Bill Johnson - Find Safety, Encouragement, and Strength in the Presence of God
Whenever something comes up, I run; I don’t walk, I run to the promises of the Lord. I run to what God has spoken to me—what has He said to me last? What is it that He has deposited in my heart about this season? Most people would do well if they just returned to the last thing God told them. But sometimes, due to anxiety, fear, and all the junk that goes on in our lives, we tend to drop the things that God has given us.
In 1 Kings 19:5, as he lay sleeping under a broom tree, suddenly an angel touched him and said, «Arise and eat.» He looked, and there by his head was a cake baked on coals and a jar of water. So he ate, drank, and laid down again. This is the first record of angel food cake in the history of the planet, which is an amusing comparison with demons filling the pigs, creating deviled ham. So we’ve got plenty of recipes in the Bible. Apparently, we don’t always go from glory to glory.
In verse 6, again he looked, and there by his head was a cake baked on coals and a jar of water. He ate, drank, and laid down again. The angel of the Lord came back a second time, touched him, and said, «Arise and eat, because the journey is too great for you.» So he arose, ate, drank, and went in the strength of that food for 40 days and 40 nights as far as Horeb, the Mountain of God. The Lord took this moment for Elijah and intensified the feeding program because it would be followed by a season with no food. Now, seasons of no food are never punishment; they are to help us refine our focus and rediscover what He’s already fed us.
If He is silent, it’s because He has already spoken. Some of you grew up in homes where punishment was just the silent treatment, and it’s hard not to project that onto the Father. Thus, it’s automatic for us to think we’ve done something wrong. Certainly, if someone is living in rebellion and known sin and refusing to repent, there’s another issue. However, when we live to serve and honor the Lord with everything we are and everything we have, and there’s silence, He wants us to revisit our history.
There’s something unique about the testimony of the Lord. When the Lord has spoken to you through Scripture or when there’s been healing or deliverance, it doesn’t matter what it is; when the Lord is active in our lives, it creates a testimony. A testimony is a living entity; it’s alive! I’ve never been able to describe it well, but I just know that it never dies. Throughout eternity, everything He has ever done for any person will be actively alive, proclaiming His nature, greatness, and covenant.
So when you and I have a history with God in Scripture, and we have the Lord meet with us in certain life situations, whether we’re looking for direction, something positive like a promotion, or navigating a crisis, it doesn’t matter. In those moments, we read and He begins to feed us. History is created there—underline it, mark it, do something so that you can revisit it. If you’ll revisit with affection—listen to me carefully—if you’ll revisit the moment, you aren’t conjuring up, nor trying to control or manipulate God; you’re just coming in with thankfulness for the God who met you at your Burning Bush. When you revisit it once again, something gets reignited; that’s right! It’s as alive now as it was 20 years ago when it happened.
If we can learn to steward our moments and realize that anytime we come into a place of silence, all He is doing is helping to direct our souls into where His voice is still active—in what He has already said and what He has already done. So, He directed me to this portion of Scripture, and I realized in my reading that He was giving me enormous amounts of spiritual food. The Bible says that we live not by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. We live literally because He speaks; we live because He talked it into us.
I recall a guy who once told me, «I get so much from one verse in the Bible that I just don’t need to read anymore.» As I looked at my screen, I thought, «You’re an idiot!» Can you imagine going into the world’s best restaurant ordering Wagyu beef (if you’re a vegetarian, this doesn’t work, but just pretend you’re a meat-eater!)? You sit down to order that Wagyu beef, perfectly cooked. You slice the meat, take the first bite, and angels begin to sing all around you. Their wings flapping, out of your innermost being comes a new song—a new song for a new season, probably in languages you’ve never spoken before. Can you imagine taking that one bite and going, «That was so good I don’t need another»?
By the time you finish, you’re trying to figure out how to get the next one! When you taste of His goodness, there’s no limited involvement; there’s only abandonment. When you taste and see that the Lord is good, you want to dive headfirst into the pool of His goodness to experience everything you can because it’s the one thing that really matters. I remember as though it were yesterday, how He spoke hour after hour, directed me to this passage of Scripture, and I realized, «Okay.»
That night was followed by the 40 days; if you think you’ve done something wrong, you’ll look for problems. If you realize His nature, you’ll look for His presence. I remind you; He said, «I’ll prepare a table for you in the presence of your enemies.» There is grace for every moment—more than enough! He’s extravagant; He’s not wasteful, and He made sure to pick up all the loaves and fish that weren’t eaten, because He doesn’t waste!
