The Spirit of Jezebel and Your Wilderness

Narrator: Welcome to Self Talk with Dr. Ray Self, the place where you can get real answers to tough questions. Jesus promised you abundant life but poor choices and dark forces stand in your way it is time to learn how to overcome the obstacles that keep you out of your promised land. Knowledge of God will pave the path for you to walk in his blessing.

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Dr. Ray: Hello and welcome to Self Talk. I'm your host, Dr. Ray Self. Thank you for being with me. This show as always is brought to you by the International College of Ministry, a Holy Spirit-filled online seminary offering associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral programs, now enrolling so check us out. God bless you.

I want to talk to you about that familiar topic, oh that spirit of Jezebel. Jezebel, Jezebel, what are we going to do with you? You know, we all know that spirit. We um, it seems like the spirit originated back with Queen Jezebel and her husband Ahab, the story in the book of Kings how she particularly attacked the prophets of God, killed many of them, scared Elijah half to death where he runs and hides in a cave. So Jezebel has been around for a long time. We have labeled that spirit the spirit of Jezebel. It's actually a controlling, manipulating uh, spirit of divination or witchcraft that's been around for you know, thousands of years; one of the fallen demons most likely. But what I want to talk about is that spirit seems to especially attack people with a prophetic gift. It targets people with the gift of prophecy, especially, I mean, we see in scripture that that spirit of Jezebel, actually the living Jezebel in the flesh, Queen Jezebel, targeted prophets of God. 

But that spirit of Jezebel I believe, and many other ministers, Spirit-filled ministers, also believe that spirit is still around and still harassing and attacking ministers, especially those who flow in the prophetic. And I can tell you countless stories of friends who I know who, who flow in the prophetic. Maybe you know, they're, they work in the office of the prophet, they're called to the office, they move in that area, and they have been harassed by that Jezebel spirit but recently I was listening to a show by a lady named Elizabeth Johnston and she had a guest on there that connected Jezebel with narcissism and also with the wilderness journey and so I got to thinking about that.

You know, in the wilderness is where Jesus was tempted of Satan and he put up with him for about 40 days and finally he rebuked him and got rid of him, okay? Or just rebuked him from harassing Him. You know, he tempted, you know, he, he would tempt Him and try to get Him to question you know, if you're the Son of God, turn these stones into bread, if you're the Son of God, throw yourself down from this temple, mountain, but Jesus would respond with the word of God and this went on for about 40 days. But it was suggested in this particular show that Jezebel is, operates like similar to Satan in our wilderness experience in that sometimes God will use a wilderness experience to strengthen us and to test us. Now, I'm not sure I agree with all that, but I will say this: the Jezebel spirit- well, let me just talk to you about the symptoms of Jezebel. First off, how do you know there's a Jezebel spirit around? Well, the Jezebel spirit operates through people. And I want to make this really careful. We do not battle against flesh and blood. Our battle is not against people, it's against demons, it's against the work of Satan, okay? It's not a flesh and blood battle. We have to know who our enemy is but unfortunately, many times the spirit will operate through people close to us.

Have you ever noticed that Satan will use people that are in your close sphere of influence to hurt you? And the reason is obvious because it's, it's a, it's a more effective scheme. He can hurt us more by using people close to us, so what I want to point out to you is the spirit of Jezebel can work through people unknowingly. In other words, the person who's being influenced by the spirit, I believe most of the time is unaware they're being influenced by this spirit. But this spirit is causing a lot of harm and damage to the prophet.

So what, what is, what is this like? Well, there's a, there's a controlling uh, nature to this. There's a manipulating nature to this, there's an intimidation nature to this and some of the other things that, symptoms of the spirit of Jezebel, it ties into narcissism which is a person who's incredibly self-centered and cannot see another person's value or worth if it doesn't relate to the narcissist; it just doesn't matter at all. And so sometimes it's, it's not unheard of and maybe more common than we realize, that the prophet may be in a relationship with someone with the spirit of Jezebel and narcissism and has a problem with narcissism. This is a common attack against people with the gift of prophecy. 

