Shake The Shackles

All month long we've been in a series called Heal, and from Sunday to Sunday we've been

experiencing different levels of healing.

We started with physical healing, and then inner healing, and then emotional relationship

healing last week.

And today we're going to conclude this series, but we're not going to conclude the work of

healing and miracles, because that's just getting started.

Amen.

I believe that this series has also been setting the tone for what God is going to continue

to do for the rest of this year as we run with the theme of arise and build.

We're going to see a greater demonstration of the spirit and power, both here on Sundays,

in our city groups, wherever it is that we go, in our families, in our personal lives,

God is going to move in miraculous ways.

And I want you today to join me in the book of Mark, the Gospel according to Mark chapter

Mark 5 · chapter mention

5 and verse 1.

This is where the Spirit of the Lord has led me today, and I want to share with you this

message.

Then they came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gadarenes, and when

he had come out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs, a man with an unclean

spirit who had been dwelling among the tombs, and no one could bind him, not even with chains,

because he had often been bound with shackles and chains, and the chains had been pulled

apart by him, and the shackles broken in pieces, neither could anyone tame him.

And always, night and day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying out and cutting himself

with stones.

Then he saw Jesus from afar.

He ran and worshiped him, and he cried out with a loud voice and said, What have I to

do with you, Jesus, son of the most high God?

I implore you by God that you do not torment me, for he said to him, Come out of the man

with an unclean spirit.

My message today is shake the shackles, or shaking the shackles, and we're going to speak

today on spiritual healing and deliverance.

Why don't we pray?

I know we've been praying, I know we've been worshiping all service long, and what a great

time we've had.

Annointed, talented worship and praise has gone forth, but right now we're going to talk

to the Lord and we're going to ask Him to speak to us.

Father, we come before you once again.

We thank you, Father, for your spirit that we feel so powerfully, so real in this place

today, and we come to this point of hearing your word.

Annoint our hearing, God, so that we would have an ear to hear what the Spirit is saying

to all of us.

And anoint my lips of clay to speak with clarity, with power and precision, to the hearts, to

the spirits of everyone here today, or those that are watching online.

Father, we submit and surrender the remainder of the service into the hands of the Holy

Ghost, and we do this right now in the name of Jesus Christ.

We do this in Jesus' name.

Some would say, in Jesus' name.

Amen, amen.

You may be seated in the presence of God.

The story before us is one of the more dramatic scenes in the Gospels, a vivid display of

darkness colliding into light, of misery running into mercy.

And at the center of it is a man trapped in a world of spiritual bondage, a shackled spirit

whose oppression drove him over the edges of sanity, into the fringes of society, and

to a place far beyond the reach of human intervention.

All the townspeople there and even in the surrounding areas knew of this man.

They knew him as the tomb dweller.

The madman who lived and made his dwelling among the dead.

If you ever saw this man up close, you could never scrub his image from your mind.

It was so disturbing.

His dirty, bloody, wild appearance would have disturbed your eyes and would have marked

you in such a way you could never erase it from your memory.

It's just one of those things that when you see it, you can never unsee it.

That's how badly of a condition that he was in.

If you never saw him, then you would have definitely heard his hair-raising cries and

deep howls as they pierced through the hush and the silence of night.

So even if you never saw him laying at night and the stillness of the midnight hour, you

could hear the echo of this madman's cries off in the distance of the tombs.

So whether you heard or saw him, you knew that this was the type of person who was overwhelmed

and consumed by such a ravenous problem, such a horrendous situation.

But I want you to understand today that this man was not a monster.

He was not a monster.

In fact, he was of no harm to anyone but himself.

And though there might have been urban legends and rumors that spread around town like the

boogeyman, you know, the kakooey, be careful because he's out there.

You don't want to be walking around in the middle of the night.

Parents would warm their children.

If you see this guy, run the other direction.

But truly, this man was of no harm to anyone else, only to himself.

He was a man, a regular man with an ugly problem.

