to remove it by accusation.

One of the big problems that Christians have, is struggling with guilt and condemnation. In other words, the victory, the acceptance that Christ won, has been stolen away from you. It comes as a thief to steal, and you don't notice that it's being stolen, but you lose your peace. You lose your sense of identity; and then you start to find it in other things.

I find so many people struggling with a deep pain, deep grief of rejection and deep insecurity on the inside. They've had their vineyard ripped off. What God said is for your provision for you, to supply not only yourself but your family, has been stolen by deception. She raised a false accusation, and raised up false witnesses, and then she had him killed, to get his vineyard. The inheritance, what God has provided for you, promises for your money, your finances, your marriage, your personal life, your health - the devil wants to steal those things away from you.

#2 - To steal your Legacy. Your legacy is what you will leave to the next generation. In Malachi 4:6, he said he will “turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the children to the fathers”, meaning there's a breach in the family relationships, and no longer are the families united, but they're embittered against one another.

I've prayed for businessmen, and they've got a lot of things going for them, in terms of money, but their family is a wreck. Their legacy has been ruined. The legacy you leave… it's not all the money you get. The legacy you leave are the people you have built up, and invested in, that carry on the values and the life that you've given them. Think about that.

The legacy is, first of all, natural. It's our own family, and the next generation. The devil wants to steal the next generation. We are very active working to invest, we've got seven children, and now we're investing in the grandchildren - we have 24 grandchildren. All families are in church, but there was a fight to hold onto the legacy. I had to fight for every one of them, in prayer. Every one of them could have been lost. There's a warfare for the next generation. You have to stand in prayer - husband and wife, standing together, believing God, holding God's promises over their family, and intentionally investing into them.

Then it's got a bigger aspect, that has to do with the legacy of the next generation of soul winning and discipleship. New souls that come in… the devil will try to hinder whatever he can - try to hinder evangelism; and try to stop you having a voice, so there's no voice of witness, no testimony, no reaching out to the next generation. If you got saved, and stay in church, but you never win a soul, never do anything, then he's quite happy with that, because there's no legacy, spiritually, for your life with God. That’s why, when it comes to evangelism, there’s always a warfare around evangelism.

The church has got to be stirred, because we're always only one generation from extinction.

#3 – To destroy the prophetic, and the supernatural.

1 Kings 18:4 – “While Jezebel was killing off the LORD’s prophets, Obadiah had taken a hundred prophets and hidden them in two caves, fifty in each, and had supplied them with food and water”

Jezebel viciously attacked the prophets, killing everyone she could find. She was determined to stop the voice of God being heard in the nation - to shut down the voice that would have the power to unseat her, to shut down the supernatural power of God.

I look and see the supernatural power shut down in most churches around in the west. Why is it shut down? Fear! What are you afraid of? Are we afraid that God might do something? Are we afraid that there might be something a bit messy? Are we afraid that things won't all look nice?

Our God is a supernatural God. We misrepresent Him, if we're not strong advocates for the supernatural. Why is it, that we're not strong advocates for the supernatural? Fear! That fear leads to control; and shutting it down. We're in agreement with the spirit while in church, offering. This is a serious issue!

The prophetic voice - every person can flow in the gift of prophesy. Every person, who is the sheep of Jesus Christ, can hear His voice. The devil wants to shut down the voice of God. If you stop hearing the voice of God, the prophetic in your life is shut down. The voice that brings life, brings revelation, inspires, and guides… he wants to steal that voice out of your life!

That's why there's a fight for the prophetic - to either stop it, or to make it so weird, that no one wants it. Either way, it shuts it down. We must keep ourselves stirred, so we can stay in prophetic flow. One thing I like about this church, is that there's a prophetic atmosphere here. It's just easy to flow, easy to hear God. Even while I'm worshipping, I'm hearing Him tell me this and that, and I write it all down straight away, so I don't lose that word. This is the warfare you have!

Timothy was told: “war a good warfare, by the prophetic word”. In other words, what God says to you, is a weapon of war, that will destroy the devil; that will bring down the resistance in your business, the resistance in your family. It brings down things, in the spirit. That's why it's so precious. That's why the devil wants to shut it down. Stop the prophetic voice, and you stop the flow of revelation - you stop the church advancing.

Her first thing - shut down all the prophets. Kill them all! Except she didn't get them all - there was still a remnant who were hidden - and they came out in the right time. When Elijah stood up… this is the hatred against the prophetic - she said: I'm going to kill you! You see, the hatred for the prophetic was very intense. When you're dealing with the spirit realm, you're dealing with pure hate, like you've never seen before. I've encountered it. I've seen it; I've confronted it; and it is full of hate and violence - and it's against you. The fact you don't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there, and doesn't hate you.

That's why you can't entertain these things, you cannot allow access. We've got to actually stand up and learn how to fight in the spirit; learn how to stand, as sons and daughters, in the position that Christ won for us; and to war a good warfare, where we came to a victory. Amen!

#4 - To seduce people's heart away from God. To seduce.

When Elijah confronted the people, he said: why do you halt between two opinions? Why are you double-minded?

Why is it, that you come into church, but you're living another double life? Why is it, that there's not a consistent commitment to Christ, throughout your life? Why is it, you've got a piece of God, but you've also got a piece of something else?

He said: if God is Lord, then serve Him; but if Baal is lord, then serve him. Now I'm going to show you who the true one is, and he brought fire down from heaven! So whoa, okay, we got it!

I was in a meeting in Singapore, and God started to move, and demons started to manifest and scream out. Pastor Kong and his parents were there, and his mother said: what's going on? The father said: I see there's a greater spirit at work here - and we need to respond to that. These others are scared of it! So, just by seeing that happen, they came up on the altar call, and gave their hearts to Christ. We want to be connected to the stronger power.

Oh God, Your throne will rule forever! Amen! We're the winners! He is the winner! He's already won! He's waiting for us to take hold of His victory; and to rise up and win!

#5 - To undermine and replace kingdom order in relationships.

To undermine marriages and families, undermine church leadership, undermine governmental authorities, undermine authorities all through society. Any kingdom order that God has set up, and put in place - this spirit wants to undermine that order.

Here's the thing... People want God's blessing; but God blesses what He orders. God doesn't bless chaos; He blesses things which come into order. He's a God of order. All of nature has got order in it; it's ordered by God.

The spirit world has order in it too, so my role is to seek first His kingdom, meaning to align with His order, and priorities, in my relationships. If I'm aligned, then I'm automatically positioned, by the faith I've expressed, for God's blessing to flow.

Understand then, that the devil wants to corrupt God's order everywhere - to make men passive, so they don't pray, and become a priest and a leader in their home. Now we have a whole culture that reinforces that. You've got to join the rebellion against that, and stand up and say: actually, we want our lives in God's order. We want men standing up, and being the head of the home, as God called them to be.

Now it may not be a PC kind of language, but I tell you what the Bible says…

“God is the head of Christ. Christ is the head of the man; but man is the head of the woman”.

There is a governmental order. It's not an order of who's important, and who's not important. It's a functionality, to make it work. It's about fulfilling your rightful role, that you're appointed to fulfil - men and women standing together, rightly aligned, so they have authority in the spirit, and can put an umbrella of spiritual protection over the family.

The biggest problem with men, is the roots of rejection, that cause them to become passive, and fail to fulfil their responsibility to lead, and be a priest in their home.

