Bill Johnson - A Baptism of Courage
Thank you, thanks, thanks, nice to see you. That camera bar back there—I thought it was a tennis net! I thought, man, we’ve got tennis in here. That’s awesome; that would make some people very happy. All right, nice to see you! I get here right now in this season about every other week, so I’m sure you weren’t here last week, but it’s nice you showed up when I was here. So it’s good to have you, and bless our online community. We’re so thrilled to have friends and family around the world, so we honor and bless you as well. Well, well, well, I do have some funny things to read, and that seems to be in the first service today. I just kind of wanted to do that the entire time for about 30 minutes, and sometimes it’s just that kind of a day. I’m not guaranteeing anything today; I just want you to know, and they’re all old, so just pretend they’re new!
Actually, I have one new one: A man and his wife’s mother-in-law went on a vacation to the Holy Land. While they were there, the mother-in-law passed away. The undertaker told him, «You can have her shipped home for five thousand dollars, or you can bury her here in the Holy Land for a hundred and fifty dollars.» The man thought about it and told him he’d just as soon have her shipped home. The undertaker asked, «Why would you spend five thousand dollars to ship your mother-in-law home when it would be wonderful to have her buried here and spend only one hundred and fifty dollars?» The man replied, «A man died here two thousand years ago. He was buried here, and three days later, he rose from the dead. I just can’t take that chance!»
I’ll give you another chance: A Baptist minister went to see a member of the community and invited him to come to church on Sunday morning. The man was a producer of fine peach brandy and told the preacher he’d love to attend his church if the pastor would drink some of his brandy and admit it in front of the congregation. In kindness, the preacher agreed and had a small glass. Sunday morning came, and the man came to church. The preacher recognized him from the pulpit and said, «I see Mr. Jones is here with us this morning. I want to thank him publicly for his hospitality this week, and especially for the peaches he gave me and the spirit in which they were given.»
All right, three friends from the local congregation were asked, «When you’re in your casket and your friends and congregation members are mourning over you, what would you like for them to say?» Daniel said, «I would like them to say I was a wonderful husband, a fine spiritual leader, and a great family man.» Roger commented, «I’d like them to say I was a wonderful teacher and a servant of God who made a huge difference in people’s lives.» Frank said, «I’d like for them to say, 'Look, he’s moving! '»
No, I’m going to do one more; I’ve never done this one before. This is—yeah, yes, and this—yeah. Socialism: You have two cows; the state takes one and gives it to your neighbor, who doesn’t have a field to put it in. Communism: You have two cows; the state takes both, gives you some milk, then the cows die due to neglect. Fascism: You have two cows; the state takes both, sells you some milk, and the cows die in the war. Nazism: You have two cows; the state takes both and shoots you. This one is to offend everybody within reach. Then the cows are killed in the war. Traditional capitalism: You have two cows; you sell one, buy a bull, the herd multiplies, the economy grows, you sell them, and retire on the income.
I have the whole front row interceding for me right in the Nuremberg trials. One of the men on trial was asked the question: «How did you get the people of Germany to buy into your deal?» I’m paraphrasing. They said, «It was easy. It has nothing to do with Nazism; it has to do with fear. Fear can control people. If you can get them to be afraid…» The tool that the enemy has been using ever since—I mean, way back to the garden; it goes back far—there’s been an intensity level that has increased dramatically in the last 18 months. The effort to control the values, thoughts, and conduct of people through fear is extraordinary.
I’m not a fan of socialism; I have friends who are, but I’m not one of them. Socialism is communism in diapers; it wins. I’m not looking for any applause or support; I just want to make some statements knowing that it’ll sit well with some and not so well with others. But at least we can maybe think: socialism has an overemphasis on government at the expense of human responsibility. Humanism is the religion of socialism. Socialism worships at the shrine of human rights over human responsibility. Human responsibility and human rights are valuable, but they can never exceed human responsibility, or you end up in moral decline. It’s vital that you and I understand what’s at hand. We battle not against flesh and blood. The goal is not to incite some sort of activist movement where we launch verbal abuses towards people who disagree. That’s nonsense because that’s playing on the devil’s field. When you play on the devil’s field, you can’t win. We can only win on his field, and it’s the beauty, the wonder of the gospel. The gospel has answers and solutions for every single human dilemma.