I feel like in stories like this, they get sensationalized, right?

They get dramatized.

And often we lose sight of the human being, the man or the person that's in the center

of the controversy or the problem.

We need to humanize this man today.

He was someone's son.

Amen.

He was someone's brother.

He was someone's friend, perhaps.

He was even somebody's father.

This was a human being with real-life connections, with real-life relationships.

He was a man at one point in his life with ambitions, at one point in his life with dreams

and desires who, for reasons unknown to us, lost control of his life.

It's important to see him as just a regular man with an irregular problem.

As a human being, as a precious soul in the sight of God who has an ugly, monstrous problem

in his life.

He himself was not a demon.

He himself was not a monster.

He was simply plagued by demonic forces that were at work.

And it begs the question, how does a man, a man possibly with a family and a loving community

end up living in a graveyard?

How does someone in that regard, how does anyone lose control of their lives and become

a prisoner of their flesh, a prisoner of sin, a slave to Satan's influence?

To answer that question, we first must come to terms with three realities that I want

to expose to you.

First of all today, three realities that we must understand.

First is the reality of the spirit realm, a world about which many are unconscious or

unaware.

But we need to understand that the spirit realm is real.

Amen.

Somebody, I said, amen.

Somebody, it's real.

The spirit realm is in fact more real than the physical world that we interact with every

day.

The world that we can see, touch, taste, smell and hear.

The physical world, the spiritual world is more real than the tangible world because the

tangible world came out of the intangible world.

Are you following me?

The seen world came out of the unseen world.

And so that makes the unseen world that much more real.

The second reality is that man is a three-part being made up of spirit, soul and body.

Spirit, soul and body.

The realest part of you is your spirit, which is your eternal essence.

That is that eternity that the writer of Ecclesiastes said, God set eternity in the human heart.

That is your spirit, which lives forever.

That is eternal.

This is your body, your body.

You're talking about your physical body, your flesh and bones.

That is your temporary home.

Then there's your soul.

Your soul is the area of your mind, your emotions.

That's the area of your desires.

That's the area of your memories.

That's the unseen area of your life.

And when we talk about the flesh, what we are usually referring to, even though we don't

characterize it this way.

Biblically, this is what we're talking about.

The flesh is really your soul and your body.

Your body and your soul make up your flesh.

And that is typically where most of the problems in life occur.

They occur in the body or they occur in the soul.

Remember the soul?

It's the area of the mind.

It's the area of your emotions, your memories, your body.

Those were most of the afflictions and the troubles of life occur in that realm.

Now the reason why most of those problems occur in that realm and that is very important

for us to understand because there's a third reality.

And it's that Satan seeks to shackle your spirit, that eternal essence, that part of

you that God fashioned to live forever.

He seeks to shackle your spirit by dominating your soul and your body.

Since Satan cannot access your spirit especially, and I say this very importantly, if you have

the Holy Ghost, if you have received the baptism of the Holy Ghost, Satan cannot take residence

in your life if the Holy Ghost is there.

Somebody say amen for that.

But that doesn't mean simply because he cannot possess you, doesn't mean he cannot oppress

you.

And he can do that by dominating your flesh or your soul and your body.

He may not be able to touch your spirit through direct contact, but if he can mess with your

body and your soul just enough, he by virtue of a series of it or as a matter of cause

and effect can get to your spirit.

This is ultimately what he wants to do.

He achieves this through demonic influence.

I'm laying the foundation right now.

He achieves this through demonic influence by exploiting the areas of your flesh, your

soul and your body, by playing on your emotions, by tampering with the wounds of your past.

He looks for any opening, any portal in your soulish area in order to inflict pain, in order

to somehow oppress you, to dominate your thinking, your weaknesses.

He is hoping to use these things against you.

He works through the broken places of your past to fulfill your desires, to plant a root

of bitterness somewhere in there.

He hopes to inject something into the soulish or to the physical area of your life that

might chain you or bind you.