When you take that line, it doesn't really matter why you took it. When you take that line, you are surrendering to the spirit, and permitting, or tolerating, disorder spiritually in the home. Then you wonder why you've got problems…

There's no authority to bring covering over the family. If you're a woman, and you've been hurt, and you never resolve it, then you start to want to control everything, so you feel safe - but then you're out of order, and now you've got a problem. You now are the doorway through which the spirit comes. Your husband has allowed it to be there, and so there's chaos, and constant conflict.

Or, it can be the other way - it may be that the man has been abused, or hurt, or whatever; and he's now got the spirit around his life, such that now he's the controlling, abusive leader in the family. Now he's totally out of order. He's violating God's order, that the man should lead, and serve, and love his family - so he's violating God's order. By violating God's order of functionality, he gives permission for the spirit to operate.

We can still go to church on Sundays; yet we have no power in our lives - why is that? Oh, perhaps you should pray for me? No, no, I want to change you, so you come into divine alignment! If you come into divine alignment, the result is outstanding. God's blessing comes around your life, and that means favour comes around your life. It means that opportunities come.

In other words, we should “Seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness” – meaning right order, right relationships, right functionality - and everything you need is added. You initiate a law, that brings the presence of God, and the blessing of God, into your life.

But people react, you see… Our culture is totally against kingdom order. You stand up, and start to talk this, and speak this, and say this… you will unleash hatred against yourself. Where is that coming from? That old spirit, which hates the prophetic, and wants to shut down and destroy God's order. It's an old spirit - there's nothing new about it; but now you see it, and it's very, very violent; and it's very expressive, and it's showing itself all through the west now. The media - you can see it everywhere; you can see it all over the place. It's very tangibly visible. You say something, and immediately, you're falsely accused. That's what's going on! That's where the warfare is!

How do people come under that spirit?

If you look at the story of Ahab, you find two things that he did. Number 1, he entered a marriage relationship, or he became entangled in a wrong relationship. The second thing he did was, for the sake of peace, he sold himself out, to do what would keep her happy. Just to keep the peace, he tolerated ungodliness. Does that sound familiar?

He was passive, in the face of things being wrong. That goes right back to the Garden of Eden, where Adam was silent, when something was going down. Silence - no fight, no resistance, just for the sake of peace. You see this all come out again, in the final confrontation with Jezebel, where she's finally taken out - you'll find the key issue is ‘peace’.

Can we just be more ‘tolerant’? But the thing is, it's a tolerance of ungodliness; and the moment you stand up for what is right, there's a vicious reaction against it. It's not tolerant! It's totally intolerant - full of hate! We must champion the truth - champion God's word!

How does it get in?

Let me give you a few ways that the spirit gets to operate into people's lives, so you can recognise that it's far more common than we realise.

The number one doorway is: unresolved heart pain. When we are wounded in relationships, when we are hurt by people - it could be in family, with a father, a mother, in life, in school… There are so many ways that we get hurt… we live in a fallen world - stuff happens.

When we're hurt, we're faced with a decision, a crisis. I can either surrender myself to the Lord, turn to the Holy Ghost, and bring that pain, and injustice, and all that's happened to me, to the cross; and find the grace of God to forgive and bless - and I grow stronger, and more yielded to the Spirit. Or, I can decide to save myself, by building walls around my heart to defend me, and now I begin to control my pain, and control my relationships, and my circumstances, so I can't be hurt again.

That's how it gets in, very simply. Every time, instead of letting go the pain, and being healed, and releasing forgiveness, you decide to bury it, and try to control it - you get into alliance with that spirit.

Now it works on you: fear, loneliness, rejection, torments. It draws you then, to addictions. The cause of addictions, the root cause, is disconnection in relationships, because of pain in the heart. You can't solve it just getting off the stuff - you've got to fix the pain in the heart. That's how it gains its access - it manipulates people, by seducing them into things that will offer a comfort, but they eventually end up being in bondage to. Pornography, alcohol, drugs, all manners of things - it's a seduction, to try and bring a false comfort to pain, so you can control and medicate your pain, instead of bringing it to the cross - to the price that Jesus paid, and getting free, and healed.

That makes all of us open to the possibility of tolerating that spirit in our life. When you tolerate unresolved offences and hurts, you are tolerating that spirit gaining access to your life. Why? Because you will be afraid of being hurt, so you will try to control life, conversations, and relationships, to prevent being hurt (or to medicate being hurt).

I did that, for a long time; I had my own ways of medicating the pain. I had no idea what it was, but it was all attempting to control pain, to try and soften the pain, to keep myself protected, and it left me isolated, alone, and under the power of that spirit - until I broke my agreement with it, and broke my patterns of doing it.

Here's another way it enters in: it enters in through generational strongholds; through broken family patterns. If the family is broken, and there's generational strongholds of control - a controlling mother or controlling father, then the spirit is in the family. The children are wounded by controlling behaviour.

When a parent is controlling… there is legitimate control; but we're talking about ungodly control. Legitimate control is good boundaries, guidelines, discipline; illegitimate is where you dominate the child, and they have to comply, and they're never able to share their feelings, their heart, what’s going on in their life - their dreams and their passions. They are under pressure to comply with a parent who makes them perform. Their heart gets broken, they get wounded; and then they will try and control the pain - firstly by hiding it. Then they start looking for ways to medicate it, and eventually they repeat the pattern; or marry into someone who is also a controller and perpetuate the problem.

It can be in the culture. Some cultures are so hierarchical, and so strong in their way of doing things, that they actually have control spirits that run right through them - and you can tell that, because you can't say anything. You can't raise a voice. You can't share a differing opinion. You can't question, or ask something, because you will be abused and shut down - that is a controlling culture. Some cultures are like that; some families are very like that; and some churches are like that.

Churches that proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ can be totally filled with a Jezebel spirit, controlling everyone; and the emphasis is always on performance, and external appearance, but never on the heart. People can't talk about what's going on, because they feel that if I say it, then something bad will happen to me. That is a Jezebelic power at work!

This is serious stuff, and it is the enemy of the End-Time move of God. It's the enemy of the church. It's the enemy of the kingdom advancing. It was the enemy in Elijah's day, and it's our enemy. You've got to find out where it attacks you. You've got to find the location of your battle, because if you don't know where your battle is, and what the issue is over, then you won't stand up, and deal with your part in it, and fight.

Ahab tolerated it, and then went along with it; but interestingly, God held him fully accountable for everything that he did - or was done under his name. You can't escape accountability to God.

It's no coincidence that you build something strong, and great, as far as a family; but bitterness and bitter envy, and ambition, will lead to the spirit operating. Someone who has got bitterness in their heart will be looking for power and control. They go into the occult, spiritism, idolatry; and it directly opens the way for controlling spirits. You become afraid to do anything without consulting the spirits or going to the idol. If you've been in a culture like that, then the spirit is already on your life and your life is not free until you're delivered.

Rebellion, when we're hurt, and rejected, and we rebel - the Bible says that a cruel messenger will be sent against them.

1 Samuel 15:23 - “Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft…”.

When you rebel against God's order, that usually means that you're rebelling against someone you know - don't tell me what to do. It's kind of an arising, to dishonour people who are in authority, and react and rebel. Of course, if you look in the media, that's what's going on everywhere; but to be part of the kingdom, you must align with God's order. When you align with God's order, and own responsibility for your life, then God's blessing falls on you.

Another way that controlling spirits come into people's lives is through what I call Boundary Violations. Here's how it works... Let me put it this way… my skin is a boundary. Everything inside it belongs to me, and I'm responsible for it. A boundary defines what you're responsible for. I'm responsible for my stuff; you are responsible for your stuff.

I am not responsible to keep you happy - it's impossible for me to do that. If I try to keep you happy, then I'm under your control. I'm under the control of a spirit. I am not responsible for your happiness; you are. My responsibility is to live the life to follow the Lord; and if you don't like that, and get unhappy with that, well I'm sorry - that's too bad.

