Another
Coffee Break:
Dealing With Fear, Part 9
October 17, 2014
I like days like today.
You wake up in the morning, the presence of the Lord is there, it’s kind
of like Dr. Luther Mieir used to say, “Good Morning, Lord! Sure glad you’re here.” Now I know some of you wiseacres wake up,
wipe the sleepy seeds from your eyes and say, “Good Lord, it’s morning!” See.
It’s like this. You’ve got to
change your whole frame of mind when you wake up. Hehehehehe…….
Your attitude when you wake up in the morning can affect
your work, the words that come out of your mouth…actually, it can change your entire
day. That’s why today is the best day of
my life. Tomorrow will be even
better. Know why? Because – to quote one of my friends –
"God don’t make no junk days!"
David
had it figured out right when he sang, “This is the day which the
Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalm 118:24)
Let's take a slightly different approach today to
dealing with fear. I'm addressing --
perhaps a bit from an oblique way -- the Fear of Evil, and how it affects folks
in ministry.
A number of years ago, I met with a group of
perhaps eight or ten pastors over lunch to discuss a really contentious topic:
deliverance. You understand that this
topic is only contentious for those folks who’ve adopted the mindset and
doctrine that Christians can’t be afflicted with evil spirits.
The doctrine really does come out of the
mis-interpretation of the word, daimonizomai, and its usage in the KJV as “being
possessed” by demons. Possession conveys
the wrong idea entirely. Possession
connotes ownership. People aren’t
“owned” by demons, any more than they are “owned” by Holy Spirit.
When we invite Jesus Christ into our lives, He
takes up “his abode” with us. If we
continue to yield to the leading and guidance He provides through Holy Spirit,
we have the opportunity and authority to become totally free in every aspect of
our lives. Once a person has begun the
process of salvation, deliverance, healing, walking in health and prosperity,
it is somewhat like the kid who throws a big rock in a pond. You have a big splash, but then there are the
ripples that seemingly continue outward for a long time thereafter.
Deliverance is like that. Your initial experience of being set free
from unclean spirits may be dramatic, but there are the ripples – the ongoing
revelations that come by the Holy Spirit – that continue on for months, and
sometimes years.
Demons, unclean spirits, evil spirits – no matter
how you refer to them – can only create impulses; they can lead you through the
pleasures of your flesh, they can create thoughts in your mind, and they can
drive you through fear -- whether that fear be the Fear of Evil, the Fear of
Man, or the Fear of death -- through doubt or through unbelief to commit
certain acts or take certain actions that lead you into sin, or take you away
from the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Evil spirits operate in two ways: internally –
through thoughts implanted in your mind, and externally – by creating a set of
circumstances or “supernatural” manifestations that generate fear, doubt and unbelief.
The eight or ten pastors that met with me that day
over lunch knew, and confessed to me, that Christians could be afflicted and tormented by evil spirits. Nevertheless, they had adopted – for the sake
of convenience and political expediency within their churches – the
anti-deliverance doctrine.
I took them to task over their arrogant expediency,
and quoted to them from Jeremiah 8:11-12, “For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people
slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there
is no peace. Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay,
they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore shall they
fall among them that fall: in the time of their visitation they shall be cast
down, saith the LORD.”
I rebuked these pastors for telling their folks
that they were free when many of them were still being tormented. They were saying to the people, “It’s just
your flesh. You need to discipline your
flesh and bring it under subjection.”
So what’s wrong with an answer like that? Nothing.
Except that it doesn’t go far enough.
It stops short. You cannot bring
unclean spirits under subjection. You
don’t discipline evil spirits. You kick
them out!
In the months that followed, three of those men
fell “among them that fall”(see Daniel 11:33) – they fell into sin
themselves. All three were removed from
their places of ministry. One was
indicted by a federal grand jury and wound up in prison.
Of the remaining pastors, one began to suffer ill
health and turned his senior pastorate over to his son – who also happened to
be among that group of pastors. The son,
when he took over the pastorate, later called me and acknowledged that they had
been wrong. He asked me out to lunch,
and made it clear that I would be welcome to come and share and teach in their
church any time.
