Bill Johnson - Hope, Joy, and the Supernatural
Thank you, beautiful; nice to see you. Oops, Benny. Um, I have a new book. I’m so happy it happened; it’s called «The Way of Life.» Good cover too! You don’t need to read the book, just touch the cover; it’ll bless you. «The Way of Life» sounds like an interesting experience. Several years ago, I had a friend—a good friend I used to travel with in ministry—and he came to visit. We were just making small talk, hanging out in my office, and he spoke up. He said, «Billy, you don’t know how different it is here. You need to write about it! You need to study it and write about it,» just about the culture. I thanked him, and we went on with our conversation. However, I didn’t want to add another book to my list because I already had eight on my list that I wanted to write at the time. I didn’t want to make it number nine because it’s not encouraging to go backward; it’s only encouraging to go forward. So I thanked him, as it was a compliment—an honor. Then, I couldn’t shake it. It was like I was being haunted by, in a good way—a good hunt; I was being chased down by those words. Over the next couple of weeks, I called him back. I said, «Hey, Dale, tell me again what you said. I was in my office, and I felt kind of dumb; I didn’t take you seriously the last time, but I’m ready to right now.» Anyway, I ended up writing this as a result.
Does anybody have a birthday today? Bro, take note of today. Birthdays? Come here, come here! How many? How many birthdays? Man, we got tons of birthdays. All right, we got more. How many more? Yes, Merry Christmas! Yes, happy birthday! Yes! How many more do we have? Another one? How many? Is there another birthday? Go ahead! You have a birthday too? Okay, another birthday, another one. I need help! Would you go and just tell Michael we’ve had— they’re producing like rabbits right here—the ones that were born on September 2nd? All right? So help me out! Those of you that have birthdays, go with Chris, who’s running to the back door. Just, yeah, just get up and go. Arise, pick up your bed, walk! It’s your birthday! Go back there and just look pitiful at the book table and say, «It’s my birthday,» and it will help you!
All right, this is actually a sign in front of a church. It said: «Deacon Joe Battle’s funeral is canceled; he is alive after all!» I don’t even understand how you can schedule a funeral if the person’s not dead. Oh well! I don’t need a Valentine; I need eight million dollars and a fast metabolism! My favorite exercise is a cross between a lunge and a crunch; it’s called lunch! Being cremated is my last hope for a smoking hot body! That’s just gross! Teach your kids about taxes: eat 30 percent of their ice cream! This older couple is looking at each other. The wife says, «You told me you’d spend your whole life trying to make me happy!» He responded, «I didn’t expect to live this long.»
There’s a sign in a restaurant where the restrooms are: «Men to the left because women are always right!» This picture is in a restaurant with a bowl of eggs, and a sign on the bowl says, «Boneless chicken!» Two more signs: one on the front of a store says, «Push. If that doesn’t work, pull. If that doesn’t work, we must be closed!» The last one is one I read every once in a while—it was a Mother’s Day card written by my grandson, Cruz, who I believe was five at the time, to his mother. It read: «My mom is as pretty as a dancing princess! She is as sweet as a horse! She is as smart as God.» We’re working on his theology! But most of all, she is special like a dragon that is nice and can shoot water out of its mouth. No woman has ever received as great a Mother’s Day card as that!
Grab your Bibles and open to the book of Isaiah, chapter 35, if you would. We’re going to look at it. There are certain chapters I like to read. I like to go through the Bible book by book, section by section, like the gospels, maybe the epistles, the books of law, whatever. I like to go through the scriptures this way, but I also have portions that I just turn to randomly that I call recreational reading, and Isaiah 35 is one of my recreational chapters. It’s been very meaningful to me for quite a few years. Goodness, going way back to the Weaverville days! We’ve been here 22 years; it was probably 35 years ago at least that I first stumbled on this chapter. For what it’s worth, something I saw clearer this morning than I’ve seen ever before was the relationship of hope to joy. I didn’t realize— I don’t know why it didn’t cross my mind— but I didn’t realize that joy is actually connected to hope. Where you find hopelessness, you find no joy, and where you find great hope, you find great joy.