Boundary violations are when you take on someone's responsibility that isn't yours. That means you control them, or you're trying to control a dysfunctional relationship. For example, if a parent fails; let’s say, a mother or father is an alcoholic, and one of the children steps up, and takes on their responsibility - it all looks good, but it's driven by fear, and the desire to save myself. That person enters a great bondage, that affects them all their life. They're trying to control every relationship, to keep it safe.

There are boundary violations, and when someone has got a control spirit around them, they can never bring forth any leader under them. You can never produce a leader if you're a controller, because they'll be forced to please you, and they will bury their gift, and their identity, just in the order of getting peace.

It's so corrupt! The spirit is so corrupt, and so we must hate it, as God hates it. You know God hates it so much, that He gave you a free will, to decide your own destiny. He loves us so much, that He will give us a free will about our destiny. We've got to be able to give people free will, to make their own choices and be responsible. This boundary-blurring is a big issue - when I take over someone's responsibility that's not mine, then I start to move in witchcraft. When I start to prophesy over someone, in things outside the boundaries of prophecy, then I'm operating in witchcraft.

It's such an insidious spirit, that it creeps in. That's why, when you start to get an understanding of this, you want to be under authority; you want to be in alignment, because you understand what's at stake. Understanding that it's about a kingdom, and that kingdoms have an order and a governance, and the anointing flows within the boundaries of that governance. The moment you remove the boundaries of God's order, now it's like a river moving with no banks. There's a flood, and all kinds of junk happens.

You will find that when people are like this, they show certain traits. Maybe you'll find that as you listen to these traits, you may realise - ooh, that's me! I do that! Or you repent? You repent - it's quite simple, stop doing it. You are hurting people. You're not making it better. You're participating in the destruction! You're cooperating with a spirit.

You see, if I said: have you yielded to a demonic spirit recently? They say: no, not me; would never do; I'm a Christian! But if there's brokenness in your life, and you start surrendering to ungodliness, then you're allowing the spirit to express itself through you. You're increasing its ability to get control. Here's a few things it does…

#1 - It flipflops between being highly aggressive, and highly seductive. All of it is about: I want you to do what I want, and I'm going to find a way; so, it's going to be soft, or hard, or it may be both. Soft to start with, and then hard later.

So, number 1 is manipulation - relationships are emotionally manipulated, by making you feel guilty. You don't love me! Yes, I do love you, but I'm not going to do that. Understand? It's just a manipulative ploy, trying to make you to feel bad, so you feel obliged to do something.

#2 – Accusation. You're this, you're that - false accusation. Blame - it's all your fault. No, it isn't. I've got my bit; and you've got your bit. I'm just going to own my bit; stop blaming me! When you blame people, you act like a victim, so you get tears.

#3 – Victim. I've been in encounters with people where I've raised an issue, and at first it was vehement denial, then accusation, then blame. Then when I kept pressing, they suddenly collapse, and now it's all tears. Oh, I'm so hurt, my background… Next thing you know, you're feeling sad for the person. It's a flipflop thing, can go one or the other; and when you meet people like this, they're very difficult to work with, and usually conflict, and confrontation, are the only way that you're going to find your way through it.

#4 – Agenda. There's always an agenda to everything, so when you're dealing with someone who's got the spirit operating in their life, nothing they ever do is without a hidden agenda - there's always a reason they do it. They will do all kinds of things - they come into church, and they'll serve, and they volunteer to serve.

#5 – Flattery. They flatter; but the flatter is seduction - it's dishonest. Praise and affirmation is good; but flattery is just saying things to impress you, so I can gain access; because a person with that spirit will want to gain access to whoever's authorised to lead, so they can undermine their leadership, and gain power and control. That's the agenda!

#6 – Intimidation. One aspect of it is manipulation - through guilt and tears, through fussing, all that kind of stuff. Another way is through intimidation - through anger, threats, or threats to withhold. It can be as simple as withholding intimacy in marriage, withholding money, withholding all kinds of things - the threat to withhold puts a pressure on people.

#7 - Sharp criticism is a very violent way. In the Asian culture, they use shaming or scolding as a way of controlling children. It doesn't control them, it just gets them quiet, and it wounds their heart, because you've unleashed against them a demonic spirit. It creates dependency. You'll find the intimidating aspects of this person operating will be passive-aggressive. They may say something, but you can feel the anger in it, and you feel intimidated by it.

#8 - When you're around someone who's got a strong, controlling spirit, you're always on eggshells, because I don't know how they're going to be next. There's a control spirit operating. You've got to call the bluff on that one. Why should you walk around feeling afraid - worrying, or guarding what you say? Because you're trying to get their acceptance, or please them, or whatever? You've got to stop it. If they're unhappy, they're unhappy. Oh, I see you're unhappy; what's the trouble? It's their problem, not yours. When you tiptoe around people, you've taken ownership of keeping them happy. You've taken on a responsibility that isn't yours. You can never fulfil it. But if you don't make them happy, then they can make your life miserable, so you've got to have the courage to stand up to that.

See, it's seductive; and then it's threatening. Seductive - it's a goddess of love and seduction; but it's also a goddess of war. It will be violent against you. You've got to learn to be able to stand up in the Lord, to overcome the thing. You find it in the workplace; in homes; in churches; or in organisations. There will be the seductive side - in my experience, it's firstly by flattery. Oh pastor, you're so wonderful, your gifts are wonderful, I'm just so touched; but you can feel there's a lack of authenticity in it. There is genuine honour; but “flattery works ruin”, the Bible says. Sometimes it's flirting, slightly seductive talk, innuendos - all that kind of thing. It goes on in the workplace, in relationships - it just has hints of sexuality in it. That's to seduce, to draw people, and if you've got a broken marriage, or pain or struggle in your marriage, then that's the thing that will draw you away, and seduce you into something that will destroy you.

#9 - They can seduce people by false prophetic words, that can seduce people into agreeing with them, because they seem spiritual. People operating in this might seem spiritual, but if you look at the fruit, no one is built into the church - they just build to themselves. What I look for, in a leader - can you release other people, or not? If you can't release other people, then you're just building to yourself. There's something wrong with this - this is controlling. Are people being built into Jesus, or are they built to you? It's how this thing operates, and it's ghastly - horrendous. I hate the thing so much.

#10 - It's self-promoting. All kinds of ways of promoting self, usually by talking about what I can do; but also, criticising and undermining others. When you have a person with that spirit, they will smile to your face, but behind your back, they'll criticise you and run you down, and their strategy is very clear: undermine everyone, until in the end I'm the one, the last man standing.

They try and gain access to a pastor. If you pastor a church, they try and get near to you, by a process of serving, flattery, seductive, all that kind of thing. The idea is to gain control, gain your confidence, and your voice, and be the influencer in your life - not necessarily in charge, but just the one who's behind the scenes. It's horrendous! It can be hard to pick, because the person seems nice, and they do love Jesus, but they're broken, and a part of them is functioning under the influence of a spirit, that has trained them in this way of operating.

Repentance is required - you've got to deal with the spirit behind it, by leading the person to repentance. The only way through it is repentance. If you try to confront the person, if you try and have a meeting with them and say: listen, I need to talk about something I'm not happy with - you know what's going to happen?

Total Denial! No! They will deny so vehemently, what you know to be a fact, that you will feel ‘confused’, as to whether you got it right. The denial is so strong. They will literally lie, straight to your face, because they don't want to lose control.

