Bill Johnson - Inheriting Breakthrough
Grab your Bibles, if you would, and open to Psalms 16, the 16th Psalm. And I’m gonna do something a little bit different today in that I wanna take a Psalm and actually read through verse by verse and talk. I do have a specific theme that we’ll anchor into. There’s a couple verses that really highlight a theme that’s on my heart. Here’s what’s on my heart: we were praying earlier today in our staff gathering at seven this morning, praying for we recognize, acknowledge that the Lord declared over this year to be a year of breakthrough. And we’ve seen so many wonderful things happen. But the conviction that we’ve had is that in the last four weeks of the year, the last month, that we would see more breakthroughs in the last month than we’ve seen in the previous 11. We’ve have that sense of accumulation that the Lord would just multiply the effect of that spirit of breakthrough, in these last four weeks.
So, that’s kind of what we’ve been praying into and sometimes, we miss our chance to see breakthrough because we don’t pray with a prophecy, we don’t pray with a promise. Sometime, we make the mistake of thinking that everything is supposed to happen while we stand in silence. And it’s the great conflict, not conflict, it’s the great paradox of the Christian life is that we have some moments where the Lord says: stand still. See the salvation of the Lord, which I will accomplish for you, today. Your role is to do nothing but observe. And when he does that, he’s simply revealing our place in him. He’s revealing our identity as sons and as daughters of God. These are moments of unveiled inheritance. But, there are other moments where he declares a matter, but it won’t happen, unless there’s cooperation, unless there’s partnership, unless there’s prayer, unless there’s radical obedience.
Something is genuinely required to see a breakthrough happen. Larry Randolph made a statement years ago that helped me out a lot. He said: while God will always fulfill all of his promises, he’s not obligated to fulfill your potential. And, sometimes, the Lord gives us a word that is actually connected to who he’s making us to be. And, here’s the implication: is that he will not release over me any promise that is premature. Because the weight of the blessing would work the opposite work that he intended. We see it all the time in the natural. We see people who win the lottery, perhaps somebody who got this ginormous contract for their athletic skills, and they get an enormous amount of money. And, how many times we see these people actually end up in poverty, after they’ve had everything the world could ever want? It’s because they weren’t as big in here as they were out here. Their internal world, their prosperity of soul did not keep up with their external blessing.
So, what the Lord does so well as a father is he’s constantly measuring us to see what we can carry, what we can handle responsibly. He wants to put the weight of blessing on an established life. Because, then, it strengthens the established life. But the fractured life, it actually increases the fracture, if you can get that metaphor. The weightiness of blessing actually increases the size of brokenness in a broken life. And so, the Lord measures us. And he measures us, um, sometimes by the way we pray. Probably everybody in the room has prayed out of fear, out of anxiety, out of stress. You know what? He’s such a wonderful father, he just receives us any way we come. If you’re in a mess, come in a mess. Just don’t leave in a mess.
You know, when you get into the presence, you know, there’s no sense driving through a car wash and not have your car washed. You know, don’t leave the way you drove it in, you know. Leave better off than the way you got in there. And so, if you come with fear and anxiety, all that junk, you know, I get it, I have done that so many times, it’s not a problem. But prayers out of anxiety are not prayers of authority. They are prayers of a servant, not a son… Prayers of a servant, not a daughter. Prayers of a daughter and a son are prayers out of identity. They’re confident in who they are, but even more confident in who he is. Anxiety will sometimes drive us to the Lord. But, for me, I have found the absolute key for my life is when I come in out of fear, anxiety, stress, all this stuff. I get into that time of talking with the Lord, praying about things.
There’s a lot of things that are worth doing: the worship, the thankfulness, the reading prophecy, scripture, all of that. But let’s just take the prayer time. I come into the presence of the Lord. I don’t wanna leave the same way I came in. If I did, then I wasn’t praying. I was complaining. If you leave in the same condition you went in, then you didn’t go in to have an impact: you went in to release, to vent your frustrations. When we come before the Lord, it’s supposed to be, the moments of encounter are to bring personal transformation. That’s where we are changed. My favorite illustration of this, he says: «Come to me, all you who are weary, heavy-laden, and I will give you rest».
What is the deal? It’s the deal of exchange. Come to me, you who are carrying junk and I will give you rest. In other words: you give me your junk: I’ll give you my rest. Let’s make an exchange. All prayer is supposed to be an exchange. How do you know when you’ve prayed, you started in fear. You started in worry, anxiety. Maybe you started in complacency. You’re only praying because you know you’re supposed to. How do you know when you’ve come into a place of faith? You know because thankfulness for the answer is effortless. There’s already, the thankfulness, I can see the answer, I can tell the answer has been released. I don’t see it yet, I don’t have the check in my hand, I don’t have the, you know, the healing of the relationship, I don’t have anything external. Nothing’s changed. But what I’ve seen is in my heart of hearts. I feel such a confidence in the presence that I know I can just thank him right now for the answer, even before it’s come.
