Bill Johnson - The Importance of Obeying God, Regardless of the Outcome
See, it’s easy to obey God when you have an expected, anticipated outcome. The challenge in the lifestyle of obedience is facing things that you can’t control and can’t explain; they don’t happen quite the way you anticipated. So now, good morning, nice to see you. Several years ago, actually in 2012, a prophet friend of mine sent me a note and he said, «An opportunity is going to be coming for you to connect with Kenneth Copeland.» Sure enough, a few years ago, I was able to meet with him in his office, spoke at one of his events, and we have been given the privilege of privileges because tonight Kenneth Copeland is going to be here. They’ve already landed in town and I’m excited for him to come—a real gift. This particular prophetic word also released a promise to us that perhaps we’ll discuss at another time, but a promise of the Lord’s favor and provision released over this house. So I’m so thankful. I’ve enjoyed being with him, developing a friendship, and I’m very, very grateful for this wonderful, wonderful man. Tonight’s going to be a treat—I suggest you get here just a tad earlier. Just a tad!
Laughing at your own mistakes lengthens your life. Laughing at your wife’s mistakes shortens it. «Dad, the spider bit me! Am I going to become Spider-Man?» «No, this is Australia; you’re going to die.» I was lonely until I glued a coffee cup to the top of my car; now, everyone waves at me. Behind every husband who thinks he wears the pants is a wife who told him what pants to wear. This one is just wrong, but I need to read it anyway: I met a woman outside the mall crying; she had lost $200, so I gave her $40 from the $200 I found. When God blesses you, you must bless others. Now that I’ve lived through an actual plague, I totally understand why Italian Renaissance paintings are full of naked fat people lying on couches.
One more, just see if we can bring it up from there—nobody wants to see naked fat people! A pastor is performing a wedding, and at this wedding, he intends to read 1 John 4:18. He mistakenly opens to John 4:8 first. 1 John 4:18 says, «Love never brings fear; fear is always related to punishment. But Love’s perfection drives the fear of punishment far from our hearts. Whoever walks constantly afraid of punishment has not reached Love’s perfection.» That’s 1 John 4:17–18. John 4:18 says, «But I’m not married,» the woman answered. «That’s true,» Jesus said, «for you’ve been married five times, and now you’re living with a man who’s not your husband. You have told the truth.» Not the best mistake in reading scripture, but I’m sure it had a tremendous effect on that audience. Yes, it did!
All right, I’ve been wanting to talk to you out of this chapter in Judges for a long time, and I finally get a chance today. It’s one of the Bible’s weirdest stories. So Judges chapter 20—open there if you would. Judges 20. A lot of the Old Testament stories, a lot of the Bible stories, I want to rent the DVD when I get to heaven because I want to see it. The story I’m about to tell you, I don’t want to see ever, ever, ever. This story is beyond R-rated. I won’t go into too much detail, but let me just say this: a husband and his concubine wife go to Gibeah and they go into a man’s house and stay there. It says the perverted men of that city surrounded the home and demanded that they throw the man out of the house, so they could have their way with him all night. They didn’t. Instead, the concubine was thrown out; she was killed by them having their way with her all night long. The man woke up in the morning, walked out, and his concubine wife is dead. He’s outraged, he cuts her up into 12 pieces, puts a piece on 12 donkeys, and sends them to the nation of Israel so that every tribe could get a piece. Are you grossed out yet? I am, and I’ve told it three times today. It’s a horrible story. The nation of Israel is outraged at who would do such a thing—this is crazy!
So they gather together and they come upon this place and they talk to this man who tells them what happened, that the men of Gibeah ravaged her all night. The leaders of Israel come to this city, they talk to the tribe of Benjamin, and they say, «You guys have to own up to this. You’ve got to repent; this is absolute sin, perversion. It’s got to be done away with.» They refuse to repent; they protect the sinfulness of those men and refuse to repent. So Israel, the 11 tribes, end up going to war with the tribe of Benjamin to rid the nation of this evil that they refused to repent of. All right, are you with me so far?
