Bill Johnson - War-Like Prayers
Thank you, nice to see you, man. Somebody was long-winded over at Twin View; I don’t know who it was, but uh, anyway, man, I got here just in time. I don’t know what happened; if you’re late, I guess you guys just have to fake it. Chris gets up and he’ll do yodeling; he has a yodeling album he’s going to do, so he keeps threatening. Oh, it’s so good and wonderful to be together! I’m so thankful that we’re in the midst of breakthroughs and many, many blessings to our online family and community as well. I’m so thankful for you guys! I get to meet so many when I travel. I just got back from Florida this week, late Friday night. The cool thing is we saw a lot of people healed of the effects of COVID—people who had lost their smell or taste. The Bible says all foods are to be enjoyed; that’s the Bible! I didn’t make that up; that’s not like my thoughts; that’s the will of God. All foods are to be enjoyed. If you can’t taste it, they’re not enjoyed. I’m giving you slow pitches here; this is a chance for you to really say amen! So anyway, we had a bunch of those; we actually had several hundred people healed this week—very, very fun!
But I just have a couple of signs and newspaper headlines that I thought would be fun to read. Here’s a sign: «Toilet out of order; please use floor below.» Automatic washing machines: «Please remove all your clothes when the light goes out.» In a department store in London, it says, «Bargain basement upstairs.» Outside of a secondhand shop, it says, «We exchange anything, bicycles, washing machines, etc. Why not bring your wife along and get a wonderful bargain?» That’s wrong, that’s wrong; I rebuke that! Notice at a health food shop window: «Closed due to illness.» I love this one: Notice on a farmer’s field: «The farmer allows people to cross the field for free, but the bull charges!»
Let me see here real quick… Oh man, «Struck by lightning, faces battery charge.» «Astronaut takes blame for gas in spacecraft.» Here’s the last one I’ll read: «Typhoon rips through cemetery, hundreds dead.» Why don’t you open to the book of Acts, chapter one? It’ll take me a while to get there, so show some patience, but turn there and put a piece of paper in place or something.
I spoke to you a couple of weeks ago for those who are either here or online. I spoke about the design of God in our lives, enabling us to hear His voice. We were actually designed by God to hear His voice; even our senses, our physical senses, are designed to perceive God. It’s a Hebrews 5 passage. So I asked the question: how many of you have had a hard time at times—have a hard time hearing the voice of the Lord, but you could sense His peace? So I ask you that now. Yeah, that’s His voice, recognizing that that’s actually the voice of the Lord manifesting differently than we are dialed into or ready for. It’s actually the voice of the Lord because He is the Word.
What happens is the Lord ministers to us most of the time at a level that we do not comprehend, and we tend to judge our ability to hear God’s voice; we measure it by our comprehension. I doubt that we comprehend 10% of what He says, but every time He speaks to us, He puts us on a track where we’re going to get what He just said. But a lot of what He said, the disciples—look through the Gospels—they didn’t understand so many things Jesus said until after He died, and a certain event happened to go, «Oh!» And then they remembered that Jesus said… we’re not any different! That’s why it scares me to have people predict what they think how the end is going to come and how the Lord’s going to return. Nobody before you got it right! Quit trying; just be ready when He goes! Just do what He said to do, keep busy with what He said to do, and get your heart ready to go when He goes. That’s, you know, my very deep end-time theology.
So we’re designed to hear the voice of the Lord, but here’s what happens. Many times, the Lord sees—for example, you say you own a business; you’ve got a very difficult decision to make in four weeks, but you don’t know it. In a worship service here, He’ll deposit the seed of that concept in your heart at that time. And over the next several weeks as we worship, your own times in your devotion, there’s a watering of that seed. And suddenly, you have a decision to make, and you’re ready to make that decision—not because of your brilliance, the willingness to obey, yes; but not because of brilliance. It’s because the Lord set you up.