Another of the pastors present that day at the
luncheon began to repent of his anti-deliverance stance when the fall began for
the three who were later removed from their ministries. I was pleased to sit in his church one Sunday
and hear him openly repent for having taught error. He began to call people to acknowledge their
need for deliverance and respond to the authority available in Christ Jesus.
The sixth man in that group was stricken with
Parkinson’s Disease. Although he
acknowledged to me privately that he knew I had spoken the truth, he refused to
acknowledge it publicly and died two years later. It was a real loss to me because he had been
a dear friend and brother in the Lord whose ministry I had otherwise greatly
appreciated.
The other pastors moved on, and I never heard how
their ministries prospered or failed. It
was a graphic picture I’ve never forgotten.
This is something that the Lord Jesus Christ takes
very seriously. You cannot pretend that
folks are free, tell them they are free, and withhold the deliverance from them
or the understanding that deliverance is necessary to deal with certain issues
in their spiritual lives because you either "fear the people" or because
of doctrinal compromise stemming from the Fear of Evil, and not suffer the
consequences. The responsibilities that
accompany spiritual leadership are great.
Jesus paid the complete price for our freedom on
the Cross. He took back the authority
that had been given Satan and made it available to all believers. Everything that Satan stole from us –
everything! – was now available to those who would seize it.
Jesus put it like this: “And from the days of John the Baptist until now the
kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force.”
When an individual is called by the Lord, anointed
for leadership, and equipped by Holy Spirit to teach and to lead folks into a
relationship with Jesus Christ, and then that individual knowingly avoids teaching
and sharing truths that will set folks free from bondage, he or she effectively
leaves Jesus hanging on the Cross instead of presenting Him as the resurrected
and risen Christ who has taken the final authority over death and all that
Satan seeks to do to retain his control of the human race.
Wheww! That
was a mouthful! Let me put it another
way.
Jesus’ death and resurrection proved that there is
no enemy man cannot subdue when that subduing takes place utilizing the power
and authority He has given. To cheat
folks out of that authority is unconscionable.
One of the worst fables being taught by those who
seek to make Salvation a once-and-for-all event, presupposing that once a
person is a Christian, it is impossible for Satan to afflict them, is the idea
that evil or unclean spirits cannot remain in the presence of the Lord.
That flies in the face of Job, Chapter 1, where
Satan presents himself before the Lord and God asks him if he has considered
his righteous servant, Job. It becomes
an event in which Satan repeatedly tests Job and returns to stand before God to
continue his arguments, “Yeah, but if you do this, Job will turn on you…” What Satan is playing on in this instance is
the Fear of Evil.
Consider for a moment, each and every event where
Jesus ministered deliverance. The
individuals who were under the influence and/or being afflicted by the evil
spirits did not flee from His presence.
Not one of the evil spirits fled from the individuals until they were
ordered to do so by the Lord, and in a couple of cases we have examples of them
arguing with Him over having to depart.
In each case Jesus held firm. The unclean spirits recognized His authority
over them and finally departed at His command.
But they didn’t leave until they were commanded to. There is not one single case of an evil
spirit leaving as soon as Jesus was present.
It makes a nice, religious doctrine for folks to
believe that once they have Christ in their lives, no unclean spirit can
remain, but there isn’t one shred of evidence in Scripture to support such a
doctrine. More often than not, that
doctrine is bolstered by a fear of Satan and the lying concoction that he is
almost as powerful as God. What
hogwash!
What is truth is that individuals who allow these
spirits to remain in their lives after they have accepted Jesus Christ and made
Him the Lord of their lives will suffer raging spiritual battles in their
lives. Sadly, too many Christians seem
to be unaware of the fact that He has given them the authority to deal with the
situation. They do not have to remain in
the midst of these struggles.
History is replete with the stories of some of the
most influential Christians, saints of God and profound leaders in the body of
Christ who have lived their lives with certain aspects of their character under
the torment of evil spirits.
