Intimidation of Fear

Intimidation of Fear

Proverbs 28:1

1THE WICKED flee when no man pursues them, but the [uncompromisingly] righteous are bold as a lion.

There was once an old dog that ruled his master with fear and intimidation.  If the master didn’t do what the dog wanted he would growl fiercely and raise the hair on the back of his neck until the man did what he wanted.  Out of fear and the intimidation the dog communicated and the master would do whatever the dog wanted.  So it was the dog that ruled the man, rather than the man that ruled the dog.  The truth was that the dog was old and was missing most of his teeth, but through fear and intimidation the dog had mastered his master.  

There is an old dog in this world, called satan, who is much the same.  With the power and authority that he has, he seeks to continue to hold mankind captive.  He is seen in the spirit of this world and how many of us have not spoken out and been what we needed to be for Christ because we were afraid of what others would think or how they would view us.  There are many areas that fear and intimidation have ruled over us and we have bowed to it.  We have sought our acceptance and favor from one that is defeated, is perishing and whose days are numbered.  

On the other hand, if we truly fear God out of love and serve Him, He can give back to us the authority that He created us with as it states in Genesis 1:26.  “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”  We should know that the serpent is a creeping thing and whatever dominion he gained through the fall of Adam and Eve, was restored back to us at Calvary.  Jesus took back the keys and he led captivity captive and He gave gifts unto men.  Gifts that are for helping the Church come into the unity and fullness of Christ.  

The serpent feeds on dust.  He can only feed upon our flesh, but the man of the Spirit doesn’t walk and live by the flesh.  He lives after the Spirit.  Why was it that satan had nothing in Jesus?  He walked after the Spirit and not after the flesh.  There was nothing for satan to feed on.  Have you ever noticed that whenever we give place to temptation and sin that the more we feed and give life to it the stronger it grows until it rules us?

Have there ever been times in your life when you were coming to God in a special way, receiving a special revelation or truth or finding God in a new and greater dimension?  What happened?  Quite likely you were assaulted with fear, doubt, condemnation and intimidation.  Satan bore what few teeth he has left and really growled at you so that you would fear and not believe, so that you would be intimidated and not receive.  He is come to steal, kill and destroy.  But when the fear in us of this creeping thing is broken and we are cognizant of the fact that we are created in the image of God and that God Himself has declared that we should have dominion, then the power of fear and intimidation is broken.  Only by permission of God can satan touch our lives and outer man.  

“Will why doesn’t God protect us and not let satan hurt us any more?”  If He did that we would never lay hold of the victory and the authority that Christ obtained for us at Calvary.  We would never come to lay hold of the overcomer that Christ wants to be through us.  As Paul once said, “the outward man is perishing, but the inward man is renewed day by day.”  The enemy will do all it can to instill fear and intimidation.  Look what he did to the early church.  Yet, in the midst of great persecution the early Church grew like wild fire.  Why?  People found something more real, more powerful and more liberating than even physical life itself.  

It is time we quit cowering before this old dog.  When we put on Christ, when we become identified with His name, then we know that our authority in Him is greater than any in earth or in heaven.  Jesus said, ‘I do not my will, but the will of the Father.’  You see the Father was then releasing His power and authority through the Son.  When we come not to do our will, but the will of the Father then the Christ will be manifested through us.  There is no authority that can stand against the authority that is in Christ.  He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.  We are His ambassadors sent with the signet ring of the King and the seal of the Holy Spirit.  That is why the uncompromisingly righteous are as bold as lions.  

It is time for us to no longer succumb to fear and intimidation from the old, “has been” dog.  It is time that we stepped into our role as master over all that God has commanded to be under our feet.  In Christ you have authority and dominion over much more than you know, but your power is in living through Christ and His living through you.  It is IN Christ that we can do all things, forsaking those things that hinder us and that are food for satan to feed upon.  Come into your identity of Christ in you, your hope of glory.

Blessings,

#kent

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Born to Serve

Exodus 23:25
And ye shall serve the LORD your God, and he shall bless thy bread, and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee.

