Bill Johnson - God's Presence Is Your Inheritance
What would it be like if, when you got up tomorrow morning, you became actually aware of the manifest presence of God right in front of you? I have set my heart on the Lord in such a way that I live with the awareness of the manifest presence of God before me. Well, good to see you! Merry Christmas! Baby dedications are so important; they’re so vital, and I appreciate the chance that we have to bless these kids because blessings make a difference. You know, Zechariah prophesied over John the Baptist when he was eight days old. I doubt he understood or remembered a word that was said. They didn’t have to be understood; they just needed to be spoken. They just needed to be declared. So, that’s what we did. Thanks for joining with us.
I saw a couple of signs I really like. One said, «I thought getting older would take longer.» Anyone over 50 relate to that one? Yeah! Man, I thought it would take longer! The other one — oh, here! I’ve got it right here — there’s a list of three things. «Going to bed early, not leaving my house, not going to a party — my childhood punishments have become my adult goals.» I just think that’s so funny!
All right, grab your Bibles, if you would, and open to Psalms 16, the 16th Psalm. I’m going to do something a little bit different today in that I want to take a Psalm and actually read through it verse by verse and talk. I do have a specific theme that we’ll anchor into; there are a couple of verses that really highlight a theme that’s on my heart. Here’s what’s on my heart: We were praying earlier today in our staff gathering at 7 this morning, praying for — we recognize and acknowledge that the Lord declared this year to be a year of breakthrough, and we’ve seen so many wonderful things happen. But the conviction we’ve had is that in the last four weeks of the year, the last month, we would see more breakthroughs in the last month than we’ve seen in the previous 11. We’ve had that sense of accumulation, that the Lord would just multiply the effect of that Spirit of breakthrough in these last four weeks. So, that’s kind of what we’ve been praying into and talking about.
Sometimes we miss our chance to see breakthroughs because we don’t pray with the prophecy; we don’t pray with the promise. Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that everything is supposed to happen while we stand in silence. It’s the great — not conflict, but the great paradox of the Christian life: we have some moments where the Lord says, «Stand still; see the salvation of the Lord, which I will accomplish for you today.» Your role is to do nothing but observe, and when He does that, He’s simply revealing our place in Him; He’s revealing our identity as sons and daughters of God. These are moments of unveiled inheritance. But there are other moments where He declares a matter, but it won’t happen unless there’s cooperation, unless there’s partnership, unless there’s prayer, unless there’s radical obedience. Something is genuinely required to see a breakthrough happen.
Larry Randolph made a statement years ago that helped me a lot: «While God will always fulfill all of His promises, He’s not obligated to fulfill your potential.» Sometimes the Lord gives us a word that’s actually connected to who He’s making us to be. Here’s the implication: He will not release over me any promise that is premature because the weight of the blessing would work contrary to the work He intended. We see it all the time in the natural; we see people who win the lottery or perhaps someone who gets this ginormous contract for their athletic skills and receives an enormous sum of money. And how many times do we see these people actually end up in poverty after they’ve had everything the world could ever want? It’s because they weren’t as big on the inside as they were on the outside; their internal world, their prospering soul, did not keep up with their external blessing.
So what the Lord does so well as a Father is He’s constantly measuring us to see what we can carry, what we can handle responsibly. He wants to put the weight of blessing on an established life because that strengthens the established life. But the fractured life actually increases the fracture. If you can get that metaphor, the weightiness of blessing actually enlarges the size of brokenness in a broken life. And so the Lord measures us; He measures us sometimes by the way we pray. Probably everyone in the room has prayed out of fear, out of anxiety, out of stress. You know what? He’s such a wonderful Father; He just receives us any way we come. If you’re in a mess, come in a mess; just don’t leave in a mess! You know, when you get into His presence, there’s no sense in driving through a car wash and not having your car cleaned. Don’t leave the way you drove it in; leave better off than when you got in there. So if you come with fear and anxiety, all that junk — I get it; I have done that so many times. It’s not a problem. But prayers out of anxiety are not prayers of authority; they’re prayers of a servant, not a son or daughter. Prayers of a daughter or son are prayers out of identity; they are confident in who they are but even more confident in who He is. Anxiety will sometimes drive us to the Lord, but for me, I have found the absolute key for my life is when I come in out of fear, anxiety, and all stress, I get into that time of talking with the Lord, praying about things — there are a lot of things that are worth doing: worship, thankfulness, reading Scripture. But let’s just take the prayer time. When I come into the presence of the Lord, I don’t want to leave the same way I came in. If I did, then I wasn’t praying; I was complaining. If you leave in the same condition you went in, then you didn’t go in to have an impact; you went in to vent your frustrations. When we come before the Lord, it’s supposed to be that moments of encounter bring personal transformation; that’s where we are changed.
