Bill Johnson - How to See From Heaven's Perspective and Walk in Authority
The Lord has made it possible to live in heavenly realms, affecting our circumstances in life. For most of us, our walk with Christ involves trying to persuade Him to invade earthly problems and repair them. However, Jesus did not minister that way, and that may be the reason the Son of Man healed everyone He prayed for. As Paul says in Colossians, «Set your mind on things above,» because your life is hidden there. If you anchor your awareness of God in His world, His plan, and His purposes, you will find yourselves living from that reality in response to the broken conditions of this world. Conversely, if you don’t, you will always have a prayer life that begs God to intervene in the problems you find yourself facing.
There is a difference between being seated in heavenly places with Christ and living from the heart and mind of God toward a problem. There is a significant distinction between that and a person who is in the midst of a problem, begging God to come and fix it. We all start there, but it’s tragic to serve God for 20 years and still use that as your platform for prayer because He wants us to be aware of who He is, what He’s like, and what He has done. We are to live from that reality toward the issues and situations of life.
If I react to problems—let’s say it’s a relational conflict—and become overwhelmed by the size of that conflict, I will live in reaction to the devil’s work. Here’s the problem: people do this all the time, and they live in reaction to a problem while calling it intercession. If I live in reaction to a problem, then the author of that problem has influenced my thoughts and behavior. You might say, «Well, my behavior is rebuking,» but that’s fine; he still influenced you. The devil has no right to influence my agenda. You never see Jesus living in reaction to the devil; He always lived in response to the Father. There’s a world of difference between the two.
Living in reaction to the devil characterizes some parts of church life. I’m not saying nothing good can ever happen; I’m just saying it’s depressing. It’s discouraging because what motivates you is the devil, not the goodness of God. It’s a far inferior motivation to see good things happen. So, Jesus says people ought to always be praying but to never be overwhelmed by the evil that surrounds them. Instead, they should be aware of God’s nature. He takes them to an understanding of a Father’s heart that has intimate personal care for His children. He contrasts this with how, if you can elicit this kind of response from an evil judge who has no fear of God and doesn’t even like people, how much more can you receive a response from a loving Father who is moved by your heart’s cry?
He’s not just sowing a trait of God; He’s revealing what fuels our endurance in prayer—an overwhelming awareness of God’s nature. How do you cultivate that? I’m glad you asked. I have talked several times over the past month or so about biblical meditation. So, I want to focus on how meditation is different from Eastern meditation. Eastern meditation aims to empty the mind, while Western meditation is intellectual in nature. Eastern meditation can be dangerous because it opens you to evil spirits. Proper thinking actually insulates you from spiritual warfare. You won’t know the truth, and the truth will set you free. What you know insulates you from the demonic influences meant to dissuade and distract.
Some of you have the mind of Christ so established in you that you can be in the midst of intense spiritual warfare and not even realize it because the wall around you absorbs the fiery darts. You live inside this protective wall, thinking, «This is a party time. We’ve got food, family, and friends,» while the enemy hurls stones at you. You don’t even know they’re hitting your wall. He shoots arrows, and all kinds of junk happens, but you’re so insulated by the mind of Christ that there’s little, if any, effect on your life.
This isn’t make-believe; it’s a reality. Your mind will be anchored and shaped by the knowledge of God, and that knowledge will set you free. That liberty and freedom will insulate you from the things the enemy throws your way. Biblical meditation is a word that means to murmur, to mutter, to speak to yourself, and to repeat a verse over and over again.
The illustration I shared a few weeks ago was out of Psalms 127. It’s a great verse I found many years ago while praying for financial breakthrough. I remember taking this phrase, «He provides for His beloved even while they sleep,» both in the New American Standard version and in the Passion translation. So, here’s biblical meditation: we’re supposed to meditate on three basic things: the word of God, the works of God, and the ways of God.
I’m talking right now about the ways described in scripture, but eventually, I want us to explore Luke 18, which reveals the ways of God that shape our thinking. God’s ambition for you and me is not to equip us to answer questions correctly in a Bible quiz. The goal is not just to provide the right chapter and verse for puzzling questions; that’s a good start, but that’s not His ambition. His ambition is for His word to become flesh in us—intertwined with our thoughts and emotions through biblical meditation—so that it becomes an expression of our personality.
So, if you’re facing a financial challenge, here’s what I would do. This word meditation is illustrated by the Jews at the Wailing Wall, who rock back and forth. I’m not saying you have to rock, but the rocking motion at the Wailing Wall is a physical act of meditation; it’s a repeated action. You say, «You provide for Your beloved even while we sleep, God.» I give You honor; I am Your beloved, the apple of Your eye. I’m overwhelmed by Your kindness, God, that You would call me Your beloved. I qualify for this verse because You said I am Your beloved and You provide for me even while I sleep.