Born to Serve

From the time that we come into this earth we were born to serve. We will serve something or someone all of our days. The question is what and whom do we serve?
The children of Israel during their stay in Egypt served the Egyptians some four hundred years. Just think, that is longer than our United States is old. Being servants to Egyptians had become a mindset and just a way of life. It was who you were and what you did. It took a Moses, operating under the Spirit of God, to begin to overturn that mindset and slavery thinking. It is no different with us. We grow up serving the world and thinking like the world. That is what everybody does, so that is what we do. Then along comes Jesus and upsets our way of thinking and serving.
Some are naïve enough to say, “I don’t serve anybody. I’m my own person.” When a person says something like that they are saying, that indeed, they are a servant to their flesh. It is there old nature that rules over them, but if they have never known anything different they don’t recognize it as slavery.
God allowed Israel to become the servants and slaves of Egypt. God told Abram in Genesis 15:13, “And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land [that is] not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years.” Now why did God do that? Why did He allow Adam to fall into the slavery of sin and darkness and in the process take all of humanity with Him? We can’t know freedom and really appreciate it until we have experienced slavery and bondage. We can never really appreciate the light of day until we have walked through the darkness of night. We can’t really appreciate the warmth and beauty of spring until we have walked through the coldness and the deadness of winter. God allows us to experience certain things so that we can have an appreciation and a revelation of something so much better and so much higher.
God has delivered us out of the realm of bondage into the liberty of the Sons of God, but some of us still have our old mindsets and earthly way of thinking. Many of us still see our promise land as a place possessed by giants and impossibilities rather than seeing it as a land flowing with milk and honey which is our inheritance. As a result we slip back into the bondage of our unredeemed thinking and belief system. We don’t believe we can therefore we can not.
God wants to blow the lid off of this kind stinking thinking. It is an offense to Him and denial of who He is. We are not going to possess this land in and of our selves because we are no longer of ourselves. We are of Christ. It is the Christ who is the might and the power and the authority in us to prevail and possess our land, as we dispossess the giants and its former inhabitants. How long are we going to allow satan to rob us of that which is rightfully ours? It is only the intimidation of his fear and doubt that prevents us. Where is our spirit of Joshua and Caleb that sees how great their God is rather than how weak we are in our flesh? If you can see it by the Spirit you can possess it by faith. If you are walking in the will and authority of God then there is none that can stand before you.
God has raised us up to be the conquering servants of the MOST HIGH GOD! He has brought us out of the bondage of sin and darkness. He has brought us out and is training us up to be the servants that bring humanity unto Him. You are His priesthood, His army and His sons to bring liberty to the afflicted and set the captive free. Romans 8: 18-25 declares, “I am sure that what we are suffering now cannot compare with the glory that will be shown to us. 19In fact, all creation is eagerly waiting for God to show who his children are. 20Meanwhile, creation is confused, but not because it wants to be confused. God made it this way in the hope 21that creation would be set free from decay and would share in the glorious freedom of his children. 22We know that all creation is still groaning and is in pain, like a woman about to give birth. 23The Spirit makes us sure about what we will be in the future. But now we groan silently, while we wait for God to show that we are his children. This means that our bodies will also be set free. 24And this hope is what saves us. But if we already have what we hope for, there is no need to keep on hoping. 25However, we hope for something we have not yet seen, and we patiently wait for it.” We are God’s Moses to His creation. He has commissioned us in His Son to be the liberators of His creation that have been subjected to the bondage of sin and death. We have been blessed that God has given us the privilege of knowing Him and being prepared for this calling. Unfortunately many of us don’t yet see it by faith. Some of us see it, but we are still too entangled in the affairs of this life. Until our thinking is liberated we can never be the servants that we were born to be. We are called to be servant kings that rule and reign to bless and liberate. That is our purpose and that is our calling. With the most reverent respect to God, I say, “ the devil be damned, let’s possess the land!”

Blessings,
#kent

When Fear comes Knocking

2 Kings 18:28-35

Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out with a loud voice in Hebrew, and spoke, saying, “Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria! 29 Thus says the king: ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he shall not be able to deliver you from his hand; 30 nor let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, saying, “The LORD will surely deliver us; this city shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.”’ 31 Do not listen to Hezekiah; for thus says the king of Assyria: ‘Make peace with me by a present and come out to me; and every one of you eat from his own vine and every one from his own fig tree, and every one of you drink the waters of his own cistern; 32 until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive groves and honey, that you may live and not die. But do not listen to Hezekiah, lest he persuade you, saying, “The LORD will deliver us.” 33 Has any of the gods of the nations at all delivered its land from the hand of the king of Assyria? 34 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim and Hena and Ivah? Indeed, have they delivered Samaria from my hand? 35 Who among all the gods of the lands have delivered their countries from my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem from my hand?’” 

When Fear comes Knocking

As we read this passage of scripture today that took place during the reign of Hezekiah, we see him faced with the greatest challenge and threat to his kingdom that he had ever known.  The king of Assyria, which typifies satan, sent his messenger of fear, Rabshakeh, to attack the faith and trust the people of Judah and Hezekiah had in the Lord and replace it with fear of the natural. They were facing the greatest force and enemy of their day. Assyria was undefeated and it had taken every nation that it entered into, including Israel.  Now Hezekiah is faced with the decision to either give in or trust the Lord.  Everything in the natural is saying give it up, you don’t stand a chance.  You don’t hold a candle to this giant that now stands before you.  What Rabshakeh said was true, no other nation or gods had been able withstand them.  Where Rabshakeh and the king of Assyria failed was in counting the Lord God as like unto the gods of wood and stone.  

There are times when we are faced with similar circumstances in our lives.  We face giants and situations that are far greater than we are in the natural.  They blaspheme or mock our God and expect that we should bow to them.  Our very lives or livelihood may be at stake.  What will we do?  Will we bow in fear to the enemies’ demands or will we throw ourselves before the Lord and plead our case before Him as Hezekiah did?  

It is often in our weakness that God’s strength and power are manifest.  If fear is able to undermine and rob our faith then we will not see the salvation of our God.  If we dare to stand firm in Him then we will see His salvation work, even though it may not be immediate.  There are areas in life that we have to walk by faith, humbly and fearfully before the Lord, so that we are not reliant upon our strength or ability, but we wholly lean on Jesus name.  The enemy will kick up dust, he’ll rant and rave and do all that he can to strike fear and unbelief in our hearts, but it is our faith in the All Powerful One that prevails.  Through prayer and faith we hide ourselves under the shadow of the great Jehovah.  We know that when He goes out to battle on our behalf then we cannot fail or be defeated.  We are more than conquerors through Christ who has loved us.  

In 2 Kings 19:5 we hear what the Lord says through Isaiah, His prophet concerning these blasphemous threats. “So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah.  And Isaiah said to them, “Thus you shall say to your master, ‘Thus says the LORD: “Do not be afraid of the words which you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed Me.  Surely I will send a spirit upon him, and he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.”’””  God is still saying to us, “ Do not be afraid of the words that you have heard.” We must know our Lord today as Hezekiah and the people came to know Him then.  He is a mighty Fortress and Deliverer.  He will take up the cause of the righteous and in His time and His way that enemy will be defeated.  When fear comes knocking, don’t be afraid, only trust and obey. 

 

Blessings,

kent