Because what he wants to do is use all of your passions, your desires, your memories,

your lusts, your temper, all of these things against you so that you will in essence enslave

yourself so that you will become a prisoner of those things.

Amen.

And it's important that we see how Satan works and how the kingdom of darkness works.

I find it interesting that this man, as we read in the Gospel stories, which is actually

found in all three synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, we see this story.

It must have been so powerful of a moment.

It must have really struck the disciples that all three of those writers would write about

it.

It's all there.

What's interesting is that this man broke his physical chains, but he couldn't break

his spiritual chains.

He appeared free on the outside.

The Bible says no man could tame him.

They tried to shackle him, and they thought they were helping him by shackling him and

by putting these fetters and chains on his body.

They tried to chain him up, and then because he was so possessed with these demonic power,

he would break those chains free.

And so he appeared to be free, but he was still bound on the inside.

His real bondage was not on the outside.

His real bondage was on the inside.

And someone here today may be struggling with the very same issue.

You appear free on the outside, but on the inside, you're oppressed and you're bound

in some unseen area that you can't seem to break free from.

And it's very difficult to direct and to operate in those areas and to fix those areas because

they're so deep and you can't seem, no matter how hard you try, to break that cycle in your

life, that cycle of sin, that cycle of abuse, that cycle of self-infliction, that cycle

of deadly habits, that cycle of addiction, of sin, no matter how hard you try.

We look for, like this man found others that were trying to help him through these chains.

There are lots of different methods and philosophies and things that we can find in this world

to try to resolve and calm us and fix us and settle the issue and resolve what's going

on in our life and going on in our hearts.

But none of those things seem to work because it seems like even though we appear free on

the outside, maybe we're smiling to our friends or checking in at work and checking out.

And everyone thinks we're fine.

And we've got our spouses convinced that we're okay.

We've got our children fooled that we're all right.

We got everybody thinking that we're free.

We come to church.

We clap our hands.

We shout.

We dance.

But God's will for you today is that your spirit man would be free, free at last.

That your spirit person would finally break out of the place.

I wish somebody would hear what I'm saying because if your spirit is set free and delivered,

then your emotions will be free and then your body will be free and then your mind would

be free.

Somebody say, man, the first thing you need to do is you got to come out of the tombs.

Someone say, come out.

Come out of the tombs.

He was in the tombs of all places to live.

This man chose to live among the tombs.

He chose to surround himself with death and the Bible teaches us this truth in Romans

6.23.

It tells us that the wages of sin is death.

The wages of sin is death.

You must understand that sin is a spiritual disease.

And once it affects you, it starts to spread and it causes death, spiritual death.

Emotional death, relational death, and sometimes even physical death.

Somewhere in his body or soul, his heart and mind, this man in the story gave a little

room for the devil.

I'm not here to judge him.

I'm here to analyze the situation.

At some point in his life, this man gave a little room for the devil to work and to

plant something in his life.

We don't know what it is.

We don't know what he dabbled in.

We don't know what he opened himself up to, but he opened himself up to something.

And I can assure you that even though the Bible says that he had a legion of devils,

he had somewhere around 2,000 demons were abiding in him.

I can tell you that probably not all 2,000 devils possessed him at one time.

It probably started off with just one little devil, you know?

It probably started off with just one little thing, one thing that he allowed to come into

his life, one place that he allowed for the enemy to work.

This is how sin begins to take hold of someone's life.

Satan only needs you to give him an inch.

He doesn't need a mile.

He doesn't need yards.

He only needs you to give him an inch, just a millimeter of space for him to work with.

He only needs you to give him just one moment, just one drink.

Come on now.

Just one peek or one glance, just one touch, just one little act of anger, just one little

rumor spread.

And the Bible tells us this in Ephesians 4, 27.

It says, do not give the devil a foothold.

Under the verses say, do not give place to the devil.

And he's giving us a principle.

