Bill Johnson - The Mystery of Restored Strength
So when he says, «Your strength is renewed like the eagles,» he’s saying, «Listen, I’m setting you up to enter into a dimension of strength that you’ve never known. On your best day, you could not accomplish what you can accomplish by the renewing of strength.» And how is he doing it? Well, we know waiting on the Lord is part of it, but this one here is different. He said he’s going to bring into your life good things. Whenever I’ve been scheduled to be here with you, something has happened, but not today. Today I’m here. If I could do anything, it’d probably be to put us all at a big table, get coffee and donuts, and just sit down. But it looks like that’s not an option, so sorry that I just created an appetite for donuts. I’ll let you forget; I’m not totally sorry. Ben, no, you’re right, I’m not sorry at all. I wasn’t going to read this in this service because it’s streaming, but I’m going to, and I’ll blame it on Twin View campus. They took a vote, and they thought strongly that I should read this to you.
A governor of California is jogging with his dog along a nature trail when a coyote jumps out and attacks the dog. The governor starts to intervene but reflects upon the movie Bambi, then realizes he should stop because the coyote is doing only what is natural. He calls Animal Control. Animal Control captures the coyote, bills the state $200 for testing it for diseases and $500 for relocating it because a veterinarian collects the dead dog and bills the state $200 for testing for diseases. The governor goes to the hospital and spends $3,500 getting checked for diseases from the coyote.
After getting his bite wound bandaged, the running trail gets shut down for six months while Fish and Game conducts a $100,000 survey to ensure the area is now free of dangerous animals. The governor spends $50,000 in state funds implementing a coyote awareness program for residents in the area. The state legislature spends $2 million to study how to better treat rabies and how to permanently eradicate the disease throughout the world. The governor’s security agent is fired for not stopping the attack. The state spends $150,000 to hire and train a new agent, with additional special training regarding the nature of coyotes. Peter protests the coyote’s relocation and files a $5 million suit against the state.
Now, I could stop right there. The governor of Texas is jogging with his dog along a nature trail when a coyote jumps out and attacks his dog. The governor shoots the coyote with a state-issued pistol and keeps jogging. The governor spends 50 cents on a .45 caliber hollow point cartridge. The buzzards eat the dead coyote. And my friends, this is why California’s broke, and Texas is not.
Doesn’t look like anybody’s left. I’m not sure about online. Hi, yeah, I love you. Well, I made it through that part; that’s good. I want you to turn in your Bibles. It will take me a few minutes to get there, but I want you to turn in your Bibles to Psalms 103. Three weeks ago, as I was reading through this particular Psalm, a particular verse really stood out to me. I began to study it. I brought up, I think, 54 different translations on one particular verse because it fed me so much. I don’t know if you have this happen: where you’re reading, and the Holy Spirit seems to highlight a verse, phrase, or chapter; that was my experience. I marked it down and wrote it in my iPad and began to write about that verse and look at other verses. It has to do with desire.
This is not a new subject for me; for us, one of the most important books that I’ve written, that I get excited about, is called Dreaming With God. It is, in some ways, maybe the most undervalued one. It connects people to the capacity for dreaming in a way that illustrates God. He gave us an ability to desire; it’s a God-given ability. We know that it got perverted; it got distorted, and the desire for wrong things is the most common thing there is. I get that. But the capacity is still there, and it’s still part of Divine Design. It’s through the Divine Design where we function according to how we were created that he partners with us. Please catch this: it illustrates who he is and what he’s like. It is the fulfilled desires of his children that help to manifest and illustrate the nature of God in the world. It is actually your responsibility to have answers to prayer. I know the common thought is, «Well, God’s the one who answers.» Yes, but he told us what he would answer. Our responsibility is to stay before him until the kind of breakthrough he has guaranteed takes place in our lives.
Sometimes he answers things immediately and quickly, and sometimes he has to work on us to prepare us for the answer. So it’s a delayed answer because he’s building the container of character in our lives so that the answer won’t destroy us. His commitment to fulfilled desire is extreme. It’s so extreme that in the Gospel of John, chapters 14, 15, and 16, he says to his disciples, «Whatever you ask for will be given to you.»