I think it may be possible—I need to think through this—but I think it may be possible in some ways to measure a person’s hope by measuring their joy. When you understand what the word hope means, it helps for that to make sense in present culture. Hope for us is like a wish. «I hope that happens!» It’s a kind of shot in the dark. But biblical hope is completely different than that! It couldn’t be more different than you can imagine. The word hope in the Bible is the joyful anticipation of good—the joyful anticipation of good. That’s actually what the word means! So it’s joy before you get what you were praying for. It’s like the anticipation of good that is equal in the measure of joy to how you feel after you get the breakthrough.
In another month or so, we’ll have the World Series. I love baseball; baseball has always been our family sport. There will be a winner of the World Series, and there will be people in the locker room testifying that they are thankful to God for giving them their gift, their opportunity. I love seeing that because, you know, if you can’t give God thanks in the good times, you’re a mess; you need help, maybe deliverance. I don’t know. I’m always thankful to see those reports. But that kind of joy is not that hard to stir up because it’s in response to something wonderful happening to you! Maybe something you worked for; maybe it’s just a blessing out of nothing. I remember years ago my wife’s parents went into a particular grocery store locally, and I think they were the hundred thousandth customer, and as they walked through the doors, the bells rang, and they were given a brand-new Toyota Camry! So it’s not hard to rejoice when you’ve just won a brand-new car! You know, you didn’t do anything; you just happened to go shopping, and you won the car! You rejoice, of course! But the biblical word of hope is measured in a joy that is expressed before there’s anything to rejoice for, and it’s not wishful thinking. It’s not based on nothing; it’s based on the actual nature and character of God. It’s based on His prevailing word over your life, over my life. It’s that we live conscious of the heart of God, the mind of God, the nature of God, and His devotion or commitment to us.
Because of that, I may not know what’s always happening, but I can always live with hope because I know that nothing I’m facing caught Him off guard. There are a lot of things I’m facing right now that caught me off guard; they caught me by surprise. But there’s nothing I’m facing that caught Him by surprise. So, I can always return to that place of confidence knowing that even though I didn’t know to expect this, my relationship with Him has kept me positioned to be a person of hope. I can actually celebrate the answer before I know what the answer is going to look like, before it ever even comes! That really is the life of a believer.
Our responsibility in life is to live with hope that is actually contagious! It is infectious! There’s a kind of phony faith that just denies reality, and I don’t like that. Because real faith doesn’t deny the existence of a problem. Real faith denies the problem a place of influence. So I don’t ignore the fact that I’ve got a doctor’s report or I’ve got this bill that is due or this relational conflict or whatever—I may not have answers for these things that I’m facing—but I know that my Father does. I know that when Jesus died, He took into full consideration everything I would ever face in life. He died in my place for my sin; He went to the absolute outer reaches of what love looked like. The implication of scripture is if He would do that, certainly everything that is less than that is covered.
Does that make sense? I just put a great verse into my own words; it didn’t work as well, but it’s because I couldn’t remember how to quote the other verse. Here’s my pretend copy of the verse: if He went that far, certainly everything this side of that extreme act of love is covered by that same act of love: «How will He not also freely give us all things?»
So we have in Isaiah 35 the first couple of verses that start with these verses of hope. Let me give you kind of prophetic language here. I did a study a long time ago, again from the Weaverville days, and what I did is I looked for every place I could find water in the Old Testament. There would be mention of rivers, streams, springs, rain—any kind of manifestation of water. What I did was I looked at all these prophecies these prophets would say, «He will bring streams in the desert,» or «rivers on the mountains.» There are all these terms that were unusual. While I believe there’s application of these kinds of promises for nature itself, ultimately what God is looking at is the barrenness of a human heart. He’s looking at the barrenness of the human condition, and He’s giving a promise of a solution.