There are people in their heart of hearts who want to succeed but don’t know how, and so out of fear, they buy into a system that promises them bread tomorrow. Here’s the thing—I’m going to talk just a few minutes on this, and then we’ll actually open the Bible and talk about something else, so I’ll give you a chance to get cleansed by the word. All of you that are hurt by my words will recover, I promise. If somebody’s in need over here, if I take your car and give it to someone who doesn’t have a car, me as government calls that compassion, but it’s not compassion until I give my car. Many things slide under the illusion of compassion and justice, and they’re actually the opposite. My burden for this hour and day is that as a people, we could be discerning and understanding what’s actually happening.
If you take the last forty years and look at history in the United States and the nations around the world, you’ll see a slow, steady march toward a one-world government. I’m not saying we’re close to it; I’m just saying we’re closer than we’ve ever been. Here, let me just—if I haven’t offended everyone yet, give me a moment. I’m trying.
With the mark of the beast, you can’t buy or sell or do business. Without a vaccine, they want you to not be able to buy, sell, or do business. Now, I’m not opposing vaccines; I’m just saying this is an interesting dress rehearsal for a bigger issue in the future, and we’ve just got to be careful what we buy into. Not everything you buy into today will bless you.
Let me rephrase that: Some of the things you buy into today will cost you tomorrow. Wisdom—the Lord said—it’s written in the Bible: «The Lord prospers His servant; He adds no sorrow to it.» When the Lord does it, there’s no balloon payment. Does that make sense? There’s no, «Oh no, when is something bad going to happen?» He doesn’t work that way when He imparts the blessing to somebody; it comes with sustainability in its systems. Socialism is funded by entitlement, and many of us in this room would be 100% opposed to socialism but have married the spirit of entitlement. What you have going on on the inside actually creates the room for socialism on the outside, and it’s walking with that kind of wisdom and the resolve to honor the Lord with everything you are and everything you have in a responsible way.
The Lord is so interested in increase that when the guy with the talent—remember in Scripture? The one who had the five talents and two? He says, «You could have at least put it in a bank and gained interest.» Everything was about increase. It’s not about what you were given; it’s about what you produce. I realize that can be taken to an extreme where we create a works-oriented environment. I’m not interested in that, but it’s still true that God rewards according to productivity.
As we’ve stated a number of times, I know I’ve heard Chris do it; I’ve done it a few times as well. The promised land is an interesting place because it wasn’t where they went and sat on a beach, sipped iced tea, and waited for Jesus to return. They actually had to go in. In the wilderness, they picked up the manna off the ground; they followed a cloud—not much else to do. In the promised land, they had to plant crops, harvest, work with herds; they had to do all that stuff. The point is, we are never more fully alive than when we are walking in our divine assignment, producing things for His glory. That is what we are wired for.
Now, it’s the privilege of a culture to care for those who are disabled—especially war veterans who cannot hold down a normal job anymore. It is our responsibility to care for them, those who are mentally disabled and cannot function. I’m not poo-pooing all government stuff, but I’m just saying socialism is like fire. I think I already said it; it’s like the fire of Proverbs; it never says enough. It never says enough! There is no end to its increase of power. This is where, as a people, first of all, we pray. Secondly, I’ve heard Christians say—forgive me, because this is probably something most all of us have said—but I’ve heard people say, «Well, no political leader is my savior.» Well, I don’t know one Christian who ever thought of any political leader as being able to save them. But unfortunately, that statement—usually, not always—is made by someone who doesn’t want to vote or doesn’t want to take godly counsel on how they vote.
All right, I need a drink before I finish this. So we have a responsibility to understand, articulate, and now, listen carefully: righteously resist, learn how to intercede and pray to understand what the challenges are, and make sure it’s fixed in here first.
