Bill Johnson - Obstacles to Breakthrough
You existed this far away from the very thing you prayed for, but you didn’t recognize it when it was given to you. I always grew up thinking that whenever he talked about the Discerning of Spirits, it was the ability to recognize a demon, and that’s actually not what the scripture says. It’s discerning the spiritual, and Paul talks about it elsewhere. He says coming to know one another after the spirit. So much of what we are asking for in God actually requires discernment to recognize because it comes in familiar shape. How many of you were part of the weekend? You were able to be there? Oh, great, great! Glad, glad, glad! It was great fun for all of us. Special thanks to Eric and Candace and their amazing team. My goodness, they put it together; I was impressed! All right, well, we have good stuff in store. Did you like that video, the Bethel album, the new album? It’s the first live album since 2012, so four years. There are 13 different worship leaders on this one; it’s live, of course, recorded here, 16 new songs, and a couple spontaneous ones. Somebody’s trying to deceive me because it says 14, but we’ll just talk. Let’s find out whose handwriting this is; we’ll have a little conversation. So, it’s better than you thought; it’s 16 brand new songs. Anyway, it’s just outrageously good, and we are so thrilled with what God is raising up here. I want to give one to a single mom right over here; you’re the first one firsthand I saw. I’m so sorry, and Merry Christmas to you. Back to a first-time visitor goes the other one, the first hand I saw. Can you catch? Good! Because I can throw. You’re good; you saved that man’s life in front of you, so I’m very glad for that! We do believe in healing, but I don’t like it forced.
There was a new family that just moved to town; their son came to Sunday school, but he seemed upset. His teacher asked him if anything was wrong. The boy replied no, that he was going to go fishing, but his dad told him he needed to go to church instead. The teacher was very impressed with the boy’s parents and asked the boy if his father had explained to him why it was more important to go to church than to go fishing. The boy said yes, he did. My dad said he didn’t have enough bait for both of us. So, that’s—don’t repeat that! Do not repeat that! All right, I want—we’re going to read out of two portions of scripture today. The first one will be John chapter 7, and the second one will be in Luke chapter 4. So if you want to—we’re going to read first out of John 7, put a piece of paper in John or Luke 4, and we’ll get to it in a few minutes.
I want to start by telling you what my heart is, what I’m aching for, what I’m burning for. That’s to see yet another level of breakthrough for hometown victories. Hometown victories is a phrase— I don’t know who it was; somebody on our team kind of coined the phrase to represent the miracles that we see on a weekly and daily basis, often for those who visit and come to the healing rooms on Saturday, to be part of the life of the church for a few days up to a few months. The miracles that are seen constantly—to see the people that are here day in and day out who are the heart of this church family— to see those miracles increase for them as well. We’ve had some real rough situations in recent months and years, and I believe there are biblical answers. This is a challenge to examine because whenever you uncover a truth, they all work together in tandem, and whenever you uncover one of those principles, it’s easy for someone who’s experienced loss to look at that principle and then do the guilt-shame thing. How many of you understand that’s not the real effect of truth? The Bible says you will know the truth; the word «know» there is the word to experience. You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. The real evidence that we have come to see scripture for what it’s saying is that there’s liberty, there’s freedom, there’s empowerment, there’s enablement. That’s the evidence that we see clearly. Anything short of that is not clear. It’s not clear truth.
I’m working against something today. I have theologian friends—one of them, I’ve heard him use the phrase «pastoral theology,» and it’s not used as a negative term. What it basically means is, as pastors, we are put into situations where we need to encourage and comfort people who have suffered loss or disappointment, tragedy, crisis. Everybody’s asking why, and sometimes as pastors, we are put into a position to give an answer for something that God is not answering. Whenever you do that, the best you can do is create a clone, create a copy of the genuine. We have such high value around here for revelation, for understanding what he said in His word—not in addition to scripture, but what he said in the word. We have a value for perceiving truth that sometimes we don’t have as high a value for mystery as we need. Mystery is as important as revelation because mystery is where your trust is proven, and the life of faith and the life of trust is more than believing for a breakthrough. Sometimes the life of faith is to endure something you can’t explain and have no control over, and both facets of that kind of faith are essential. In fact, I tell you what; there isn’t this thing called maturity apart from that element of trust in the mystery.