Martin Luther, one of the most incredible leaders
of the Reformation, and a man responsible for beginning the process of leading
Christians out of the Dark Ages, was tormented by a spirit of racism. It hounded him to the day of his death, and
he never recognized that Christ had given him the authority to be free of his
hatred of the Jews.
John Bunyan, who wrote one of the all-time classics
of Christian literature, The Pilgrim’s Progress, was tormented by a spirit that
drove him to demand everything at half price.
You may laugh at that and think it is something of little consequence,
but he was never free to the day of his death.
Because of his continuous demands on people to sell him whatever he
wanted at half-price, his testimony was compromised, and people had difficulty
seeing the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ in him.
Was he a Christian at the time of his death? Certainly.
Just because folks are tormented and do battle in
certain areas of their lives with unclean and evil spirits does not in any way
alter the fact that they have committed their lives to Christ and seek to walk
with Him in a love-relationship. It
simply means they have not taken advantage of the authority available in Christ
Jesus to kick out the tormentors.
It was the prophet Hosea that prophesied, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”
When the knowledge of how to be free has been
provided and folks fail to avail themselves of it, either through ignorance or
willfully because of a religious doctrine that teaches otherwise, they suffer
unnecessarily; and there are folks who go to their graves who have given their
lives to the Lord that never walk in the liberty Jesus Christ provides – in
this lifetime!
Freedom isn’t a when-we-all-get-to-heaven goal or
objective. It is a here-and-now reality
available to everyone who seizes it and takes it by force from an enemy who
seeks to cheat them. It is available to
the newborn Christian. It is available
to the seasoned Christian. It is
available to the weakest Christian. It
is available to all who will avail themselves of the power and authority Jesus
Christ provides.
No demon or evil spirit can prevent a Christian
from seizing his or her freedom and kicking it out when they appropriate the
name, the authority, the power of Jesus Christ.
By the same token, no wicked spirit will leave of his own accord just
because Jesus is there in a person’s life.
That spirit must be commanded to leave, and once gone, the person now
freed must continue to resist Satan.
There is nothing automatic about it.
This is war, folks!
Spiritual warfare! Jesus is after
a people who are overcomers. One does
not get classified “an overcomer” if he or she does not overcome the world, the
flesh and Satan, just as Jesus overcame.
We are more than able to overcome Satan!
Wow! I
didn’t mean to get preachy today. Just
got started sharing things, and the “preach” kind of took off. It isn’t my purpose to fight with folks over
doctrines. You can hold any doctrine you
want to hold – as long as that doctrine has life and reality in it. If your doctrine(s) keeps you in a place
where you lack real peace in your life, I suggest you begin to take another
look-see at where that doctrine comes from, and what Jesus actually said and
did, and what He is saying to you.
Are you afraid of Satan? Are you afraid that he won't leave when you
command him to do so? Are you afraid you
will be in worse shape if you try and he doesn't obey? Folks, this is all part of the Fear of
Evil! That fear is generated by Satan
himself. He's the one who is
afraid! He's the one who MUST bow to the
name -- the onoma -- of the Lord Jesus
Christ IN YOU!!!
In the coming weeks, I will try to share with you
some of the experiences I’ve had with folks (and they would fill many books if
I recounted them all) throughout the years who have been set free.
Jesus made a statement that puts everything in
context. “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free
indeed.” (John 8:36)
That is free “indeed!” Not free
because you think you are free; not free because your pastor says you are free;
not free because I say you are free; not free because you have a doctrine that
says you are free; but free in reality, free experientially, free indeed!
We
will continue this next week.
Again, if you are in
need of healing -- especially if you have some terminal disease or prognosis of
a very short time to live from the doctors -- please join our prayer conference
calls on either Monday or Wednesday of each week at 7:00 PM Eastern. Once
again, the number to call is (805) 399-1000.
Then enter the access code: 124763#.
To get into the queue for prayer, when Randy opens the call up for
everyone, hit *6-1 on your keypad. Let us minister to your need for healing!
Blessings on you!
Regner
Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
CAPENER MINISTRIES
RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
Email Contact: Admin@RiverWorshipCenter.org
Our book, A
Tale of Two Brides, published by Destiny Image, is available on
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