Now, commonly when we as pastors teach on that, we say, «Well, what he meant to say was…» Actually, he said what he meant to say. What he meant to say was if we pray things according to his will, then he will answer. That’s a given; I do understand that, and I believe that strongly. But the problem with that approach is we take almost a robotic or programmatic approach to prayer, as if that if I recite certain things, then he will answer what he wanted to do in the first place, instead of drawing us into a relational journey where my desires actually become the offspring of my relationship with him, where they manifest my understanding of his nature in his Covenant. He longs to answer things for us that benefit us but also manifest him.
So look with me if you would at this. Actually, I was going to quote a couple of passages from John. Let me do that first to create a little better context for Psalms 103. Here’s a verse I’ve quoted many times in the last few months: John 15:7. «If you abide in me,» which is living in a felt realization of his presence, «and my words abide in you» — that’s the intentional embracing of whatever he’s spoken into your life — «you will ask whatever you desire, and it will be done for you.» So what he’s doing is he’s giving us permission to desire in the context of staying connected to his presence and valuing everything he says to us in that context. If I can use desire again to illustrate, its desire becomes the offspring of the relationship we have with God. It’s those things that draw him into that co-laboring role with humanity. That was the design; that’s your design in the first place.
Proverbs, I think, 13:12 says, «Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but desire realized is a tree of life.» Think about that: desire realized, fulfilled desires, fulfilled dreams is a tree of life. What is the Tree of Life? The Tree of Life in scripture basically marks you or helps define your eternal purpose. Fulfilled desires are a part of your eternal purpose. It’s not about trying to build a crowd of egotists that manipulate God to get what they want. The problem is that in reacting to that potential error, people give up the right to dream and call it discipleship. There’s such a fear of getting it wrong that we don’t risk to get it right. There are certain things that simply will not be done on the earth unless somebody dreams. There are certain aches, if you will, in the hearts of humanity that cannot be satisfied unless there is somebody who will dream the dream and go before God to be used by him to do that particular thing.
John 16:24 says, «Up until now, you’ve asked nothing in my name. In that day, you will ask the Father in my name, and whatever you ask for will be done for you.» Here’s the phrase: «that your joy may be full.» Now, think about this: joy is not a simple «he, he, ha, ha.» Joy is such a priceless commodity in heaven that when Jesus was facing the cross — the most horrific experience in all of human history, not just the physical suffering but carrying the weight of every sin of every human past and future — in that moment, he carried it as an offering to the Father to become the sacrifice to break the power of that sin. He endured the cross because the joy set before him, so here’s Heaven’s heavenly this commodity of heaven — this joy element of heaven — is so profound that Jesus was willing to endure that to obtain it.
So then Jesus brings us into his journey and says, «Whatever you ask will be done, that your joy may be full.» The word there is excessive, more than necessary. That is a part of your eternal purpose, Tree of Life. So to live below that — to live just with Christian routine — I like discipline, so don’t misunderstand me. I like Christian discipline; it’s an important part of my life. But life comes from the passion; it comes from the offering; it comes from the zeal and the risk. It comes from those elements of faith that release such breakthroughs in areas of our life that we’ve never experienced before.
So here he’s drawing us into the awareness of why we’re on the planet. I’m not just on the planet to work a job, encourage a few people, and share my faith occasionally, then go home. We’re actually here to dream the dreams of God to see certain things happen on the earth that no one has ever seen before. Psalms 103: «Bless the Lord, O my soul,» verse 1. It’s important to recognize that David commanded his soul, his emotions, his will, his mind to bless the Lord. «Well, I just don’t feel like it.» Well, that’s why you command your soul to get into shape. «Well, I don’t want to do what I don’t feel like doing; then I’ll be hypocritical.» No, you’re hypocritical if you only do what you feel. We’re believers, not feelers.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul; forget not all his benefits. Who forgives all your iniquities; who heals all your diseases. Ben and I would sit on the edge of our bed day after day after day, and we’d quote this verse. We would sit there, and we would give thanks. If you’re a guest, forgive me for bringing you into a family story journey, but my wife died last July — almost a year now. We would sit on the edge of the bed, and we’d just say, «Father, we thank you; you forgive all of our sins, and you heal all of our diseases.» You say, «Well, Bill, she died.» Yeah, but that doesn’t change who he is. My experiences don’t alter who he is and what he said. What we’re trying to do is bring our lifestyle up to the standard of what he said, not lower what he said down to our lifestyle so we feel good about ourselves.