As pastors, sometimes we are with people that have suffered loss, and we’re fighting hard to come up with answers. Some of the answers that I’ve heard through the years are just downright stupid. You know that God needed another little angel in heaven? Well, that’s just dumb; He doesn’t need anything. It’s just, you know, sometimes we’re fighting for answers so much to try to console people, and we just say stupid things. Other times, we say things that are close to the truth, but they’re not, and sometimes we actually say the truth. Just to put you all at ease here, does this make sense to you? There’s kind of a pressure to connect the dots, and sometimes the dots need to stay unconnected. Sometimes they just need to stay connected, and it’s legal for you to ask the question why. To be honest, I stopped asking why quite a few years ago. I don’t remember the last time I asked why, and it’s worked well for me—adopt it if you’d like—because I found asking why doesn’t mean I’m going to get an answer.
But asking why sometimes leads us into make-belief solutions. People will come to unbiblical answers, and that’s why it’s called pastoral theology. It’s something that’s not totally true, but we hope it’ll bring comfort in the moment. I don’t know that any pastor ever thinks that through; it’s just—we’re scrapping, we’re grappling for solutions because we’re with friends that we care for, that we love, and they’re in pain. Sometimes the best thing to do is just be present and not be talking. Sometimes the thing that’s needed most is just an arm to complain, whine, cry, criticize—do anything you need to do. I’m not going anywhere because you believing what I have to say is not why I’m here. I’m here because you’re a friend, and sometimes that’s what we need the most.
What I’m trying to deal with is I’m trying to butter you up for some truth. What I want to do is I want to take three or four weeks to just examine biblically why sometimes people don’t get healed. It is not going to be a thorough study; I don’t have that much insight. I’ll just give you what I have, and we’ll work with that till I get more. But I want to pull some things out of the word that show biblically why sometimes there isn’t a breakthrough, and familiarity is one of those areas that I want us to start with in John 7.
John chapter 7—actually, you know what? I want to read something to you first. I’m writing a book on the goodness of God, and this is off subject a little bit, but at least it makes sense in my thinking, so I’m going to go with my thinking. I’m writing on the goodness of God, and I have a chapter on preventing a civil war. The civil war, honestly, is between believers over the definition of the goodness of God. Everybody has to believe he’s good because the Bible says so, but the way it’s defined varies so dramatically—from God giving cancer to one person to teach them spiritual lessons to, on the other extreme, God is no longer judge; he’s no longer, you know—I mean, it’s just bizarre!
We have to stay to the word, and here’s what I want to read to you, and I’ll try to explain it afterward. Most every believer confesses that God is good; we have to; it’s in the Bible. It’s not the conviction of his goodness that threatens us; it’s our definition of his goodness that has brought much debate, sometimes conflict and turmoil, into the family of God. If he is as good as some claim, it will require massive change in how we do life. Instead of creating doctrines that explain away our weakness and anemic faith, we actually have to find out why the greater works than these have not been happening in and around our lives. Much like the Pharisees who saw Jesus as a threat to their positions of power and influence, many leaders feel threatened over a shift in theological positions that imply we’ve not been as successful in ministry as we could have been.
The fight to protect the sanctity of our history has kept us from a more significant future. The last phrase is really the reason I wanted to read that to you: the fight to protect the sanctity of our history. There are people who will actually stay with the deception in their family line to protect the memory of their family instead of yielding to Christ to make a difference for following generations. They try to ease something, and sometimes we believe things that just simply aren’t true. It can be as extreme as holding to something that is absolute deception, anti-scripture, but people will hold to it because they’re trying to protect the memory of their parents or grandparents or whatever it might be. Other people will do very similar things with the nature and character of God.