If we could realize how often He speaks to us when we literally are not conscious that it’s His voice at that moment! I sense His presence; I don’t hear a specific voice, but I’m not supposed to—does that make sense? It’s the kind of awareness of His presence. So that’s where we’re going to hit today. Excuse me, that’s where we’re going to leave today and head into something else. Where we’re headed today is that in the same way I am designed and fashioned to be a living instrument that perceives God, in the same way, I have been designed to influence His heart. I heard somebody say recently, «In the same way, I’m designed to influence His heart.»
There’s something about the commission for prayer; it’s happening right now in the Bethel world and probably happening all over the world. But what I know for sure is what I’ve been seeing stirring here for weeks on end. It actually started over a year ago when Olive died. There was such a mantle for prayer that fell in the house. The pandemic came, and we had to take it to our homes, but now we’re able to meet in this tent out here, and it’s like it picked up where it left off. There’s a passion; it’s not a brilliant strategy. I think He has a strategy; it’s just the willingness to come into worship and to pray.
There’s something so profound happening in that environment that I don’t ever want to forget it. I don’t ever want to lose it—but it’s unto something. The Lord invites us into the inner chambers, if you will, of the King of all kings, of the Lord of all lords, the great I AM, to converse with Him so that out of that conversation, certain events would be changed, certain things would be affected on the earth because of our conversation!
From the beginning, it starts in Genesis chapter one and goes to the end of the book that God’s primary design for us is to be a co-laborer. He didn’t create us as robots and program us to do specific things; we are living entities who, through surrender, yield our will to His purposes. We find that He shapes our heart and our mind, our thinking, until we become recalibrated in what His dream is for the planet. He said to pray for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Can you imagine Him saying, «Now pray this prayer; it’s not going to happen, but it’ll keep you busy. It’ll keep you positive while nothing happens, and that’s my design for you—nothing happens»? It’s silly! We would never give an assignment like that in our own areas of responsibility, and the Lord gave us a specific assignment because of His dream.
Praying His prayer links me to His dream, links me to His process, links me to engage with the One who can actually make these things happen that I cannot possibly make on my own. So we have an assignment to pray, «On earth as it is in heaven.» We have this assignment, through our engagement, our interaction with Him, to actually have Him fulfill the cries, the dreams of our heart. And that’s part of the revelation of Him as a Father: the things that are prayed for actually happen! John 16 has this very important verse: there are four times in three chapters—John 14, 15, and 16—where the Lord says, «Ask for whatever you want, and it’ll be done for you.»
We know that’s not an invitation to become arrogant, independent, and selfish, building your own empire. What it is is an invitation to die until you can represent His heart and see a continuous flow of answers to prayer that keep you filled with joy. God designed us—look at it this way; He designed us with a capacity for overflowing joy. But He said, «The way you enter into the fulfillment of that capacity is through answers to prayer.» So in John 16, it says, «Whatever you ask for will be done for you that your joy may be full.»
Here’s the process: engage with this, pray till something happens, and the result of that is you’re going to have absolute overflowing fullness of joy. It’s the design; you’re designed for joy. You’re designed to pray and make a difference, and those two things working together keep you fulfilled. In Proverbs, it says, «Hope deferred makes the heart sick.» The second part is as important: «Desire realized is a tree of life.» Desire realized is this life-giving fruit—fulfilled desires! How are they fulfilled in the believer’s life? Through prayer. It’s the automatic implication that you engage with God and things happen because you met with Him, and those responses from God—the fulfilled answers and dreams—that is the tree of life for you!
We were designed to live with ongoing answers to prayer, and the problem is if I’m not getting answers to prayer—see, we tend to pray enough to ease our conscience, but not enough to make a difference. We have a lot of relief valves in our lives. When the Lord is moving us to pray for government, we tend to relieve the pressure by criticizing government. It eases the conscience just enough to remove the pressure when actually the pressure was supposed to be a divine invitation to enter into the courts of God and make a difference through prayer. To stand before the Lord and to accuse people is a misuse of my authority, and He’ll defend the person I’m accusing because He will not bless the curses of one of His priests, if you will, because we’re not giving that assignment.
