Maybe you've had discouragement come around you. Well that's a weapon that the devil will hurl against you too. The Bible says: you've got to stand up, got to stand in faith, or stand holding to what God says about you; and when you do that, there's two things will happen; one, you will face a bit of pressure, and suffer a little bit for a while, but then you'll break through. Two, God will have used this to grow you. Now this is one of the dilemmas many Christians find, many people who've come to Christ find, is instead of actually staying in a place of passion and intimacy and love and fire and vibrancy, they end up passive and shut down. Something has happened.
Do you know anyone like that? Is there anyone who's lost their fire, their passion? Actually they look no different to any other person in the world. See, something has happened and it requires of us that we take an act, and have some remedy. I want to show you just a simple scripture in Isaiah 7, then we'll come back here and finish; and this is the story of a man who tried to serve God, Isaiah 7. He came against - there was a problem came. Here it is here, Isaiah 7, first few verses - and it came to pass in the days of Ahaz. It says that: the King of Syria and the King of Israel went up to Jerusalem to make war, but they couldn't prevail against it. The King of Syria - even today there are Syrians, and there's a battle going on in Syria right now. Nothing much changes over the course of history, and so the Syrians gathered an army together, and they got Israel. Israel speaks of Christians who backslid, and so you have the enemy came, and it came up, and tried to assault Jerusalem. It tried to assault the King, but it couldn't get the victory. Here's one thing you need to know; that the devil can never get a victory over you, you can never fail permanently unless you let the devil do it, unless you lie down. You don't need to be defeated continually, not at all.
God's there for you to help you, so I want to you see what happens. It'll show you the strategy - and so it was told the house of David, saying: Syria's forces are deployed in Ephraim, and his heart, and the heart of the people, move like the trees move in the wind. In other words, what happened is there were rumours came around that said: boy, there's a lot of problems coming up. You and I, you've got to make decisions whose voice you're listening to. If we listen to the voice of God, the voice of the Spirit of God, He will always put faith and courage into our heart. If we listen to the voice of people who have faith in their hearts, they will always encourage you - you can win in life.
But if you listen to the voice of negative people, discouragement and fear will start to come around your heart. You'll start to feel dismayed. If you listen to the voice of spirits whispering in your ear, words of rejection, and words of failure, and words of defeat; if you listen to those voices you'll become overwhelmed, and see this is what happened. They were like the trees blowing in the wind, unstable. Now I want to show you clearly what the devil's plot was, because it hasn't changed; and the Lord said to Isaiah: go out and meet Ahaz, at the end of the aqueduct at the upper pool, and say to him - and He gives him two things: number one, He tells what the enemy strategy is; and two, He tells him what to do about it. Let's get what the enemy strategy is.
He says: Syria, Ephraim - Verse 5 - have plotted evil against you, saying: let us go up against you to trouble it, make a gap in the wall for ourselves, and set a King over there. So number one, the enemy said: let's go up and intimidate them. Let's go up against them to intimidate; so one of the first strategies the devil will use to keep you out of your destiny, is just to try and intimidate you. To intimidate means, you feel little, and the problem's very big; and when the problem has become very big in your mind, and in your thoughts, and in your emotions, and you are very little and very small, you are intimidated. That's what intimidation is, and the Bible tells us the devil prowls like a lion, and he's got many ways to bring it against you; so any time you feel overwhelmed, you feel in your mind the problem has got very big, and you are very small, you are starting to go down the route of intimidation.