Bill Johnson - Strength for the Battle is IN the Battle (There's Food in the Fight)
Yes, I may feel disqualified, I may feel too weak, I may feel a hundred things that would logically keep me from my yes, but it’s in the yes that strength comes. The spirit of the Lord comes upon the one who says yes, and then they find themselves able to do what they couldn’t do a moment earlier. I’m so glad we get to do this today; we get to do all kinds of stuff! I love crepes, and there’s a crepe truck out there, so if I just kind of walk off the stage in a couple of minutes, it’s because I’m going for crepes. Actually, I won’t tell them. I’ll say this is supposedly a true story—I believe it is.
Young Paddy (P-A-D-D-Y) bought a donkey from a farmer for a hundred pounds. The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day. The next day, he drove up and said, «Sorry, son, but I have some bad news: the donkey died.» Paddy replied, «Well, just give me my money back.» The farmer said, «I can’t do that; I already spent it.» Paddy said, «Okay, then just bring me the dead donkey.» The farmer asked, «What are you going to do with him?» Paddy said, «I’m going to raffle him off.» The farmer said, «You can’t raffle a dead donkey!» Paddy replied, «Sure I can! Watch me! I just won’t tell anyone he’s dead.» A month later, the farmer met up with Paddy and asked what happened to that dead donkey. Paddy said, «I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at two pounds each and made a profit of 898 pounds.» The farmer asked, «Didn’t anyone complain?» Paddy said, «Just one guy. To the one guy who won, I gave his two pounds back.» (Laughs.) Paddy now works for the Royal Bank of Scotland, so that’s awesome. It’s a great story.
All right, grab your Bibles if you would and open to the Book of Numbers. I’ve been in my own devotional reading, reading out of the books of law for the last couple of months, and I’m in Deuteronomy now. I always love reading all of the Old Testament, but to be honest, I like all the Scripture. Some of it’s more confusing than other parts, but I love the stories of Israel coming out of Egypt into the Promised Land. Those stories are just so graphic to me; they’re like remedial reading—it’s easy to read, and it’s easy to see truth. I remember thinking about this story of entering the Promised Land and how prophetic it is for us as a people. Paul actually wrote about the Old Testament; in Romans, I think it’s 15, he said these things were written in earlier times for our instruction. So Paul was actually saying we need this, and so many believers ignore the Old Testament. It’s the root system for the gospel, and it’s critical that we pray, learn to understand, and read. Some of these stories are just food for my soul, and I enjoy them so much.
This story is about Moses; he chose twelve spies—leaders from each tribe. Let me put it this way: highly valued, highly respected leaders, one from each tribe, sent them into the Promised Land to examine what they were about to inherit. This is such a bizarre story to me because God promised Israel—let’s say about, estimated, some would estimate about 2 million people in Egypt—that they would inherit the Promised Land, and yet out of two million people, only two people entered. Some would say, «Well, if God promised it, it’s just going to happen,» but that’s simply not true. Larry Randolph helped us with this concept best; he said God will fulfill all of His promises, but He’s not obligated to fulfill our potential. Some words are given to us as invitations to co-labor with the Lord—to step into destiny. One of the most challenging parts of this storyline is that there is conflict that precedes arriving at destiny. There is always an obstacle to keep you from your destiny, and the obstacle is not there for our destruction; it is there for our strengthening. It’s in the obstacle that the will of God becomes reaffirmed and established in us.
From day one, it’s always been about co-laboring with the Lord. The whole thing has been about co-laboring with the Lord. He commissioned Adam and Eve; He commissioned them to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the Earth, etc. It’s always been about co-laboring. It’s about working together; it’s never been about God doing everything for us, nor does He require us to work independent of Him. None of His commandments are punishment; all of His commandments are invitations to life. All of these commandments are invitations to partnership, and that’s what we have in this story.