He's telling us that even if you give the devil just a little foothold, just a little

place, he's going to take that space you give him and he's going to stretch it and he's

going to work in that space.

That's all that he needs because when you give the devil a foothold, he will take a

stronghold and he begins to work and develop and that stronghold will eventually drive you

to the tombs of life.

There is somebody here today under the sound of my voice.

Your struggle is that maybe someday or one day in your past or one day not too many days

from now, you gave the enemy a little bit of room to work.

You gave him a foothold.

You allowed him to work in some area of your life through your relationship or through

a little sin.

You told a little white lie.

You just let something creep in and all of a sudden now you've got a problem in your

life.

Now you're bound and now you're oppressed and you don't know how you got there.

Oh, hallelujah.

I've come to tell you today that God wants to set you free because our Bible says that

the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but are mighty in God through the pulling down

of strongholds.

I've got good news for you today, my friend.

There is no stronghold too great that the power of God cannot bring down.

I wish I had a witness today.

There is no stronghold too great that the spirit of God, that the word of God cannot

break.

There is no yoke too strong that the anointing cannot break.

Somebody ought to give God some praise today.

Ah, we have come into this house to lift up the name of Jesus so that God would come and

break the stronghold that is in your life, brother, so that you can finally get the victory.

He lift up that name right now.

Somebody magnify him today.

Hallelujah.

I did not come simply to preach a message.

I came to set up those who are captive free.

When you read what Jesus said about himself, when he talks about what he came to do, he

said, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to

the poor.

He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted and then he said to proclaim liberty to the captives,

the recovery of sight to the blind and set at liberty those who are oppressed.

I will tell you there in that verse, you can read it for yourself in Luke chapter 4 verse

Luke 4:18

18.

He said, proclaim liberty and then set liberty.

He said, proclaim it and then do it.

We can't just preach about it.

We've got to demonstrate it.

I didn't come today just to preach a message about deliverance.

I came here today to actually see somebody get delivered.

My God, I've got an anointing upon my life this afternoon.

I don't care what your sin is, what your hang up is, how long you've been battling,

how hard it's been, how ferocious it's been.

There is an anointing in this house today that can set you free once and for all.

I feel the Holy Ghost in this house right now.

I feel the spirit of the Lord.

You've got to come out of the tombs.

You've got to come out of the grave.

Get out of that place of death.

Get out of that place of sorrow.

Get out of that place of misery.

Get out of that place of sin.

Get out of that place of darkness and say, I'm not going to live here any longer.

He came running out of the grave.

He came running out of the darkness like we sing in that song into a glorious day.

He said, I'm coming out.

Someone say, I'm coming out of this.

I'm coming out of this.

I'm coming out.

He said, I see my answer and I've got to come out of the tombs.

I've got to get out of this place of death.

I got to get out of this place of darkness.

The tombs is no place for a child of God to live.

Amen, somebody.

The tomb is no place for you to live.

The spiritual tombs are places of unrealized potential where unrealized potential is buried.

Buried behind the soil and buried beneath the ground in the tombs are dreams that have

never come to pass.

Songs that have never been sung.

Books that have never been written.

Ideas that were never shared.

Plans that never materialized and purposes that were never fulfilled.

That is exactly where someone is today.

You've got gifts that are buried.

My God, you've got treasures that are buried.

You've got, my Lord, you've got a destiny that's been buried.

Maybe you come to church, but you're still buried.

Maybe you know the song, but you're still buried.

Maybe you say, hallelujah, but you're still buried.

But God sent me here today to bring you out of that grave, but you got to want to come

out of it.

Notice that all Jesus had to do was set foot in the city or the region of the gatherings.

And this man went 2000 devils inside of him.

I got to get to Jesus.

And the Bible said that he ran and he came down to where Jesus was.

And so many people missed their miracle because they're waiting for Jesus to come all the

way to, no, no, no, no, no.

He already came 2000 years ago.

Who shan't alamakai?