So if I am designed to live with overflowing joy because of answers to prayer and I’m not getting answers to prayer, then I have to get my joy from the discipline of prayer. If I get my joy from the discipline of prayer, then I’m training my heart to celebrate form and not impact. What is religion? Form without power! It’s the beginning of the end when there’re no answers to prayer, and we have to find our joy in the fact we prayed when we’re actually designed by the Lord to see things happen around us. You are here as an ambassador of another world. An ambassador—if you’re an ambassador in the natural from the United States, your income is according to the income of an official in the United States, not the country you go to.
Let’s say you go to an extremely poor country. The food you eat is from your country, not the country that you’re sent to—unless you want to. In other words, everything that you experience as an ambassador in that embassy is actually considered the United States. When you’re on that land, you’re considered in this country. Translate that now to our life as believers: we’re ambassadors of another world, and we are to dedicate our homes, our apartments, our properties to the Lord so that this land actually becomes healed—the land becomes healed. Excuse me… and it becomes—so sorry, my throat is dry—come on, never mind.
The land then becomes the property of the King of kings and the Lord of lords, and He is able to work His purposes and His will into that which I own as a representative of the kingdom of heaven. When we pray, we make decisions that mark people with eternal purpose; this is our responsibility. Now, I want you to go to—are you, you’re already in Acts 1—so just take a look with me at, I think, three verses, maybe. Yeah, I think three. The interesting thing about the book of Acts is that the book of Acts talks about prayer or uses the word prayer or quotes prayers more than any other book in the Bible, with the exception of Psalms, which is a book of prayer.
Now think through this logically with me. The Acts of the Apostles—which could easily also be called the Acts of the Holy Spirit—is linked with the predominant subject of prayer. From the beginning to the end of the book of Acts, you see it in Jesus’s life. I remember a study one day when John—the report that John the Baptist had died. Jesus sought to get alone; the crowds followed Him. He ministered to them; He finally sent them away and went to a mountain to pray. He got alone with the Father. Why? Because somebody just died!
I don’t know; it says that He was tempted in all ways as we are, so I’m assuming He had similar emotions and things going on in His heart that we would have in ours if we found that somebody died because of us. It says He went up to a mountain to pray, and then it says when He came down, everybody He prayed for was healed! Might be a correlation. See, we tend to pray for specific needs; pray and fast. Jesus fasted into a lifestyle.
Acts 1, verse 14 says, «They all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus, with His brothers.» First half of the verse: «They continued with one accord in prayer and supplication.» What’s the point? The great features, the great happenings in the book of Acts are always linked to prayer. We are about to have literally heaven invade earth in the upper room. What preceded it? Ten days of prayer!
I’d like to put it this way: before heaven ever invaded earth, earth invaded heaven. For ten days, there was this apprehending taking hold of what God had promised, which means you’re automatically engaging in mystery because it’s not a slot machine. You put in a dollar, pull the slot, and you get your answer. We’re invited into a relational journey where there’s push and there’s pull, and there’s adjustment and there’s repentance and there’s declaration, there’s confession—there are all these things that we do in the journey because we were born for these answers to prayer. Sometimes we’re in a day-or-two struggle, but we pray for a day and blame the absence of an answer on the sovereignty of God.
Chapter 2 is kind of cool. This is after the outpouring of the Spirit; I think this is somewhere between two and five years after the Day of Pentecost. Verse 42 says, «And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayers.» It’s just pointing out some of the prayer references, but what is good to notice here is that they had found the secret for sustaining a move of God. You know, we read throughout history where a great move of God took place, and it lasted six months; it lasted a year; it lasted five years. But it ended! Why did it end? They found out how to continue.