All right, chapter 20. We’re going to start with verse 18. I’ve got quite a few verses to read—eight or ten, I guess—so just follow with me if you would. Verse 18: «Then the children of Israel arose and went up to the house of God to inquire of God, and they said, 'Which of us shall go up first to battle against the children of Benjamin? ' The Lord said, 'Judah first.'» Of course, the name Judah means praise—praise first! So the children of Israel rose in the morning and encamped against Gibeah, and the men of Israel went out to battle against Benjamin. The men of Israel put themselves in battle array to fight against them at Gibeah. Then the children of Benjamin came out of Gibeah and on that day cut to the ground 22,000 men of the Israelites. The people, that is, the men of Israel encouraged themselves, and again formed the battle line at the place where they had put themselves in array on that first day. Then the children of Israel went up and wept before the Lord until evening and asked counsel of the Lord, «Shall I again draw near to battle against the children of my brother Benjamin?» And the Lord said, «Go up against him.»
So the children of Israel approached the children of Benjamin on the second day. Benjamin went out against them from Gibeah on the second day and cut down to the ground 18,000 more of the children of Israel—all these drew the sword. Then all the children of Israel, that is, all the people, went up and came to the house of God and wept. They sat there before the Lord, fasted that day until evening, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings to the Lord. So the children of Israel inquired of the Lord. The Ark of the Covenant, which is the abiding place of God’s presence, was there in those days. Phineas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, stood before it in those days, saying, «Shall I yet again go out to battle against the children of my brother Benjamin, or shall I cease?» And the Lord said, «Go up, for tomorrow I will deliver them into your hand.» It goes on from there, and they, of course, win the battle.
When Israel came out of the wilderness, the first city they faced was Jericho. Many of you are familiar with the story. They came out against Jericho, and the Lord said, «Destroy everything; everything in the city belongs to me.» Israel defeated that city in their first step of taking over the land that God had promised them, and their victory was tremendous. The problem was that they went to the next city, Ai, and there was someone in Israel who took something that belonged to the Lord and kept it privately in their tent. They withheld what belonged to God. As a result, when Israel went out to war against Ai, they lost. So they went to the Lord and they said, «Lord, what’s up? What did we do wrong?» The Lord said, «Somebody took something,» and they ended up bringing destruction on that, but the point is that when they lost, it was connected to sin—obvious disobedience—but not in this story.
See, it’s easy to obey God when you have an expected, anticipated outcome. The challenge in the lifestyle of obedience is facing things that you can’t control and can’t explain; they don’t happen quite the way you anticipated. He’s not a slot machine; He’s not a vending machine where you put prayers in and pull the button, and you always get your intended outcome. You always get His goodness; you always get His activity, but He distributes them according to His wisdom, His purpose, and His plan. Sometimes we collect the promises of the Lord—this is extreme, but just follow me. Sometimes we collect these promises to use before Him as though we had control over Him, and we never have the right to direct the Sovereign One. What we do have a right to do is to partner with Him and say what He says, do what He is doing, and watch His hand be released.
In this story, Israel goes against the sons of Benjamin, this army, and they have 22,000 of their comrades—22,000 of their relatives, their friends, their families—who were killed in that battle. And there’s no rebuke for sin; there’s no exposing a reason. All they know is that they lost, and it was a battle that God sent them into. A lot of bad theology is created when we’re put in situations we don’t understand because we need explanations. We don’t need explanations as much as we need the willingness to do whatever He says next. Wow! My heroes in the story are the soldiers who are still alive because they woke up after a loss; they came before the Lord and they said, «Do we go out again?» Wow! And the Lord says specifically, «Go out again.»
In the second battle, they lost 18,000 of their comrades. Once again, no addressing of hidden sin—there are no items that have been stolen—none of that stuff that we see elsewhere in scripture. Instead, what we see is the incredible mystery of being sent into a battle by God that you lose. No explanation. What amazes me is the resolve of the children of Israel at this moment because they’ve just lost twice; they don’t know what’s going to happen the next time, and they prayed again. That’s a stunning part to me—they prayed again, asking, «Do we go out again?» And the Lord speaks and says, «Yes, tomorrow you win.» Wow! Obedience cannot be connected to our intended outcome.
Wow! Help us. It’s easy to fall into that trap where we think, «I will lay it all down because He will do this for me.» Now He is the God of reward; He’s the God of promises. Nine times out of ten, that’s the emphasis I have whenever I talk to you—in fact, it’s probably 99 times out of 100. That’s the point that I address because we’ve been called as co-laborers to live with faith, to live with risk, and to partner with the Lord to see His purposes accomplished on Earth. But there is a remaining mystery in this story that you can obey and not have things turn out as you thought they should.