My favorite illustration of this is found in Matthew 11:28–30. He says, «Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.» What is the deal? It’s a deal of exchange. «Come to Me, you who are carrying junk, and I will give you rest.» In other words, «You give me your junk, I’ll give you my rest. Let’s make an exchange.» All prayer is supposed to be an exchange. How do you know when you’ve prayed? You started in fear, you started in worry or anxiety, maybe complacency; you’re only praying because you know you’re supposed to. How do you know when you’ve come to a place of faith? You know because thankfulness for the answer is effortless. There’s already the thankfulness; I can see the answer. I can tell the answer has been released. I don’t see it yet; I don’t have the check in my hand; I don’t have the healing of the relationship; I have nothing external; nothing has changed. But in my heart of hearts, I feel such confidence in the presence that I know I can just thank Him right now for the answer, even before it’s come. So you always want to pray in the places of faith, because then what happens is in that place of faith, decrees are made, requests are made, and decisions are made that are made out of authority, not out of pity, trying to get attention.
So here’s what I want to do a little differently. We’re going to take this Psalm, and I want to just talk through this Psalm; we’re going to go verse by verse. We’ll stop most every verse, and I’ll talk. So make sure you’ve got a Bible or you’re sitting next to someone with a Bible. Let’s begin with verse one. The psalm is entitled «The Hope of the Faithful and the Messiah’s Victory.» Verse one: «Preserve me, O God, for in You I put my trust.» O my soul, you have said to the Lord, «You are my God. My Lord, my goodness is nothing apart from You.» Look at that phrase again: «You are my Lord.» This is what we say to God: «You are my Lord, my goodness is nothing apart from You.» I don’t think we can overemphasize the need to recognize that everything good that happens in us is by His grace. I’m not sure you can overemphasize that thought: everything good happens by His grace.
Yeah, but Bill, you radically obeyed! I did, but even the act of obedience was by grace. Yeah, but your faith was so strong! Yeah, but even that faith was a gift. See, everything always goes back to a Father who enabled or empowered us to do what was humanly impossible, what we’ve never been able to accomplish on our own. Keeping that in mind, I think, is one of the most crucial things for a victorious Christian life. As I’ve said before, you can’t discover your significance until you’ve come face to face with your insignificance first — it’s the discovery that my righteousness is as filthy rags. There’s nothing I can do to help my situation, and then the Redeemer comes and says, «I paid it for you.» In that moment, an exchange of grace takes place.
So he says in this verse, «My goodness is nothing apart from You.» In other words, the goodness that flows through me is only because of the goodness I receive from You. All right, next verse — verse three: «As for the saints who are in the earth, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.» I love this verse! I have «excellent ones» underlined in my Bible. As for the saints — believers — they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight. It wouldn’t be hard to spend the morning just on this one theme, on this one thought. It takes eyes of faith and a discerning spirit to recognize the excellence that is in the individuals around you. Parents, it’s so easy to fall into the mode of constantly correcting this and that and not actually seeing the excellence that God has already put into the heart of that child. It doesn’t mean we don’t correct; we do. We’re supposed to! But we’re supposed to feed from the beauty of what we see. Paul talks about us knowing one another after the Spirit, not just in the natural. «Well, they’re 5'8», 160 pounds, went to university, and has this job.» Not just that! It’s recognizing that there is something of the brilliance and beauty of God Himself that radiates from that life.
What is so significant for us is that we actually have the privilege of calling that out. The prophetic culture that Chris has been so strongly championing for these 20 years has been to call out the gold in people. All that is is recognizing the excellence that God has already written into the spiritual DNA of that individual, reading the poetry, the work of art, the masterpiece that God is writing over that person’s life. Here’s the phrase: «The saints, the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.» That would be a forbidden thing to write if it were not in the Bible because all of our delight is supposed to be in God, not in people.