I’m not interested in feeling good about myself; I’m interested in knowing at the end of the day I did what he said. So forget not all his benefits: who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with love and kindness and tender mercies, who satisfies your mouth with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.
Verse 5 is the verse I want to talk to you about. Look at it again: «Who satisfies your mouth with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.» I like this particular translation, the New King James. I do enjoy it. I don’t like this translation, though. I looked up, I think, 54 translations of verse five to see how it has been commonly translated through history, and the word «mouth» actually isn’t in this verse. So when it says «satisfies your mouth,» in other words, he’s not saying he gives you a good meal so that you get your strength renewed. No, he satisfies your life with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.
I don’t know how many times in scripture I could find a couple times where youth is renewed like the eagle. We know, for example, in Isaiah, it says those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength. That makes sense to me: waiting on God, spending time in prayer, spending time in worship, feeding on his word. That just does something to strengthen me; it’s profound, it’s wonderful, and it makes sense.
This one’s different. He said he supplies your life with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. I don’t have the complete story; I’ve heard it for years, and I won’t get all the details right, but I’ll get the basic part of the story right. Eagles, I think when they get like 50 years old or so, start doing this molting thing. There’s another name for it, but they start pulling out all their feathers. They beat their beak against a rock until it breaks; the talons become the same; they break them up. I heard last night from a friend that only one out of three actually survives the process because they can no longer fly to get food. They have to be taken care of by other eagles who have gone through that molting stage before, so they’re not able to fly. They’re beat down; they’re broken; they’re without feathers, without the beak and the talons.
This process, when they get fed by these other eagles, allows them to start growing feathers out again, the beak grows, the talons grow, and they actually get restored to a place of strength that is greater than before they went through the molting. They can fly higher; they can accomplish so much more than they ever did before the molting stage. So when he says, «Your strength is renewed like the eagles,» he’s saying, «Listen, I’m setting you up to enter into a dimension of strength that you’ve never known. On your best day, you could not accomplish what you can accomplish by the renewing of strength.» And how is he doing it? Well, we know waiting on the Lord is part of it, but this one here is different. He said he’s going to bring into your life good things.
What I don’t want to do is reduce this to material blessing, but it includes it. It’d be foolish to ignore the reality. It may be, for example, that you were thinking of a friend that you’ve not talked to in a long time. The last time you talked to him, life was just a disaster, and they call you on the phone. They say, «Hey, I know you’ve been praying for me. Thank you. I’ve committed my life to Christ. Things are so different. My marriage is getting healed; my kids are doing well.» That good thing may have come through that phone call where you get to participate in the breakthrough of another friend and see what God’s doing in their life. It may be that someone invites you to coffee, and you’re able to take time without the pressure of a busy schedule, and you connect with this friend of yours that has meant so much through the years — the good things that God provided for you.
It may have been that hour-long coffee appointment. It could have been that you had this desire — maybe you never even told anyone — but this desire, this love to have a Mont Blanc fountain pen. Out of nowhere, somebody just comes up to you and says, «Hey, I’ve got a pen here. I’ve never used it. Your name came to mind today, so here’s this secret desire nobody knows about, and you get this gift.» What is it? Well, it’s a pen, but it’s more than that. It’s a good thing that, if you remain thankful and realize it’s part of the gifting of God to renew strength, something happens to our inner man where we become strengthened to renewed strength like the eagle.
