2.
Ministers are in torment

Unfortunately, we live in an age and in a society where the image we have of our local minister (or evangelist, or teacher) is of someone high on a pedestal, three miles removed from the anguish of tormenting fears of satan.
The minister then feels a tremendous inner burden to live up to his stainless steel image. Tremendous energy drains out of his innermost being as he struggles day after day to "keep the mask on." Publicly, he usually succeeds.
But the turmoil raging inside his soul is another matter There he carries on more wars with fear and anxiety than most of us could ever deal with.

One typical example is a pastor who recently wrote to me in desperation. He said:

"Brother, I am a pastor and am filled with the Spirit. But we are battling with the problem of being very double-minded. We are being tortured by satan with fears, doubts, and fears of rejection - unable to stand firm. When God leads us to pray for the sick or to work miracles, we are beginning to take courage to do it, in many cases, while we are beginning to pray or move on it, fear hits us and we are not able to complete the work."

This man is not alone.

There is another fine pastor in Capetown - South Africa, but who is another example of how fear is robbing preachers (and their entire congregations) of the glory and power of God. I met him in Durban and he insisted that I would visit him in his place and have meetings in his church. We made the proper appointments and exactly on time I arrived in Capetown. I was fetched from the airport by one of his church members who brought me to his house. When we arrived there she gave me the key of the house and told me to do as if I was at home, for the pastor suddenly had to go to Johannesburg. I decided to wait for him, not at his house but at a missionary home nearby. The church member who took me from the airport drove me there, and I frequently had contact with her. But no trace of the pastor. On the other hand there was a church board who did not want to move into action without hearing from this pastor. I waited for 14 days... The day after I left he turned up. Too late... no service was held in those fourteen days..! See how fear can rob a congregation from a blessing..!
Several weeks later when I was already back in the Netherlands, I got a phone call from him. He said, "Brother, I would have been so happy to have you in our meetings, but I had to go, and I was not sure what the church board would say on this, as I did not yet find the right opportunity to speak to them about the meetings by the time you arrived."

An other man told me that he would be one of my main supporters if I only would have meetings in his city. But he did not understand. This is not how I use to work. I’m not for sale, and I’m not his prostitute.

I heard from an other pastor who invited an evangelist. The evangelist came, but the pastor never showed up in the meetings. Later he explained "I'm afraid of my deacon board." He went on to tell that just before the evangelist came to town they had started a radio broadcast. According to him, "We're beginning to get some nice people in the church. The deacons were afraid that if the folks knew we were connected with a meeting like those of the evangelist, they might lose them. we carry on such a big program that we can't afford to have anything happen."
The evangelist asked: “Brother, how many people did you get out for your Sunday night service?" He murmured, "About 40 or 50."
“Where was the rest of the town..? They were at the meeting of the evangelist. All those people that his deacons were so worried about scaring away were at our place... some of them until 2 o’clock in the morning.

Oh, how fear of man is keeping hundreds of thousands of people and their pastors not only away from the blessings of God, but away from obeying Jesus and moving out in the power of God!

• Pastors are afraid of their congregations;
• congregations are afraid of their pastors;
• pastors are afraid of each other...
• afraid that the church down the street might get a few more tithe-paying sheep.

I can just hear the agonizing cry of our Lord as He warns us and pleads with us:

And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body and after that have no more that they can do. 5 But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him. (Luke 12:4-6, AV).

It may sound unbelievable to you, but in more then one occasion pastors (and would be or should be pastors) have asked me (not always in a nice way) to leave their congregation as they feared for their “position” – Pity to see that some of these churches do not even exist anymore today, and others gather with just a handful of followers (of the pastor?)

A few years ago another pastor confided, "I really don't want to teach spiritual warfare. Talking about satan might scare people." But, praise God, this man got the victory over the fears in his own life, and today is raising up one of the most powerful youth armies for God in the country! His congregation has more than doubled.

Right now God is looking for thousands of pastors, ministers and evangelists like this man. Before Christ returns, He is going to purge His body of all the dead works we've been locked into out of fear; all the cold, joyless formalism which holds congregations in bondage because their pastors are afraid of the Spirit of God.

How my heart grieves to see so many of you, who long to sing, to testify, and to move out in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, hold back because you're afraid you will say the wrong thing. You are holding words of life "in your hands," and are afraid to deliver them!

There are whole congregations who are even terrified to lift up their hands to the Lord, or to issue a prayer request at a small gathering. Of course, giving a prophecy or a message in tongues is out of the question! So many people long to see the gifts of the Holy Spirit (the gifts that God gave us to build and equip His Church) in operation - but the pastors are so afraid of their people "getting in the flesh" that they never get in the Spirit.

Once a man started to get the Baptism of the Holy Ghost in my meetings. He made a begin to speak in other tongues and then all of a sudden he stopped. I asked him, "Why did you stop after you started to speak?" He answered, "When I started it sounded like I myself was speaking. I got to think that it was me and not God, and I became afraid."

You do not have to be afraid. God, your Father, will not give you something that isn't of Him

If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? 12 Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? 13 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him? (Luke 11:11-13)

Do not be afraid to "let go."