So, anyway, what I did was I lined up every verse I could find, and what I found was that no matter what Israel was facing—sometimes they were facing military threat, nations set against them—sometimes they were tasting their own sin, tasting the fruit of their own choices for generations—and so they were facing that dilemma: maybe disease or whatever it might be. Anyway, it seemed that no matter what the problem was, when God brought a promise, it was always in the form of water. He would say they’re surrounded by enemy nations and I’m going to bring streams in the desert. «Rivers won’t help us, God! We actually need to defeat our enemies!» But His terminology is what you and I need to line up with because if you do, you’ll understand the language of the prophets in scripture.
Whenever—and I don’t want to say it’s 100% of the time, but it’s pretty close—whenever water was mentioned in scripture, it represented the Holy Spirit. So no matter the problem, God’s answer was: «I’m just going to release the Holy Spirit to you. I’m going to send you the outpouring of the Holy Spirit— the early and latter rain! I’m going to give you streams in the desert!» We see this terminology all through the Old Testament, and it’s basically a prophecy of God releasing His presence and power as the one cure-all. There are responsibilities we have in life, but this increase of presence is really the big cry of the human heart.
All right, Isaiah 35. You ready? Yes, Bill, we’re ready! Amen! Verse 1: «The wilderness and the wasteland shall be glad for them. The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly.» I just love the word abundance! «Blossom abundantly» and rejoice. Flowers are rejoicing even with joy and singing. «The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the excellence of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the excellency of our God.» What is this? This is a barren area that is visited by God until the blooms are blossoming with abundance! The ultimate is they finally see the glory of God, which is in this passage defined as the excellency of God.
So are you tracking with me? They’re in this place, and in hope, all of a sudden they’ve got this wellspring of joy rising up in them because they have so connected with God’s promise and purpose over their life that there is abundance! They are flourishing; there is life where there has always been death! And now this joy is just stirring up, and they’re seeing Him. The ultimate is to see the glory of God, which is the excellency of God Himself. So we’ve got this as the backdrop for the rest of the chapter.
Now verse 3: «Strengthen the weak hands; make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are fearful-hearted, 'Be strong; do not fear! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with a recompense of God. He will come and save you.'» Look at those two verses again! «Strengthen the weak hands; make firm the feeble knees.» Now here’s verse 3 and 4—the two verses in the chapter where you and I are commissioned to do something. All right? We’ve got the backdrop of God changing circumstances—the backdrop where He just shows up in an extraordinary way—and then He says, «Here’s your job: strengthen the weak hands; make firm the feeble knees.» Say to those who are fearful-hearted, «Be strong; do not fear! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.»
This is interesting. Because of a life immersed in hope, we are able to step up to the person who is not in hope—the person who is faltering, the person who is at the place of personal weakness. All of us have been in the place of weakness. We’ve all been in the place of strength. This right now is giving us the backdrop: listen, you are being immersed in the purposes of God! You have a reason to live with hope every day of your life, and in fact, to the measure you are without hope, to that measure you are under the influence of a lie. No one who truly believes what God has said is without hope! There is nothing you and I will ever face that caught Him by surprise, nor was it not already included in His solution.
One of the strangest things in scripture to me is where it talks about Jesus being crucified from before the foundations of the earth. So picture this: before the world was made, God the Father and the Son already made a decision. «We’re going to create a world; we’re going to create people in our image; they will sin!» So there’s already the commitment in the heart of Jesus: «I will die in their place.» What does that mean? Before there was a problem, there was a solution! That’s amazing! So when you and I hit something that’s brand new to us, it’s not new to Him! Before there was a problem, there was already a solution!
So here He gives us the commission. He says, «All right, find those who are in a place of weakness! Strengthen their hands; they’re not able to work as they’re supposed to! Strengthen their knees!» What does that look like? I don’t know, but I remember years ago a friend of mine that was fresh out of the military talked about how they would have to run these great distances, and sometimes one of their troops would just lose all strength and collapse. So they would run over to him. They’d take the backpack, put it on top of their own backpack, and two other soldiers would take the soldier by the arms, and they would actually carry him the rest of the race! He didn’t have the strength to finish the race on his own, so two others that had strength would carry him the rest of the race until they finished. Maybe that’s what it is! Maybe it’s the fact that we stand with one another, and we hold each other up, and we tell our knees our strength until we’re at a place where we can carry out the very thing that God called us!