So I want to take you through a good part of chapter 13; we’ll read a half a dozen verses or so, and then we’ve got something to find in chapter 14. All right, so you’re there—Numbers chapter 13. I will start with verse 28. Then they told him, saying, «We went to the land where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.» Which is interesting because it took two men to carry one bunch of grapes out; it was so huge. Hmm. Nevertheless, verse 28: «The people who dwell in the land are strong; the cities are fortified and very large. Moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the South. The Hittites, the Jebusites, the Perizzites, the Gergashites, the Amorites, and the Canaanites all dwell by the Sea along the banks of the Jordan.» Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, «Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome.» Let me jump on this just this one phrase, «Let us go up at once.»
I’ve seen—I have obeyed the Lord, but I did it with delay. In my delayed obedience, I saw this happen, so just trust me on this one. If you would, delayed obedience reduces the power released in my obedience, whereas when I have acted quickly in obedience, there has been a tremendous release of power. It’s like the Lord honored the obedience, but it didn’t have near the fruitfulness that He intended it to have because I delayed. I debated, evaluated, and tried to bring God’s will into my human reasoning to figure it out, which restricted the effect of my obedience. Caleb is at a moment where if he can get Israel to act quickly, they will respond and see tremendous triumph. So that’s what he’s trying to do. He says, «Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.»
Verse 31: «The men who had gone up with him said, 'We are not able to go up against this people, for they are stronger than we.'» They gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, «The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. There we saw the giants, the descendants of Anak, and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight; so we were in their sight.» Here’s the crazy thing about the ten spies: to Israel, they were reasonable. There’s such a fear of being labeled as unreasonable that the people actually chose unbelief over faith. The crazy thing about this is that the ten spies came back with a negative report about the size of the giants, and their negative report became a self-fulfilling prophecy. They warned Israel, and their bad report actually became contagious. The people embraced bad news over good news, which is really common.
We live at a time where the enemy works very hard to make us feel— and to appear—as victims, not victors. The strategy is to inundate us with enough negative reports and bad news—what we call discernment—to sound spiritual. Bad news keeps us from our destiny. Paul already told Timothy, «Fight your fight for your destiny with the prophetic words given to you.» So Paul was saying, from where you’re standing to where you’re going, there’s conflict in between, and you’re going to need prophetic words to get you there. You’re going to need to use as weapons what God has said.
Now, how do you use the word of the Lord? You speak it. You speak it; things have to be said. I don’t know if you realize this, but Jesus, before He had performed one miracle, stood before a group of people—He had no history in the miraculous. He stood before a group of people and made this proclamation: «The spirit of the Lord God is upon me because He has anointed me to bring good news to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind; the lame are going to walk.» He goes through this whole thing before He’d done anything. Why? Because He’s making a proclamation. Your words announce where you’re going.
If I’ve asked you this before, if God inhabits my praise, who inhabits my complaints? Words attract presence, and you and I determine what presence we want to attract. Sometimes we actually create landmines along our road to destiny through our words. There’s this warning here, and we see it illustrated so graphically where ten spies were able to take the heart out of an entire nation—ten people. It’s interesting: when Joshua sent spies the next time, he only sent two. It’s a lot easier to get two united than twelve. I don’t know that Moses did it wrong, but I know he learned. He changed the plan.
So here’s this story where the entire nation becomes riddled with fear because of a bad report. You have to understand—keep in mind—they think they are making a reasonable decision. Fear is almost always based on facts of some sort; just not truth. I’m not—we’re building a building. I’ve never been—I like buildings, but they’re tools. I’ve never been excited about building this or building that. My philosophic approach to buildings gets tossed out the window when God says it’s time to build. The only thing I need to know is, does He say build? If He says build, then I am now a builder. I am now a visionary for a building, and I’m gonna suck it up.
The whole thing—I’m not emphasizing building for as long as I can remember, but I can tell the prophets have warned us in recent years, «If you delay, you will have disobeyed.» So we are doing the at-once thing right now. We’re all—of us are going, «Caleb, here! At once! Let’s go forward and build!» So that’s what we’re committing ourselves to. But this challenge before us is an impossibility, much like Israel’s. Any destiny that you think you have that is possible, you’ll probably accomplish and take the credit. God tends to assign us things that we can’t take credit for once they’re accomplished. One of the ways we know that we’re in the center of what God has called us to do is because it’s simply not within our capacity; sometimes it’s not even within our gift mix.