Then, if the denial doesn't work, and you keep pressing in with the facts – and you've got to have those facts, if you're ever going to confront a person who's got that spirit operating. These are the facts; you present the facts; and you have a witness to the facts... I've had people sabotage my witnesses, and then I'm left with egg all over me, like I'm just an idiot. I've failed a few times, and I’ve had to get smart about how to deal with this thing now. So first they deny… then they'll blame you! It will suddenly turn; and it's all on you - you're being blamed! They will accuse you! So now it's turned from denial, to now attacking.

If none of that works, and you remain resolute… then they collapse in tears! And still, it's still not taking responsibility. It's trying to get you to feel sorry for them, so you take your eyes off what the issue is - they refuse to deal with the issue. It's horrendous!

You've probably had some experiences, I've had a few experiences with it; but in the end, I could very accurately predict it! I could tell people: this is what's going to happen; and they'd say: man, it happened just like you said!

In secular society, they might call them a narcissist. Anyway, how are we going to get free? There's an anointing of the Holy Spirit that breaks the yoke. One of the great things I love is that the Bible tells us of people that overcame that spirit, but it always requires repentance. Samson was overcome by that spirit, lost his vision, became confused, lost his anointing, lost his strength… but when he repented, God restored his strength, and he stood up!

I can remember when I went through a major battle, and my own son said to me: dad, you're going to have to fight another battle in this area. You're going to need to stand up and bring this thing down. I knew it was a word from God, from my own son - and I knew what that meant. There was a warfare, that went on for about nine months; so I can tell you exactly how to pray, how to fight, and how to stand up; but the first thing you've got to realise is, you must let go of all entanglements, that this thing has got access to your life in.

There has to be a deep repentance, from any place you’ve become entangled - whether it's some sexual thing, some kind of little habit you've got, anything that that thing works to manipulate you - you have to bring it to the cross. There's got to be a recognition: I'm in a warfare; it's about my inheritance; it's about my legacy; it's about my future; it's about other people's lives, as well as mine. I will make a stand! I will begin to fight!

The first thing is to recognise: it's a fight.

The second thing is to repent - of every place where I tolerated this. Did I allow this to happen?

Don't go blaming someone else! I have men come, and they complain that their wives are controlling, and all this kind of stuff. I say: shut up! You need to man up! You need to repent that you have tolerated this your whole life, just because you just wanted someone to love you. You want someone to be nice to you; and you haven't got the strength in you, to stand up, and lead properly, and courageously.

You need to repent every place you've tolerated this thing, because repentance will bring you back into heavenly alignment, and you will then be re-authorised to confront the spirit. When you confront the spirit, you can bring resolution to the issues; but if the spirit is not confronted, there will always be a problem of this thing working behind the scenes to interrupt it all.

The first step is to recognise: it's a problem; and make the decision: I will fight.

The guy in the Bible who stood up against this thing was Jehu. The Spirit of the Lord came on him, and he just went for it; and this is interesting... The first person he met said: is it peace? Can we work this out? Can we tolerate? Can we get on? No peace! Next one came, is it peace? No peace! Next one said: is it peace? No peace, while this witchcraft continues!

There will never be peace, while this spirit is allowed to operate! Peace is what you get after the battle - when you win. Peace comes from victory!

It says: he pulled his bow back, full strength, and gave it everything. Then he went into the city. The moment he goes into the city, Jezebel painted her eyes up! She wants to seduce him, wants to impress him, wants to give herself power, whatever. Then she begins to mock him: oh, you're going to be like one of those other guys? What good came of him, when he tried this on?

He said: who is on my side? Who is on the Lord's side? Throw that thing down! The eunuchs, the people that had had their life, their energy, their identity stolen away by that spirit - they rose up and cast it down. This is an hour for those who have been hurt by that spirit, those who have had their strength taken away, those who've lost their identity - to start to stand up again!

Say: God, I'm taking hold of You! I repent! I bring the pain in my heart to the cross, for You to heal. I release forgiveness, and now I stand in my place, in the spirit. You've got to understand where the battle is and what your position is. We are sons of the living God! He has won the victory! The devil is defeated; so, the only power he's got, is the bit that I gave him. That's why I disentangle; have a repented, clean heart, and begin to seek the Lord.

How do you warfare? When you're positioned right, you learn to build your spirit, praying in tongues, until your spirit is strengthened - start to stand up, on the inside!

You need to stand up on the inside, stop rolling over, stop lying down, stop feeling sorry for yourself! Don't be like Elijah, and hide in the cave, and feel sorry for yourself. Stand up, man of God! Stand up! There's an anointing, of the Spirit of Might, that comes on you. Start to pray in tongues every day! Commit to pray! You're fighting for your life! You're fighting for something that's valuable; so, put up a fight!

My fight is for my future. My fight is for the generation that will follow me. I will win this battle! Pray in the spirit; begin to engage with God, until you become strengthened on the inside again. Your spirit starts to stand up, and then out of that place you decree - you speak to the spirit, and you exercise your authority. I speak to that spirit! I forbid your operation against me; against my wife; against my children - whatever it's against, you've got to find where the battle is. Wherever the battle is, forbid its operation.

I bind all your spirits; I forbid all communication - because there's a whole network of spirits. Now, I release the power of God into that situation. I release the angels of God to work. I release revelation. I release an exposure of that thing. I decree the kingdom of God has come into that place!

You've got to use the word of God. You've got to start to exercise something in the spirit. You're the voice, for God in heaven to manifest on the earth. Repent! Get your heart right with God. Build your strength in the spirit!

When David was overcome and defeated – when everyone wanted to kill him, wanted to destroy him… he rose up inside! He strengthened himself in the Lord, and then he started to hear God, and God gave him a strategy. He ended up on top.

When you win this battle, you'll end up on top. You'll end up better than you were. You'll end up with the blessing of God released. You'll end up with things you never expected, because God has been activated to work - because you stopped tolerating something ungodly, and you stood up and said: I and my family, we will serve the Lord. We're going to honour God, and so as the head of the household, I'm going to take contention up against that spirit.

It's quite a simple thing. It's basically the reconnection with God, by removing the entanglements in your heart, and then just pressuring the spirit, day by day. I usually do it for about three weeks. I pressure it, and pressure it, and sometimes there are massive reactions. Sometimes massive reactions happen, and then sometimes it just flushes out, and there it is. Now the problem is out, and we can see it, then we can have a good discussion about new boundaries. You can address the problem.

Always enter spiritual warfare first; and when the Lord says, then you address the problem face to face. You have the facts, you set it out; and then you set new boundaries: this is how it's going to be. You need to be quite insistent, and strong in this area, and not be afraid. Fear is how it will gain access again.

My trust is in the Lord. I'm not afraid of what you will do! I remember standing and facing someone, and they said: this is going to happen, and this is going to happen, and this is going to happen...

I said: I don’t mind. I'm telling you what God wants, and this is how it's going to be. People that had been influenced by that spirit just walked away, but God came through, and we went from strength to strength to strength.

I had people accuse me falsely. I had people say all kinds of things to me. I had people speak false prophesies over me - and none of them have come about. The opposite came about! Exactly the opposite! You see, because my heart was clean, I didn't mind.

God said this to me: don't try to defend yourself. Let Me do that. You'll just make a problem that you can't solve. He said: just be an honourable man; be generous, and honour people; forgive people, and just follow the vision that I have given you.

Don't become entangled in fighting the people. Our warfare is not against flesh and blood. You've got to rise in your spirit. Will there be difficulties? Will it be painful? Of course! But the outcome… You've flushed the spirit out, and you've brought a change in the relationship. Either you're not in it anymore; or you're in it, and it's changed.