I’ll quote later Rol Foran—it’s one of my favorite quotes he gave us years ago: «God will keep all of His promises, but He’s not obligated to keep our potential.» Sometimes the Lord speaks to us not revealing what He’s going to do but to give us the opportunity to co-labor with Him to see what He will do. In this situation, Israel was brought into a conflict by the direction of the Lord, and they lost. How did they ultimately lose this? They stopped doing what He said. But they didn’t! They got up after the first loss; they got up after the second loss. You’ve got to understand what’s going on in their minds; they don’t know if they’re going to lose yet again the third time. They said, «Lord, do you want us to go into battle again?» And this time He says, «Yes, for tomorrow I will give them into your hand.»
We live with a confidence knowing the goodness of God. We live with a confidence knowing that He keeps His promises. He is the faithful one; He is the one who rewards those who seek Him and rewards those who give themselves completely to Him. We know that this is absolutely true. But still, even in that promise, He doesn’t work for me; I work for Him. He doesn’t show up on my timing; He shows up on His. There’s something powerful about yielding to the sovereignty of God, knowing that His goodness will more than make up for anything that I am in that is so confusing and doesn’t seem to be headed in any kind of redemptive direction. I am confident of His goodness, yielding to His goodness—that’s the lifestyle of obedience.
Obedience provides us with several things—there’s probably a list of a hundred things—but the lifestyle of obedience provides us with something that is one of the rarest commodities in the church, and it should be the most common: a clean conscience. Many people have little things that they’ve tucked away; they don’t want to deal with it, don’t want to talk about it, don’t want to admit it. «Well, He understands. He sees my weakness, and He knows.» And there’s this hidden lifestyle where there are little secret compartments: «I’ll deal with it later. God understands. He’s the one who made me this way.» These little secret things that are hidden have defiled the conscience. Many people will come and they say, «Bill, would you pray, or ask any of us to pray for me to have boldness?» Not realizing that boldness grows in the atmosphere of a clean conscience.
Yeah, that’s good! Boldness grows in the atmosphere of a clean conscience. When you protect your heart, when you guard yourself against anything that would weaken or defile the conscience—that conviction that says I will do anything to honor and obey the Lord to protect that sometimes frail conscience. Proverbs says if you make a contract with somebody, and when you’re through with that contract you realize «uh-oh,» you’re going to lose money. You didn’t do the math right; you realize you didn’t lose money—stick with the contract, stick with the agreement to your own loss, knowing that protecting that heart of integrity, protecting that heart that conscience has its reward in the long haul.
I know for a fact I’m harvesting things today—seeds, if you will—that I planted 20 and 30 years ago. He is faithful, but He’s also wise, and He knows exactly when I will need what my responsibility is—not to obey so that He will do something for me. I obey because He is Lord. I remember talking to a friend once who was willing to obey if he could understand what the outcome would be. «He doesn’t work for you; He owes no explanation. He is God.» I remember I had a—I forget the storyline now—I had a pretty challenging schedule for a number of weeks, and I remember I was here on a Sunday morning and spoke four times. Chris and some of the guys said, «Hey, don’t even come tonight; just stay home, stay home and rest.» And so I thought that sounded like a pretty good idea because of the schedule I had. I got home and Benny said, «Are you going to go tonight?» Knowing that I just always go. But she said, «Are you going to go tonight?» Because of the schedule I’d had, I said, «You know, I think I might stay home tonight.»
Then I remembered when I was at the back door, just talking to people as they left, somebody walked by, asked me a question, and I said, «I’ll see you tonight.» And I remembered, «Nope, I’ve got to go because I told them I’d see them tonight.» You do anything you can to protect that tenderness of heart, that conscience that cannot be defiled by compromise. Not protecting the conscience is what actually invites compromise and ultimately deception and sin. The lifestyle of obedience that tries not to control God but instead to yield to God— that lifestyle of obedience is afforded a priceless commodity called a clean conscience.
The second thing Jesus taught in the Gospel of John, I think it’s chapter 15; could be 14. He makes this statement: «If you love me, keep my commandments.» If you love me, keep my commandments. It’s interesting that my love for Jesus is actually demonstrated in my obedience. My obedience is the litmus test; it’s that which proves if I am an authentic lover of God or just in word only. Jesus said, «If you love me, keep my commandments. If you love me, obey. Do what I said.» The third thing that is afforded to us in the lifestyle of obedience is it helps to reinforce this concept that I am a citizen of two worlds—right now, here on Earth, but also in Heaven. Why do I say that? Jesus said there are those among you—He’s talking to a group of people—He says, «You do your religious service out in the open so everyone can see you because you desire the applause of man.»