He already stepped foot on this world.

He already died on the cross.

And now it is up to somebody today that says, I'm sick and tired of living with this.

I'm sick and tired of being bound in my private life.

I'm sick and tired of being bound to pornography, being bound to drug addiction, being bound

to fear, being bound to bitterness.

I'm tired of where I am.

And I see Jesus as in the house today.

I see Jesus as in the church today.

So I've got to come out of my tomb.

I know there's somebody today that needs to come out of your tomb.

Come on, somebody, say, man.

You got to come out of somebody, say, man.

You got to come out of your tomb and make up in your mind.

I don't care what anybody thinks about me.

I don't care if they talk about me.

I don't care if they write about me.

I don't care what rumors they spread about me.

This is my moment to get free.

This is my moment to be healed.

This is my moment to be delivered.

Oh, rabbi yashanda, I feel the holy ghost in this place today.

The second thing God told me to tell you is that you need to stop cutting yourself down.

This man is a classic example of somebody with no self-esteem, or at least a self-esteem

that had been tattered and so broken that he didn't know what to do with himself.

He did not value his life.

He did not value himself the way that he ought to as someone who is fearfully and wonderfully

made in the image of God.

And this man, the Bible said, would deliberately harm himself by taking stones and rubbing

them harshly against his skin, cutting himself in the darkness of night, cutting himself

in the bleaching hot day of summer, cutting himself because he didn't know what to do.

He was so trapped with this condition and he didn't see himself as being a respectable,

dignified man.

He looked at himself when he drank from the pools and he saw his reflection.

He saw an animal.

He saw a wild man.

He saw a mad man.

He saw a man with no control.

He saw a man that was hurting, that was wounded.

And ultimately, he saw somebody that he didn't respect anymore.

He didn't even know who that man was anymore.

Can I minister today?

Is that all right?

He couldn't even recognize himself.

And sometimes you get to a place in your life when you look in the mirror.

You don't even recognize who you see anymore.

You don't even recognize because you don't pray like you used to pray.

You used to be on fire for God.

And somewhere along the way, you lost your fire.

You used to sing loud for God.

And somewhere along the way, thank you, brother, you lost that.

You don't even recognize who you are anymore.

All you are when you look at yourself as an empty shell of who you used to be.

And it seems no matter who says what, no matter all the pain and the walls of the church could

be coming off and it doesn't touch your spirit because you have so convinced yourself through

the lies of the enemy that you're not worth it and you have no value.

And this man was cutting himself down.

And some of you may not be using stones to do it, but you're cutting yourself down with

your words.

You've heard the word you've heard that sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will

never hurt me.

That's a lie.

I don't know whoever said that because words can hurt.

And the things that you might be telling yourself like you're not worthy and you're not good

enough and no one will ever love you and no one's ever going to accept you and God want

to accept you.

And these are all lies from the devil that he's got circulating in your mind.

And it's just causing you to cut yourself down.

You cut yourself out of opportunities.

You cut yourself up.

Oh my God, I'm getting into something right now.

You cut yourself out of the team.

You cut yourself out of places that God wants to take you.

You cut yourself out of the equation.

You cut yourself out of miracles.

You cut yourself out of the plan of God.

You cut yourself out of what God can do.

You cut yourself short and you cut yourself out and you're constantly chipping away at

your life.

Oh, but God wants you to know, my friend.

Your life has value and your life means something and your life is precious in the sight of God.

I don't know who I came to preach this to today.

I don't know who needs to hear this right now, but you need to know that it only takes

one voice from God to shatter every lie that the devil has spoken about you and everything

that you've been telling yourself.

Everybody needs to hear right now another sound of my voice that you matter, that you are

loved and therefore God so loved the world.

And that's you.

And that's you that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever would believe in him would

not perish but have everlasting life.

I came to tell you today, stop cutting yourself down because you are the head of God.

You are the head and not the tail.

You are above and not beneath.

I wish somebody would believe that right now.

