For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. 2 Timothy 1:7 NKJV Fear is a spirit and not always an emotion. You can be afraid of something without having the spirit of fear. The spirit of fear causes you to overreact. You can be afraid of things like spiders, roller coasters or scary movies. The spirit of fear takes a normal fear and elevates it. The goal is to get you out of faith. It gets you to pull back from trusting God and others. The keys to recognizing this are that you are short-tempered, get stressed and start to doubt the Lord. This is not what Jesus has in mind for us.
Years ago, I heard a message by Lou Engle that had a great impact on my heart, especially the "intercessor" part of my heart. Today, I revisited that explosive and impactful impartation. What I have gleaned from it, is not just for me, but for a remnant of believers. We are in a season where God is about to cause the dreams that He has placed within us to break forth & explode! Lou's message introduced me to the word "Ekballo" and the beautiful relationship between Ekballo & discovering & living the Dreams, (the books & scrolls) that God wrote about us & put within us.
Some people would question the wisdom of God, but He allowed me to be a free spirit for many years, until my mid 20s. I am so glad He did it that way. I would have been pro-abortion, not to the degree I see going on tonight, but I was after MY own freedom. Little kids want their freedom too, and they have to learn to govern themselves, or they will be potentially harmed. But good parents, and not everyone has them, teach their children to be careful, smart and wise.
What do you do when prophetic ministry goes wrong? How do you get your peace back and start again when you feel embarrassed and broken? Are there warning signs you can see beforehand and prepare yourself? Not long ago, I got invited to a presidential ball. It was a grand event with dignitaries, great food, music, and all the things that go along with an occasion like that. I felt honored to be invited. Sensing the Lord might have had a reason for me being there, I was open and pliable, listening to the Holy Spirit.
When you feel spiritually dry, the enemy tries to push your emotional buttons. Spiritual dryness can cause you to give in and come into agreement with vain imaginations and familiar spirits. How you manage your emotional response when your buttons are pushed will determine the path you take. The truth is the enemy will always use your past against you. His philosophy is that "if it worked once, it could work again." But the more you walk in the Spirit when you are emotionally charged, the more you will be spiritually refreshed.
Let's read I Peter 2:24, "Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed." The WORD says you were healed. Sickness is a curse of the law, and Galatians 3:13 says, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us...." Matthew 8:17 says, "That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses." He took your infirmities and bare your sicknesses. Learn to read the scriptures with a personal identification.
If you feel like you had some momentum and began stepping into a new season when, all of a sudden, you felt halted, this Word is for you. It's like you're in a holding pattern, and things have not been progressing. God gave me an image of a pool. This pool, like many, had a couple of steps into the water with progressive depth on each step. After that, the pool gradually sloped down and deepened from one end to the other. You have felt a call to "come deeper," but you have not seen any more "steps" appearing in the natural to do so. God says the way into the deep is simply continuing to move forward. Just like the pool vision, you can't see visible steps ahead of you, and you think that because the Lord worked through big steps in the last season that it will look the same.
What do you crave? Is it something God doesn't want you to crave? Is it more important to you than God? If you want it just because you want it, you may be living by following your desires and cravings rather than the power of the Holy Spirit. Galatians 5:16,18 (TPT) tells us, "As you yield to the dynamic life and power of the Holy Spirit, you will abandon the cravings of your self-life. When your self-life craves the things that offend the Holy Spirit you hinder him from living free within you! And the Holy Spirit's intense cravings hinder your self-life from dominating you! .... But when you yield to the life of the Spirit, you will no longer be living under the law, but soaring above it!"
The other week I had a dream, and I heard the Lord say, "The greater the battle, the bigger the miracle." When He spoke these words I felt great hope, full of expectation, being released in the dream. I felt such an increase in the demonstrative power of God to turn impossibility on its head. I could also see that the Spirit of God was bringing comfort to those who have been in major battles. I could feel the weariness of these many saints who have been saying, "The battle has been so great."
The Great Commission should be imbued with the essence and mission of every local church. This is especially true if we are devoted to the "apostles doctrine" the way the early church was (Acts 2:42). The early church was always "missional" because it was "apostolic." The word "apostle" comes from the Greek word apostello, which means "sent one." The Latin word for apostello is missio, from which the word "mission" or "missionary" is derived. Paul, the great church planter, who wrote about one-third of the New Testament, was focused because he knew he was a "sent one." Titus 1:1 (ESV) says, "Paul, a servant of God and an apostle [sent one] of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth."
Follow Up