The Word of God commands us, to be “Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord” (Romans 12:11, AV).

God literally enthrones on the praises of His people “But thou art holy, O thou that inhabits the praises of Israel”. (Psalm 22:3). You need never be afraid to use all the "talents" He Himself has put within you to enable you to worship Him in spirit and in truth.

You do not have to fear anybody else's opinion when He gives you a word which will heal or encourage one of His suffering lambs. You need only to stand up and give it!

If you insist on living in fear of "being emotional" or of "being in the flesh" you will never know what it is like to be used of God in the Spirit. But you say, "Wait a minute, Brother Schoemaker, I'm not one of those people who is bound by fear. I'm fine."
You are? Then let me ask you,

• How many souls have you won to Christ during the past 12 months?
• How about in the last six months? Or Three months?
• How many unpaid vows do you have?
• How often have you used your "talents" to proclaim God's Word to the lost?  To heal the sick?  To bind up someone who is brokenhearted, or to set one of satan's captives free?

What kind of excuse are you going to present to the Master? Jesus has ordained that, “ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth”. (Acts 1:8, AV).
Yet satan is keeping many of you so bound by fear that you can't even witness to your neighbor or fellow worker at your job.

The strongest satanic deception in the Church today is that satan's demons operate only outside the body; that when it comes to Christians, these demons have no real power. Meanwhile, the demon spirit of fear is keeping a majority of God's people tied tip in fruitless bondage, deceived into thinking that it's all right to sit back and wait for heaven - when in reality they are headed for "outer darkness."

What I say is:

• That when God gave you talents, you got to work with it.

• That when God gave you a ability you may not turn it to a disability.

• That when God gave you a calling you cannot sit back.

All this directly relates to satan's second most destructive deception.

2.2. THE SECOND MOST DESTRUCTIVE DECEPTION

There are literally thousands of different fears that bind the Church today. Over and over again we face fear of cats, trees, cars, airplanes; fear of being alone, of being rejected, of being around people; fear of intimacy, fear of relationships, fear of responsibility, fear of commitment; fear of poverty, fear of success, fear of losing what you have, fear of the opinions of others, and fear of impending sicknesses.

But the one deception that satan has succeeded in pulling off, in the minds of all those who fear, is that failure to overcome your little fear is no big deal because it affects you and you alone.
Let me tell you something. No fear that you hang onto or fail to get victory over ever affects only you alone! We are all one in the Spirit, and any fear which hinders you, ultimately has a devastating effect on the whole Body of Christ in the spirit world.

This is why God has always refused to allow the fearful to remain in His Army! In essence He told them, "Go home. We don't want you. We don't need you. When we go to war you'll only contaminate the others."

And the officers shall speak further unto the people, and they shall say, What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren’s heart faint as well as his heart. (Deuteronomy 20:8)

Now therefore go to, proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart early from mount Gilead. And there returned of the people twenty and two thousand; and there remained ten thousand. (Judges 7:3)

In God's Army today it doesn't matter what your fear is. The truth is that all fear originates from a demon spirit of fear who has gained a foothold in your mind, and is an arch-enemy of God.
If this spirit of fear is allowed to retain its foothold, sooner or later it will rise up to hinder, block and prevent Christ's life from flowing through you when you need it the most.

Friend, are you ready to do something about it? In many ways God's Army today is like the children of Israel were when they came out of Egypt. After they were delivered, what was the first thing they were faced with? The Red Sea.
What was their reaction to it? They were paralyzed with fear!
Fear literally overtook their minds as they turned against Moses, whining, "Have you brought us out here to die in the desert because there were not enough graves for us in Egypt?" (Exodus 14:11, TLB).

At first Moses desperately tried to encourage them by telling them to hang in there. "Just stand still," he said. "The Lord will fight for you."  But at that point the Lord Himself broke in with a direct command: "Quit praying and get the people moving. “Forward, march!”

The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace. 15 And the LORD said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto me? speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward (Exodus 14:14-15, AV).

These are the same orders our Commander is giving us now.

He is telling us that it's time to quit whining about our fears and time to get moving in our offensive warfare against the devil. Therefore, as of today you and I are going to go after every demon power of fear that is binding your life and destroying your witness for Christ!

You say, "Brother Schoemaker, you sound angry." Well I am angry... not at you, but at satan for robbing you of Christ's riches in this life, and of your reward in His Kingdom to come.

we are going to stop this now. we are going to rip the mask right off the devil (and his tactics) - openly and without fear.
I have exposed his strategies and am providing you with a foundation for conquering him in every aspect of your life.
You are not going to hide. You are not going to remain on the defensive. You are not fighting a war of preservation. God's Word has already told us why He sent His Son to deliver us. It was:

That he would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear, 75 In holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life. (Luke 1:74-75, AV).

Bless God, you have heard His battle cry against fear in your heart. You are now going to come down out of your high tower of head knowledge and move out onto the battlefield.

All the joy, courage, confidence, peace, vitality and zeal that satan has stolen from you through fear will be restored to you in the mighty Name of Jesus. “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind”. (2 Timothy 1:7, AV). Get ready. You are about to begin a victorious life!