Breaking the spirit of famine

Your famine is a temporary condition, 
not a permanent position!

As a student of the Book, I'm sure you've recognized that the Word of God is a book of battles. The warfare paradigm is one of the most clearly deliniated and often repeated Kingdom realities in the Word.

In the Old Covenant we see that every champion had great enemies. Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, the prophets, and the corporate nation of Israel each had enemies to overcome on their path of destiny fulfillment.

The theme is repeated in the New Covenant with Jesus Himself being the preeminent model of one's destiny being opposed, battled, and vehemently resisted by a multitude of enemies. The Apostles also carried out the grand tradition as they pursued the Holy Spirit's mandate to advance the Kingdom of God in their time.

The Apostle Paul summed up this dynamic succinctly in I Corinthians 16:9 'Behold, a great and effectual door are opened unto me, and there are many adversaries'.

No doubt you're well aware by personal experience, of the warfare dynamic that is such a prevalent part of the believer's journey. That stated, I want to focus on a particularly violent opponent of your destiny: the spirit of famine.

Now before I lose you in the verbiage 'the spirit of famine', let me qualify what I mean. 

Famine in it's purest sense, is extreme lack that persists for an extended season. 

The Hebrew word for famine means 'lack, scarcity (and it's resulting hunger)'. In other words, famine means you're wrestling with a landscape of extreme lack in your life.

No matter what you need, when you're in famine, you never have enough and you don't possess the capacity in yourself to change the dynamics to 'get enough'.

Biblically speaking, famine can result from both natural and spiritual issues. There are times when famine manifests as a result of natural, environmental, economic, or relational conditions. Other times, famine results from poor decision making and unwise choices. There are also times when God calls for a famine to bring testing in our lives (see Issac in Gerar, Joseph in Egypt, Jesus in the wilderness). The Word bears out all of these divergent types of famine.

The spirit of famine of which I write is a different animal altogether and is your adversary's attempt to block the blessing of God from manifesting in your life. It's the result of the very real demonic forces assigned against your life, your assignment, and your destiny. I'm writing today to identify the spiritual warfare component that's at work in the natural famines you're wrestling with.

I. God's blessing is the only tangible proof of your covenant with Him

Let me repeat that statement because you need to let it resonate in your mind and spirit: The blessing of God is the only tangible proof of your covenant with Him.

How else can you prove externally that you have a covenant with God? Blessing is 'covenant evidence'. Blessing makes the covenant tangible.

Now, before you're tempted to recoil at that statement, think for a minute about God's 'proof pattern'. He made a covenant with Noah and put a rainbow in the sky as proof that He'd never again destroy the earth with a flood. Every time Noah and his descendants saw a rainbow they saw evidence of their covenant with the unseen God.

When God cut covenant with Abraham, He told him to look at the innumerable stars in the sky as a point of reference for the prophetic promise he carried as the father of many nations. Every night sky Abraham peered into revealed the evidence of his future and served to prove that his prophetic experience with the Covenant Maker was legitimate.

In both cases, God gave Noah and Abraham tangible focal points as evidence of their covenants. My point here is that when God makes a covenant, He seals it with tangible proof to give evidence to the ones He makes covenant with. Blessing is God's way of giving you proof that He is Who He says He is and that He does what He says He will do.

God's blessing also provides tangible empowerment to accomplish your dreams, goals, visions and assignments. It equips you with resources, both physical and spiritual, to accomplish your destiny. Blessing propels you forward in energy, confidence, and strength. The blessing of God will energize and strengthen you!

Furthermore, it also provides you with emotional and mental encouragement that God is indeed on your side, guiding your steps, rewarding your faith, and empowering you to succeed. Remember that God works on a reward system: He is a Blessor, a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. No good thing will He withhold from them that walk upright before Him.

So I think by now you get the point. I went into all of that to lay out the case that the blessing of God is your evidence of covenant because that's really what the spirit of famine is all about.