I believe God can trust you with abundance if you’re not wasteful. But some people display their wealth by their waste; it’s not good stewardship. You never have so much that you can waste. Because He has set His love upon me, therefore, I will deliver him. Who does the deliverance come from? It comes to the people who set their love on Him. I don’t want to twist the meaning of this, so again, do everything to resist any kind of guilt, shame, or whatever. To me, this is an invitation by God to learn what it means to fix the affection of our hearts, to be anchored in Him continuously.
He makes a point for a reason: because He set His love on me, «I deliver him.» I know when I’m home, I tell my wife I love her many times a day, often during a meal. It’s going to be repeated frequently, but I reset. I’ve already set my love on her, but I reset. In Acts chapter 2, it says they continually devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, breaking of bread, prayer, and fellowship. They continually re-upped the contract, re-signed the contract.
There is something about this passage that provokes me because He has set His love upon me; therefore, I will deliver him. There’s something about the ongoing, I hate to reduce it to a discipline, but if that’s what it takes, do it! The ongoing resetting of our affection for Him throughout the day—if you need it, set an alarm to remind you!
There’s something about this; He’s such a lover that He’s drawn you. I’ve talked about this for years, but at night, going to sleep, I turn my affection towards Him. When I go into a difficult situation, I’ll stop, turn my affection toward Him until I sense His presence resting upon me. It’s not that He wasn’t there before, but something happens; either He comes or I become aware. I don’t care what it is; I like it. Turning my affection towards Him makes something happen in that moment where there is a manifest presence of God upon me for whatever environment I walk into.
I’ve told you before that there was a grocery store I used to shop in—it had occultic stuff there too, but I loved to shop there. I remember the owner taking me aside one day; before I walked in, I would just stand at the door and turn my affection toward the Lord, make sure I could sense the Spirit of God resting upon me. Then I would walk in and just shop. I wouldn’t do anything different than anyone else, but the owner took me aside one day and said, «Bill, something is different when you walk in the room.» That was because of the manifest presence of God resting upon me.
This is what He’s saying: «Because you set your love on me, therefore I will deliver him.» So, I pray right now that each of us upgrades that resetting of our heart’s affection for Him—not just reduced to a discipline, but the increasing passion of the Lord would become our passion. I remember a prophetic word I heard, oh goodness, probably in 1972, before I was married in '73. I remember sitting in a service in Bethel Church at the old location, and this woman prophesied. She said, «If you long for me as I have longed for you, you will be satisfied.»
What does it mean to set your love on God? It means you’ve received His love. Do you know that Scripture says we love Him because He first loved us? When I love Him, I am only loving Him back with what He first gave me. When I opened my heart to receive His love, He gave me the capacity to love Him back. It’s strange in scripture that we see instruction for the husband to love the wife and for the wife to respect the husband. Why? Because if the husband does a good job loving the wife, she doesn’t need to be commanded to love in return.
The point is carried on in the illustration of Christ and His church—the husband and the wife. Because He has set His love upon me, therefore, I will deliver him. I will set him on high because he has known my name. I’m not sure what that means, but my mind goes quickly to being seated in heavenly places. That particular passage about being seated in heavenly places with Christ is a wonderful truth.
The problem I have is it often gets reduced to a point of theology and never becomes an experience. Heavenly places are supposed to be a place from which we think and from which we see. It’s not a mind-over-matter thing; it’s that our love runs so true with Him. The ongoing resetting of our hearts of affection for Him becomes so continual that we not only have the point of theology—accurately, we are seated in heavenly places—but we actually think and see from that place.
Because our burning heart of affection for Him and His burning heart for us brings us into such a state that our perception changes. Everything changes! It’s that person who can say to the disease, who speaks life into a situation. John G. Lake discovered this when he held a disease in his hand, put it under the microscope, and watched it die. Not everyone could do that. Why? Because not everyone has life flowing from them continuously!
If you take a garden hose and put it in polluted water, whatever is in that puddle is going to leak into the hose. The only way to keep the inside of the hose unaffected is to ensure that before you put it into that contaminated stuff, the water is turned on. If there’s a continual flow through the hose, you can put it in any environment, and it won’t get infected.
We have people setting up barriers of protection around themselves because they don’t have enough flowing out. You get the stuff flowing through you, yielded to Him—not for the sake of power, but because of love. When you’ve set your heart of affection on Him, suddenly there’s so much flowing from us that it starts to change the atmosphere and the environment we walk into. We’ve been called into this for this season. This is a season of advancement.
Alright, we’re getting close to the end. That’s right, verse 14 again! Look at it in your Bible: «Because he has set his love upon me, therefore, I will deliver him. I will set him on high.» It’s actually a place of safety, in a sense, unreachable; by the way, Scripture teaches pretty clearly that we are out of reach of the enemy but not out of sight.