If you change you, then everyone around you must adjust, because there's no longer the old you. The people who get angry when you set new boundaries are the ones who were benefiting by you not having those boundaries. The ones who get angry that you've got a new authority in your life, are the ones who benefitted when you didn't have any authority in your life, and you compromised.

That's why we need to stand - get your life back, come out of the cave. Elijah - what are you doing here? You don't belong in a cave! If you're defeated, you need to open your heart and say: God, tonight I'm going to break out of that place. Amen!

Sons Break Strongholds  

Sun 8 Nov 2020 AM « Back to Top

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If we are a son or a daughter of the living God, then we are called to be a builder. Relationships must be built, and sustained. A church has to be built.

Our relationships are like a garden. They can have weeds in them, and they become overgrown. The garden of our heart, and our relationships, need to be nurtured - you need to protect them.

Adam was given a mandate, as a son of God - put in a territory, put in a place (in a garden), and his mandate was to cultivate it - to nurture it, and develop that garden.

He was also told to protect it. There's a warfare, around being fruitful - around your marriage, family, finances, and your relationship with God. You must become then, a ‘breakthrough’ person.

Introduction

What if God wanted to touch you, and you were just switching off? What if you were right at a point, where God was wanting to speak into your heart about change, and you just switched off? One of the dilemmas we have is, we get so used to the worship time, that we just turn off; rather than hungering for Him, and lingering with Him, saying: Jesus, I love You. I deeply love You. I long to encounter Your love. I want to be rooted and grounded deeply in Your love. I want to reflect Your love to the people around me. I want to break through the limitations to being a loving person. Come Holy Spirit, speak into our hearts. Lord, we just honour You.

There's a lot of people right now that are in just agitated state - agitated because of election results in New Zealand, agitated because of what's happening in America. But you need to get your eyes fixed on what counts. Jesus said: My kingdom is not of this world - otherwise my servants would fight. We've got to watch that we don't get caught up in fighting against people, when our battle is against hidden spiritual powers. We're called to love people and hate the devil.

Jesus said this, concerning His kingdom… It begins like a little rock, then becomes a mountain, that will fill the whole earth. We must always stay centred on Him, and His kingdom. Our role is to be aligned with Him, and His kingdom. Whatever happens in the elections, God's instruction is the same: pray for those who are in authority, that we may have peace. We're not to hate them, judge them, or speak against them. We are to dwell in peace; and pray for those in authority. Our primary call is the kingdom of God, to become ambassadors for heaven. How can you become an ambassador for heaven, while you tolerate hatred, and bitterness, and anger, and deep feeling of injustice? We need to be clean of all those things. Say, Father, let Your will be done.

This is what got the disciples agitated. They wanted Jesus to lead a kingdom, that would rise and overthrow the Romans. He said: you don't understand. My kingdom is a spiritual kingdom, and it operates in the spirit realm, through people whose hearts are surrendered. Lift your heart to the Lord, lift your hands. I surrender. Lord, cleanse my heart, from being entangled with the affairs of life, of this world, to such a degree that I've lost sight of just loving people, and loving You. Lord, return my focus to what I'm called to be, and do - to be a son of the Almighty, an ambassador for the kingdom. Lord, we honour You. We thank You. Amen.

Main Message

I want to just continue one thought, related to the seminar I did. It's called “Sons Break Strongholds”. The Bible is very clear, if we are a son or a daughter of the living God, then we are called to be a builder. There is nothing in life that doesn't require building. A marriage must be built, and it must be sustained. Relationships, we build them, and we sustain them. A church has to be built. Nothing happens by accident. Everything must be built.

Our relationships are like a garden. They can have weeds in them, and they become overgrown. The garden of our heart, and our relationships, need to be nurtured - you need to protect them. Adam was given a mandate, as a son of God - put in a territory, put in a place (in a garden), and his mandate was to cultivate it. In other words, nurture it, and develop that garden. The second thing he was told to do, was to protect it. In other words, there's a warfare, around being fruitful. There's a warfare, around your marriage, around family, around finances, and there's a warfare around your relationship with God. You must become then, a ‘breakthrough’ person.

I want to look at this area of strongholds…

2 Corinthians 10:4-5 – “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but they're mighty in God, to pull down strongholds (mighty through God), casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ”.

We are involved in a conflict, but it's not a conflict with people. When you start to get angry, and reactionary, and start to name-call people, then you've lost the plot. You've lost the battle. You're already defeated. Our battle is not against people; our battle is against something that's unseen. It's in a spiritual realm – unseen, but very real; hostile, spirit beings. That's where the warfare always is, and they operate, and they work through people; so, we end up reacting to people, instead of loving people. We end up reacting to them, and then perpetuating, or reflecting, the lack of love that's in their own life.

Jesus has equipped us. The Bible talks about “the weapons of our warfare”, meaning that we have a “warfare”, and we have “weapons”, that God says you can use; but if you don't use them, then you will be defeated in the warfare. So, we must realise, there's a warfare. Notice in that verse, that he talks about “pulling down strongholds”. A stronghold is something you've got to pull it down; and it requires an intentional effort. The word ‘pull down’ is to ‘demolish’ something. Everyone that's sitting here today… there is some area, that you must demolish.

When they went into the land that God promised them, He said: see that good and fruitful land? I give it all to you. I've given it into your hands, and I've overcome the enemy, but… you must go in and possess it. You have to do something. If you want to develop in your relationship with God, there is a conflict over that. If you want to see more miracles in your life, there's a conflict around that. If you want to see greater breakthroughs of finances, there's a conflict around that. Everything that God has promised us, we must take hold of, by the exercise of faith. It doesn't just come to us - so we have a spiritual battle. Every believer is called to be a warrior, and a builder - every one of us.

Freedom is a legacy given to sons. Part of your inheritance, as a believer, is that you are called to freedom. I just loved it up here today, around that offering time, just watching everyone being free. I just love it when people can laugh, dance, enjoy God, and just enjoy the freedom. We're called to that. We're called to liberty.

Galatians 5:13 – “You are called unto liberty...” You're called to it! We're called to freedom! Man, I love that, we're called to it. You're called to freedom, and freedom… you can see it! You can feel it, because it shows through people's emotions - the joy, the freedom. There's all this freedom; but it has to be taken hold of, and then expressed, and valued in our life.

Galatians 5:13 – “You're called to freedom, but you don't use freedom to indulge the flesh, but by love, serve one another”.

The real freedom we have is when we learn to love people and serve them; but anything that stops you loving people is a stronghold. Anything that stops you being free to serve people is a stronghold. It's resisting you reflecting God's love to people. So, what is a stronghold? God wants you to get a breakthrough today.

A stronghold is a fortified place, a heavily defended place, behind which is an enemy. It's a heavily defended place; a place of survival or refuge. It's a place which serves as a centre for a hostile group, or a group that all have a common mindset. That's dictionary definition; so, what then, is a spiritual stronghold? It is an ungodly mindset. It is a way of thinking. It is a way of behaving, that hinders you coming into the knowledge and experience of God. Let me say it again: an ungodly mindset; or a way of thinking and behaving; and it's got several characteristics…

1) It's probably been established over a period of time - and you've gotten used to living with it.

2) It strongly resists change. You can say: oh God, I have a new resolution - a new year’s resolution… but they never work, because they rely on the flesh. They rely on your willpower; and sometimes, underneath it, there's something else.

3) It's empowered by unseen spiritual beings. There's something that energises it; something is giving it power. If you don't dismantle what's giving it power, then you struggle to change. A lot of people come to church, and they love the atmosphere, they love the experience - and that's wonderful, but God wants you to change, and become a worshipper, and become a free person - one that knows how to love people, and serve people. See, that's being free of it.