Interestingly, in John 5, Jesus says, «How can you believe, you who seek the favor of man?» In other words, the hunger for the favor of man undermines faith. The hunger for the favor of man undermines faith and weakens that place of faith. So Jesus says of these who perform their spiritual activities in the open to be recognized by people, He makes this conclusion: «They’ve received their reward already.» The point is, what? In Heaven, there’s reward, and on Earth, there is reward. But these people lived in such a way that their entire reward was here on Earth. When you and I stand before the Lord, there’s this crazy picture of a pile that represents our works—silver, gold, you know, precious stones, and wood, hay, stubble—and the fire of God touches that thing, and everything that is left—the gold, the silver—represents what was done in Christ, and that’s the basis for reward.
When you and I stand before the Lord, our greatest treasures will be the things we didn’t get rewarded for here on Earth. Our greatest treasure will be every time we were rejected instead of celebrated. The greatest moments when you’ll stand before Him and be so thankful: «I was ignored in that moment; I should have been honored, but I was ignored.» Because at that moment, you receive His reward. The greatest rewards will come to us in that moment for things we didn’t get fulfillment for here on Earth. You will be thankful, together we will be thankful for every time somebody passed us by when it was time for promotion, when it was time for recognition, because in those moments He makes up for everything we missed here.
See, the lifestyle of obedience connects us to this system of reward—but it’s reward from a sovereign God who knows what’s best. He’s wise and He builds us for eternity. He knows what I need now and He knows what I will need then, and there’s this abandonment to trust in the lifestyle of obedience. It’s not obedience unto; it’s not «I will give this so that I can receive this.» It’s literally, «I am yielding myself to the Lord because my supreme pleasure in life is obeying the one who is the rightful Lord over all that exists.» Yes, He is the rewarder. I don’t ever want to undo that, but there’s something that takes place in those tender, tender moments where there’s a willingness to obey God no matter what. He is not in my control; He is my Lord, and I say yes.
Yeah, come on! I’m thankful for the incredible rewards and things that He releases into our lives—how He blesses us, increases us, gives us opportunities, greater anointing—bless all the stuff. I’m thankful for all of it. But there is a day coming when you will be thankful for these moments where you said yes, and it didn’t end up like you thought, because those are the moments where He more than makes up for what you expected here.
The last one that I want to point out to you is in Genesis 22, and I’ll just read it for you. It’s verse 18. It’s a story where Abraham takes this incredible risk to obey the Lord in offering his son Isaac as an offering, as a sacrifice. And the Lord, of course, stops him. It’s a profound story, but what I’m going to read to you is the verse that is the conclusion to that story: «In your seed, all the nations of the Earth shall be blessed because you have obeyed my voice.»
Now listen to this: «In your seed, all the nations of the Earth shall be blessed.» Why? «Because you have obeyed my voice.» Here’s the deal: our obedience never just affects our life. There’s a domino effect—multiple generations are impacted by the lifestyle of obedience. The wake created by the one who says yes to God to live the lifestyle of risk—no matter what I believe for this outcome. It’s like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego thrown into the fiery furnace. They said, «God will deliver us, but if He doesn’t, we’re still not bowing.»
Yeah, now this is what we anticipate; this is what we believe. We declare it with our mouth; we confess it. This is what we expect. But if it doesn’t turn out that way, we’re still not bowing to this God. That’s right! And that’s the lifestyle of the believer that lives with a passion for the yes—the yes unto God!
So good! So here, the scripture says that the nations of the Earth are blessed because of Abraham’s obedience. Our lifestyle of obedience affects not only our family line. In fact, I love seeing this in the Psalms, especially for some reason. Psalms 25, for example, says, «If you fear the Lord, your soul will be prosperous.» Now listen: everybody wants a prosperous soul, because everything that happens around you—from health to finances—is dictated by the prosperity of soul. That’s good!
So He says, «If you live in the fear of the Lord, your soul, your inner world, will have more than enough emotional, mental, creative health—all that area will be overflowing with life if you live with the fear of the Lord.» And then He says, «Your soul will be prosperous, and your descendants will inherit the land.» Are you alive, or did I talk too long? You’re still alive!