Let me put it this way: you can love people and not love God, but you can’t love God and not love people. 1 John says, «If you say you love God but hate your brother, you’re a liar.» You can’t claim an unseen spiritual reality that cannot be measured in the natural. If I say I love God with all my heart, then you have to be able to see my love for people; it’s measurable. My claimed unseen reality — I love God with all my heart — has to be measured by how I treat people. This is not just about treating people in the sense of serving, which I believe in. We are servants of the Lord; we serve and love people. This one is a different perspective: it’s recognizing the brilliance, the beauty, the excellence, the divine design in the people around you. That’s really what the prophetic is — to call to the surface the divine design.
Yeah, some people — in fact, many people — would never become who God intended if somebody close to them didn’t believe in them and speak to what they saw. This is a lifestyle confession. This is a lifestyle prayer: «The saints are the excellent ones in whom is all my delight.» I actually express joy over those whom God has connected me to.
Next verse — verse four: «Their sorrows shall be multiplied who hasten after another god; their drink offerings of blood I will not offer, nor take up their names on my lips.» I have that last phrase underlined in my Bible: «nor take up their names on my lips.» This one also deserves much longer discussion. Paul warns about discussing the sins and misdeeds of other people; including that in our conversation here and elsewhere is a statement of not even taking up the names of false gods and putting them on your lips. That’s interesting! Certain things are beneath you to talk about. Wow! You have to — to engage in those inferior things, you have to actually lower who you are.
That’s a huge challenge right now because we are inundated with information through media, and it is possible to have zeal and conviction about any given subject, and you can be 100% right but completely separate from truth. The Lord has us designed to be people of truth. Life and death are in the power of the tongue. We are to contribute to what God is doing in the Earth and not just be accusers against what He’s not doing in the Earth. Some things are beneath the dignity of the believer to engage in conversation. More than once, I’ve just walked out of a conversation — not because it was dirty or evil, but it just wasn’t worthy of my involvement. Sometimes you just make those decisions.
Verse five — you guys still alive? All right, now we’re going to get into the inheritance! This is where you get stuff, all right? So get happy! I’m teasing. Verse five: «O Lord, You are the portion of my inheritance and my cup; You maintain my lot. The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; yes, I have a good inheritance.» I love this theme so much! I don’t think there’s a better illustration of the Christian life than Israel entering the Promised Land. To me, it’s the most graphic thing; I feel like you could probably chart your Christian life by watching Israel enter the Promised Land.
If you could picture this: they leave Egypt, which we know is symbolic of sin. The blood was shed and put on the doorpost. When the blood is shed over our lives, we leave sin; we come into a time where the dealings of God get us ready to inherit promises. The Promised Land is just that — it’s a land of fulfillment. On the other side of every conflict, on the other side of every problem is the Promised Land. That’s why you can rejoice before you get the answer because, when you’re in the middle of a conflict, by design, the Promised Land awaits on the other side!
You go through difficulty, and the Promised Land awaits! So Israel, the Lord shows them the Promised Land, this entire territory they’re going to inherit as a nation, and He says, «It’s all yours! All of it, everything you see belongs to you.» He said, «No good news and there’s bad news. The good news is it’s all yours; the bad news is I’m going to give it to you little by little.» But the reason He gave it to them little by little is that if He gave it to them all at once, He said the beasts would become too numerous and would actually defeat them. That’s a bizarre picture! If they got everything all at once, they wouldn’t have the population or the systems of economy or social justice or any of the things needed to maintain healthy environments and healthy communities. They don’t have any of that intact yet, and if He gives them all these cities all at once, the beasts of the field will become too numerous and will actually drive them out of their own inheritance. Why? Because they don’t have the maturity to maintain the inheritance!
That’s what the Lord is constantly working on in you and in me: building that sense of maturity, that our internal world is healthy and together so that He can trust us with influence in the external world. That I become big on the inside so that no matter what He gives me on the outside, I can manage it for His glory; it doesn’t work against me; it works for me and, more specifically, for the purposes of the King and His kingdom. Amen? And so He measures us.
The Lord promises this great Promised Land to Israel. Here’s the language used for inheriting the Promised Land: «My lines have fallen to me in pleasant places.» My lines — what is that? It’s land; it’s boundaries for land. They would go into the Promised Land, and Joshua had the responsibility of dividing all the land into sections for each tribe. Reuben would inherit one part; Ephraim and Manasseh would all have different parts of inheritance, and he would draw the lines and say, «You get from this side of the river to the peak of that mountain; you get from this mountain to the other side of the valley.» They have these territories written out as property lines.