The New American Standard says, «They continually devoted themselves to the apostles' doctrine, the breaking of bread, fellowship, prayers.» They re-upped their own personal investment in these things. They didn’t complicate it; the apostles' doctrine for me is whatever the word of the Lord is for that particular season. You will find themes throughout all of the body of Christ in every season. There’ll be a similarity; we’ve watched it for years.
It’s not a list of doctrines, or it would have been listed! Amen? Bill, that’s a good point. Breaking of bread, sharing meals together, fellowship, prayers. They continually devoted themselves. Why? It’s how they got where they were! Alright, go to chapter 12. I’m going to read five verses here, beginning with verse 1. Acts chapter 12. It says, «Now about that time, Herod the king stretched out his hand to harass some from the church. Then he killed James, the brother of John, with a sword, and because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to seize Peter also. Now it was during the days of unleavened bread. So, when he had arrested him, he put him in prison and delivered him to four squads of soldiers to keep him, intending to bring him before the people after the Passover. Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church.»
The following verses detail an angel coming and literally guiding him out of prison; he doesn’t even know it’s a real experience! He thinks it’s a vision, and after he gets out of the prison, he realizes, «Oh, this is for real! I’m out of prison!» It’s a tremendous story, but what’s the point? James was martyred; Peter wasn’t. What’s the one distinguishing feature? It was the constant prayers of the church. I hear people teach things like, you know, that martyrdom—like this was the will of God. Well, it is if people aren’t praying—in the absence of prayer, the will of God is shaped and changed. He can use it; He’ll use the martyrdom, and He did.
But it says that with Peter, the church constantly prayed. Why constant? Any time we’ve been summoned into the need for constant prayer, it’s one of two reasons: one is there’s a demonic opposition to the answer in place; number two is because God is trying to shape something in us to be ready to handle the answer when it comes. He molds us; perseverance brings answers to prayer. Enduring faith brings answers with character. He’s trying to create the context for an answer to be stewarded well.
Constant prayer—why? Because we’re dealing with a governmental power that had partnered with the demonic in a level of principality influence over this nation. I don’t live conscious of the devil; I don’t chase him around; I hardly ever talk about him. But I’m going to today. There are individuals that have made covenants, whether they know it or not, with principalities and powers, and through their position of authority, have released darkness over the land. It’s true in our country; it’s true in other nations. They have so deeply entrenched their hearts, their souls to a demonic agenda that they actually personify those principalities' purposes and plans.
They are not the enemy! I cannot relieve my burden that I have in prayer and release it through being critical of that leader or this leader; it doesn’t bring about any change. It’s a misuse of authority, but the enemy has fooled the church to think these issues are political issues and we don’t need to be involved. It’s absolute stupidity! We are moral agents that help to keep clarity—not through control and manipulation, but through literally heaven’s atmosphere of what is right, what is true, what is wrong.
It’s crazy, but in this, our demons are starting to look a lot like people. The yes of certain leaders have so illustrated things that only five years ago would have been considered insanity. You know this; I’m preaching to the choir. But I’m just trying to say, listen, we have a responsibility—it’s a responsibility to engage with God to make a difference. It says the church had constant prayer; it wasn’t a now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep prayer; it wasn’t a prayer before a meal. It was an engaging with God until something changed.
Constant prayer is digging the heels in because something is going on! There has been a partnership made, in this case, Herod, where a spirit has come upon a leader, and he’s governed by—watch this! You’ll see this all through Scripture—where a political leader is governed by the fear of man. He sees it pleases the Jews; so he’ll commit yet another crime to please this particular group—the group that illustrates the spirit of murder! He will adopt the spirit of murder to gain their favor. And that’s how the political system works!