You will live with a prosperous soul, but you will have an effect on the next generation, and they inherit the land! Yes! Your decision to say yes here, to guard your heart, to walk in the fear of God will have a tremendous impact on your life, but you will see it have an even greater impact on your descendants. Why? Because nobody’s yes is confined to their own little circle, their own little world. The yes unto the Lord changes and confronts atmospheres. The yes shouts! Come on! The yes to God that was a whisper in quiet shouts in public and changes and transforms atmosphere, right?
One of my favorite stories in the Bible is with Jonathan, the son of Saul, and his armor-bearer. They are standing together; they’re out on their own. I don’t know why, but they’re out on their own. They look across; they’re on this little rise, this little hill. They look across the ravine; up on the hilltop is the Philistine army. Now there’s just Jonathan and his armor-bearer. The armor-bearer is kind of like an equipment manager—if you remember in school, the ones who took care of the equipment at recess—that’s the armor-bearer; he’s the equipment manager.
They are standing there, and Jonathan sees the Philistine army up there. He turns to his armor-bearer and says, «I think we can take them.» And the hero of the story is the armor-bearer. He goes, «Yeah! The guy with the equipment says, 'Yeah, we can take them! '» Jonathan has this plan—it’s one of the worst military plans in Bible history unless God is in it. And in this case, God was. He said, «Jonathan said, 'I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to go out in this little opening over here; I’m going to make myself conspicuous. If they tell us to come up here, then we know God has given them into our hands.'»
Why is that a bad military strategy? Well, number one, we got an army there; we got one soldier and an equipment manager here. And if they say, «Come up here,» it means they have to crawl on their hands and knees to an approaching awaiting army. Right? Not a good plan!
Jonathan says, «If they invite us up there, we’ll go up there and God has delivered them into our hands.» And if they come down to us, I don’t even remember what their plan was, but anyway, they go into the open. Jonathan does this, and they said, «Oh look!» and they start mocking; they said, «Hey, come on up here; we want to show you something.»
Now how many of you remember when you were like 12 years old? Anytime that somebody was 16 or 17 years old, and they said, «We want to show you something,» it was never good. It never turned out positively at all. So that’s the moment these guys are in, Jonathan and his armor-bearer. The army says, «Come on up here; we want to show you something!»
Jonathan is as encouraged as you can get when he shouldn’t have been, but he was. And it says they crawled on their hands and knees to this approaching army on their hands and knees. And when they come close, the Lord knocks them all down.
The armor-bearer forgets who the soldier is; Jonathan is the soldier, not him. He gets so excited he just starts killing everybody. He takes Jonathan with him; he starts killing everybody. It’s a bizarre story, but it doesn’t end there, because see, Israel was in a time of horrible, horrible backsliding. Some, the Bible says in 1 Samuel 14, had sinned so bad that they actually left their identities as Jews and joined the Philistines, learned their language, wore their clothing, fought in their army, and tried to be what they weren’t.
It says when they heard the story of Jonathan’s courage, when they heard the story of his obedience, something woke up in them. If you could just see this picture—they’re numbered with the Philistine army and they hear the story of radical courage and radical obedience. They begin to strip off the Philistine garb; they began to throw down their Philistine identity. It says they ran to join the Israelis in the fight. They left the lie to embrace truth because they heard of somebody else’s obedience.
Your obedience never just affects you! And yet there’s another part of the story; it doesn’t end there. There’s one more part. It says that not only were there some who joined the Philistine army, there was actually a group of people who didn’t have the courage to join another army, but they were so afraid they were paralyzed by fear. It says they went and they hid in the mountains—in the caves, I believe of Ephraim, if I remember right.
They hid. They no longer identified with their people; they didn’t identify with the Philistines—they were just too afraid to take a stand for anything. And they hid. Somehow, good news traveled fast, and people carried them back into the cracks and crevices of the mountains of Ephraim and they found these fear-ridden people, and they heard the story of Jonathan’s courage, the armor-bearer’s courage, and their radical obedience.
It says, listen to this: they left the caves, they left the hiding places, and it said they ran to the front lines of battle. They didn’t just join politically with the movement; they joined, putting their yes or lives on the line for what they knew they were born for. The obedience of Jonathan created a sense of identity in those who were bound by fear. Fear could not hold down anyone who knows who they are!
Yeah, fear cannot hold back anyone who knows who God made them to be! That’s right! And it’s all because of radical obedience!