In spiritual gifts, Paul talked about spiritual gifts in First Corinthians 12. And remember the scripture, you know, First Corinthians, well, I, he talked about it in 12, 13 and 14, but in 14:1, First Corinthians, Paul said pursue love, eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially that you would prophesy. Then verse 39, he actually said covet to prophesy. So Paul knew that the prophetic gift was the most important of all the gifts. It was the one to be desired the most because the prophetic gift is God speaking to us. And so when God chooses vessels, he chooses human vessels full of the Spirit to be His voice. That is where Jezebel comes in; that is the part that Jezebel hates the most. He, Jezebel does not want people with a prophetic call to be effective. I've often said this, you know, Satan doesn't care about you, he could care less about you. What he's concerned about is the call of God on your life and the purposes of God. Satan does not attack God directly, he attacks God indirectly. Satan's not going to attack God directly, I mean, he would lose in, you know, an instant. 

So what he does is he attacks God's plans working through God's people and one of the most powerful things that God has, one of the most powerful tools that God has on this earth is the prophets or those with the prophetic gift and Satan, using the spirit of Jezebel, wants to hinder that gift as much as possible. That's why sometimes, sadly, in a prophet's life or maybe, you know- I want to be careful with the word prophet. There there are, I do believe there are prophets walking around the world today that are real prophets of God in the office of prophet just like there are evangelists, pastors and teachers and apostles. I don't believe that is all passed away, I think that's, that's not what the bible says very clearly, but there are also people who just flow in that gift. Now, they're not a prophet but they do flow in that gift. Regardless, the spirit of Jezebel targets these people. It's like there's a target on their back that says prophet. You know, these red circles and it says I am a prophet and Jezebel attacks and sadly, the way Jezebel attacks is using people close to those with the prophetic anointing. And it's, it's in Corinthians, um, also Paul said, Corinthians chapter 2… uh, or Second Corinthians, Paul said we are not to be ignorant of Satan's schemes. So we need to be aware of this spirit. We need to be aware of what this spirit does. We need to be aware of how the spirit operates, okay?

Now given this, remember this, if, the spirit will operate through people close to you but the person close to you is not your enemy, it is the spirit operating through them that needs to be dealt with, okay? Because so many times, I'm telling you, they're not saying, they don't wake up in the morning hey, I'm going to use the spirit of Jezebel to hurt my spouse, you know? That's, that's not, that's not what happens, okay? So, our war is not against flesh and blood; our enemy is the enemy and we need to be aware of that. A story, this is a true story, and some years ago in my church I had a lady who really obviously did have a spirit of Jezebel and she was controlling, manipulating, and intimidating, and some of my church members approached me and said Dr. Self, are you going to cast her out of the church? Aren't you going to ask her to leave the church? And I said no. They said well, what? I don't understand; I don't understand. I said I'm not gonna ask her to leave - I'll call her name Mary, that's not her name, I'll say her name is Mary - I'm not gonna ask Mary to leave, I'm gonna ask Jezebel to leave. And you know, that's really what we need to think about. What's our war against? Paul was very clear, our war is not against people. it's against demons, it's against the schemes of Satan. 

And you see this all over the world today, especially in America. This spirit of the antichrist that's in our government and in our schools, in the media. We're warring not against flesh and blood. This is a demonic war but we have the Holy Spirit of God. We have the authority of God and we have the power to take a stand and defeat this scheme. But we need to be aware of what the scheme is. So what Jezebel will use, a lot of tools, a lot of weapons. It can be you know, narcissism, completely self-centeredness. Now why is that a weapon? Because if you are in a relationship, a friendship, a marriage, somebody, a mother, a father, or somebody in your family and that person is narcissistic, then you or the message to you is you need to be quiet and unheard and unseen because you do not matter. So narcissism hurts the people around it but also Jezebel will try to manipulate and control to get her way; and I hate to call her her, him, it's a, it's a it as far as I'm concerned. But Jezebel will manipulate, intimidate, and use subtle methods to try to cause harm to the call of God upon your life.