We pray not to throw stones at people in leadership, because we’ve got some wonderful people in leadership, and we have some that are wonderful and just don’t know it—they’re thinking stupid. I’m not going to give names, but the responsibility is still to pray; to sit back and say, «Well, God’s sovereignty, He can turn this abortion thing around anytime He wants!» Oh, don’t be stupid! Maybe 62 million babies is enough! Maybe it’s enough where we actually draw a line and say, «No, no, this is not okay; this is not okay!» Yes, we vote; yes, we do what we’re supposed to do, but don’t fall for that trap that these life-and-death issues for a nation are political issues; they are not!
Constant prayer—why? Because there was an opposition! I love the story about Jesus: the devil met Jesus in the wilderness, tempted him, and tempted him and tempted Him again; and then it says finally the devil left Him. The devil has been severed from his source of strength! You have an eternal source of strength; your yes to God wears him out! Your yes to God can outlast the enemy’s attempts to dissuade you. Constant prayer—agreement in prayer—is profound; it’s not just an intellectual agreement, although I’m not opposed to that.
It’s not just that we agree on an idea. You know, we can say, «Let’s pray together about abortion being, God healing, forgiving our land and healing our nation,» and we would be in agreement together. But it’s more than that! It’s a burning of the soul; it’s the joining of hearts that says, «This is something we must lay hold of!» There’s that unity in prayer; there’s this exponential increase that happens. And the way I like to illustrate is, if I take a fishing line—which it’s only right that fishing is more acceptable than hunting, so I can use fishing line in my illustration today and spare all the non-hunters—not in this room, of course; none here, but maybe out there somewhere in the YouTube world.
If you take a fishing line that breaks with two pounds of weight on the bottom—two pounds of pressure—and you tie a two-pound weight, it breaks. You take two of those and you wrap them together, and you would think it would hold up to four pounds of weight because it’s two plus two, but it multiplies. It has this effect; it’s like six or eight pounds now to break two-pound test lines! You take a third one and wrap it around; you’ve got three rep together. Now you’ve got something like 15-pound test line out of three two-pound—it’s exponential growth! And in the natural, it prophesies to us about the power of agreement in prayer!
I believe in praying on our own! We have 12 acres, and I walk my property; that’s what I like! I walk when I pray. You don’t sleep and pray! Now, every night I try to sleep and pray. I get in bed and I begin to pray until I go to sleep. I like that, but if I sit down and pray, it’ll be nap time soon! I will sleep in the arms of Jesus—He’s never mad—but I would like to pray for something! So, I like to walk! I like to walk and pray and to bring things before the Lord.
That’s generally what I do; I come here early in the morning on Sundays and I just, I walk for an hour! I just walk non-stop for an hour, sometimes an hour and a half—just walking and praying for what’s supposed to happen on that day. The point is that we engage with God to make a difference! We don’t engage with God to check the box and say we finished our assignment! The engagement in prayer is to make a difference, and it’s the only way I can access the reality of joy on a kingdom level that is overflowing because things have happened due to this partnership.
We’ve been called into a co-laboring role, a co-laboring partnership. So here we have constant prayer that was offered up. Now, I want you to go to John chapter 15 and let me talk to you—John 15, verse 1. We’re going to—excuse me—we’re going to read eight verses. Verse 1: «I am the true vine, My Father is the vine dresser.» Jesus is giving a lesson, a metaphor, an illustration of an extremely profound reality.
Let me tell you where we’re headed before we get there so that you’ll be able to picture it as we read it. If you take a vine—a grapevine, a vine that grows grapes—the branch connects to the vine, but the fibers of the branch and the fibers of the vine are so intertwined that you can’t separate them. You can cut the branch off, but there’s an actual growth into itself, and that is the actual picture in Scripture of abiding in Christ: you can’t tell where He ends and where you start. There’s this intertwining of hearts, of minds, of will—there’s this yieldedness to the heart and purposes of God so deeply that I can’t tell where He starts and where I am. That sort of thing—that’s the work that God is doing in us, and that’s the purpose of this illustration.