Yeah! Chapter 15 of 1 Samuel gives us the story of Saul. Saul was instructed by Samuel the prophet: he was to wipe out this group of people, to kill the king—he was a bad man—and take all the sheep. Slaughter everything; nothing lives. Regardless of what you think about that plan, this is what happened in the Old Testament: Saul spared the king and the best sheep.
Samuel comes, and Saul greets him, you know, basically saying, «Welcome, wonderful man of God.» The prophet Samuel says, «Be quiet—in our language, shut up!» And Saul goes, «Whoa, what’s going on here?» He says, «What’s the bleeding of the sheep that I hear?» Yeah, you were instructed to kill all the sheep!
So Saul—see, when you’re not living in radical obedience, you want to deflect blame onto someone else. So Saul says, «Oh, it was the people; they insisted we kept the best sheep to give unto the Lord to sacrifice to God.» It’s amazing how sinful lifestyles often get explained away through phony spiritual terminology and purposes. We hide sin under this guise: «We’re going to sacrifice to the Lord, so that makes it okay.»
This is where we get this statement: it’s in the middle of the right page of 1 Samuel 15, right in the middle: «Obedience is better than sacrifice.» Say that with me: «Obedience is better than sacrifice.» Say it again: «Obedience is better than sacrifice.» Let’s be honest, God doesn’t need burning sheep. There’s nothing about it. Everything He has us do is for us. Yeah, none of it—He doesn’t need it; He’s not in need. He’s more committed to what I become on the inside than what I experience on the outside.
And so, in this passage, the prophet says, «Obedience is better than sacrifice.» And then he pulls no punches in the second statement—he says, «For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.» So we’ve got two bookends here: obedience and rebellion. Obedience is better than sacrifice; rebellion actually connects you—what is rebellion? It’s the insistence on me being in control. And what is witchcraft? Witchcraft, at its most basic foundation, is manipulation and control. And he says, «Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.»
Obedience is better than sacrifice—say that with me: «Obedience is better than sacrifice.» And rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft! Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft! I think there’s a unique reward, a unique promotion, a unique grace, if you will, given to people who get up on the third day after two losses: «I did exactly what He said to do; I did not get the intended outcome, but I am still willing to go to war again.» There’s something, I believe that God is raising up—the Green Beret, the whatever you want to call them in this hour—of people that will say, «I will obey regardless of outcome because my obedience is unto the One I call Lord!»
Come on! It is unto the One I call Lord! I have this sense that there are planned outcomes and breakthroughs that God has for all of us in ways that we’ve never imagined. I really believe that what’s coming our way is greater than we have the intelligence or faith to ask for. I really do, but I also have this sense that some of us are in the middle of a lesson and the lesson is: «Can you get up the third day and pray, do we go out again? Good, do we go out again?»
Yeah! There are measures and realms of triumph and victory that you were born for, that I was born for—some of which you only get to taste of on the third day. All right, let’s stand! Woo! At least we got away from chopping up the woman, and you know, it was kind of touch and go for a while there, but you stuck with me! I’m so glad!
Yeah! We just say yes to You, Lord. We do! We just say yes, God! I honor You and thank You. I give You praise that You are the rewarder of those who seek You. We celebrate that amazing, amazing reality. Thank You, thank You, thank You. I pray that You give great courage to everybody in the room—every one of us in this family—to get up again on the third day and ask, «Do we go out again?» And the cry of our heart is for You to receive all the glory, all the honor, all the praise, and that Your name would be held in highest honor throughout the earth because of our yes!
Thanks! I need to ask the question: if there’s anyone here who’s never made a personal commitment to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, you’ve never made that personal confession of faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior, and yet you would say today, «I really don’t want to leave the building until I know I have found peace with God.» Please, if I can have nobody moving around right now; this is the most special moment of the day. I want to make sure that anyone in this room who is not in a personal relationship with Jesus—you don’t know what it is to be born again, to be forgiven of sin—and yet you would say, «I know that’s why I’m here.»
I want you just to put your hand up, and by doing so, you’re saying, «Bill, I don’t want to leave the building until I know I’ve found peace with God.» Put your hand up high. I want to take just a moment to make sure everybody, everybody, everybody in the room is in the family. Those online, we have pastors online—we just welcome all of our friends who have joined us all over the world. We love you guys; we’re so thankful for you! I bless you! We have people constantly coming to Christ online, and we just celebrate that so much!
So Father, I pray for a great spirit of breakthrough to rest upon Your people in this lifestyle of obedience in Jesus' name.