It’s important that our material life, our materialism, cheapens this whole thing. It cheapens it because it destroys the capacity for dreaming because it stops short of its purpose. Material things stop short. But when those material things, that fountain pen, testify to you of a Father who sees secret desires, then suddenly that fountain pen is a thousand times bigger than a fountain pen. Why? Because it tells you what it’s like. It tells you he sees; he reads the desires, the thoughts, the intentions of your heart.
I remember years ago; it’s been a while since I’ve shared it, but I remember sitting up by Whiskeytown Lake as a young man. I was out there with my Bible, praying; it was a nice, warm day. I was sitting by not the lake part but the little ponds on the other side of the highway. If you’ve been there, there are huge boulders, and I was sitting there reading my Bible, just enjoying the Lord honestly. After a while, I saw this little bluegill swimming around down below me, so I thought I’d torment them. I’d pick up little tiny pebbles; I’d throw them in the water, and they’d come up and eat it and spit it out. I was having fun; it was all for the glory of God. While I was sitting there just kind of playing with the fish, I had this thought come across my mind. «I wonder if a bluegill would eat a bee because bees have stingers.»
I’m not kidding you; as soon as that thought came to mind, a bee flies right in front of me, drops out of the air, right down into the water, spins on top, and a fish comes up and eats it. I go, «He knows the thoughts, the intentions, the desires of our hearts,» and there’s something in that priceless moment that marked me. It wasn’t an answer to prayer; it would have been a dumb prayer. Why waste my prayer energy calling for bees to die? But it was him illustrating what he’s like as a father.
I was on staff here many years ago when my dad was pastor. I remember they would have a need in the church for help with stuff, so I would just volunteer. I never wanted to talk in front of groups of people; I never wanted to write. I didn’t like reading; I didn’t like any of it, but I loved Jesus, and I just wanted to do whatever he said. So I came to this place in my devotion to the Lord: I killed every dream and desire I ever had and laid it all at the feet of Jesus. I didn’t care if I ever owned anything; it didn’t matter to me at all. All I wanted to know was at the end of the day did I obey God, did I do what he said? That was the passion of my life.
I remember the church needed a junior high boy Sunday school teacher, so I volunteered to do that. I remember we needed a bookstore; the bookstore we have to this day, I actually started 40-some years ago. I don’t know anything about business, but I know how to buy books, so I bought some books and music and stuff. I would volunteer for places, and it’s kind of funny; if you know me, this would make a little bit more sense, but I ended up with like eight responsibilities, and six of them were administrative, which is divine humor.
But here’s the key for me: I just wanted to follow the Lord, and so I would volunteer. I didn’t volunteer where I thought I was gifted; I volunteered where I thought there was a need. If you only volunteer where you think you’re gifted, you have way too high an estimation of your ability to recognize your talent. What happens is you get put into positions where you find out what you can’t do, don’t have skill for, but you also find desires, and things begin to develop in you that you never knew you had. It’s not until you put yourself into the position of responsibility.
I remember back in that day, Benny and I were newly married, and I had saved my birthday money, maybe Christmas money, gifts, or money to buy a hunting rifle. That’s the decline right there, the hunting rifle. So I really wanted to buy a hunting rifle. I saved up my birthday money, and I had enough to finally do it. But we had a couple of bills that really needed to be paid. It’s not normal for us to take birthday money to do it, but I really felt of the Lord, «I cannot buy this gun; I need to pay these bills.»
I don’t even remember, to be honest, if I told Benny, but I took care of the bills. I came to church; I think it was the next Sunday; it could have been two Sundays later after having gotten rid of my birthday money. I got rid of it, and one of the old-timers here at Bethel when my dad was pastor — his name is Harvey Dunn. He was such a wonderful man; he could point at one time to 60 people in the room that he had personally led to Christ. He was just this amazing lover of Jesus, and he really liked me. I had a lot of favor in his eyes. If I was doing an adult Bible study of some sort, he would come, and he would always be such an encouragement to me.