Verse 2: «Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes that it may bear more fruit.» God rewards all growth with pruning. How many of you want to grow? Yeah! He rewards all growth with pruning! Verse 3: «You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.» The word «clean» there is the same word as the word «prune.» You’re pruned! I pruned you! And then He says, «But you guys are already pruned because of the word I spoke to you.»
What does it tell us? The discipline of God comes from His voice! The circumstances are just to get our attention. Oh, the whale swallowed Jonah, and that was the discipline of the Lord! No! It just got his attention! It just got his attention, so the next time God spoke, he was actually listening! He actually prunes us with His word; it’s called a sword for a reason! That was better than your response, but it’s all right.
Verse 4: «Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in Me!» Boy, isn’t that the truth? There’s nothing of the eternal I can produce through my own efforts, but everything is available if I yield to Him! «I am the vine; you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit. Without Me you can do nothing.»
If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. Verse 7: «If you abide in Me and My words abide in you, you will ask whatever you desire, and it will be done for you.» Please listen carefully to this verse I like to bring up; our team brings it up fairly often. These verses out of John 14, 15, and 16—in three chapters, Jesus repeats one thought four times! Four times in three chapters, and the thought is this: whatever you ask for will be done! Four times He does it! Whatever you ask for will be done!
In this particular verse, He creates the context for the absolute; He creates the definition—or He illustrates how I can live in such a way that I live with the overflowing fullness of God’s joy through answers to prayer. It’s according to verse 7: «Abide in Me; let My words abide in you, and you will ask whatever you desire, and it will be done for you.» I don’t like the teaching that basically says if you pray for what God tells you to pray, He’ll answer your prayer. I know there’s truth there, but God makes Himself vulnerable to the desires of His people! This isn’t licensed to control or manipulate God, but it is an invitation for a relationship where you actually have input in interaction into the outcome of things.
The effort in consistent prayer is not to persuade God; it’s to deal with the powers that are entrenched in the area that we are pushing into. And the process transforms us, so that we become responsible stewards of what we’ve just prayed into! See, Israel, if they would have walked into the promised land in an 11-day journey—it was supposed to take—they would have wandered right out! They didn’t have the parameters for how to do life! They were careless in their worship of the golden calf and all these other stupid things. They wouldn’t have had the maturity to maintain the inheritance!
So the Lord puts us in situations where we push to build a strength so that once the answer is released, we have the maturity to use it for His glory. There’s this overriding theme that if I could communicate one thing today, it would be this: when it becomes my passion for His will to be done on earth and for Him to be glorified as a result—that’s two sides of the same coin. When it becomes my passion to see the will of God done on earth, I don’t mean the parts that benefit me; I’m talking about the absolute demonstration of the Lordship of Jesus when that becomes demonstrated and God is glorified in all the earth!
In the first service today, I read this verse from the Passion Translation; now one of the Psalms says «there’s a day coming when all the kings of the earth are going to give Him thanks because they’ve heard His voice.» All the kings of the earth will give Him thanks because they’ve heard His voice! So God has these lofty plans, these lofty dreams. And I’m not angry about this, but I do get frustrated to hear so many believers say, «Well, that can’t happen until Jesus returns.» That’s only because we have greater faith in the return of Christ than we do in the power of the gospel!
Confidence in the power of the gospel! How does it end? I don’t know how it ends; neither do you! Neither of our opinions are worth much unless we got them from Him! You know? But the point is this: the power of the gospel can change anything! He gave me an assignment not with the intention of ignoring me! He didn’t say, «Seek for Me to be glorified in the earth; it’s not going to happen. I’ll come back someday, and then it will.» Seek for My will to be done on earth as it is in heaven; it’ll just keep you positive in your thinking, and it’ll keep you active until you die!
He gave us an assignment! Why? Because of His personal dream to see something happen on a planet that has been marked by sin! He paid a price for the healing of the land and the healing of the people that live there, and He wants to see that world mirror the reality of the one He’s in complete charge of! So here He says, «If you abide in Me, My words abide in you.»