And here, he says, «My lines,» talking about inheritance, «my lines have fallen to me in pleasant places.» In other words, «God, You gave me beachfront property! I got a lake, I got a river, I got a mountain! I got the whole deal! I got the best land on the face of the planet; You’ve given it to me!» What’s his inheritance? He says, «O Lord, You are the portion of my inheritance and my cup.» This is bizarre because, again, this refers back to an Old Testament reality: there are 12 tribes, 11 tribes and then two half tribes. One was the tribe of Levi. Levi had a different inheritance than everyone else. Everyone else got these big pieces of land to grow crops for animals, raising animals, and to be involved in commerce; it was to be involved in business so that they would have something to trade, not only with other tribes but with other nations as the Lord prospered them — they would be a resource for multiple nations.
But Levi — the Lord gave them only enough land to keep them fed, not for produce, not for involvement in the world’s economy — enough for themselves. And then He said, «Priests, you inherit Me.» When He identifies this concept here, He’s identifying the fact that, as we put this in New Testament context, every New Testament believer is a priest under the Lord. The Lord is saying, «Your inheritance is Me; you get Me!» There is no greater inheritance, and that’s why He could say, «God, I got You as my inheritance; my lines have fallen to me in pleasant places!»
I’ve got the most significant inheritance in all of human history because I inherited God. When you were born again, you put your faith in Christ by the grace of God; the Holy Spirit came and took up residence inside of you. Your physical body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Paul says that when the Holy Spirit came to you and was given to you, He came as a down payment! Wow! The Holy Spirit is a down payment.
Now, if I go down and buy a car for $10,000, and I put down $3,000 cash and get a loan for the seven, what I’m saying is, «Here is $3,000; I still owe you seven. I’m going to be giving you more of the same until you’ve received the whole thing.» When you were born again, God said, «Here is the Holy Spirit, and I’ll keep making payments until you have the whole thing.» He’s already declared that we are heirs of God.
Now, I don’t think there is a concept in Scripture more mind-boggling than God giving Himself to you and to me as an inheritance. There’s nothing that stretches the imagination more. What really becomes strange is in Ephesians 1:17, he says, «I pray that God would give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.» Then he says that you may know what are the riches of the glory — listen to this phrase — «of His inheritance in the saints.» So here’s this foundational revelation: it’s like Paul is saying, «What do you give to the church that has everything?» The Church at Ephesus was like the best. The book of Ephesians is the only epistle without a word of correction.
What do you give to people who have everything? This is what Paul prays: «God, give them a spirit of wisdom in the knowledge of God.» In that context, he says that you would know the riches of the glory of His inheritance in you. So here’s this bizarre picture: God inherits you, and you inherit God! Don’t ask me to explain it; it hurts my head to think about it, but it is true!
Verse seven: «I will bless the Lord who has given me counsel; my heart also instructs me in the night seasons.» I love that thought! I actually like to go to sleep; I just like to go to sleep. But I want to go to sleep at night believing that God’s going to touch me while I sleep. Now, what I don’t do is wake up in the morning and try to measure it because some of what He deposits is like seeds that grow over time. It’s best just to believe what He says in Job 33: He says that He visits us in the night and seals up instruction in our hearts so that if He were to do it during the day, we would become proud. In other words, the word He deposits in us reveals our significance to such a degree that, without the right maturity, we would respond in arrogance: «Look at who we are!»
So God puts it in seed form so that in maturity, it develops as we grow, but it’s in the night. But this says, «My heart instructs me in the night.» Don’t expect your heart to instruct you if you’re not feeding it! That’s good! If you’re not putting this in there, don’t expect it to come out when you need it. I think it was the Quakers who developed this phrase — I forget the wording, but it might have been, «We’re going to sleep on it.» The thought was that we’ll just trust the Lord with this problem and go to bed in rest, believing that God will instruct us in the night.
I think it’s one of the most important ways for us to learn to grow and hear from God because we’re not working. Sometimes we associate breakthrough with our works, with our efforts, with our labors. We have to have certain parts of our lives simply unfold without our efforts. And this is one of those moments. So he says, «My heart instructs me in the night.»
Verse eight: «I have set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.» I have set the Lord — that’s a — I don’t know what you do with that phrase, but here’s what I do: this isn’t the Lord; this is a bottle of water, all right? But I’m going to set the bottle of water before me. The psalmist says, «I set the Lord before me.» Now, can you actually grab God and put Him in front of you, or is it the determination of heart? I’m going to discover who is already there.