II. Cutting you off from God's Blessing is the agenda of the spirit of
     famine

Your enemy recognizes the multidimensional, multifaceted purposes of the blessing of God and he will throw out all the stops to cut you off from it!

Your blessing is the desire of the spirit of famine. The spirit of famine is a satanic strategy to cut you off from the blessing of God and to take it from you. The ultimate objective is to destroy you through the poverty that famine creates so as to destroy your destiny. Remember, the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. The spirit of famine is a satanic strategy to steal your destiny.

Note the following truths about famine as a tactic of your enemy and it's assignment against your life:

* Famine is your enemy's way of attempting to prove your covenant with God is invalid

* Famine is your enemy's way of attempting to prove that God is a liar

* Famine is your enemy's way of attempting to starve you out of your place of destiny

Make no mistake, when the enemy hits your life with a spirit of famine, things will go from bad to worse. Times will go from hard to harder and for a season it will seem like your enemy has succeeded at cutting you off from the blessing of God. Worst of all, when you're battling the spirit of famine, it will seem like you're completely cut-off from the Voice and Presence of God.

A lack of mental and spiritual clarity, as well as struggling to hear from God are evidences that you're wrestling with a spirit of famine.

Some additional evidences that you're battling a spirit of famine are listed below:

• No compassion, mercy, or help from those connected to you who are not in famine
• An excess of closed doors in your life
• Extreme difficulty in achieving breakthroughs in prayer
• An overwhelming sense of hardness that surrounds every facet of your life
• Strong mental oppression that is heavier than normal discouragement
• The total loss of your reserve resources so that you struggle for survival on a day to day basis

III. The spirit of famine vs. Prophetic Authority

You need to know that the objective of the spirit of famine is to completely surround you with lack, cut you off from your supply lines (both natural and supernatural), and suffocate you through starvation. It's assignment is to cut you off and to starve you out!

The paradigm for an assault from the spirit of famine is revealed by Syria's assault against Samaria in 2 Kings 6 & 7.

The king of Syria gathered his entire army and besieged Samaria. Samaria was the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel. It was the center of economic activity for Israel and was positioned in the nation's most fertile, productive farmland. The spirit of famine that operated through the king of Syria strategically targeted the center of Israel's economy, the very heart and soul of the nation.

The Syrians succeeded in isolating Israel's leadership, their economy, and the seat of their authority, cutting them off from any outside assistance. Notice that their king had allocated his entire army to cut-off one city! The spirit of famine never fights fair and will squeeze you through overwhelming opposition.

The objective was to destroy Israel through an extended season of extreme lack. The ensuing conditions were deplorable. Cannibalism was practiced to fend off starvation. The heads of donkeys were being sold for the equivalent of $1,400 U.S. dollars. It seemed as though the spirit of famine had succeeded.

IV. Deliverance from the spirit of famine never comes from human 
      compassion:it only results from asserting prophetic authority

The spirit of famine is broken through the power of a divine decree, released through the mouth of a prophet. While I realize this may seem foreign to some, God used this strategy for both the widow at Zarephath with the prophet Elijah as well as with Elisha in Samaria. My point here is that the releases that come from a prophetic mantle are designed to break the spirit of famine.

V. When God wants to bless you He'll assign a prophetic voice to your 
    life

• Prophets carry authority to break the spirit of famine because they must wrestle with it extensively while in the personal solitude of their qualifying seasons

Please pay attention to the truth I just shared with you about prophets and their qualifying seasons. It's a secret of the Kingdom that not many are aware of. It's rarely taught in our churches but part of my assignment is to shed light on prophetic truths that others don't talk about.

While we benefit from the prophet's authority and ministry, what we don't see is the deep wrestling that God requires of prophets for them to possess the authority level to move in a famine-breaking, recovery-birthing anointing.