One of the methods may be gaslighting. Gaslighting is where you are, they want you to question your sanity, they want to, you to question your beliefs. You, you say this is how I feel and they say “oh no, you don't feel that way, you shouldn't feel that way, you can't feel that way,” but you do feel that way. Gaslighting is an attempt to get you to question your own reality and not trust your own feelings and not trust your own gut and not trust your own intuition and not trust with you what God is probably telling you by gaslighting. And again, uh, the person with the Jezebel spirit who may be gaslighting you may not realize and probably do not realize that that's what they're doing. That's why I don't want you to come against people around you, “oh that's Jezebel,” remember we're not battling that person, we're battling that spirit. 

So narcissism, gaslighting, and then just flat-out control and manipulation. How do they do that? Well, they want you to, they may use passive-aggressive behavior if you do not comply to their wishes. They're going to not speak to you, withdraw from you, have nothing to do with you for a period of time as your punishment. That's called passive-aggressive behavior or they may openly try to cause you shame or condemnation or guilt like, “how could you do that? You must not love me, you obviously don't care for me. You call yourself a man of God, you call yourself a Christian, how could you possibly think that way? If you are a real Christian, you'll have to do this. If you think you're saved, you've got the Holy Spirit, why aren't you doing this?” 

This is very similar to the same type of method that Satan used against Jesus. You know, “if you be the Son of God.” And so manipulation, condemnation, guilt, gaslighting, narcissism, shame. You know shame is a really, really big one. All this is to get you to comply against your will and the fruit of that is a lot of confusion, a lot of frustration, and so if you're feeling, I know I'm throwing a lot at you with this podcast so just bear with me. This is a heavy, heavy, heavy duty topic. But how do you know? How do you know if Jezebel's attacking you? Well, one of the primary symptoms is mental confusion. You will feel frustration and some mental confusion and you will even sometimes question your own reality. This is what the spirit does to you, but you have to remember, you know, we've been “given power over snakes and scorpions and all the works of the enemy. These signs will follow those that believe in My name; they will cast out demons.” You have authority. It could be, and in this show, from this show Elizabeth Johnston that the guest mentioned that it may be a wilderness experience and God is using Jezebel to test you and strengthen you. But, and again, I'm not 100% sold on that but I do know we learned lessons from Jesus in the wilderness. 

The first thing I learned was he had the affirmation of the Father before he went into the wilderness. The Spirit of the Lord came upon him like a dove and a voice from heaven came and said “This is My Son in whom I'm well pleased.” So he had his Father's affirmation; he knew his identity. Then He went into the desert and Satan began to question Him- get, wanted Him to question His identity. “If you be the Son of God, turn these stones into bread.” “If you be the Son of God,” that's the big word, if, “throw yourself down from this temple mount.” But Jesus didn't fall for it because He knew who He was. So one of the key things that if you're being attacked by this spirit is know who you are, okay? Know who you are. Do not doubt yourself. Have, have confidence in yourself, in the Spirit of God that is within you. Know your identity. You are a child of God, you are a joint heir with Jesus Christ, you are a member of the royal priesthood, you're above and not beneath, you’re the head and not the tail, this is who you are.

So knowing and having absolute confidence in your identity in Christ gives you authority and power to recognize and rebuke the schemes of the enemy, okay? And understanding and using the word of God. So if you're listening to this podcast, you say you know, I really think I have a prophetic anointing, I really think I hear from God; really, well, I know that God wants me to flow in this gift or maybe this is really who you are; that spirit of Jezebel has been harassing you. I haven't met anybody in the prophetic gifting area who hasn't been harassed by this spirit. It could be a wilderness test for you but remember even when Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days, eventually He said enough, I've had enough, and he rebuked Satan and went on about his ministry.

So God will use the, all things work for good for those who love the Lord, according- and called according to His purposes. Jezebel may be harassing you but you have got to take authority over Jezebel. Take authority over Jezebel, rebuke Jezebel, renounce Jezebel, command her activities to stop and if it's coming through a loved one or a friend, set that friend free. Command that spirit of Jezebel to stop operating through that person. You see, the controlling spirit working through a person is actually very addictive to that person. A person with a controlling spirit lives externally and when you live externally, the, there's a huge benefit to that. The benefit to living externally is you do not have, you can avoid the internal. So if, if I, if I am a person with a controlling spirit, my focus is always on other people and how to make them do what I want them to do or what I think is best for them to do; and my focus stays on that and my focus is away from me, it's not dealing with my heart or my issues. Many people who've had traumatic experiences, have been abused, actually become, you know, controllers because the pain inside is just too much to face right now. So they can avoid the pain by trying to control the world, or world around them, or trying to be in complete control of everything they handle or touch.