«I give You praise. You are my provider.» You provide for me even while I sleep. «I’ve dedicated my work to You; but You’re bigger than my work. You release resources to me even when I can do nothing for myself. You are the God who provides; You provide while I rest. You work while I rest.» This recitation is about who God is and what He has said.
What happens then is, when you awake in the middle of the night, your first thought may be, «Oh, we have this bill due tomorrow,» but then you also think, «And He provides for His beloved even while they sleep,» and you find yourself going back into a place of rest because you’re resting in who God is. It’s not mere mind over matter; it’s not just some intellectual exercise. It’s about taking that which is eternal, which is the word of God—the truth He has highlighted to you—and holding it so near and dear that you ponder, consider, quote, mutter, speak, declare, and confess what God has said over and over again.
This word should become, as Lance Wallnau would say, «cellular» in us; it is to become a part of who we are. When I listen to the voice of a problem more than the voice of the Lord, faith will always be an uphill battle. If I take my counsel from life’s difficulties, my heart will be shaped by inferior things. Oftentimes, we receive our counsel, input, values, and sense of urgency from problems, without the breath of God revealing His heart and mind. God has a solution for every challenge, problem, and difficulty. Learning not only to read but to meditate on the word is crucial.
To meditate means it’s a word best illustrated by a cow chewing its cud; it brings it up and chews on it repetitively to extract all the nutrients possible from that food. Meditation on the word is different from Eastern meditations promoted by various religions, which aim for nothingness. God wants you to be full. Their ideal is emptiness; His ideal is kingdom, word, voice, and fellowship. Through biblical meditation, we extract the very things that God is thinking—not just saying. This brings us into connection with the one whose heart is perfect, into a face-to-face reality with the one who paid a sufficient price to settle every broken issue on planet Earth.
There is not one situation beyond His reach or outside His compassion; it is all settled. The difficulty for us is that we are bombarded with information nearly 24/7, much of which is inferior. Some of it is overtly evil and corrupt; some of it is just a distraction. Learning to live from heaven toward Earth, from the word of the Lord, from the heart and mind of God toward situations, is our lifelong journey.
It’s what you said yes to. People come, saying, «I’m so confused by the situation I’m facing.» Of course, they’re confused; they listen to the problem more than they listen to God. You can’t expect any other outcome. If listening to life’s difficulties shapes my perception, faith will be an uphill battle—but it doesn’t mean I can’t get there. I just need to return to what God is saying and His nature, His covenant.
The big challenge is living conscious of the heart of God, the spirit of God, and the will of God. What is His will in this situation? We often settle for things that are inferior and not what Jesus would have done if He were in our shoes. It’s difficult to still hear the voice of the inferior if I’m not replacing it with an affectionate response to the voice that changes everything.
The purpose of prayer, you know, could probably fill a list of a hundred things and still fall short, so I don’t want to oversimplify or rob the importance of prayer that matters most to you. Let me try to summarize it, at least from my perspective, for tonight: the purpose of prayer isn’t merely for me to talk to God about doing things. It’s really about obtaining His heart because the more I obtain His heart, the more I pray—not parrot prayers, but the product of a relational life called prayer.
In John 15, it says that a servant does not know what his master is doing, but a friend does. The servant responds to commands, and that’s not wrong. The most basic aspect of our initial journey with Jesus hinges on responding to commands. However, what He seeks is our interest in His heart, so we’re not just waiting for commands; we’re seeking His values, His intentions—those things motivate us. When you align with His heart, you start praying what He would pray if He were in your shoes. That is co-laboring.
The goal of prayer is co-laboring, where His heart is revealed on the Earth—not just because He commanded us to reveal it or provided recorded prayers to recite but to become people who, in seeking Him, mirror His heart and nature in our prayer relationship. Touching the heart of God gives us a unique advantage that I hope we can pursue more aggressively as a church family in this next phase. I’ll illustrate it in a moment.
Let’s look at 2 Kings 6:8. Now, the King of Syria was making war against Israel and consulted his servants, saying, «My camp will be in such and such a place.» The man of God sent to the King of Israel, saying, «Beware that you do not pass this place, for the Syrians are coming down there.» The King of Israel sent someone to the place the man of God warned him about, and he was watchful there— not just once or twice. Therefore, the heart of the King of Syria was greatly troubled by this, and he called his servants, asking, «Will you not show me which one of us is for the King of Israel?» One servant said, «None, my lord, but Elisha the prophet who is in Israel tells the King of Israel the words you speak in your bedroom.»