In order for any of us to possess spiritual authority, we must wrestle our way into the next level. The anointings, mantles, and ministries you admire and that are effective for you have been acquired by those who possess them through deep qualifying seasons. Before the prophet ever releases a word into your life, they've had to wrestle their way into a new level of authority.

The wrestling of one season releases prophetic authority in the next season.

What prophets wrestle with in one season, God gives them authority over in another season. Elijah was tormented so powerfully by Jezebel in one season that he sunk into a suicidal retreat into the cave at Horeb. God met him in that place, turned his season, and broke Jezebel's jurisdiction out of his life.

After Elijah's personal wrestling match with Jezebel, his mantle represented the authority to break her jurisdiction as well as the spirit that operated through her. Years later Elisha came into possession of Elijah's mantle, broke Jezebel's power, and birthed the fulfillment of the prophetic word God had given Elijah.

VII. Asserting prophetic authority is God's strategy for breaking the 
        spirit of famine

I know that I've given you a ton of material to this point. Let me shift quickly by giving you three keys that you must implement for God to break the spirit of famine out of your life:

Breakthrough Key #1

• Recognize and Respond to your Prophetic Connection Points

God prophetically aligned the widow of Zarephath with Elijah by repositioning the prophet into her country and her famine was broken. Her recognition of this prophetic alignment revealed the solution that brought resolution to her famine. She shifted from death to life and literally released a perpetual miracle in her house for a year!

A major key to breaking the spirit of famine out of your life is to recognize the prophetic connection points that God has aligned you with. Samaria was aligned with Elisha and the prophetic mantle on his life released them from the tyranny of the spirit of famine. Though it was dormant for a season, God activated the prophetic DNA in Elisha and he decreed a word of divine release. The result was a miraculous victory over the spirit of famine and an economic recovery that broke the back of their lack once and for all.

When the Syrian army had succeeded in decimating Samaria, just before they reached the break point of defeat, God broke through their prophetic connection point with a prophetic decree.

Note that their deliverance did not come from an outside source: it came directly through their prophetic connection point.

Elisha was also living in the city, dealing with the same famine dynamics that they were. It's interesting that God required the prophet to move in faith, in an unscripted moment of prophetic decree, ignoring the very dynamics that were defying him in order to deliver the city.

The word of the Lord was that God was breaking the spirit of famine off of Samaria with a release of unseen, unexpected prosperity in Samaria's marketplace in one day. Elisha asserted his prophetic authority, released the word the Lord put in his mouth, and the spirit of famine was broken.

Breakthrough Key #2

• Nothing shifts naturally until something is released prophetically

You will recall that there were four lepers outside the city who did not hear what Elisha released prophetically. Likewise, Elisha and the city leaders had no idea that the lepers were about to become connection points in an unseen realm that would facilitate the manifestation of God's prophetic decree.

The point here is that the lepers did not rise up and move toward the Syrian army until after the Lord released the prophetic decree through Elisha. The discovery of victory was activated when the prophet moved. Elisha's prophetic movement created human movement and the lepers discovered unexpected abundance. The principle is that new prophetic movement activates new human movement. There must be a human response to a prophetic release for an enemy to be broken.

Though they were disconnected naturally, the lepers were connected to Elisha prophetically by divine alignment and his prophetic release activated decision-making that moved them into a miracle space, even though they never heard what Elisha spoke. The result was unexpected provision, prosperity, and victory. The prophetic movement of Elisha activated human movement that God partnered with, releasing physical and financial abundance.

Breakthrough Key #3

• A fresh prophetic activation is awakening ideas in you that will equip to defeat the spirit of famine

Get ready for some radical repositioning to take place in your life. We are entering a strong 'comeback season' where that which has been stolen is being replaced, repaired, and recovered.

The spirit of famine and the elements that it operated through are being driven out of your environment by the strong Hand of your God. Beginning today, the Lord is initiating a season of doing wonders among us. Your response to prophetic movement is creating a new dimension of partnership between you and God. He will give you the blessings of His covenant.

