You've got to learn to get assertive, and get up, and start the day in prayer, and make decrees and declarations of the word of God, your life will be in alignment with the Lord! Demons, before they even come to you, you're on them, all over them! That's the spirit of David, see? So David, all these things happened to him, so there may be, we'll find there'll be resistance. An interesting thing here is I read that the giant, the Philistines came and they got themselves into this place called the Valley of Rephaim. I looked up about that and what I found was that Rephaim, they were descendants of the Nephilim, but they were formerly a race of giants. It's in this plain where the giants used to live, that's where the Philistines decided to set the battle, and I began to realise there are sometimes patterns of thinking, and fears, and strongholds, and issues in our life, and behind every one of them is some giant stands there intimidating you. Now the giants actually had all been killed by Joshua. All that's left is the memory of them. All that's left is the name. There's no giants there - but in that place where the giants were named, and where they once fell, there was a battle currently with the Philistines.
It's like Christ at the cross has legally defeated every enemy, defeated every bondage, defeated every demon that would come against you, but you have to deal with the memories of those things, and the thoughts of those things, and the attitudes of those things, and rise above it! I have felt God speaking to me about this, and I have been purposing in my heart to this year push out in a whole number of personal areas. It's good, you never quit, never give up, never retire see? [Applause] So I know there's a few people out in a retirement village, but don't you get a retirement spirit around you - it's all over, it's all over spiritually for you, you're not earning any more fruit in heaven, if you have that around you. You don't retire, just keep getting fired up - oh, we're in a retirement village. Well great! Let's start a prayer meeting! Let's start to pray and believe. Before all these people die and go to hell, let's get a few of them saved, and some of the staff while we're doing that!
So we've got all these activities they've arranged, well let's get to and start to pray, agree, and talk to them. And they can't escape - they all live in the village! [Laughter] All it needs is just one or two, hot-fired gospel Holy Ghost-filled tongue speaking believers - let's get the village saved aye! It's your territory if you live there. No one got saved? What happened? Why did you go there? Hey, glory to God! So we want to catch some people. If you're at school, young people at school, you need to believe God to break through the giants of fear and intimidation, rejection, see some people saved, see some people touched. It's a bit of work, you've got to sow and work at it, and of course there's always a resistance comes from the giants, so they call them to the place of battle, in the place that had memories of giants. I have no doubt that all of us this year will have some challenges, and it'll probably be over issues like fear or rejection or shyness, all that kind of stuff. But you've got to see what David did.
Now here's what I like about David - let's read what he did. It says: the Philistines heard that they'd anointed David king over Israel, and then went up to look for him. Now this is what I love about David: David immediately, because he heard about it, went straight down into the stronghold. The stronghold was his fortress, so when he heard it's on, there's a fight brewing, immediately calls all his soldiers together, gets them all armed up, and he's on, I'm going for it! Now you notice, he's already gone out to battle before he's even asked the Lord about whether he's going to have a fight or not. Now what that tells you then - see, its amazing insight to David - what it tells you is, he had a warrior spirit, and no one's going to knock him back, or put him down from what God called him to - warrior spirit. Got a breakthrough spirit. Interesting, all these guys around him got the same spirit on them, so notice, he's immediately someone stands up and challenges him to a fight, it's on. Now that's a fighting spirit. That's a fighting spirit. I've seen a few nasty people around town at times, and you look them in the eye, and suddenly [grr] they want to take you on, you know? That's not a fighting spirit, that's just they're plum angry and made at something and they're looking for a fight.