4) It undermines your relationships, and success in life. If you have a financial stronghold, a stronghold of poverty, it will affect you getting wealth, and growing successful, and prospering - no matter how hard you work. It will increase loneliness in your life, because it's the secret part. It's the part you've got hidden. It's the part you covered up. It's the part you don't want anyone to find out about. It's that ‘little secret’ you're wrestling with constantly - that's your stronghold. In that place where you're wrestling, the stronghold, there's no revelation of love - you're isolated, and alone, and in pain. When we have those strongholds, we try to look good, but in fact many of us are struggling with something.

Finally, here's the key one, which it says very clearly in that passage…

5). It actively obstructs you experiencing and knowing God. One of the key characteristics of a spiritual stronghold… it actively obstructs you experiencing and knowing God. That's why you need to deal with it. That's why you need to find what your strongholds are, and overcome them, because they are standing between you and a greater dimension of God's love and blessing.

If you have a stronghold, for example, of rejection, there will be a wound in your heart, that came some point in your life. There will be a lie, or a belief – that I'm not accepted, I'm not good enough… and that's been there so long, that demons now have gained access to your life, and they continue the torment. So, every time you look at life, you look through the filter of rejection - they don't want me… they don't like me... I don't fit in here... I don't belong here - it's talking all the time. It's a stronghold, with spiritual beings that torment, that keep you fixed there.

When you have a stronghold of rejection, usually then unbelief gets with it, and it stops you believing I could experience from God. It hinders you. It obstructs you. God can be moving, and yet you're gripped in rejection and unbelief, and so you can't receive from Him. That’s why we need to overcome them, because they exalt self. They put you at the front - they put your thoughts, and your ways, at the front; and they stop you experiencing and knowing God - so we want to deal with them.

Let's talk about examples of some strongholds. I know ones that I've wrestled with have been in our family for generations, but God calls you to be the generation that arises in faith and brings an end to that pattern. He calls you to be the generation that brings a breakthrough, and builds a different future, but you can't build a great future if you don't address the things that obstruct you experiencing God, and His provision for your life.

With strongholds, frequently they're hidden, they're secret. They're hidden away, because we don't want anyone to know about them. Sometimes they're obvious, so obvious that people react to you, because they see the way you are – unloving, reactionary, angry, and a bully; or critical, or negative, or passive… or whatever it is. There are many strongholds, that the Bible talks about.

There's a stronghold of bitterness - that's the most common one. A stronghold of bitterness is rooted in hurts and offences that we’ve never resolved. You don't always feel bitter, but you react; you complain; you're negative. You react hostilely, when you're mistreated, because you're interpreting it wrong. A stronghold of bitterness, the Bible says, is a “root that defiles”. Imagine having an enemy that has occupied part of your heart, so no matter what you do, there are hidden spiritual forces trying to work through your mouth, through your mind, and through your attitudes, to corrupt every relationship you've got. If you want to build, you must overcome your strongholds. It's not either/or; build or fight; build or battle. I've got to actually fight, to overcome things that resist me building; that are in the way of knowing God; that are in the way of my marriage experiencing more; in the way of my family; in the way of my relationships experiencing more.

Sexual sin, and lust, are another big one; and often it's been there for years. Sometimes it's been within a family - the mind tormented with defiling pictures, or unclean thoughts. Sometimes we've done things that have opened the door to that, and now it's become something that's got a hold of you, and grips you, and now it defiles everything. You can't see people right. Instead of looking on people and seeing them as a beautiful person in the image of God, you're corrupted by the stronghold.

Bitterness, lust and sexual sin - these things defile us. These are strongholds. We can have many different kinds of strongholds. There can be a stronghold of rejection - it affects the way you see yourself, and the way you see people around you. Men with rejection can't build great marriages, because they want someone to love them, and care for them, and mummy them, etc, but they don't know how to love people. God says: “husbands, love your wife”. So, these strongholds must be dealt with!

We've got to address any strongholds that stop us being the people God called us to be. We're called to freedom!

For some people, the stronghold is one of shame. Shame is a message that says: something is wrong with me; I'm not good enough. Shame causes people to hide, when we feel like something is broken in our life. We've been put down by people, shamed by people… sometimes it's in families. Sometimes it's in cultures, that use shame as the weapon to hold you, and control you; and when you've got that shame around you, you can never enter intimate relationships.

All strongholds resist love. All strongholds resist experiencing God. All strongholds leave you alone.

Shame is a major one. It's a mindset, that something is wrong with me; we hide.

Addictions are another stronghold. When people lack the experience of love, where love has been violated, or love has been withheld from us - that's what causes these strongholds. They're all a love deficit somewhere, and the thing that will deal with them is not our fighting, and trying, and performing. It's the encounter with the love of God, the love of a Father, who loves us. Addictions usually are rooted in shame and pain, the pain of being wounded, hurt, abused, abandoned, beaten, whatever it is; and it's unresolved in the heart, so we feel a deep shame. Shame causes people to go into addictions, and that not only increases the shame; it now gives them a secondary problem as well. We must resolve those things. These are strongholds to deal with.

Another major stronghold and you see it today all over the world (it's fuelled by media), fear - fear and anxiety. Fear is a spirit, the Bible says. “God has not given you a spirit of fear, He's given you a spirit of power, a spirit of love”. God has given you a spirit that reveals you're loved - and it overcomes the fear! A lot of people right now are reacting in fear, because of what they see going on in the world; but we're not to be that kind of people - we're called to be something different. We're called to be passionately filled with the love of God; and having an answer to the fears that others have!

How can you do that, if you've got a stronghold of fear? You'll be attracted to things that stir your fear. What's going to happen? What's going to happen next? There are so many people living that way - fearful of what's going to happen next. Just read the Bible - it tells what's going to happen next! It tells us that the big end of everything is Jesus, and His kingdom prevailing over all things! It tells us that before that happens, there's going to be a lot of troubles in the earth; and yet the whole church… people get so full of fear when they see stuff happening! You're yielding to the wrong spirit!

Those things that are happening, that engender fear… that are stirred by others engendering fear… are sent to try and attack you; and bring you into fear; bring you into agreement with it. God wants you to be stirred to overcome it, to break that stronghold, so you live in no fear of what you're reading and seeing. In fact, you stop reading, and seeing a lot of stuff, because your focus is on an invisible kingdom. Your focussed on looking to Jesus - the author, and finisher, of our faith. It's our faith that will overcome.

How can you overcome, if you keep filling your mind with the wrong stuff? We're to be caught up in praise and worship, as sons and daughters of the living God; building a house that honours Him; and having the boldness to come forth, out of His presence, with answers.

Strongholds, they don't go away. You must overcome them; and that stronghold is set in front of you, for your maturity. If you won't defeat your stronghold, you remain immature. If you'll take the challenge, and face, and overcome the stronghold you have, you will grow in maturity.

You will be able to build upon now that new piece of land; like in the Old Testament - there was a piece of land, that's occupied by the enemy. If you want the land, then overcome the enemy. When you've overcome the enemy, now you plant, and cultivate, and use the land for your benefit - that's how war works. We are to overcome the places in our mind and heart where there are strongholds, and to cultivate the word of God, cultivate the love of God, cultivate faith. It's God's plan for us. That's God's plan!

All these strongholds are caused by violations of love, or a withdrawing of love. The remedy will be the love of God. It's encountering what love is really like. Freedom will begin when we start to connect with the one who loves us and start to experience His love.