He assigns Paul, the Jewish scholar, to minister to the Gentiles and Peter, the fisherman, to the Jews. He assigns people differently than we would. We tend to define our ministry by what we’re good at instead of what we’re called to do. If you discover what you’re called to do, then you seek Him privately for the gifts necessary to fulfill the call instead of creating everything around what you’re comfortable with.
Chapter 14, verse 1, says, «So all the congregation lifted up their voices and cried, and the people wept that night.» This is a little touchy, so let me just take it with a bulldozer. Just because somebody is crying—now let me back up. It’s going to be a little fast. We’re people who care for people, and you know if you have a friend, a loved one, or somebody—a counselor or whatever—it might be, they’re in tears; there’s brokenness. We always want to rally around them and support them, absolutely my first response. But sometimes, if we’re not careful as friends, we can insulate people from God’s dealings because the only reason they’re crying is because they’re in pain, and the only reason they’re in pain is that God turned right and they turned left.
Let me give you the illustration: Jesus said, «My yoke is easy; my burden is light.» What was the example? A yoke is a wooden thing that rests on the shoulders of two oxen. So you got the big ox; he’s carrying the weight of the yoke. He’s got the little ox, who has no weight. However, if the big ox turns right and the little ox turns left, the little ox is going to be in pain, and he’s going to cry. What you don’t want to do is insulate the dumb choice to turn left when God is turning right. That’s what you don’t want to do.
You want to show mercy, kindness, and care, but get to the bottom of the issue. The reason they’re crying is because God gave them a future—a destiny—it’s on the other side of giants. In the resistance of God’s yes, in their no, they found tears. Now, does that make any sense? I hope so. I hope so.
Verse 2 says, «And all the children of Israel complained against Moses.» It’s a whole new experience right there! And then Joshua spoke up, and he said in verse 8, «If the Lord delights in us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us—a land which flows with milk and honey. Only do not rebel against the Lord, nor fear the people of the land, for they are our bread.» If we see spiritual conflict and warfare as God does, let me insert here: I believe our awareness of spiritual conflict and warfare is going to increase without us becoming double-focused, and that’s the essential part for me.
But if we were to see spiritual conflict and warfare the way He sees it, we realize that our meal—that which strengthens us—is in the fight. Samson was attacked by a lion; the spirit of the Lord came upon him, he killed the lion. It says sometime later, he walked by the carcass of that lion, and there was honey in the carcass. His nourishment came from within the carcass of the enemy he defeated. People are lacking nourishment and strength simply because they’re running from their assignment. Their assignment is to bring defeat to these powers of darkness that are taunting the armies of the living God.
It’s a spiritual yes on our part that just says, «I will not back down from this. I will not back down,» and somehow that yes positions us to be nourished. Most people want to be nourished before the war. He says, «You get nourished in the war.» So here we have Samson nourished from honey that was in the carcass of the lion he killed. The Lord put it this way in Psalms 23: David wrote, «There’s a banqueting table; there’s a table set before me in the presence of my enemies.» So there’s a place of nourishment in the place of spiritual conflict.
And here it says, «These giants that are about to terrify this entire nation, keeping us out of our destiny, out of the will of God, out of the purpose of God for us as a nation—those giants will be food to us. We just have to say yes to what God is saying, and in the process of obeying the will of the Lord, taking the word of God, putting it on our lips as Jesus declared over His own future, we take the word of the Lord and we make that proclamation. If we understood the power of God’s word, we would declare it more often. The power of God’s word!
And so here’s the situation where He says, „Listen, they are our bread. We’re going to be nourished in this conflict, and by keeping ourselves from the conflict we were born for, we actually keep ourselves from the strength we were designed for, from the nourishment and the refreshment—the nutrients we were designed to be strong in this season—but the strength only comes in the conflict.“
I’m trying, I’m trying—come on! You and me, we got this. One of the most tragic stories—most tragic stories for me in my reading of Scripture in the entire Bible—is David in his failures, the fall with Bathsheba. The story kicks off with this phrase that says, „In the time when kings went out to war, David was in the palace.“ Someone once said, „If you’re not in the battle you were born for, you’ll face a challenge you have no grace for.“ If you’re not in the battle you were born for, none of us like conflict. It’s not that we delight in conflict; it’s that we delight in our yes to God.