I have the highest status you can get with the airline I fly with. They don’t even tell you how you can get it. There are statuses that you get by accumulating many miles, but there’s one status they don’t even tell you about; you have to be invited. I’ve been invited. I’ve been there for years. I’m thankful, and sometimes what happens is I land late somewhere, and there’s a short time between where I landed and where I’ve got to get. They will meet me right off the plane with a sign, and they say, «You’re Mr. Johnson, yes? Come with me.» They’ll take me down onto the tarmac, put me in a Mercedes, and drive me to the next gate. It’s wonderful until I’m really late on a flight.
Is anybody catching the picture here? All of a sudden, a gift they gave me is one that I expect. I’ve been treated rudely on a plane once, and I thought, «I just need to pull out my status card to show them.» I talked to one guy—oh goodness, I won’t tell you what happened. He was just extremely rude and said, «You’re no different than any other pastor.» I said, «We’ll see.» Then I think he looked on his chart to see who I was and my status, and that guy could not do enough for me the rest of the flight to take care of me.
You get into these places of favor and blessing and increase, and it creates an appetite that, if you’re not careful, you can actually think you earned it. Now I could say, «I have that status because we spent this amount of dollars,» and that’s how the airline takes care of those who spend that much money because of all the flying that I do. There are a lot of arguments you can make in your head for why you deserve something, and it’s that entitlement that has actually created the spirit of socialism in the land. If we can deal with it here, we’ll be positioned correctly to deal with it out there—does that make any sense?
All right, that’s all I’m doing. I love my Bible, yes, I do! Our friends love their socialist government as long as they’re being blessed, but as soon as they say, «You can’t leave your house for two weeks,» it’s not as fun. There’s something about control that we’ve got to be careful we don’t succumb to, and I’m deeply concerned. It’s what I talk to the Lord about, it’s what I pray about, and I pray that… I did an interview on a TV program here a week or so ago, and the guy that was doing the interview said, «If you could speak to the leaders of our nation,» and it was a different country, «if you could speak to the leaders of our nation, what would you say to them?» I said, «Get a backbone! Get them back home!»
I’m not looking for applause of any kind, I’m looking for thinking and responsibility. Amen. It’s important that we know how to recognize the root of something that’s in the political system without picking up a political spirit. As soon as you do that, you will get labeled—you’ll be called all kinds of names. But people give labels so they can disqualify your voice, and it’s just going to take courage. I feel like what the Lord wants from us in this season is a baptism of courage to really pray in a new season. So why don’t you stand? We’re going to pray on that.
I let you get all cleansed and cleaned up from what I just said, and then we’ll get into the word and see what happens here. All right, so Lord, I do pray for a true baptism of courage that You’d help us to live with wisdom and understanding to know the times and seasons that we are in and what Your response is to a given problem—not just what we arrive at emotionally through our own frustration, but true kingdom response so that we can be builders and not just destroyers; that we can be restorers and not just confronters. I pray for this in Jesus' name. Amen!
All right, go ahead and turn to somebody and tell them, «You really needed that!» All right, open your Bibles if you would to 1 Samuel chapter 1, 1 Samuel 1. Now, there are many who would say that Jesus didn’t train His disciples in these kinds of things. Instead, He taught them how to survive in existing governmental settings, and that is absolutely true. He taught how the employees should respond and how the soldiers should respond and how the slaves should respond and all that. He taught them how to do kingdom in the environment they’re in.
But I also remind you that He told them, «The kingdom of heaven is like leaven.» It is not leaven as a philosophy; it is leaven as that which helps to redefine the environment you’re in. He also said that we are light and that we are salt, and all three of these elements affect their surroundings. What the Lord wants for us is to not raise up a political movement, but instead to raise up a servant-hearted movement where we get into the systems, love people well, and allow the kingdom to truly bring about change.
I’m just trying to identify some of the things that I feel like the enemy has. He uses justice and compassion as false fronts for the real Trojan horse that brings in this onslaught of demonic chaos and loss. I said I was done; apparently I wasn’t. Now I am! All right, I may talk about this again. I won’t announce it ahead of time because I want to make sure you show up, so it’ll just be a surprise.