But it didn’t stop there with just physical service. A touch; an embrace; holding somebody up—it moves into a prophetic realm that I don’t think was… I don’t see this passage as somebody waiting to get a word from God so they can prophesy to the friend. Instead, I think this is an automatic decree that we owe to one another because we know the nature of God and the overriding promise of God for any situation in our life. So what is it? Say to the one who is fearful, «Don’t be afraid! God is going to vindicate you! With full recompense, everything that’s been lost—He will restore to you!»
Why is that important? It’s not just empty encouragement. How many know what I mean when I say empty encouragement? Someone trying hard, but it doesn’t hit the mark and doesn’t fix anything? This is actually the release of the grace of God into an individual’s life that helps to bring them into the very answer that they ache for. So look at it again: «I’m strengthening hands, strengthening knees. Now, don’t be afraid; don’t be afraid! God’s gonna vindicate you! There’s nothing that we are facing that He hasn’t already provided a solution for!» They may not have the ability to face that thing on their own, but it’s art because we’ve got their arms, and we’re standing there bringing that kind of encouragement!
Why is this vital to me? In fact, in my Bible, I wrote Ephesians 4:29 down next to this passage because for me it perfectly illustrates a truth that I saw in Ephesians 4:29. Here’s the verse: «Let no unwholesome word proceed out of your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment that it might give grace to those who hear.» All right? No negative words; encouraging words only—edifying words according to the need of the moment! It has specific application that it might give grace to those who hear.
That’s the fascinating part to me. I could come to you and give you an encouraging word and somehow that would bring grace! Where does grace come from? It comes from God! Grace is what? It’s God’s favor. Okay, work with me here! It’s God’s favor! I take this individual, I come to them with an encouraging word, and I say, «Don’t be afraid; don’t be afraid! God’s going to vindicate you! He’ll fully supply whatever was stolen from you!» I will stand with you; we’re going to see this through! God will fully vindicate every loss you’ve ever suffered. We make this decree!
But here’s what scripture says: When we bring that word of edification according to the need of the moment, it gives grace! Where does grace come from? God! So let me put it in my language: He sees me choosing an individual to encourage, and He says, «All right, that is where I will add grace! I will now release divine favor where my son has shown favor.» We don’t manipulate or control God, but He’s given us permission! Every person in this room has been given the ministry of reconciliation! It’s in 1 Corinthians! Every person—every one of us has certain overlapping responsibilities! In this case, it’s the responsibility to stand as one who believes in the vindicator!
I can’t vindicate you; I can’t fully provide for you what was lost. But I can stand with you out of my confidence because I have hope—out of my confidence in who God is and His promise that prevails over my life, over your life—and I can say, «He will fully vindicate you!» God sees me bringing the edification according to the need of the moment, and He says, «I will now add my power called grace into the equation, which will help to bring about the vindication!»
Will it happen if you don’t say it? See, the Lord doesn’t give us commissions that He’ll carry out if we don’t. He doesn’t give us some assignment: «Go into all the world; preach the Gospel!» But if you guys just get too tired or whatever, it’s all right, I’ll just do it Myself! Or if you don’t go, I’ll send angels! My goodness, I’d rather have angels sent anywhere than some 20-foot angel standing on a street corner! They’d probably have a bigger response than any of us! Or Jesus will just show up in the flesh, and man, if that’s the option, let’s just have Him do it!
When He gives us a commission, it’s because He has imparted to us a divine enablement—grace—and a responsibility to carry out the assignment. So my question is: I’ve got the weak, faltering person next to me that needs someone to strengthen, someone to grab an arm, stand with them, bring encouraging words to them! But then prophesy: «God will vindicate you!»
Is it possible that some of the things we’ve waited for Him to do have been delayed because He’s been waiting for us to do the thing He signed us to do? We’ve seen it before! I’ve seen a number of times in my life where I’ve waited and waited and waited, and I found out after a while that He was waiting for me! He’s waiting for me to act, waiting for me to obey—take a risk, whatever it might be! All that time, I blamed the absence of something on the sovereignty of God when in fact it was just the lack of risk and obedience on the part of Bill.