Expand your vision, God is expanding your horizons. In a time when many are eyeing deep reductions, God is going to give His people miraculous expansions. Your time of enlargement is at the door.

A prophetic word for you:

God has identified the spirit of famine assigned against you because He has an assignment of prosperity aligned with you. Hear me on this. The blessing of God and the tangible evidence of your covenant with Him are being restored gloriously, mightily in your life.

There is overwhelming, famine-breaking recovery that you are stepping into. The key for you at this time is to position yourself as those lepers and to move in the direction of God's prophetic stirrings. He's steering you in the right direction. He's positioning you to step into unexpected blessing. Make sure to honor your prophetic connection. Your deliverance from the spirit of famine is directly linked to your reaction to what the prophetic voices in your life are speaking at this time. You know who they are and there is deep prophetic confirmation in your spirit.

He is breaking the spirit of famine out of your life because it's time. The assignment of your enemy has been canceled. There is a new season of prophetic activation that is awakening in your spirit, your heart, and your mind. Your alignment with the prophetic voices assigned to you and your response to God's voice through theirs is going to break the spirit of famine once and for all. There are new ideas, strategies, and solutions being revealed in you as you move in the direction of His prophetic stirrings. He has already positioned everything you need to succeed in the place of your next step!

No matter what you do, in this season, do not disconnect from the set, prophetic voices God has aligned you with. You know who they are. Honor your connection with them and move in the direction that the stirrings of God are provoking within you. Your deliverance will come when you respond to a fresh uprising of the prophetic authority that's being activated in your life!

The Focus Factor

As you know, lately at The Destiny Center we've been focusing on the principles of becoming a champion.  I want to continue focusing on the concept of becoming an uncommon champion and I write today to share some things with you that the Lord's been emphasizing in my spirit. 

While there are many champions in Scripture, the Lord has kept me focused on David in this season.  I believe there are destiny keys revealed in his journey of faith and achievement that the Holy Spirit is highlighting for us as keys to our own breakthroughs and successes.  As such, it is my fervent expectation that as we follow the David Model we will experience 'David Results'. 

With that in mind, I want to share some keys with you that I know are going to bring you insight and empowerment as you press toward your intended outcomes.

'Uncommon Champions emerge from unlikely places to possess Impossible Destinies'

I'm sure you've noticed by now that I use the word 'uncommon' quite a bit.  The word has such a dominant place in my personal language pattern because on a prophetic level, it's what I keep hearing the Lord say about His people and about our destinies.  Regardless of our times, seasons, and scenarios, I continue to hear the Lord say 'uncommon' to me.  He has uncommon victories, uncommon opportunities, uncommon prosperity, and uncommon destinies on His mind for us.  After all, haven't you noticed that you've been in an uncommon season of uncommon warfare, wrestling with uncommon enemies? 

 'Uncommon Enemies always try to block the Emergence of an Uncommon Future'

The word 'uncommon' means 'extraordinary, remarkable'.  Consider that meaning in light of what God did with David.  Everything about David's rise to greatness (from his obscure life as the 8th son of a poor man from a small village) as Israel's most prolific king speaks to God's proclivity to do uncommon things with uncommon people.  David possessed an uncommon destiny and nothing in his personal history could stop it. 

'An Uncommon Enemy reflects a Destiny Door' 

Destiny Doors are the key opportunities, Divine appointments, and significant shifts that enlarge your living.  Destiny Doors are the kind of shifts that release you from the suffocating limitations of old seasons.  They serve to emancipate you from inadequate environments and they open up times of enlargement in your life. 

These Destiny Doors are the Divine appointments that God has strategically positioned to set you in a greater dimension of achievement, fulfillment and success.  They open up a deeper, greater path toward your destiny.  When you encounter a Destiny Door, you begin experiencing Divine acceleration, so that things that wouldn't move, shift, or come together for you previously begin manifesting in your life and you have to run to keep up with what God is doing.