I wish somebody would thank God for that right now.

I wish somebody would recognize that in this house.

Come on for about 30 seconds.

For about 30 seconds.

Is there somebody that can lift up your voice?

Is there somebody that can lift up your hands?

Come on, come on.

Keep it going.

Keep it going.

Praise him.

Come on, come on.

Praise him.

The psalmist said, I will praise him for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

If you can't praise him that you are fearfully and wonderfully made, then what are we doing

right now?

Oh, to God be the glory.

So give me a few more moments of your time.

And this man was self-inflicting himself.

And today I say this very respectfully with a lot of reverence, with a lot of care and

respect for whatever it is that you might be going through in your private life.

But you need to understand that you might be hurting yourself in ways that you cannot

even begin to imagine.

You're cutting yourself down with words, with decision, self-neglect.

Somebody under the sound of my voice is continually to punish yourself over things that God has

already forgiven you of.

You need to, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ.

And yet you continue to condemn yourself for things that God has already released you from.

Oh my God.

Let me give this to you before I move on.

How you treat yourself, result from how you view yourself.

Hallelujah.

And how you view yourself, result from what you believe.

And what you believe, result from what you hear.

I have reverse engineered the way, and to help somebody understand why it is you see

yourself and treat yourself the way you do.

It comes back to what it is you believe about your life.

And not only that, you go one step further, what you believe as a result of what you hear.

Fear, the Bible tells us that faith comes by hearing of the word of God.

And the opposite is also true brother, fear comes by hearing of the word of the enemy.

My question to you today is, who or what are you hearing?

Who or what are you listening to?

It's time to stop cutting yourself down and start accepting who you are in Christ.

That you are blessed with every spiritual blessing.

God wants to set somebody's spirit free by restoring the dignity of who you are as a

child of God.

And restoring your sense of self-worth and self-appraisal.

You need to have a high value of yourself.

You need to stop letting other people appraise your value.

My God, hallelujah.

You need to stop letting other people assess whether you're worthy or not.

No, you are worthy because God says you're worthy.

I wish I had a believer today.

The Bible says for you were bought at a price.

Oh my God, it was costly.

Jesus paid a costly price to purchase our salvation with his own blood.

Therefore glorify God in your body and where else?

Your spirit that in our part of you, which belongs to God.

I belong to God.

Someone say I belong to God.

I belong to God.

God wants to restore your sense of self-worth today.

He wants to restore your sense of who you are in Christ so that you can start loving

yourself again.

Because here's what begins to happen.

As you begin to love yourself rightly, you start to be able to love others rightly.

Jesus said you love your neighbor as yourself.

You can't love others when you hate yourself.

Those that struggle the most to serve and love others don't because they hate others.

I'm going to help somebody.

They don't because they hate themselves.

We think they don't like people.

No, it's got nothing to do with other people.

They don't like them.

But when you are secure, when you are secure and confident about who you are in God and

that you are wonderfully made and that you are free on the inside, cheerfulness, charity,

love and service pours out to others.

It has to get fixed in here.

The third thing God wants me to tell you is that you today, before you leave this service,

can worship away your chains.

The Bible recounts that this man did something completely unexpected.

Imagine you're with Jesus when you get to the region of the Gadarenes.

Here comes this man.

Now, I tried to give you the rated PG version.

This man wasn't wearing anything.

Now it's PG 13.

He come running.

That's in your Bible.

We can say it.

You see, it's in the Bible.

Read it.

You can handle that.

And this guy's coming.

He's all cut up.

He's just foaming up the mouth.

His hair is all unkempt.

And he's just sprinting towards Jesus.

Now, I know we want to act all holy and righteous, right?

But if I'm hanging around with Jesus and I see this guy coming out, I'm hiding behind

Jesus.

I'm like, you better get him, Lord.

I'm not spiritual enough to do with this guy.

This guy just came running, barreling down out of the mountains.

And he just falls down, the Bible says.