I’ve had quite a few times in the last couple of months—especially where I’ve been awakened in the night. You know, I don’t know if this happens to you, where you’re just perfectly sound asleep and then all of a sudden your brain is working 100 miles an hour! How did that happen? Out of nowhere! It was a dead start! How did it suddenly wake up? And I’ve got a million things going through my mind, and I’m just wide awake! Physically tired, but wide awake mentally!
What I’ve been doing of late in the past—what I’ve always done—is just anchor my affection in Him. But in recent days I’ve had to bring another tool into this toolkit of mine, and I will lay there, and I won’t do this out loud because I don’t want to wake Benny, but I’ll lay there and I’ll just begin quoting Scripture—Psalms 34: «I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise will continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make its boast in the Lord; the humble will hear it and be glad. Magnify the Lord with me; let us exalt His name together. I sought the Lord, and He heard me; He delivered me from all my fears. Taste and see that the Lord is good.»
And I’ll just lay there and just begin to quote Scripture! What’s happening? The verses may have nothing to do with what’s in my mind; it doesn’t have to! It’s the living voice of God! It’s the living voice of God that brings all the random stuff; it just starts pruning! «This thought isn’t necessary, this one won’t help you, this one’s illegal.» This one starts pruning all these illegitimate thoughts that are competing for my affection, and it restores me to this railroad track that already has a predetermined destination. And it puts me on this thing: «I rejoice in the Lord always; again I say rejoice!»
I had somebody ask me just a few weeks ago: «If you had to live the rest of your life off of one verse, what would it be?» I’ve never been asked this one before. I’ve had a lot of good questions over the years, but this is the first: «If you had to live your life off of one verse, what would it be?» I thought, «That’s easy: John 3:16.» It’s hard to get any higher than that one; that’s the grand finale of all Scripture! «For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish; they’ll have everlasting life!»
That’s not just an evangelism verse; that’s a hearer-Bill-stay-alive verse! Get centered into what I’m saying and doing; become anchored in My presence once again. Here, this will help you fight off every distraction that is simply there to dilute your affections for Christ: «For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him would not perish; he’ll have everlasting life!» Something happens in that midnight hour, 3 a.m. hour where I was so awake; suddenly I’m anchored into the person of peace!
Verse 8 says: «By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so you will be My disciple.» By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit. What is this in that verse? By this! If God’s going to be glorified by it, we probably ought to figure out what it is. By this, my Father is glorified—to bear much fruit! At minimum, it’s His answers to prayer; a fuller definition would be me abiding in Christ until there are answers to prayer. But that’s the «this.»
I want you to picture this: you have a concern for a relative, and it just wakes you up at night, and you pray. The next day you do the same, and you pray for several days, and then all of a sudden you get this phone call that that relative was spared in an accident or they turned their heart to the gospel and received Christ, whatever it might be! You got an answer to prayer! What you don’t see is the angelic realm that witnessed the interaction between a born-again person created in the image of God who yielded themselves to be a worshipper by choice—interacting with the great I AM and making a request that actually shaped the course of history!
The angelic realm celebrates, «Your plan worked! Your plan worked! You created them in Your image, and even when they fell, You restored them, and You brought them into a place of co-laboring! You brought them into a place of partnership with the Almighty God! They pray; You act; things change! Your plan worked!» By this, my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit! By this! This abiding in this felt reality of the Spirit of God!
The greatest reality in my life is the presence of God! To live unaware of it is a waste of time! To live unaware of this most precious gift of all—that the Holy Spirit Himself would dwell in me and rest upon me! To live unconscious of that one thing is to sell myself short of every divine purpose that He has created for me! I owe Him answers to prayer! I owe Him answers! He decided a long time ago to answer; that’s why He gave me promises! He gave me promises to pull me into a place of relationship with Him where together we would affect the course of history! It was already written; my name was already written in the document! This is what my son is created to do!