That’s why He prepares a table for us in the presence of our enemies. You’re out of reach, but you’re not out of sight. Why? I think the Lord loves to torment the devil; that’s just my thought. I think He enjoys it! You know what? When you’re sitting at the table and the enemy is all around you, what is your attention focused on?
If you’re in a situation where you feel pressured, if you refine your focus, you’ll find that table of fellowship. He prepared a table before me in the presence of my enemies. If all you see is the enemy, then you need to readjust. Get back to what God has said about your life—find the table of communion. It’s in that table of fellowship with God that we find our place of great strength, great confidence, great life, and great health.
Don’t ever underestimate peace because it’s the manifestation of His mind over you. The peace of God is a manifestation of His mind affecting your environment because He’s not nervous about anything. If you’re anything like me, you’ve had the ability to make a mountain out of a molehill, taking something simple and making it very complex.
What happens is that many of us, as we walk with the Lord, tend to exaggerate the size of our problems to feel justified in our fear. We exaggerate the size of our problems so that our anxiety seems logical. We need to read our Bibles—that’s what we need to do!
Let’s read the Scripture together, Psalm 23. How many of you memorized this, maybe even as a child? It’s probably the most well-known portion of Scripture on earth! It is quoted, and whenever a TV show depicts a funeral, the priest often quotes at least part of this Psalm, and for good reason! The problem is that we’re too familiar with it.
Some of the richest things, I often come across in my readings, and I’ll pray: «Lord, help me to read this for the first time again.» Sometimes, just simplifying things or changing to a different translation helps me. How many of you have written something and, when you were finished, you proofread it and everything looked perfect? But then someone read it and said, «Hey, you forgot a word here!» You could read it on the page, but it wasn’t actually there.
That’s why God gave us editors—to help us not look foolish! But sometimes, we do that automatic reading thing; familiarity causes us to skip over things that we really need to hear as though it were the first time. So, I pray today would have that effect on you as it’s having on me.
Psalm 23:1: «The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.» Oftentimes for us, we don’t have a financial problem; we have a lordship problem. The issue of lordship—the Lord is my shepherd—is where this begins. It doesn’t ignore that there’s conflict, that there’s warfare, that there’s evil, that there’s darkness; it doesn’t ignore any of that. It just gives us insight into how He takes us through that process—not for defeat, fear, or anxiety, but for triumph, so His name may be exalted and we may be strengthened.
«The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.» We are the worst at diagnosing our own problems and circumstances. There are many who think they have relational problems when, in reality, they have lordship problems. There are many who struggle with fear and anxiety, and that’s only due to the absence of lordship.
It’s if I assume that—I can take any small problem and make it so large that I forget who Jesus is. No problem looks big in the face of the One who defeated everything on our behalf. Amen? In the face of the Lord, «The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.»
Sometimes the Lord yokes us together with others—perhaps in a work context, maybe in family situations. When you’re yoked with someone, the yoke only hurts when you try to go a different direction than they’re going. When you try to pull away, that’s the pain. The Lord is actually using the circumstances around us to teach us to walk like Jesus. Oftentimes, the pain we feel, which we are so certain is someone else’s fault, is actually a lordship issue.
You can go home now! The Lord is my shepherd; the Lord—the master, the ruler, the benevolent, kind, caring leader—directs my life. I’ll tell you, my greatest weakness over the last 40 years, embarrassing as it is to say, is that I assume I know the will of God in a matter. It’s never a choice between something evil and something good, or something moral versus immoral, honest versus dishonest; that’s not it.
The issue is doing the right thing that God has directed or hoping that He’ll bless a good thing. He’s such a great father sometimes; He covers me. He’ll let me do something in His name that He wasn’t a part of, and He says, «Yeah, it was close.» He’s just that kind of father, and I’m so thankful for that because He’s saved me from a bunch of dumb stuff. But other times, He just leaves me hanging, not as a punishment, but to say, «Son, if you can feel the pain of the moment you’re in, it’ll help your memory next time you’re in that situation where you think you already know what I want from you.»
Does that make sense to anyone else? I feel like I know what I should do, seeing what He’s done before, so obviously, that’s what He wants, but that’s not always the case. It’s that assumption that trips me up.
I receive a lot of encouragement from David’s life; I think his story speaks to me the most. There were times he might have forgotten to pray or sought the Lord on the most obvious details. He would pray for things I wouldn’t even think to pray for because I just assumed, «Well, this is what God wants,» and He is Lord—He’s the King of Glory, the Lord of all Lords. He is my Savior, a benevolent dictator, a kind and perfect Father; He’s loving and empowering, but He is Lord.
He is never to be forgotten. He is absolutely Lord, and every knee will bow and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord; that moment, that day is coming. But we have the privilege of doing that every day of our life. He starts this Psalm by describing the condition of a disciple. It doesn’t mean that when it says «I shall not want,» it doesn’t mean I’m not going to have another need tomorrow. It doesn’t mean I won’t have a difficult decision to make; it doesn’t mean any of those things.