God is not manipulated by us. Here’s the way I like to put it: since I can’t imagine a place where He isn’t, I might as well imagine Him with me. What would it be like if, when you got up tomorrow morning, you became actually aware of the manifest presence of God right in front of you? I have set my heart on the Lord in such a way that I live with the awareness of the manifest presence of God before me.
Verse nine: «Therefore my heart is glad, my glory rejoices; my flesh will also rest in hope.» I love that phrase, «My glory rejoices.» Did you know that you can’t give God glory unless you have some? Everything that God has made has glory. The psalmist talks about the planets; each planet has a measure of glory upon them that God has given them. Everything that God has made has a measure of glory. We are — as far as I know — the only part of creation that has the privilege of bringing the glory that God has put upon us back to Him, giving Him all the glory. He is the source of the glory in the first place. «My goodness is nothing apart from Him.»
Chris talks about Moses when he laid hands on the elders, where he was imparting that authority to take Israel into that next season. The term that is used there is that he took of his own majesty and put it on these elders. There’s a certain majesty, a certain measure of glory that rests upon each person. To think inconsistent with Him is to think below His design and our potential. Amen?
Verse ten: «You will not leave my soul in Sheol; You will not allow Your Holy One to see corruption.» That verse right there is a prophecy about the resurrection of Jesus, the resurrection of the Messiah: «You will not allow Your Holy One to see corruption.» In other words, He will be raised from the dead before His body decays. Amen?
Now, let’s take the last verse, and this is one of the two verses I want to spend time on: verse eleven: «You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy, and at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.» Look at it again: «You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy.» I love that phrase so much.
Now, verse six says the Lord — I had someone prophesy to me once basically said the voice of the Lord often sounds like the voice of your wife, and I’ve discovered this to be true. I sometimes cannot tell the difference between the two. This says that the Lord is at my right hand. Let’s stand right over here. The Lord is at my right hand. But then, when we get to the end of the psalm, it says that I am at His right hand. So how can the Lord be at my right hand and me be at His?
Thank you. Thank you! She made a good call! Chris, is that what you said? Yeah! I’m not going there, but I understand what you mean. The whole point is, in the same psalm, we have these unique themes that would appear to contradict, but they don’t; they actually enhance each other. The Lord puts Himself in a place to influence on my behalf, but He invites me into a relationship where I bring influence on His behalf.
Here’s the phrase: in His presence is fullness of joy! In His presence is fullness of joy! I love the phrase «fullness of joy.» To me, that is a phrase synonymous with «prosperity of soul.» Fullness of joy — I don’t know how many times it’s in the Bible, but there are two that stand out to me. The other one is in John 16, where Jesus speaks to His disciples and says, «Up until now, you’ve asked nothing in My name. But in that day you will ask the Father in My name, and anything you ask for will be done for you.» Here’s the phrase: «that your joy may be full.» Wow! Anything you ask for will be done that your joy may be full!
I would like to suggest that these — this 16th Psalm and John 16 are parallel passages in that you were designed to live in joy because the cries of your heart have been fulfilled. People tell me, «I just don’t know; I prayed, and nothing happens.» Try talking to God about something He wants to talk about. «Yeah, well I thought He was my Father; He wanted to talk to me about anything.» Yeah, I’m all in, but He’s not listening, apparently. So talk to Him about something He wants to talk about. That might sound silly to you, but it’s a different way of phrasing: «Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added.»
It is so easy in this Christian life to turn our affections toward the things that are added and not on the King and His kingdom. This issue of breakthrough — here in Your presence is fullness of joy! I’m going to make this a little silly — say you need a car, and so you pray hard; you work hard; you finally are able to get that car, and it’s a good thing, just because it happened in your life and it was a goal and the Lord honored it. But there are times when the Lord works in such a way that it actually happens in the context of discovering the presence of God.
I don’t want to over-spiritualize prayer for a breakthrough for something, but I’m trying to paint this picture: when this car comes into my life in the journey and the value of the presence, the affection for the presence of God — this car will never become greater in my affection than my affection for God. Why? Because in the relationship, it is the product of prayer, and the product is never worshiped above the producer.
This life we have in Christ, in the presence — we are affectionately embracing and enjoying the presence of God, being a people of purpose. Something happens where He’s able to supply, provide, bring breakthrough, open this door, and give increased anointing for this — all of these things, though, testify of His nature! None of them have the place of being elevated above our affection for God Himself. It enhances my relationship with God.