This demonstrates the advantage of knowing God; He knows things ahead of time. If we’re listening, we could pray in advance to prevent disasters or set things in place. When we don’t utilize that advantage, we must respond or react to things as they arise. I remember one of our pastoral couples in Weaverville; their two young kids were in the back seat, whispering. When their mom turned around and asked what they were doing, they said, «Nothing.» She pressed, and they insisted, «Nothing.» Finally, she said, «Okay, I’ll ask God,» and she turned around to say, «You were playing with matches,» as they were freaking out because they had started a fire that required putting out near their house. It’s cheating, but it’s not.
We have the advantage to pray in advance of situations. How many of you have felt a subtle impression? You wouldn’t have glamorized the moment by saying, «God spoke to you,» but just a thought like, «I’ll call someone,» and it happened to be exactly when they needed that call! The Lord’s voice sounds so much like ours because He usually uses internal thoughts and impressions. Learning to lean into Him is a substantial product of effective prayer; you pick up His heartbeat without trying.
It’s not a groaning and travailing to attain the heart of God. It’s simply saying, «You are all I want. I want Your heart to shape mine.» That, ultimately, is the outcome of prayer. Jesus said, «Come to Me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.» The real purpose of prayer is exchange. Come to Him with your burdens, and He will give you His light yoke.
If you come to Jesus and leave feeling as heavy as when you arrived, you weren’t praying; you were complaining. Prayer makes an exchange. It takes on the heart of God and sees a situation through His perspective. That’s the whole purpose of prayer, and it’s not just to leave us with His perspective on the matter; it’s so we can pray as co-laborers to effect change.
If I were to choose one Bible verse that best summarizes my walk with Christ, it would be the verse we’ll read in a minute: «Abide in Me, and My words abide in you. Ask whatever you will, and it will be done.» I don’t understand how or why this happens, but the Lord designed everyone in this room to be a co-laborer with God, to partner with Him so that His purposes are accomplished on Earth.
Jesus, the Eternal Son of God, never ceased to be God but chose to live with limitations during His humanity. He said, «The Son of Man can do nothing of Himself, but only what He sees the Father doing or hears the Father saying.» The point is, Jesus lived with self-imposed restrictions. We must ask, «Why?» As God, He could have performed anything, but He chose to set an example of what life could be like for anyone forgiven of sin and empowered by the Holy Spirit. He modeled that lifestyle and invites us into this journey.
There’s a secret Jesus gives us. In the gospels, Jesus would speak, and people remarked that He spoke differently than anyone else, with authority—not like the scribes and Pharisees. The people saw it: Whenever He spoke, something changed. Jesus revealed what happens when He spoke in John 6:63, saying, «My words to you are spirit, and they are life.» In other words, when I speak, my words become presence, and that presence gives life.
At the beginning of His ministry, before He performed any miracles, Jesus stood before the synagogue in Nazareth and was given the chance to read. He reads from Isaiah 61, declaring, «The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me to preach the gospel to the poor, to release captives, and recover sight to the blind.» He makes this decree before performing any miracles. The people who had experienced nothing for ten generations suddenly encounter this moment of transformative presence.
Now, if Jesus made such a declaration about His life, perhaps it’s beneficial for you and me to do the same: «The Spirit of God is upon me to release captives, recover sight to the blind, and set prisoners free.» That’s what we were born for. By making such decrees, we unlock the realities God has intended for us.
In one verse tucked away in John 3, Jesus makes an unusual claim that He spends time in heavenly realms with the Father while He stands on Earth. It’s early in His earthly ministry, and He has three and a half years left. He states, «No one has ascended to heaven except he who descended, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven.»
He invites His followers to grasp this truth: we can live in heavenly realms toward our circumstances. Most of us spend our lives trying to persuade God to intervene in earthly issues, but Jesus showed a different way. Everyone He prayed for was healed. Each situation, even funerals, was transformed because He embraced this secret.
Jesus models for us that we have the ability to ascend to heavenly realms while grounded on Earth, which isn’t something to strive for but to surrender to. It’s part of God’s purpose for us to experience this reality while here. After Jesus' death, resurrection, and ascension, He returned to the right hand of the Father, but this truth shows us the relationship we are to live in.
The disciples witnessed miracles, but they asked Him to teach them to pray after seeing what resulted from His power. In that, He modeled perfect partnership with the Father, revealing the Father’s heart and enabling us to pray with authentic connection.