'A Destiny Door will Shift Your Living!' 

Destiny Doors are neither ordinary opportunities, nor ordinary enemies.  They are the significant thresholds you cross when you're stepping into a greater dimension of God's purpose for your life.  'Destiny' includes the totality of your faith journey and your arrival at specific times, seasons, and outcomes.  As you journey toward new realms and dimensions of destiny fulfillment you will cross thresholds of newness.  David certainly experienced this with Goliath.  When he defeated the giant, a door was opened in his life that shifted him out of the sheepfolds of Bethlehem, into new realms of opportunity and greater levels of living.  As a result, David discovered that his life had shifted and a whole new world opened up to him.

'An Uncommon Destiny attracts Uncommon Enemies'

Perhaps you've heard me say that you know who you are by the enemies you attract.  More than just a catch-phrase or preacher-speak, this truth is revealed in Scripture time and again.  For instance, Goliath became a destiny door for David because part of David's life-assignment was to destroy the final five giants that remained in the land from the time of Joshua.  Goliath had four brothers who along with him constituted an uncontested reign of terror.  Long before David's birth into a supremely dysfunctional family, God had destined him to bring these generational leftovers to their collective knees.

'At strategic moments, when you're crossing thresholds into deeper dimensions of destiny fulfillment, a significant enemy will rise against you'

Not only did David attract the attention of Goliath (whom he quickly vanquished) but more importantly, he attracted the animus and rage of King Saul because he had a king's anointing on his life.  You know the deal.  David slaughtered Goliath and brought great deliverance to Israel only to find that his new found favor and success opened the door to a protracted, severe, and unexpected persecution cycle in his life.  David had vanquished a great enemy only to find that the prophetic king's anointing he carried  a attracted greater enemy than the giant he'd just dropped. 

'The anointing you carry and the future you represent determine the enemies you attract'

The enemies David attracted as he was emerging from the sheepfolds of obscurity reflected the destiny that awaited him.  His 'destiny enemies' also served to create prophetic contradictions in his life.  The enemy that rises against you says something important about the assignment the Lord has for you.  In this way, the Lord works through the hostility of your enemy to confirm, reinforce, and further validate your destiny.

Perhaps you've endured the blow-back of strong enemies and the hostility of destiny-defying dynamics that seek to block your emergence from one level or season to the next.  In that place, you need to know that there is Divine confirmation in your prophetic contradiction.  The prophetic always releases conflict.  Knowing that truth and embracing it as a Kingdom dynamic empowers you to focus on the validity of your prophetic identity and will keep you motivated in the fight.

                                                                    

To this point I've focused on the 'uncommon' element of David and his status as a great champion.  As you can see, he was indeed 'uncommon' and went through some 'uncommon stuff' to achieve the uncommon destiny God had designed for him.  My prayer is that, in the prophetic pattern of the David Model you can see the prophetic realities of your own journey.  Remember, uncommon preparation precedes uncommon promotion.

The Focus Factor:  The Power of Prophetic Vision

'Your greatest skills become delivery systems for the anointing on your life.  They are the keys God uses to unlock your Destiny Doors'

Every champion possesses incredible skills that they've cultivated deeply over time.  David was no different and it was his skills that gave the anointing on his life a delivery system through which he achieved uncommon victories.  These skills become keys that unlock doors to greater success.  One of the great keys David employed that empowered him to prevail over his enemies was his ability to cultivate a prophetic focus.  I call this key 'the Focus Factor'. 

David developed the uncanny ability to direct his focus in a prophetic direction in times of great chaos and this invariably turned the battle dynamics in his favor.  In this sense, David created unlikely and impossible outcomes through the power of a prophetic focus.  David's focus factor repeatedly turned defeat to victory, enemies into opportunities, and losses into recovery.  David knew where to focus his attention, his resources, his expectations, and his energies.  When trouble got big in David's world, David got 'small' in his focus.  Don't underestimate the power of this truth.