It doesn’t imply that if you have a problem in your life, then Jesus isn’t Lord. That’s the opposite! This Psalm describes how to live life in such a way that, regardless of your circumstances, you always come to a place of breakthrough because Jesus is Lord. Notice in the Psalm, He says, «For My name’s sake.» Every victory you and I experience, all of creation celebrates Jesus for your victory. Why? Because they see His plan worked!
Romans 8 talks about all of creation groaning and travailing. You know, I mentioned a meeting where I said, «Someone needs to get the Hallelujah chorus so that when your phone rings, it’s a moment of celebration.» So that night, someone had the Hallelujah chorus as their ringtone!
The Lord is looking for one simple thing: our acknowledgment of His Lordship. It’s not complicated; it may be hard, but it’s not complicated. Jesus is Lord, and in that place, there is such rich fulfillment, enabling you and me to stand in the face of adversity, difficulty, challenges—whatever we might face—and say, «Because He’s my shepherd, I lack nothing.»
In that context, we can testify of His goodness in our life: «The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.» He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside still waters; He restores my soul. The word «soul» here is used over 750 times in the Bible, often describing us as complete—spirit, soul, and body. So when He says, «He restores my soul,» it means He restores everything about me to health again. Sign me up for that one!
He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me. Here’s one of the most important things I saw in that particular season; I’ll be honest: I was sick, waiting for that word of the Lord. I kept waiting for the clarity that would set everything right for me, but His silence—whenever He’s silent—is not punishment; it’s because He has already spoken, and His silence helps you find what He’s already said.
It’s not the silent treatment. He’s a gracious Father; everything is from love. I was hoping to receive that word and looking for someone to call or help me out of that tough spot. Many people came to pray with me, and it was wonderful, but there was never that breakthrough word; it just didn’t come.
All that came was overwhelming peace. After, I could say two things: Bold faith stands on the shoulders of quiet trust. Bold faith stands on the shoulders of quiet trust! What He was looking for in me was not an expression of bold faith but a quiet trust. He was trying to build something deeper in me.
Whereas I had been striving to illustrate and demonstrate bold faith, He wanted to develop a resting in me that would result in quiet trust being the foundation for another level of bold faith. Does that resonate with anyone?
Here’s the main deal: «Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.» I realized there are measures or manifestations of His presence that you can only find in the valley of the shadow of death. He manifests Himself differently in different contexts and situations, revealing an aspect of His presence you can only find there.
Why would He take you through the valley of the shadow of death? Because He believes in the work He’s done in you. He’s confident in the great work that He’s completed in each one of us. He’s confident enough to trust us in perilous situations. If the new creation created inside of our hearts when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ were not a true reality, He wouldn’t put us in that environment; we’d be devoured in a heartbeat!
But He enables us to walk through those situations. He doesn’t create evil or darkness, but He wants to take us through. The longest way through a trial is to do it apart from the lordship of Jesus. The quickest way through a trial is with Jesus as Lord. There’s only one shortcut: Jesus is Lord.
«For I know the thoughts that I think toward you,» says the Lord—thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Look at it again: «I know the thoughts I think toward you,» says the Lord, «thoughts of peace, not of calamity, to give you a future and a hope.»
That verse is a broad-reaching promise; it’s often quoted by preachers and rightly so. It’s one of those gems tucked away in a difficult context. I’m so thankful for this decree that the Lord makes: «I know the thoughts I think towards you—they’re not thoughts for your calamity; they’re for your blessing!»
Imagine being carried away captive, unwillingly bound and taken to another nation, subservient to a ruling class of people. You are prisoners there, and all you can see are restrictions, the restraints, the problems, all you remember is what you left behind—the promises you had over your life that didn’t come to pass. The Lord steps into that absolute chaos and says, «I want you to know what I’m thinking about. I’m thinking really good thoughts about you!»
It’s about your welfare and prosperity! I daydream about you; I think about these moments that are difficult for you. But if you’ll take just a moment, you’ll rediscover the promise of the Lord. I remind you of that Psalm, «I prepare a table before you in the presence of your enemies.» What is the table? The table is a place of exchange, a place of fellowship, a place to eat—nourishment to strengthen you.
The Lord says, «I prepare this personal strength and personal encounter place in the midst of your enemies.» Oftentimes, we’re overly mindful of what’s wrong. We have lost sight of the fact that He placed a table right in the middle of the most unexpected place.
Again in Jeremiah 29, «I know the thoughts I have towards you—thoughts of your blessing, of your prosperity, bringing you into wholeness.» He does not want you to miss a thing; He’s bringing you back!