he."

I mentioned that Sunday, I dealt with the spirit-filled churches, and one of the things we said is that a spirit-filled, apostolic church is an arrowhead. It's an arrowhead. A spirit-filled, apostolic church has authority in spiritual warfare. It carries a building anointing. It has a governing anointing. It dislodges principalities and powers and rulers and creates an open heaven for God's continued blessings to flow in a region, in a territory, in a church, in a business, in a family.

Now, I'm going to dive into this for a little bit and just talk. We believe, if this church, that we have victory over everything, we have dominion and power. God has given, Jesus gave us dominion, power, but there are moments where if you're sitting in the seat of rejection or offense, the enemy uses that to trip you up.

You can see in scripture where there are characters in scripture where we see personalities performed in the Bible, where their whole mindset and their whole personality was to cause problems. Yeah, you look at Goliath, that was a giant standing in David's way and the Army's way, and David had to deal with it.

We looked at how Ahab presented a need to Naboth, and then we see that Ahab didn't get his way, so what did he do? He whined to Jezebel. Yeah, and Jezebel got what Naboth wanted in a cruel, inhumane way.

So as we begin dealing with these two spirits, I don't even know if I should call them spirits, but these two characters in the Bible, I want to read something that I've read about Jezebel in John Paul Jackson's book. He says this way: "A spirit of Ahab symbolizes the absence of authority, or at the very least, passive authority. It speaks of a mindset that avoids confrontation and denies fault. Ahab loves the position it has and fears confrontation. Someone with an Ahab spirit would rather make peace at any cost, even if it leads to making an unholy alliance. An individual under the influence of an Ahab-type spirit often makes truces instead of covenants, thus prostituting rather than sanctifying relationships. An Ahab spirit will always sacrifice the future good for the sake of peace today. Working in tandem, the spirit of Ahab and Jezebel will quietly form a co-dependent relationship, and both will need and feed off the other in order to accomplish each one's goal."

So if you want to read more about that, you can get the book "Unmasking the Jezebel Spirit" by John Paul Jackson.

Now, one of the things I'll move through this quickly, but I want to give you a few things this morning about Jezebel. But before I do, I want to mention this: that God is raising up what I like to call governing churches. You with me? Yeah, governing churches.

What do I mean by that? I preached a message a few years ago called "Regional Governors," and in that message, I explained that God has called the church to become governors of regions, governors of families. What is a governor? A governor, we have a governor of the state of Texas, is Abbott; he decrees, legislates, and the same thing for us. God has called us to decree a thing and to legislate from the heavenly realm what God is speaking.

So we're called to be governors, regional governors in this region, in this community. You're called to your house to be a governor, and it's going to take folks that are going to stand up against culture to see the hand of God, the move of God, the kingdom of God established. It's going to take regional governors, it's going to take people that'll get just so tired of the way things are, they get sick and tired with the way things are, and begin to decree a thing, to decree heaven's agenda on earth, on earth as it is in heaven.

So a governing church, the thing about governing churches, though, is that they're called to warfare. They're called to challenge the status quo. They're not nominal; it's not nominal Christianity, it's radical Christianity. It's taking authority over cancer, it's taking authority over disease, it's taking authority over culture, it's standing up and not being silent.

Our voice becomes louder than the culture; that's a governing church. We don't allow principalities, powers, and rulers to reign and rule over regions and territories; we set up the kingdom of God. We set it up with, in the kingdom of God, what is it? Righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

Yeah, you're going to have to help me today; you're going to tell me today. That's the kingdom of God, and that's what God's setting up, His rule and His reign. God is within us; we are the temple of the Holy Ghost.

So, as Pastor Joni said last Sunday, we should operate in righteousness, peace, and joy. Yeah. And if you missed that, you need to go watch that; that's on YouTube. It's a powerful message.

But we are a governing church; that doesn't mean that we're better than any other churches in this region. It doesn't mean that we're, you know, the best church. It just means that we're doing things different. We're doing things according to the word of God. We're not just going to bust you in and bust you out; we're going to spend some time teaching you and discipling you and raising you up to be a voice in this community, a voice of reason, a voice of restoration, a voice of joy and peace. That's what this world needs right now.

While all churches are called to warfare, there is an anointing on specific churches to attack territorial spirits in territories and family lineages, in the spirit realm, and open the way for others.

So we got to understand that we don't attack people. Our warfare is not with flesh and blood, correct? Alright. We don't wrestle with flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Notice the word spiritual. Important.

We've got to have an attitude that we're not going to take anything from the enemy without having attitude. We've got to know, everybody say you've got to know.

Uh, offense is brutal; I said offense is brutal. Um, there was a, it's funny, after I preached this message, I started seeing these quotes by Bill Johnson, and one of the quotes that Bill said was, um, and I'm paraphrasing, offense will make you something to the degree that offense will make you see things that aren't really there, hear things that really haven't been said, and it's usually that is usually how offense works.

Um, the enemy will trip you up. You, someone will look at you and you'll get offended on it, or you'll hear something and you'll be offended on it, but it's all the enemy trying to bait you, and you've got to know when the enemy's baiting you. Man, you've got to know, everybody say you've got to know.

Um, offense is brutal; I said offense is the breeding ground for all sorts of demonic activity. If not handled quickly and correctly, offense will open the door to the enemy; it will open the door to the enemy.

When someone is offended, what they're really saying is that they feel rejected. Remember that Sunday, I dealt with the spirit of rejection; I dealt with that because you know what, some of us, we've been rejected all of our lives, and now we live in a house of rejection, and everything, when someone tells us no, or looks at us differently, we feel rejected.

Rejection is real; it's not something to play with. If you feel rejected, you've got to get healed from that; you've got to get healed from it. You've got to go down to the root of that and get it dealt with. You've got to get dealt with rejection, and finish; they work together; they're partners.

When you find one, the other one is nearby, ready to come and torment you. Rejection will torment. You'll lay in bed at night, wondering, well, how do they really feel about me? Yeah, been there, done that, y'all. I'm just talking from my experience.

The more we feed rejection, the more we feed offense, the longer you give them permission and access into your life. Amen.

Proverbs 23:7 says, "For as he thinks in his heart, so is he."