So, you always wanna pray in the places of faith. Because, then, what happens is that, in that place of faith, decrees are made, requests are made, decisions are made that are made out of authority, not out of pity, trying to get attention. Here’s what I wanna do a little different. We’re gonna talk this Psalm, and I wanna just talk to you, out of this Psalm. And we’re gonna go verse by verse. We’ll stop most every verse and I’ll talk to you. So, make sure you’ve got a Bible or you’re sitting next to someone with a Bible, and let’s begin with verse 1. The Psalm is entitled: the hope of the faithful and the Messiah’s victory.
Verse 1: «Preserve me, o God, for in you I put my trust. O my soul, you have said to the Lord, 'you are my Lord, my goodness is nothing apart from you…'», look at that phrase, again, «You are my Lord». This is what we say to God: «You are my Lord. My goodness is nothing apart from you». I don’t think we can overemphasize the need to recognize everything good that happens in us is by his grace. I’m not sure you can overemphasize that thought. Everything good happens by his grace. «Yeah, but, Bill, you radically obeyed». I did, but even the act of obedience was by grace.
«Yeah, but your faith was so strong». Yeah, but even that faith see, everything always goes back to a father that enabled or empowered us to do what was humanly impossible, what we’ve never been able to accomplish on our own. Keeping that in mind I think is one of the most crucial things for a victorious Christian life. As I’ve said before, you can’t discover your significance until you’ve come face to face with your insignificance. First is the discovery: my righteousness is as filthy rags: there is nothing I can do to help me in my situation. And then, the redeemer comes and says: I paid it for you. In that moment is the exchange where the grace takes place. So, he’s saying in this verse, he’s saying: my goodness is nothing apart from you. In other words, goodness that flows through me is only because of the goodness I received from you.
Verse 3: «As for the saints who are on the earth, 'they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight'». I love this verse. I have underlined «Excellent ones» in my Bible. «As for the saints», believers, «They are the excellent ones in whom is all my delight». It wouldn’t be hard to spend the morning just on this one theme, on this one thought. It takes eyes of faith and a discerning of the spiritual to recognize the excellence that is in the individuals around you. Paul talks about us knowing one another after the spirit, not just in the natural, not just 5'8», 160 pounds, went to university, has this job. Not just that, it’s recognizing there is something of the brilliance and the beauty of God himself that radiates from that life.
And, what is so significant for us is we actually have the privilege of calling that out, the prophetic culture that Kris has been so strongly championing for these 20 years has been to call and all that is is recognizing the excellence that God has already written into the spiritual DNA of that individual. It’s reading the poetry, the work of art, the masterpiece that God is writing over that person’s life. And here’s the phrase, he says: «The saints, the excellent ones in whom is all my delight». That would be a forbidden thing to write if it were not in the Bible. Because all of our delight is supposed to be in God, not in people. When you love people, let me put it this way: you can love people and not love God, but you can’t love God and not love people.
1 John says if you say you love God, but you hate your brother, you’re a liar. You can’t claim an unseen spiritual reality that cannot be measured in the natural. If I say I love God with all of my heart, then you have to be able to see my love for people. It’s measurable. My claimed, unseen reality, I love God with all of my heart, has to be measured by how I treat people. But this is not just treating people in the sense of serving, which I believe in. We are servants of the Lord. We serve and we love people. This one is a different perspective. It’s a person recognizing the brilliance, the beauty, the excellence, the divine design in the people around you. That’s really what the prophetic is. It’s to call to the surface the divine design.
Some people, in fact, many people would never become what God intended if somebody close to them didn’t believe in them and speak to what they saw. This is a lifestyle confession. This is a lifestyle prayer. The saints are the excellent ones in whom is all my delight. I actually express joy over those that God has connected me to. Next verse. Verse 4: «Their sorrows shall be multiplied who hasten after another God: their drink offerings of blood I will not offer, nor take up their names on my lips». I have that last phrase underlined in my Bible. «Nor take up their names on my lips». This one, also, is worthy of much longer discussion. Paul warns about having conversation about the sins and the misdeeds of other people, of including that in our conversation.
Here, and elsewhere, is the statement to not even take up the names of false Gods and put 'em on your lips. That’s interesting. Certain things are beneath you to talk about. To talk about those inferior things, you have to actually lower who you are to dabble in that conversation, which is a huge challenge, right now. Because we are inundated with information through media. It is possible to have zeal and conviction about any given subject. And you can be a hundred percent right, but completely separate from truth. The Lord has us designed to be people of truth. Life and death is in the power of the tongue. To be contributors to what God is doing in the earth and not just be accusers against what he’s not doing in the earth. Some things are beneath the dignity of the believer to put in conversation. More than once, I’ve just walked out of a conversation, not because it was dirty, not because it was evil. It just wasn’t worthy of my involvement.