It's understandable because when you're abused, it's a horrible feeling of being completely out of control, totally out of control, so you sort of make an inner vow that from now on I will be in charge and in control. However, it opens up a door, it opens up a door for the spirit of Jezebel to come in and use you. So I have a lot of compassion for people who have the spirit of Jezebel, even though they're causing harm to others. I know that many people with the spirit of Jezebel have control issues and probably were victims of abuse themselves. They have a lot of internal pain and they are avoiding that pain by keeping their focus on the outside of other people.

Again, that's a lot and I hope this… I guess what I'm trying to say that, just summarize this, Jezebel is very active. I believe in the world today Jezebel will use people close to you. Jezebel's weapons can be narcissism, it can be gaslighting, shame, condemnation, control, manipulation, those are Jezebel's weapons. Jezebel's purpose is to hurt your call, to hurt your identity, to destroy your self-worth, to get you to even question your own feelings and value and ideas, get you to question your own sanity even. And that is the scheme of the enemy. We're not to be ignorant of the schemes so knowing all this, number one, have compassion. Have compassion on those with the spirit of Jezebel. They don't know, they don't know they're being used by Jezebel. Pray for them, have compassion, pray for them and rebuke that spirit and the effect of the spirit out of your life and pray for God to deliver that person from the spirit of Jezebel and Jezebel's influence upon them, okay? The spirit of Jezebel, renounce it, you have authority, God has given us power. We have the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God which is, is a million times stronger than the spirit of Jezebel, but Jezebel doesn't want you to know your power. Jezebel doesn't want you to know your strength, Jezebel doesn't want you to know who you are. And I hope this has ministered to you and again, it's a heavy heavy topic but let's pray. Let's end with a really good prayer.

Heavenly Father, I thank you for each person listening to this podcast. And Father, we know that there's spirits, evil spirits operating in this world today. Uh Father, I know the spirit of Jezebel is attacking the prophets still today, it’s attacking people with the gift of prophecy people or prophetic ministers, people in the office of prophet. Jezebel is attacking, Father. And Father, we renounce and rebuke the spirit of Jezebel. We renounce and rebuke the spirit of Jezebel and we command Jezebel to stop and to go. And Father, anyone listening to me, if Jezebel is attacking their family, we rebuke it, we renounce it, we tell Jezebel to stop her assignment by the blood and the power and the authority of Jesus Christ, we renounce, we rebuke, and we command Jezebel to stop. Be bound and go and to get out. Thank you, Father, for this vehicle called a podcast to use me and just, I just pray, Father, that this will be a blessing and people will get free who hear this, Father, and know that Jezebel is working sometimes through people close to us; but we can rebuke Jezebel, we can recognize her and we can stop her activities not only in our lives but set even our loved ones free because You've given us authority to do that. So Father, I thank you and I praise you in Jesus’ name. Amen.

So I do want to thank you for listening to the show. It's an honor and a privilege, um… you know, check out my links. I've got a couple of great books on amazon.com. If you'd like to donate, what I do with donations is I give away free education, I help, I have a lot of pastors all across America who enroll in ICM and it's- so many ministers and pastors want a seminary education and cannot afford it, nobody is refused an education with International College of Ministry. If they don't have enough money, we have what's called a hardship scholarship fund and so what I do with donations, to the best of my ability, is we use this to fund and help us to give away scholarships to pastors and ministers and evangelists and also to our campus in India, in Peru, and Liberia so if you could help us with our scholarships, that would really be a blessing to us. It's icmcollege.org forward slash donate. There's a link in the notes or the description, icmcollege.org forward slash donate. Thank you for listening, I'm Dr. Ray Self and God bless you.

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