So here we have the verse: «Strengthen the weak hands, make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are fearful-hearted: 'Be strong; do not fear! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God! He will come and save you! '»
Look at verse 5: «Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened. Then get next to the hurting person, prophesy over them that God will fully vindicate! Then the eyes of the blind are opened; the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. The lame shall leap like a deer; the tongue of the dumb shall sing. For waters shall burst forth into wilderness, rivers in the desert.» Do you see this? Then the eyes will be opened, the ears will be opened, the lame—the tongue—everything healed, everything restored! What did it follow? It followed the decree made by the hope-filled believer! Notice the language—the prophetic language used in this passage to illustrate a supernatural invasion into a person’s life.
«Then the eyes of the blind will be opened. The ears of the deaf will be unstopped. The lame will leap like a deer. The tongue of the dumb will speak… for I will have poured out rivers! Waters shall burst forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert!» There’s that prophetic language! He says, «This healing takes place; why? Because streams, waters—I release My presence!» Who comes to you like rain?
I remember standing right here in the School of Ministry, second-year class—actually, I think it was first year, several years ago—and someone asked me a question about worship, and it started raining right here inside the building. It just started raining! I thought the rain was always spiritual; sometimes it just rains where it shouldn’t, like indoors! You must have a leak up there. Yeah, it got repaired right after it stopped raining. The angel who broke it repaired it, apparently. I don’t understand any of that, but I like anything that makes me wonder! I was in Las Vegas years ago with Randy Clark, doing an event there, and it started raining indoors! This time, it rained for like three hours! Brian Gen leading worship— they led with the song «Rain Down» by Delirious, and it did! It rained down for like three hours! So the pastor sent teams up to the roof to find where the leak was; there was nothing up there! It wasn’t raining! There was no leak; it’s just raining!
Sometimes the Lord does things to offend our brain, to soften our heart because He wants to do something out of the ordinary, break into the unusual! He wants to bring rivers into dry places, and sometimes that means eyes are opened, sometimes it means deaf ears are healed, sometimes it means the lame walk, sometimes it means it just rains! There are people all around the city that ache in their heart as they go to sleep at night and it’s all because they don’t know anyone with hope! If they just knew one person that had the rock-solid hope of confidence in God, they would approach life differently!
Let’s look at the rest of the chapter, and then we’ll wrap this up. Verse 8: «The highway shall be there, a road; it shall be called a highway of holiness!» A highway of holiness! In Psalm—no, Isaiah 62, there’s a highway that’s talked about. A highway is built. If you can picture this, worshipers are like spiritual bulldozers that remove rubble and stones, and as they prepare to build this highway—this is an unusual picture; it’s in Isaiah 62:10. So here’s this highway being built in this chapter; it’s called this road, «The highway of holiness.»
Now I love this because I think one of the most misunderstood things about God Himself is the holiness of God! When we see Him and stand before Him, none of us will stand and say, «Love, love,» even though He is love! None of us will stand and say, «Good, good,» or «Great, great!» Everyone who sees Him says, «Holy, holy, holy!» See, holiness is the actual beauty of God; it’s called the beauty of holiness. Holiness is one of the things the enemy fears the most in His people because holiness is the actual representation of the nature and presence of God into culture and society!
The enemy has worked hard to reduce holiness to a list of rules—things you can do, things you can’t do—it’s not that! It’s a person; it’s the essence of a person! His own beauty, His own wonder! This particular passage describes this backdrop of hope—the people of God getting in there, bringing encouragement and prophetic decrees, the invasion of the supernatural into those people’s lives! Out of that comes this highway of holiness! It’s amazing what people are willing to pay a price for when they discover it’s authentic and it’s real! It’s amazing what people will lay down to pick up something else when they find out this is the pearl of great price! Everything else I own is nothing compared to this!