'Your ability to experience Divine recovery is directly linked to your ability to correctly refine your focus in times of chaos and crisis'

David's brother rebuked him for having a vision for victory.  Saul tried to cap David's success level with failure, inadequacy, doubt & self-defeat.  Goliath attempted to curse him with intimidation and fear.  In all of this, David was impervious to the negative and defeating dynamics that sought to defy his pathway to victory.  Instead of allowing his environment and the significant voices in that environment to shape his vision and break his focus, David refined his focus to the prophetic word over his life and his Divine assignment.  Everything David did in that moment, rejecting his brother's accusations, his conversation with Saul, his refusal to wear Saul's armor, and his prophetic defiance of Goliath reflect David's prophetic focus.  He saw nothing but victory in a place where everyone else saw defeat.  His prophetic focus reinforced his vision for victory. 

David carried a prophetic confidence, indeed a prophetic 'knowing' within him that shaped his perspective of the battle and set his field of vision.  Subsequently, he saw and knew what no one else could. In that moment, because of the power of his prophetic focus, David stepped into greatness and became an uncommon champion.  His prophetic focus created an outlet for the anointing upon his life to find expression and to create a miracle in a hostile environment. 

'History will forever remind us that a prophetic focus always cancels a demonic assignment'

Perhaps you're struggling to find your focus in a time of crisis.  Don't lose heart.  Every uncommon champion has seasons where the chaos they're enduring creates great obscurity and uncertainty.  The key to getting through the stress and frustration of that place is knowing that there's a Divine resiliency resident within you that will bring you recovery.

'Times of chaos and vision obscurity precede greater dimensions of prophetic clarity'

God would not call you to uncommon living without equipping you to fulfill your assignment.  Before you entered the season where chaos clouded your future and enemies broke your focus, God anticipated it. I write today to encourage you that God will not leave you with a broken focus. 

'Seasons of great wrestling,  where you struggle to maintain your vision and focus, precede  greater seasons of richer prophetic focus' 

While David succeeded in maintaining his prophetic focus in his Goliath Season, he lost his vision and focus in his Amalekite season. When the Amalekites sacked his city, burning it to the ground and taking his family hostage, David had a complete breakdown.  He 'lost it' in the smoke and flames of his unexpected chaos.  The Scriptures tell us that he and his men were bitter and exhausted their capacity to weep.  They were tapped out and his men talked of killing him.  In that broken condition, when vision gave way to unrelenting pain and his ability to focus seemed a casualty of the chaos that surrounded him, David experienced a Divine recovery of his prophetic focus.

In the midst of the chaos, something awakened in David, and the champion that he was emerged from the shadows of a broken focus and an uncertain future.  In that moment, David experienced a shift.  While his men spoke of killing him, David's focus recovered and a prophetic strategy was born that turned it all around.  In the end, David and his men recovered all.

I'm writing to tell you today that God's got your recovery on His mind.  You may be in a time of great chaos and situational uncertainty but there is a prophetic release that's bringing you back into balance.  Your ability to see clearly and focus prophetically is being reborn in you.  Trust me on this, you are entering a significant season of vision recovery.  New dimensions of prophetic focus are being formed in your faith, your spirit, and your mind.  Things are shifting in your unseen realms and a strong sense of newness is awakening deep within you.

You will exit this season of chaos where you've struggled to 'see and know' clearly, with a stronger sense of clarity, direction, and aim than you had before your chaos ensued.  You've not lost anything in this season: you've been prepared for a greater capacity to see like never before.  New strategies are being revealed in you that will bring victories and uncommon success into your life.  The voice of the Lord is being restored in your hearing.  Your vision has survived your transition and great recovery awaits you.

Never underestimate God's ability to empower you to recover you focus!