I do believe that the Lord is giving us the opportunity, the invitation, if you will, to give birth to a new season. I believe it’s of the Lord, but I do believe it’ll take courage in prayer. Now we’ve talked about prayer more in the last year than probably in any five years that I’ve been here. I know that I’ve done it over and over again. Many of the team’s Sunday night meetings have been focused on prayer, and it’s not an accident. It’s tragic in some ways; I wish I could erase everything everybody knew about prayer and start over. We’ve got it so confined to our religious activity that we’ve lost the fact that it’s actually like breath. It’s breathing.
When He said pray without ceasing, He’s basically saying it’s the same as breathing: just do it all the time! Just make it the normal expression of who you are, wherever you are in life. All moments are good moments to pray, and it’s not special words. It’s not that sort of thing; it’s not this professional-sounding petition. It is a communion with God that sometimes has words. But I believe that the Lord… I feel like we’re on the edge of it. We keep standing over these edges; I have intercessors praying for me just because I stand over the edge. Yes, we’re on the edge of a significant breakthrough in culture—in the manifestations of revival—in a way we’ve never seen before.
I feel like we’re on the edge—not quite in the place of transition where you push, but close to that point where we’re about to get delivery to something we’ve not yet seen before. And it will require a courageous kind of praying that, for many, is going to be foreign to you. So that’s what I want to talk about—not in any kind of a «you lack» sort of way, just an invitation.
There’s a story with Hannah. Hannah is this woman who’s married, who has no children, and she wants children really badly. So let’s just pick up the story in chapter one. I’m going to read quite a few verses, so just follow along, if you would, please.
And he had two wives; the name of one was Hannah, and the name of the other was Penina. Penina had children, but Hannah had no children. Verse five: But to Hannah, he would give a double portion, for he loved Hannah, although the Lord had closed her womb. Her rival also provoked her severely to make her miserable, because the Lord had closed her womb. So it was, year by year, when she went up to the house of the Lord, her rival provoked her; therefore, she wept and did not eat.
Verse eight: Then Elkanah, her husband, said to her, «Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? Why is your heart grieved? Am I not better to you than ten sons?» A question she never answered. Smart woman right there.
And Hannah arose after they had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh. Eli, the priest, was sitting on the seat by the doorpost of the tabernacle of the Lord. She, being Hannah, was in bitterness of soul and prayed to the Lord and wept in anguish. Then she made a vow and said, «O Lord of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me and not forget Your maidservant, but will give Your maidservant a male child, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall come upon his head.» That’s a Nazarite vow.
And it happened, as she continued praying before the Lord, that Eli watched her mouth. Now Hannah spoke in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard. Therefore, Eli thought she was drunk. Eli said to her, «How long will you be drunk? Put your wine away from you.»
Hannah answered and said, «No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor intoxicating drink, but have poured out my soul before the Lord. Do not consider your maidservant a wicked woman, for out of the abundance of my complaint and grief I have spoken until now.» Last verse: Then Eli answered and said, «Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition which you have asked of Him.»
This is an extraordinary story, and it underlines and emphasizes to me the purpose behind persistent prayer. Because we have, biblically, mandates to pray once and don’t ask again, and we have mandates to pray and continue asking, and both actually—one chapter apart—Jesus taught them both. There’s a purpose for each. What I don’t want to get into are the differences; I do want to highlight this one here.
The purpose for persistent prayer, in my thinking, is one of two things. There are demonic powers involved, and that persistence helps to break that down. The second is that I need to be changed into the person that can handle and steward the answer well. A lot of the things that we pray for, if they were given to us immediately, we would not manage them well—at all! Much of what we taste of the will of God in our life, much of what we inherit or taste or actually experience, is determined by what we’ve become.