When the Prodigal Son returned home, he was in a mess… but his father ran to him, embraced him, and hugged him, and loved him, and restored him - that's what love looks like!

How are we going to break strongholds? We've got to make a decision, that I will do all I can, to connect with the love of God, through worship. I will begin to engage Him; and then I need to address the strongholds...

If you're going to overcome a stronghold you've got to recognise there's one there - recognise the pattern. Everything begins when you recognise that you've got a problem - and call it by its name.

Secondly, it requires you take responsibility for the change. Don't wait for someone to pray for you. That will help, but you've got to own what you have to do, to deal with that thing. You're in agreement with something - you've tolerated it living in your life, and it's your journey to overcome it, so you can grow. Fathers give their sons challenges.

Third thing we need to do, to deal with a stronghold, is resolve the hidden pain. Usually with a stronghold, there's pain somewhere. You were wounded, you were hurt, you were rejected. Someone did this, or did that, or withheld, or betrayed – whatever it is, under the stronghold, there's always some pain to acknowledge, and grieve over, and bring to the cross. Is there someone I need to forgive? Do I need to release forgiveness to someone? Do I need to repent, that I've held this thing, that I've agreed with this thing? Do I need to repent that this thing has become an idol, that I've bowed down and served? Instead of encountering God, I've let this thing dominate my life.

God is wanting to bring us, and His end time church is going to be full of worshippers, full of people who love His presence, full of people that are abandoned before Him, full of people that can flow with the Holy Spirit, full of people that can stay in His presence, enjoying Him, knowing how to bring heaven to earth. That's the people God is building. That's why He wants you to be free of the stronghold.

Do you have to break your agreement, or renounce your agreement, with something? Then renounce it! Speak the words. Cancel your agreement with fear. Cancel your agreement with rejection. Cancel your agreement with unbelief. Cancel your agreement with those things. Cancel listening to criticism. Cancel it! Break your agreement with it; and then make your stand, and speak against it, and resist it.

That is what sets you free; but after you're free, you must build in that part of your life. Every time you encounter God's love in that part of your life, the revelation of His love helps to build us, and establish us, in truth. God loves His people. He's committed to raising up a family of overcoming sons. You're called to be one of them. You're called to rebuild, overtake, and overcome the enemy, in whatever part he's robbed from you.

Closing Prayer

I believe some people today need a breakthrough. I don't know what your breakthrough is in, but people here today are needing a breakthrough.

Perhaps it's fear and anxiety? You say: God, I've been listening to stuff, reading stuff, watching stuff, and my fear levels have gone high. I really want to break my agreement with that and repent of agreeing with that. I want to refocus my life on the eternal kingdom, and upon You.

Perhaps it's bitterness? You say: oh man, I've got some anger and issues underneath in my heart, I need to address those. Come on, deal with it today. Don't put it off. Name it; and start to press in, to change it.

Perhaps it's some area of uncleanness that keeps badgering you, and coming around you? Don't just agree with it, or tolerate it - stand up, and push it back.

You are called to freedom! You are called to liberty. You are called to it. Jesus paid a price for it. It's yours to take hold of, if faith will rise in your heart. You say: I don't have to live with that stronghold anymore. I can push through that stronghold. Jesus - You conquered that thing on my behalf. I'm identifying with You, breaking my agreement with it and breaking through it today.

What is it? A stronghold of poverty, stronghold of failure? Whatever it is, you say: God, today I want to deal with that thing. Who is ready to deal with something, and say: God, I can see something in my life, it's just there constantly, it's hindering me - I want to overcome it!

Sons overcome strongholds. Sons are fighters. Sons are warriors. Sons learn how to stand up - to be men and women of God.

That's you! That's who you are. Don't let the devil tell you that you're not that. That's who you are. Don't you live out of the old identity, live out of who you are now. You're a son. You're a son of the living God! You are loved. You are blessed. You have an inheritance. Freedom is your inheritance. Reach out by faith and take hold of it, come on.

If you're needing a breakthrough today, say: Jesus, I am coming today to break my agreement with that stronghold.

Rejection, bitterness, unforgiveness, unclean torments. People struggling with fear, disappointment, or intimidation. People struggling with grief… make your way to the altar. Lift your hands to Jesus. People struggling with shame, the words spoken over you, the treatment you got, the looks, the words... Break out of that shame today.

People struggling with addictions, whatever it is, it's a poor substitute for love. It's a withered substitute for love. Whatever addiction you've got, you say: God, I'm using that as a substitute for love. I want to break the power of that thing today. Say: God, I know who I am. I'm a child of God. Freedom is my legacy, and inheritance - I'm taking hold of that today.

Perhaps you've never received Jesus Christ as your Saviour? You've never given your life to Christ? This would be a great day to receive Jesus as your Saviour.

I want you to fix your eyes on Jesus. There will be people come and pray with you. They will pray a prayer of agreement, to break whatever it is you've decided to break your agreement with. They're not coming to save you; they're coming to agree with you. They're agreeing with your decision: I am a son of God. I am a child of the living God. I am a daughter of a King. I'm part of a royal family.

Before we pray, just name (before the Lord in your heart, or with your mouth quietly), what it is you want to break out of. Name it, call it what it is. Stop blaming people. It's my thing. I choose today to rise against it.

Is there some pain you need to bring to the Lord? Is there someone you need to forgive? Is there something you need to repent of? Do you need to break your agreement? Declare your identification with Jesus Christ, and then break your agreement with that stronghold, and command every spirit that's behind it, to go from your life.

We're going to worship God together, and in that atmosphere of worship, freedom comes! In the Bible, sometimes they shouted it, and then freedom came. People are going to come and lay hands on you, and You'll be delivered. Follow me in this prayer...

Father, I come to You in Jesus' name. I declare Jesus Christ is my Saviour and Lord! I'm redeemed from every stronghold, every evil spirit. Freedom is my inheritance. Today in Jesus' name, I break agreement with my stronghold, with the spirits behind it, with the lies behind it. I break my agreement now! I command it to loose from me! I declare now, freedom, freedom, freedom! Come on, let's shout to the Lord!

In Jesus' name, I take authority now. I come against every spirit stronghold - witchcraft, rejection, bitterness, unclean spirits, shame, fear, addictions... I command you now, loose in Jesus' name! We decree breakthrough! The power of God is here to minister. Thank You Lord! Your power is here to set people free! Thank You Jesus.

Summary Notes

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Sons Break Strongholds

I. Introduction


1. Sons are Builders of Fathers House

* Gal 5:13 For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
* Your Marriage, Family and Relationships are Important must be built
- Relationships are like a garden…it must be cultivated and protected
- Unresolved issues can grow and sabotage both life and ministry
- Most people are unaware of hidden spiritual roots that sabotage relationship and intimacy
* Sons Breakthrough Spiritual Strongholds and overcome unseen spiritual resistance …
* Breakthrough and then Build


2. A Tree is Known by its Fruit

* Luk 6:43 For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.
* Luk 6:44 For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush.
* Luk 6:45 A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

* Insights:
- Naturally we recognize a tree by the kind of fruit that it brings forth
- In the same way spiritual roots produce spiritual fruit good or bad
- Unless the root is removed it will continue to sprout and produce fruit
- Jesus reveals that the Heart is a soil that produces fruit good and bad
- Learning new skills, or making resolutions, or trying harder will not deal with the spiritual root
- Spiritual roots must be identified and removed, and love must be cultivated and increased


3. Strongholds must be Demolished

* 2Co 10:4 For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds,
* 2Co 10:5 casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ

* Insights
- We are in a warfare against unseen wicked spirit beings in the spirit world, not against people
- Conflicts with people are often the fruit of the activity of unseen wicked spirits
- Jesus has equipped us with spiritual weapons and given us authority to overcome wicked spirits
- “Pulling down”…. Greek ..kathairesis;
a pulling down: destroying, destruction, tearing down, demolition
- There must be an intentional effort to remove spiritual roots and strongholds
- Freedom is the legacy given to sons... we must take hold of it



II. What is a Stronghold?

Definition:
* A fortified place or a fortress.
* A place of survival or refuge
* An area dominated or occupied by a special group or distinguished by a special quality
* A place that serves as the center of a faction or of any group sharing certain opinions or attitudes.