And, sometimes, you just make those decisions. Verse 5. You guys still alive? All right. Now, we’re gonna get into the inheritance. So, this is where you get stuff, all right? So, get happy. I’m teasing. Verse 5: «O Lord, you are the portion of my inheritance and my cup: you maintain my lot. The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places: yes, I have a good inheritance». I love this theme so much. I don’t think there’s a better illustration of the Christian life, growing in the Christian life, life in the Kingdom of God. I don’t think there’s a better illustration in all of the Bible than there is of Israel entering the Promised Land. To me, it is the most graphic thing you could, I feel like you could probably put it up on a chart and you could watch your Christian life develop and evolve through that chart of watching Israel enter the Promised Land.
If you could picture this, they leave Egypt. We know it was symbolic of sin. The blood was shed, put on the door post. When the blood is shed over our life, we leave sin, we come into a time where the dealings of God get us ready to inherit promises. The Promised Land is just that. It’s land of fulfillment. And that’s on the other side of every conflict. On the other side of every problem is Promised Land. That’s why you have the reasonable ability to rejoice before you get the answer. Because when you’re in the middle of a conflict, by design, the Promised Land’s on the other side. And so, the Lord promises this great Promised Land to Israel. What you hear is language used for inheriting the Promised Land. He says this: my lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. My lines. What is that? It’s land, it’s boundaries for land. They would go into the Promised Land and Joshua had the responsibility of dividing all the land into sections for each tribe.
Reuben would inherit one part, Ephraim and Manasseh, they’d all have different parts of inheritance. And, he would draw out the lines and say, «All right, you know, you get from this side of the river to the peak of that mountain. You get from this mountain to the other side of the valley», and it got these territories and they’re written out as you would property lines. And, here, he says, «My lines», talking about inheritance, «My lines have fallen to me in pleasant places». In other words: God, you gave me beachfront property. I got a lake, I got a river. I got a mountain. I got the whole deal. I got the best land on the face of the planet. You gave it to me! And that’s what he’s saying. But what’s his inheritance? He said, «You’re my inheritance».
Look at the first verse, again. Verse 5. He says, «O Lord, you are the portion of my inheritance and my cup». This is bizarre, because this, again, is referring to the Old Testament reality. There’s 12 tribes, 11 tribes and then 2 «Half-tribes». All right? One was the tribe of Levi. Levi had a different inheritance than everyone else. Everyone else got these big pieces of land to grow crops for animals, raising animals. And it was to be involved in commerce. It was to be involved in commerce. It was to be involved in business. It was so that they would have something to trade, not only with other tribes but with other nations. As the Lord prospered them, they would be a resource for multiple nations. All right?
But Levi, the Lord gave them only enough land to keep them fed. Not for produce, not involved in the world’s economy. Enough for themselves. And then, he said: priests, you inherit me. He says: I’m your inheritance. So, when he identifies this concept here, he’s identifying the fact that, as we put this in New Testament context, every New Testament believer is a priest unto the Lord, and the Lord is saying: your inheritance is me. You get me. There is no greater inheritance. And that’s why he can say: God, use my inheritance. My lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. I got the most significant inheritance in all of human history, because I inherited God. When you were born again, the Holy Spirit, you put faith in Christ. By the grace of God, the Holy Spirit came and took up residence inside of you. Your physical body is a body, is a temple of the Holy Spirit.
Paul says that when the Holy Spirit came to you and was given to you, he came as a down payment. The Holy Spirit is a down payment. Now, if I go down by car for $10,000 and I take $3,000 cash and I get a loan for the seven, what I’m saying is: here’s $3,000. I still owe you seven. I’m going to be giving you more of the same, until you’ve received the whole thing. When you were born again, God said, «Here is the Holy Spirit». Now, keep making payments until you have the whole thing. He’s already declared that we are heirs of God. I don’t think there is a concept in scripture that is more mind-boggling than God giving himself to you and to me as an inheritance. There’s nothing that stretches what really becomes strange is in Ephesians 1:17, he says: «I pray that God would give you a spirit of wisdom and Revelation in the knowledge of God». And then, he says: «That you may know what are the riches of the glory».
Listen to this phrase: «Of his inheritance in the saints». So, here’s this foundational Revelation that, it’s like Paul is saying: you know, what do you give to the church who has everything? The church at Ephesus was, like, the best. The book of Ephesians is the only epistle without a word of correction. What do you give to the people… You know, Christmas is coming up. My family says I’m hard to buy for just go shopping with me. I’m the easiest person to buy for. Trust me, I am the easiest one. What do you buy for the person who has everything? This is what Paul prays. He prays God give him a spirit and wisdom in the knowledge of God, and, in that context, he says: «That you would know the riches of the glory of his inheritance in you». So, here’s this bizarre picture. God inherits you. And you inherit God. Don’t ask me to explain it. It hurts my head to think about it, but it is true.