Much of what we experience in our walk with the Lord—the breakthroughs, the answers to prayer, the extraordinary events that take place in our lives—much of what we experience is determined by what we’ve become. And that becoming takes place often in that kind of praying. It’s the kind of praying that you’re embarrassed about, but you just don’t care enough anymore. Normally, you’d be embarrassed. It’s the kind of anguish of soul that no longer matters how you appear to somebody else. It’s not making a scene to get attention; it’s not that at all.
It’s that I am so absorbed in that which God has put in my heart—I’ve got to have breakthrough, or I think I’ll die. You see that kind of praying throughout history. If you’ve done any reading on some of the great revivals in history, oftentimes people would come to that kind of moment in prayer; they no longer cared about anything at all. They didn’t care if they ever ate again; they didn’t care. They just didn’t care about all these things that two days ago maybe really consumed their attention, but at that moment in time, the only thing that matters is that thing for which God has laid hold of my life, and I will not settle for anything else.
We have that kind of moment here: Hannah doesn’t know when her breakthrough will come. We know that it’s been years. I would assume, because of the way she’s responding here, that she has prayed the prayer to have children for many, many years. We know her competitor, the other wife, has had many, so we know it’s years of barrenness. I don’t know how long—I don’t know what kind of prayer she prayed—but it would stand to reason that she’s prayed this prayer before. But something happened in this praying—it was the old-timers who would talk about this kind of prayer that I was on the stretch; the picture is I was all laid out, reaching for that which God has promised.
There are many people—their mentors who know better than you would tell you, «You don’t need to do that.» Because it’s already all yours—and it’s true! I have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ; it is all mine. It is absolutely true, Ephesians 1 declares it; John 16 declares it—it is all mine. The problem is, it’s in my account and not my possession. Oftentimes what is withdrawn from my account that He has laid aside for me is not released to me until I actually become what is necessary for me to become to not blow it with that blessing that God has given me.
We’ve seen it throughout history. Look at the kings in Scripture. How many times did we see a king inherit the throne and then drive it into the ground within a few years of his reign? What happened? He wasn’t equal in character to the weightiness of his assignment, and it is sure destruction when that takes place. All of us have things in our heart that we’ve ached for. I doubt there’s a person in the room who has not prayed a big prayer, a great thing that would happen in your lifetime, that you would see in your lifetime, that we would experience together. And those are God-born prayers. But great things don’t generally come out of prayers of convenience.
There’s something about costly praying. I don’t mean drawing attention; I don’t mean, «I’m on my next day of fasting, and I know I’m going to get…"—I don’t mean that. I mean the kind where it’s you and the Lord. There’s something about difficulty that helps you come face to face with the reality that I really am in this to know Him. I’m not just in this to be a blessed person. And difficulty separates those two groups of people. Some, they’re gone as soon as the blessings stop. The glitter stops falling from the ceiling, the whatever it is—the next thing they’re looking for to happen—they’re on their way to find another blessing. But those who follow Jesus, when difficulty comes, it’s the time that we intensify the cry: «God, You said, You said!»
And here she is, praying things she can’t even utter. There were no words; she was just in anguish. Her lips are moving, but her heart is in deep, deep anguish. She is laid out. Athletes will say, «I left it all on the field,» which means I gave 110%—there’s nothing else I could have done to help us win that game. It’s all out on the field, and it’s that kind of praying.
We don’t know if there was a crowd there; we don’t know if Eli was even there the whole time. He may have walked in after she was there for a while. We don’t know. All we know is she put her all on the line, and it was that kind of praying that positioned her for His kind of solution.
Because here’s the deal, as Mario Murillo told us years ago: She wanted a son; God wanted a prophet. And when she was willing to align with God’s heart, she got the breakthrough. And that’s what the anguish of soul does; it puts you in a position like Hannah. Hannah is now going to give back to God the very thing He gave to her. At the age of five, she takes Samuel, the son who came from this, to the temple to be the prophet of the Lord for Israel. Extraordinary story!
Yeah, that’s what Abraham did. He had to put Isaac on the altar. Sometimes you have to take the very thing you ache for and realize, «I just want to be a part of what You’re doing; if I have to give it back, I’ll give it back. I just want to be in the center of the work of God on the planet, and I will put back into Your hands the very thing You give to me.»