He came to me one Sunday night, I think it’s the Sunday night after I paid the bills, and he walks up to me at the Bocelli campus. He walks up to me and says, «Bill, you need a rifle.» Yes, yes, yes, I do. And he said, «Come to the house after the service tonight.» So I went over to his house, and he gave me this — if you know anything about rifles, it was a Winchester pre-64 .30-.30 lever action with a peep sight. It was just this classic, classic gun, and he gave it to me. He told me the story; he and his wife both hunted deer for years together, and he gave me one of his guns. That became my gift.
Some years later, in Weaverville, somebody broke into our home, and I had four or five rifles in the back of my closet. I don’t know what it is about guns; they actually attract other guns. It’s a miracle. You just put it in the closet, and look, there are three more. I don’t know how it happened. So it’s a miracle. And somebody broke into our home and stole the guns, except for the one from my friend Harvey. It was in the same stack. It’s like the Lord said, «Not even the devourer can take the prophetic gift away.» That’s to renew your strength. Not even the devourer can remove that lesson from your life — the continual reminder of what I’m like.
See, our life is supposed to be filled with experiences and sometimes even possessions. It may be that you had this childhood dream of owning a certain kind of car, and you’re able to do that, and it’s more to you than just a nice shiny red car or something. It speaks to you of a childhood dream. There’s something activated in the life of the believer about our Father, our Father who pays attention to the most subtle thoughts, intentions, and dreams of the heart.
You will do nothing to add to my desire that is illegitimate and undermines the purpose for my life. He reserves the right to decline any prayer I make that undermines my purpose, but he looks for those things that I would bring before him in petition that help to establish me in renewing my youth as the eagle and reveal his nature in the Earth. I keep coming back to the subject; it’s been quite a few years now — I think it was 15 or 18 years maybe since I wrote Dreaming With God — and I keep coming back to the subject. There are certain environments where I go; when I’m with Cheon down in Hrock in Pasadena, I don’t know how many times I’ve talked on this subject there. Anytime I’m around creative people, I tend to want to talk. I can feel it just bubbling up in my heart, and I feel it again with you.
It’s not necessarily a creative person as a painter or an actor or singer, but creativity is necessary in every part of life to where we authentically represent him well. It’s beautiful to see the accountant, the lawyer, the grocery clerk, and everybody thinking outside the box so they can be fresh, new, and refreshing, strengthening to other people in everything they do. That’s what we’re designed for. I believe God’s restoring that capacity to the church. I know for me, I laid everything down to follow the Lord, and I’m so afraid to pick it up again.
In Mark 10, did I talk to you about that? Was that on Twin View? I don’t think I did. All right, it all merges together. By the next service, I’m going to have this down; I’m going to do good. Either that or I’m going to take a nap on the front row, one of the two. But I just got back from Amsterdam last night, so great things are going on there in Israel. The music tour was so fun, and it’s such a treat. Anyway, I was saying something; I know it was important, too.
Mark 10; thank you, thank you. Mark 10; don’t talk; I got it. Don’t mess around. Mark 10 is just a really extreme passage where Jesus is talking about the difficulty that the wealthy have entering the kingdom. I mean, it’s hard, it’s in-your-face comments. Peter goes, «We left everything to follow you.» Jesus said, «That’s right. I’m going to add a hundred times as much of what you left back into your life.»
Now, this is — I don’t know how else to illustrate it; let’s just pretend this is my wallet, and it’s filled with money. It is not; it’s a phone, but so it’s like I say, «Jesus, I left everything to follow you; this I know could destroy my life, so here: I give it to you.» He said, «That’s right; this could kill you, so here, now it’s back into your life a hundred times greater because you laid it down to follow me; I give it back so that as you follow me, you can use it correctly.»
See, the material thing is not the problem; it’s the heart that embraces that above the relationship with him, above our value and celebration of people. It’s never been about dollars; it’s always been about heart. I’ve mentioned this to you before in years past; there’s so much conversation about how much money is too much money. I’ll leave that to the economists. How much money is too much money for a believer? Well, it’s whatever amount replaces trust. For one person, it’s a thousand; for another, it’s a hundred million. The issue isn’t the amount; the issue is who am I going to devote my life to? What will I live for? How much will it take to, in my life of God’s resources, now remove my need to trust him?