Spiritual Stronghold:
* An ungodly mindset, way of thinking and way of behaving that
(i). Has become established over time,
(ii). Strongly resists change
(iii). Is empowered by unseen evil spirit beings,
(iv). Undermines building relationships and success in life
(v). Increase loneliness and isolation
(vi). Actively obstruct experiencing and knowing God



III. Examples of Strongholds
- Each generation contributes good and bad to the following generation…..legacy
- Many personal strongholds are patterns that have been in a family line for generations
- Each generation has struggled with hidden spirits. No one has been able to overcome them
- You are the generation to overcome those strongholds.
- Sometimes they are secret ………covered over, hidden away to avoid possible rejection, shaming
- Sometimes they are obvious…….attracting criticism, judgments and rejection, strife and conflict
- All strongholds are a source of suffering and shame
- Conflicts and strife in relationships reveal the lack of mature love, and presence of hidden strongholds


Examples of Strongholds:

1. Bitterness and unforgiveness
- Bitterness is a root that defiles all relationships and produces destructive behaviour cycles
- Unresolved childhood issues are a major source of anger and bitterness
- Frequently this is directed at a parent who has failed or withheld love
- The unresolved pain experienced grows into bitterness and dishonour of parents
- This introduces an ongoing cycle of relationship issues in marriage and family Eph.6:2
- Bitterness causes major struggles with intimacy and connection to love

2. Sexual sin and lust
- Many men struggle with pornography, sexually perverted thoughts
- These can be generational, rooted in rejection, or originate from previous sexual experiences,
- Thoughts and emotions are defiled by demonic spirits and ungodly soul ties to previous encounters
- Lust causes major struggles with intimacy and connection to love

3. Rejection
- Rejection is a deep painful wound in the heart that can arise from many sources
- Rejection often arises very early in life from painful personal experiences
- Rejection can be rooted in a performance based family relationships…”loved if do well”
- Rejection defiles how we interpret life experiences and results in bad communication and reactions
- Rejected men struggle with passivity and addictions, or with aggression and competition
- Rejection causes major struggles with intimacy and connection to love

4. Shame
- Shame is a feeling of dishonour or disgrace and embarrassment caused by our own actions or the wrong actions of others against us
- Shame carries a mindset: “Something is wrong with me”… “I am the problem”
- Shame causes people to hide from intimacy…Eg Gen.3:10 Adams and Eve, isolate and blame
- Shame causes major struggles with intimacy and connection to love

5. Addictions:
- Addictions are a common stronghold
- Common addictions are alcohol; drugs, pornography, media, work.
- Addictions are rooted in shame and hinder intimacy with secrecy and avoidance
- Addictions cause major struggles with intimacy and connection to love

6. Fear and anxiety
- Fear and anxiety are very common strongholds
- They arise from many different causes including generational
- Fear leads to controlling unloving behaviour in relationships hindering true intimacy
- Anxiety is rooted in fear and withholding love
- Fear causes major struggles with intimacy and connection to love



IV. Strongholds are Rooted in Violations of love….withered substitutes for love

1. All these strongholds are the consequence of violations of love or of love being withheld from us
- We are made in God’s image…we are made to receive and give love
- We all long to be loved…to be valued, accepted and affirmed for who we are without conditions.
- When love is violated or withheld from us we react with unloving actions towards ourselves and towards others
- Love is willing to understand and show mercy and forgiveness to those who have injured us
- 1Jn 4:8 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

2. Freedom comes when we connect to love and begin grow and abound in love
* Paul’s Prayer: Rooted and Grounded in Love
* Eph 3:16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man,
* Eph 3:17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
* Eph 3:18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—
* Eph 3:19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
- “Comprehend”…… to take hold of and make your own possession, eagerly take.
- “Know”………………..to personally experience, know through the experience of intimacy
- The more we experience and become established in love and learn to draw from love, the more we become filled with God’s love and reflect His loving nature to others
- It is not enough to remove strongholds (roots)… we must grow and abound in love (fruits)
- 1Jn 4:12 No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us.
- “Perfected”….to make complete or mature, to bring to maturity, accomplish God’s purpose



V. How to Break Strongholds

We experience Freedom when we reconnect to love and become rooted and grounded in love

1. I need to believe I am loved, and align myself with Jesus to receive His love and power to break free
- Father God loves me. His love is constant and unchanging and is available
- Eg. Father welcomed and embraced the Prodigal Son and restored him
- Jesus loves us and has made provision to empower us to overcome all spiritual strongholds
- I need to become aligned with Jesus and His order for my life and relationships


2. I need to Identify and Remove Hidden Roots and Establish new ways of Thinking and Acting in love
- Strongholds resist change…. so humility perseverance are needed for lasting change
- Jas 4:7 Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.


Practical Action Steps:

1. Recognise the Pattern
- All change begins with recognising and acknowledging there is a problem
- What is the problem or behaviour that keeps repeating and sabotaging relationships

2. Responsibility for Change
- Responsibility is the first step to maturity
- Stop blaming, denying, minimising, avoiding and face the issue
- What is my part in this

3. Resolve Hidden Pain
- Ask Holy Spirit to bring hidden pain surrounding the stronghold to the surface
- Grieve the loss.
- Bring your grief to the cross and exchange it by faith for healing

4. Release Forgiveness
- Who are you holding a heart grudge against?
- Forgiveness sets you free from the destructive actions of others against you
- Forgive from the heart speaking it aloud
- Bless those who have hurt you

5. Repent
- What ways have you violated God’s laws?
- We must repent , confess them and bring them to the cross

6. Renounce Agreements
- Where have you agreed with a demonic lie that is contrary to God’s word?
- Break your agreement with that speaking aloud

7. Resist and Remove
- Are there any spirits that you need to assert dominion over?
- They are invisible persons who are speaking and impressing you negatively?

Invasive intruding negative thoughts and feelings
- Assert your dominion over them verbally…speak to that spirit being and command them

8. Rebuild
- Become established in love…learn to give and receive love
- Meditate upon the Word of God
- Declare the Word of God
- Establish new patterns
- Catch thought patterns and resist them
- Maybe you begin by sharing with spouse what God has been showing you
- Do you need to Apologise? If so… do not blame
- Just acknowledge your action, the pain it caused and ask forgiveness

Gal 5:13 For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
Php 1:9 And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment,
Php 1:10 that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ,
Php 1:11 being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.



VI. Personal Reflection and Application

1. What has the Holy Spirit been speaking to you about during this teaching?
2. Can you identify or recognise where there are blocks in your relationship with God?
3. Can you identify any of the hidden spiritual strongholds mentioned in this teaching?
- Bitterness and unforgiveness
- Sexual sin and lust, or unclean defilement
- Rejection
- Shame
- Addictions
- Fear and anxiety
4. Are any of these generational, a continuation of a family pattern?
5. When did this first become an issue in your life?
6. What action steps will you commit to to overcome this issue?
7. What kind of support would help you in your transformation journey?

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