He falls down and he just begins to worship.

He starts crying out to God.

God, I worship you.

Praise you, God.

And all the disciples are around.

And they're scratching their hands.

They can't believe their eyes.

What's happening here?

They can't compute.

The non-lookers, the townspeople, the village people that are around, they're all wondering

like, wait a minute, what's going on?

Nobody can make sense of this guy.

He's got a legion of devils in him, around 2,000 demons possessed in this man.

And with all of those demons in him, was able to get to an altar.

Brother, some of us don't have any demons and we struggle to get to an altar.

Y'all, y'all want me to shut up now?

I understand, I understand.

I'm poking on somebody.

I'm poking on you.

2,000 devils in his life.

And he recognized that there is something greater than what I'm dealing with right here.

When you ever have a true encounter with the Holy One of Israel, with God Almighty and

flesh, when you ever see Him in the light of His glory, there is something that begins

to happen.

And you say, I've got to get to the feet of Jesus.

And so he begins to worship.

He begins to call out.

He begins to pray.

He begins to just lift up his voice to God.

He starts to worship him.

He starts to worship him.

And something just begins to hit me as I see this scene.

And how even with all of his problems, he still got to it.

And the Lord showed me this.

Maybe it's not going to be deep to you, but it was deep to me.

And it was this, that how could this man with 2,000 devils come and worship at the feet

of Jesus?

I'll tell you how.

Someone say, how?

Because nothing can stop a worshipper.

Nothing can stop a worshipper, brother.

Nothing can stop a worshipper.

I don't care how bad your situation is.

I don't care how many devils you're fighting in your life.

I don't care who said what.

I don't care how long you've been bound.

I don't care how private your battle is.

Some of us, you know, we don't just, some people don't get free or as time goes on.

They just get better at covering it up.

Brother David, I've been in church long enough to know that a lot of times, even church folk,

we don't get free or as time goes by.

We just get better at hiding what's going on.

We don't want the pastor to know.

We don't want the brothers to know.

We don't want anybody knowing.

But there's a place that's bound.

But here's what I know.

Nothing can stop a worshipper.

You know why?

Because that's the one area that the devil.

That's the one area that the devil cannot win.

Because once you have elevated the name and the presence of Jesus above all else, once

you have made up in your mind that I'm going to worship you, even watch with my chains.

I can't worship him until I'm free.

I've got to be 110% free before I can lift my hands and lift my, maybe a pinky, but not

much more than that.

I can't lift too much more until I'm 100% free.

Tell that to Paul and Silas who were all chained up.

The Bible says at midnight, right?

He began to sing.

Because I don't care how shackled one is on the outside or in the inside.

There is power in your worship.

Oh my God, there is power in your worship.

What?

Because God inhabits the praises of his people.

And if worship and praise gets God into my situation, gets God into my private battle,

gets God into my place of bondage and oppression.

If worship is what draws him closer to me, the more I worship, the more of his presence

begins to consume and saturate my life.

And it gets to a point where there's only room for one.

And so this man begins to worship and he begins to praise and there's nothing the devil can

do about it.

I imagine at this moment as I close that Satan saw what this man was doing, Brother Ricky.

Maybe he called an emergency meeting with all the devils.

It says, guys, we got to, everybody meet in the boardroom.

We got a problem on our hands.

This guy is now starting to worship him.

What are we going to do?

You got to stop him.

You know, demon number three, is there anything you got?

Can you dial up one of those memories?

You know, one of those really sick things that happened in his past that kind of throw

him off guard.

You know, devil number four over there, can you, you know, you got anything that you

know, an old rumor or something you can remind him about, something that just kind of, you

know, break his focus.

Devil number, you know, 2,000.

Can you, can you do something?

Can you just, you know, let a fly land on him somewhere and distract?

He got to do something to stop this guy because if he keeps worshiping like this, if he keeps

praising like this, he's going to get free from all of us.

And nothing they did can stop what was happening.