It’s the process of living abandoned to Him; it’s the process of living on the stretch—again in that place where sometimes it’s not even words. Sometimes it’s just the anguish, the pain of the heart. It doesn’t mean we live in that place of continued discouragement or whatever; I’m not inviting people that—I’m just saying pick your moments. And when God has put that thing in your heart, get before Him and pour it all out on the field. Let it all be out there and lay hold of that which God has promised. Every one of us needs those kinds of moments.
I don’t think that’s an everyday kind of praying. I wouldn’t put that on you, but I would say everybody needs that season in their life sometimes where nothing else will do. Nothing—nothing will satisfy; nothing else will do. Oh, my cry for you and for me is for a baptism in courage! It’s that backbone; it’s that backbone to stand when others don’t stand. It’s the backbone that just says, «You know what? I don’t look like much of a winner right now, but I’ve come too far to quit. I must hold to what God has said, and if I come to the end of my life and my cry was unfulfilled, then I pray my children will pick it up and see it to fulfillment.»
We all have a purpose for breakthrough on the earth. The Lord described us as salt and light, and the kingdom is leaven—to have impact and effect on surroundings. It’s not through political anger and that stuff; it’s by loving people well, but moving intelligently and intentionally to bring about change. All right, that’s probably enough. You survived. Congratulations! You all get an ice cream cone at the door. Chris will provide it for you!
All right, let’s stand together; we’re gonna pray. What’s that? Giving your orders? What kind of ice cream do you want? Yeah, sorry, Chris—sorry! Oh Lord, let’s pray together for just a moment. Lift your voices. Yes, Lord! Great courage, great baptism in courage, God! Great baptism in courage, God! Great baptism in courage! Father, I pray that You’d give us a fresh outpouring in the area of courage, that as a people, we could stand with a backbone that’s not obnoxious but firm in the kingdom principles You’ve revealed to us. I pray that they would be contagious and that You’d give us understanding to articulate well. Give us that Issachar anointing—sons of Israel—that understand the day and the seasons that we live in. And I do pray that there would be in the prayer life of this church truly the birthing of a new season, the turning of a page, the turning of a page, the turning of a page—a new season begins!
I pray this for the honor of the name Jesus. I want to ask one question before we transition: Is there anyone here who has never made a personal commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ? It’s what the Bible calls to be born again; it actually means to become a disciple. It’s to turn away from the way you’ve done life to the way He would have you do life, it’s to follow Him, to come to know Him, to love Him. There’s a lot of movement; I’d really appreciate it if, during these moments, you would not move around because I don’t want anyone who would respond to this to be distracted by your movement.
It’s the most important moment of this day—this one right here. I want to ask the question: Is there anyone here who would say, «Bill, I don’t want to leave the building until I know that I have found peace with God, that I truly have become a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.» If that’s you, just put a hand up real quickly where you are because we’re just going to take a moment to pray. I don’t want to miss you; I see someone way in the back—thank you, wonderful! Wonderful!
Anybody else? Anybody else? Real quick—I know we have some online. We’ve had so many people come to Christ online; it’s been one of the most amazing things. Sometimes when we were forced not to be together, I would sit here and watch—if Chris was preaching, for example, I’d be on the YouTube channel or Bethel TV and watch the people that would come to Christ—extraordinary! And we know that’s true. Is there another one here? Back over here—there’s another one, wonderful! Yes, there’s another one over here. Thank you, wonderful! Beautiful!
The last one was blessing somebody, so I just took the high five. He’s getting saved too! All right, that’s fine; that’s good. This is wonderful! I bless all of you. I’m going to ask those—there’s at least three, if not four—that put your hand up that I saw. I’m going to ask you to come up to the front right over here to my left. There are people that we know and trust that I just want to bless you; that’s all I want them to do. If you brought this person who put their hand up, you can walk with them down here. Church, why don’t you bless them as they come? Come right over here.