See, the only thing that matters right now for me is what is God saying, because it requires my yes. „Well, I’m not into buildings.“ „Well, I am now. I’m now into buildings.“ Why? Because that’s what He said to do, so I’m now into buildings—and that’s just the way it is. You adjust to whatever He’s saying and you go, „Yes!“ Yes!
And so David, at a time when he was supposed to be expanding Israel’s borders and dealing with the enemies that surround them, instead he’s on his palace rooftop lusting after a woman. So he faces a challenge that he had no grace for because he wasn’t in the battle he was born for. I know all of us feel at times positions of strength and positions of great weakness. A lot of the weakness that many of us have dealt with through the years is self-imposed—self-imposed because we’re trying to get ourselves psyched up for our next phase of our life when actually it’s saying yes to the next phase of our life that helps us with the strength we need.
It’s saying yes to what He’s saying that positions me for the bread. The giants become my food. The conflict becomes my food. See, this kingdom is so completely different than how all of us would naturally think and plan. You get hungry in this kingdom by eating, not by not eating. In this kingdom, you actually rise by going low. In this kingdom, we receive by giving. Things are just different, and adjusting our perspective is critical.
So we’ve got twelve spies here. How many of them were able to taste the bread of defeated giants? Two. Two out of the twelve. Here’s what I want you to catch: the complaining, the no, the resistance to the challenge, to the impossible kept the ten spies from enjoying a meal they were designed for. It’s in the yes. It’s in the yes. I may feel disqualified; I may feel too weak; I may feel a hundred things that would logically keep me from my yes, but it’s in the yes that strength comes—the spirit of the Lord comes upon us in the yes—that makes it possible for us to do what we couldn’t have done five minutes earlier, and we were designed for that. It’s always been about co-laboring.
So the spirit of the Lord comes upon the one who says yes, and then they find themselves able to do what they couldn’t do a moment earlier. That’s the nature of grace. There’s food in the carcass of the lion. You’ll feed from your yes for a long time. I believe the Lord has heightened our awareness—many different prophets and friends of ours have warned us in recent years that if we delay, we will have disobeyed. And I don’t mention that even now as some sort of a threat or fear thing. It’s just, you know, living with the fear of God is a huge thing.
I’ve said no when He was saying yes before, and it doesn’t work out well. It doesn’t work out well. And the Lord has already called us—if you will—we’ve called this new facility an Apostolic Resource Center. It’s a place. You know, it’s not the place on planet Earth. Now, for me, it is the center of the universe, but not everyone agrees with me. We don’t have any station at the United Nations yet, so we’ll hold off on that one.
But the Lord really is raising up a company of people whose simple yes and simple love and service for each other carry a weight into the nations and can explain how a city like Redding could have representatives from over a hundred nations living here. That’s unheard of; that’s not logical, and none of us could have pulled that off. But lest you forget your reason for being here, the Lord is able to do what you and I could never put together. It is His plan, but we’re at a crossroad that requires another yes—and this yes, I’m all in. I’m all in as much as I know how to be all in.
I’m all in because this one requires facing a giant I’ve never had to face before, and when I see it His way, I get hungry because there’s bread—there’s bread there, and it’s not gluten-free either. But your gluten-free people will like it; it won’t hurt you. And I’m just going to trust there’s a lot of butter with that bread because honey, I need about half butter and half bread; that’s the way I do it.
I would just say yes—yes. Say it again—yes. Say it again. Don’t stand and pray; I’m going to pray for you, and then I’m going to bring Chris up in just a moment. We still have more—we have more; we’re going to tag team this one. How many of you are saying yes to this challenge that is before us today for this horizon built? I need to say, you say it out loud with me—yes. Say it again—yes.
Father, I ask that You would supernaturally empower our yes and that You would enable us as a church family to feed luxuriously from the defeated enemies who fall before us because of Your work—not ours. We say yes to You, and we want to fulfill everything we were designed for. I ask for this in honor of the name Jesus. Everybody said, „Amen! Amen!“ Go ahead and sit down, and welcome Chris as he comes.