The holiness of God actually reveals the very nature of God imparted to the people of God! His purpose is all wrapped up in this thing called holiness! And here, a highway of holiness is built! «The unclean shall not pass over it; it shall be for others.» Now my translation (New King James) is a little different than I think both New American Standard and New International, but I want you to hear it out of this one: «Whoever walks on the road, although a fool, shall not go astray!» I love that! I love that this road is so wide that you could have somebody on their worst day, and they’re still not going to fall off the road! That encourages me!
It may not encourage you, but I like that verse! A highway of holiness has been made so broad and so profound that the weak, instead of faltering, somehow become a success when in a previous season they never would have made it! Verse 9: «No lion will be there. I’m glad for that! Nor any ravenous beast shall go upon it, shall not be found there. The redeemed shall walk there.» Here’s our last verse: «The ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy on their heads! They shall obtain joy and gladness!»
All right, listen to what it said: «They will come with joy and obtain joy and gladness!» Anyone in the market for an upgrade in joy? It will embarrass you! Anyone in the market for an upgrade in joy? You saw it when Joyce—It’s amazing how many people want joy until they see it! «They will come with joy and obtain joy and gladness! Sorrow and sighing shall flee away!»
Here’s my prayer—in fact, I’ll just pray: my cry is that an upgrade of hope would be released into this church family! How many of you are tired of being impacted by the size of a problem and you want to impact the problem with the size of your hope? Amen! What we do is we just pray that! We pray that you would so impact every one of us that we would never again be impressed with the size of a problem or a dilemma or a challenge, but instead, we’d be so infected and driven by the size of great hope that we would be instruments of solution, of resolution—an instrument of the release of grace, of miracles into the most broken environment!
How many of you want the upgrade in joy? We pray for the Lord! I pray right now that You would release to us a hope that is actually measurable in joy—that never again would we falter under the influence of the size of a problem, but instead, our own joy would be that life-giving spring within us that not only impacts us and our families but impacts everybody around us! We pray this in Jesus' mighty name!
Yeah, I just pray that would just increase! In fact, I pray that some of you would wake yourselves up laughing to where you’re embarrassed! The cool thing is you can be so intoxicated by joy that you’re no longer embarrassed! So I pray for that level to be released over every single person! Every person tonight’s going to be one of those nights!
I know anytime we have this many people in a room, there’s always a good chance that we have people here who don’t have an actual personal relationship with Jesus! The Bible throws out this cry: «Whoever will may come!» In other words, the invitation is open to every single person to know what the forgiveness of God is like—to know what it’s like to be adopted and brought into His family as His son or daughter! This, that the Bible calls salvation, or being born again, is actually available for every single person in the room!
I’m going to ask everyone to please just hold your places because this moment is the most important moment of the day. If there’s anyone here who would just say, «Bill, I don’t want to leave the building till I know I’ve been forgiven, that I’m at peace with God—that He welcomes me into His family!» If there’s anyone in that position today, I want you just to put a hand up. By doing so, you’re saying those words: «Bill, I don’t want to leave the building till I know I’m at peace with God; I’ve been forgiven of all sin; I’ve been adopted and brought into His family!»
I’ll wait just a moment; it’s worth waiting for! But I want to make sure that everyone—anyone who’s here and who was not born again has the opportunity to meet Jesus! All right, I’m going to assume you’re all in. Let’s go ahead and stand together, please. Continue to hold your places. I want to have the ministry team come on down to the front real quickly if you would. I want to have our teams of people down here ready to help, to serve, to pray.
Anyone who needs a miracle in your body—maybe in your finances; it could be in any area. We’ve got people here who just believe God for a miracle for you! We’ve had great reports this morning in our early prayer meeting! One of our former janitors, who is now a missionary—which is a logical leap—led someone to the Lord in the country that they are in. This couple’s home has literally become a healing center where people have lined up! They fill the home! They’ve only been saved a year, but they lay hands on the sick! There are people getting healed like crazy!
It’s just what happens when you say yes to Jesus! And us, we want to encourage you to come down. Why don’t you come and wrap it up and tell people what to do?