Increase of stewardship is supposed to increase trust. There’s a better point than your response, but it’s all right; I’m pretty much giving up by now. So here he says, «Hope deferred makes the heart sick; desire realized is a tree of life.» He says he’s going to bring good things into your life to renew your strength like the eagle. It may be a moment; there may be a connection; it may be a material object; it may be a personal accomplishment or dream that you have, but the point is he’s going to add that to your life. If you remain connected to purpose and remain thankful, that which got deposited in your life — that Mont Blanc pen — actually comes to serve to build a strength so that your youth is renewed like the eagle.
I think we’re going to see people that are very, very increased in age having an energy level, an anointing level, an insight level that is beyond what we see in 20- and 30-year-olds. Honestly, I believe we’re going to see more and more of that: the phenomenon of people who should be past their prime that aren’t. It’s going to be, in part, because the Christians are laying claim to that one. I actually said all of this for him, just so you could join me in praying for Chris.
So, that’s amazing to me that what the Lord uses to build strength in us as people — that phone call, the pen, and the promotion at work, whatever it might be — the point is he’s constantly building in us because he sees us, he knows us, and he works towards that to build in us a sense of confidence in who he is as a Father. So that’s my prayer; that’s my prayer for you, that’s my prayer for me: that we increase our capacity for dreaming, that our desires would truly become sanctified; they would be healthy, they’d be holy, they’d be responsible.
Why don’t you stand? I’m going to pray over you, and then I’ll turn it over to whoever is next. Let me end with a verse out of Mark chapter 11. Mark chapter 11 says, «Whatever you desire when you pray, believe that you have it, and you will receive it.»
Can you walk through the verse with me? Whatever you desire when you pray, believe that you have it, and you will receive it. When I’m taking time to pray, oftentimes I’ll have a piece of paper with me and a pen because ideas will come that in years past I thought were the enemy distracting me. What it actually is is «whatever things you desire when you pray.» It’s in your time of prayer that certain things come to the surface that I’ll write down, not as an intrusion into my prayer time but as part of my co-laboring and dreaming with God.
I remember Charlie Harper years ago up in Mountain Chapel in Weaverville. I was teaching on this concept 40 years ago, and during worship one day, he began to have this picture of a vacation to take with his family. Because normally he would have thought that was an invasion into his worship time — the enemy was just trying to distract him — he realized this is what it is to partner with God, as he takes these tender moments and begins to interject ideas, thoughts, plans, and insights. He wrote it down; he had the most wonderful vacation with his family.
The point is whatever you desire when you pray, come abandoned to him, but then be ready because he’s about to shape what you desire and dream for, and you can trust those moments. So my prayer is for you: I declare now that the Lord would awaken in us the capacity for dreaming—the capacity for desire that is beyond natural—that it would truly be supernatural and that you would use us to satisfy the aches, the craving of humanity around us. I pray this in Jesus' wonderful name.
Some people’s whole desire today is just to be able to survive today without abuse from the man of the house. Some people’s whole desire for today is that they would actually have a meal. It’s tragic; there are so many in our country. The dreaming capacity has been reduced to survival, and the Lord wants to awaken the church beyond survival into truly living, and that’s our song.
All right, let me ask one question here before I turn it over. I know there’s a high chance there could be people in the room here who don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus, and that’s really why we’re here. We want to give everyone an opportunity to know Jesus as Lord, as Savior, to understand what it is to be forgiven and brought into his family. If there’s anybody here in that position, you say, «Bill, I don’t want to leave the building until I know I’ve found peace with God.» That’s you. I want you just to put a hand up where you are, and we’re going to have some friends just pray for you. Put it apart because I don’t want to miss you. We have people online; we do the same there. If you’re online, just write in the text box that you are receiving Christ, and one of our pastors will talk to you. All right, thank you, Jesus.