Some of you, I hear stories of God’s provision of a house, and you every time drive into the driveway, you’re so grateful because you know this was a gift of grace. What happens is you’re not worshiping a house; you’re not a materialistic person. You’re celebrating a material thing that God gave you, but it testifies to you; it prophesies to you; it preaches to you about who God is and who you are! It enhances this affection for God!
You could lose it tomorrow — God forbid! But nothing has changed in the revelation of who He is. There’s something enhanced in the relationship with God because of this simple little item that He provided for you. Years ago, I remember I was saving money to buy a hunting rifle. If you’re from another country, I was buying photo equipment to go on a photographic safari! Yeah, I was honestly saving money for this. We were newly married; we were broke. But I had birthday money, this and that, and I finally got enough where I thought I could buy a camera. You’ve heard of photo shoots, right?
And I felt from the Lord that I wasn’t to buy it; I was to pay off some bills we had. So I did, begrudgingly I did, and it was like that Sunday night, one of the old-timers here at Bethel came up to me — I hadn’t told anyone; only Benny knew. I hadn’t told anyone. I come to church that Sunday night; he comes up to me and says, «Bill, you need a hunting rifle.» I said, «Yes, yes I do!» He said, «Come to my house after the service.» So, I mean, here was this thing that nobody knew about that I was going after, but I wanted to obey the Lord in what He said. I laid it down, and that Sunday night, he says, «Come to my house.»
I had this — I had this gun — this camera; I had this camera — my house was actually broken into several years later, many years later. I had three guns; two were stolen; they were all together; it was the most valuable one, and the thief didn’t see it because in my possession, yeah, it’s a gun, but it’s more than that; this is a season; this is a father who knows the desires, the intents of your heart. This is a father who celebrates sacrifice and hard choices, and I have a physical reminder in my possession of what He is like. Amen!
It will never be exalted above Him, but it testifies of it. There’s a breakthrough that God has designed for every person in this room, and that breakthrough, I believe, is available to us in these next four weeks. So, I want you to stand. Yes! All right. Are you still alive? Everyone still happy? Happy? Yeah, me too! We’re going to pray for that real spirit of breakthrough. I just felt directed to the Lord for that this morning. Before we do that, though, I want to give a chance to anyone in the room who has never been what the Bible calls born again. You’ve never surrendered your life to Christ, where He becomes the Lord, the Master, the director of your life. You’d say, «Bill, I want to follow Jesus. I just do! I want to know what it is to be forgiven of sin, and I want to know what it is to be adopted and brought into the family of God.»
If there’s anybody in the room that would say, «Bill, I don’t want to leave here until I know I’ve been forgiven; until I know that God has received me into His family,» then I want you to put a hand up right where you are — just real quickly, put a hand up and say, «Bill, that’s me! I don’t want to leave until I know I’m right with God.» Put your hand up real quick; I invite anyone in that condition right now just to say, «I want to find peace with God.» I can’t see the hands; there’s one over here. Someone right down here? Yeah? Bless you! Wonderful, beautiful! Anyone else? Another one back over here? Yup, I see you right there. Yep, it’s beautiful. Anyone else? Real quick, real quick?
All right, we’ve got at least two that I can see, and that’s just so wonderful! I want to ask the two of you — we’ve got people down here that we know, that we love, that we trust. I want you to come down; they’re just going to pray for you. It’s not about Bethel; it’s not about membership here; it’s about you leaving with a sense of forgiveness — knowing that God has absolutely transformed your life. So I want to ask the ministry team to come to the front, and these two individuals, if you would come right over here to this team in front of the freedom banner. If you brought a friend who needs to come down, maybe you can walk down with them. Sometimes it just needs a little extra help to make that move.
All right, ministry team, come quickly. We’re going to pray! We’re going to pray for that real spirit of breakthrough to come right now! Now, yeah! Amen! Amen! All right! Please help anyone who needs help to come on down to get over to the freedom banner because we just want people to leave free, free, free! Free! All right, hold your hands in front of you; let’s just pray together. Father, I do ask that You would release over this body of believers, this church family, a spirit of breakthrough, an anointing for breakthrough that is greater than everything we’ve seen in the first 11 months of this year. I pray for those who are watching on Bethel TV the same thing — fulfill the promises, fulfill the dreams; let the joy become full because of Your presence and because of purpose. I pray these things in the honor of the name of Jesus. Amen! Amen!