I can stand away from the river and say, «Well, there’s no current where I’m at,» or I can move to that which has been flowing since the beginning of time! God created us to co-labor with Him to see His purposes in the earth. «Be fruitful, multiply, subdue the earth!» He engages humanity—engages people with divine purpose—because He could do a military invasion, but then it breaks the entire protocol He created!
If I own a house here in Redding, and you’re renting it from me, I can’t go into that home anytime I want, even though I have the master key! I can only go by your invitation! Even though I own the house—and let’s say I own it outright; the bank doesn’t know I’m not making payments! I own it! I like this conversation! This is working well!
I can’t go any time I want. Why? Because you are the legal guardian of that property as long as you’re paying your rent! Right? The Scripture says the heavens were made for God; the earth He made for men. We’re the renters! He comes by invitation! He comes by invitation! Understand, in Mark chapter 9, there’s a powerful story of a dad with a son. He wanted his son free; he was so tormented he brought his son to the disciples. And I remind you, they were the most trained people in healing and deliverance of any group of people to ever live up until that time—with the exception of Jesus Himself!
This was not their first rodeo! The dad brought the kid to the disciples; they prayed the prayer they had done countless times before! They had been sent into cities; they had seen dramatic impact so profound was their impact in the cities that Jesus said, «I saw Satan fall like lightning!» That was the impact! But with this one child, they couldn’t get free!
In church history, we’re at that point where the child didn’t get free! And we generally create theology to explain what just happened! We create theology that says, well, the sovereignty of God; He works in mysterious ways—perhaps His will for him to be delivered is further down the road! But thankfully, the father was not happy with the absence of an answer! And he took his son to Jesus; Jesus set him free! The disciples saw this happen, and they took Jesus aside, and they said, «How come we couldn’t do it?»
Jesus said, «This kind only comes out with prayer and fasting.» Most people leave that story with the key of prayer and fasting for breakthrough, which is wonderful! But the real key to the story is they weren’t happy with the absence of an answer! And they took Jesus aside!
See, you’re not designed for having nothing happen! You’re not designed for that! You’re not wired for that! You’re not wired for nothing happening! The key to that story is taking Jesus aside, finding out why! I’m not wired for this; God, You didn’t teach us how to deal with unanswered prayers because You didn’t have any! Help us; help us to engage the same way You did! Teach me; I give myself!
Here’s this prayer of repentance from dead works—faith towards God. Re-consecrate ourselves! I’m telling you, the prayer of petition becomes powerful when it follows the prayer of consecration. It’s God, I abandoned my own efforts, my own dreams—everything—and I give myself completely to what You’re saying, what You’re doing! All I want is Your heart in this matter! That abandoning of personal agendas and then praying—suddenly we pray with clarity of thought, clarity of heart, clarity of mind in ways we’ve never known before!
Father, I pray for that kind of clarity to rest upon us as a church body as we enter in this next season—this next season of just simple, simple prayer meeting with God and praying to make a difference! I pray for that to happen in this room in Jesus' name! I’ve gone over a couple of minutes. Let me just address our online family as well as anybody in the room. There’s always a chance when as a crowd decides that we’d have people here that don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus.
Jesus is God; He’s not one of many ways! If that were true, then God was so cruel to require Jesus to die when you could have gotten there by singing a song and lighting a candle—it’s not true! Jesus suffered and died in my place so that I could receive the gift of eternal life that is available to every one of you that would just say, «I want to be a disciple of Jesus; I don’t want to follow my own agendas anymore!»
If there’s anybody in the room in that case, I want you just to put a hand up, if you would, right where you are, because we want to make sure to pray for you! Anyone at all? Okay, let me speak to the online family; we have so many people that come to Jesus online—it’s been wonderful! I want to encourage you on Bethel TV, on YouTube—just put in a post that you are surrendering to Jesus, and somebody will come and pray for you. Amen! Sure, it was nice to be in the same room together! I love you; I love you; I love you!