I just want to proclaim to you; I believe the Lord put this on my heart today because he is releasing grace to change things—he’s releasing an enablement, a grace to change what we’ve seen to this point.
So John chapter 7, verse 1: After these things, Jesus walked in Galilee, for he did not want to walk in Judea because the Jews sought to kill him. Now the Jews' feast of Tabernacles was at hand. His brothers therefore said to him, «Depart from here, go into Judea, that your disciples also may see the works that you are doing; for no one does anything in secret while he himself seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world,» for even his brothers did not believe in him.
Here’s an important note to make: I want you to see this; his brothers grew up with him. Now, I remind you, until the age of thirty, there were no miracles demonstrated. He was really good as a brother—probably too good for most of his siblings—but there was not the multiplying of bread; there was not the healing of disease; none of this is happening before he’s 30 years old. And we’ll read in a moment when he gives the inaugural address to the beginning of his demonstration of the kingdom, but in this moment, the disciples have been hearing the report of miracles, and they know that in Judea, the Jews there want to kill Jesus. So what is their counsel to their brother, Jesus? «Go to Judea.»
All I want you to see is this is a very sarcastic comment they are making to Jesus, and they don’t believe that he is who mom thinks he is. All right? It’s possible—we see it throughout scripture. Paul talked about another Jesus; it’s possible for those in Nazareth to know Jesus as the carpenter’s son but never know Jesus as the Son of God. It’s possible to be very familiar with him, but so familiar that you no longer know him as God. Wow!
That realm of familiarity has cost the people of God all through history, and in a few minutes, I’m going to show you two Old Testament stories that Jesus told that exposed actually what happened and why, and it was because they did not have a value for what God valued.
Here in this story, Jesus’s brothers—look at it again, verse 3: «His brothers therefore said to him, 'Depart from here, go into Judea, that your disciples also may see the works that you are doing. No one does anything in secret while he himself seeks to be known openly.'» What are they doing? The brothers are accusing Jesus of seeking to be famous. They’re speaking sarcastically to provoke him to go to Judea, where his life would be threatened. The whole point is they have been this far away from the Son of God for their entire lives. Jesus is the firstborn; he’s 30 years old. They’ve been this close to the Son of God their entire lives, and up to this point, anyway, they completely missed it. They’re this far from the greatest revelation ever given to a person—Jesus is the Messiah; he is the Son of God—this far away, and they missed it their entire lives. Familiarity, knowing Jesus the wrong way, has cost people for centuries.
We could expand that because it’s not just knowing Jesus the wrong way. In the Old Testament, the people of God knew the anointing, that presence, that purpose of God, the power, the demonstration of God’s heart among people. They saw and reinterpreted that the wrong way, and as a result, they missed out.
I want you to look quickly at Luke chapter 4, because of the limited time I’ve got to fly, and then we’ll just try to pick up more in the weeks to come.
All right, in verse 16, it says he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up. As was his custom, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. Verse 18: This is what he read out of Isaiah 61: «The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.» Then he closed the book and sat down.
Let me give you a context for what’s happening. I want to remind you that at this time, Israel has been without any prophets, without any manifestations of glory, without prophetic dreams— that whole realm that Israel was somewhat accustomed to—for 400 years. They have not had that working—no prophets, no dreams, nothing. They have gone without the realization of presence. The realization that you and I experience day after day in our lives. We just turn our hearts to the Lord, and the presence of the Lord just begins to rest and settle on us. That was not manifest in this time.
This is, I think, the greatest spiritual drought in human history—400 years, which is ten generations of spiritual famine. When Jesus comes at this moment, remember he’s one of the citizens in the community; he’s in Nazareth, a small little community, a community without any significance except Jesus grew up there, and it’s his turn. He’s one of the men of the city. They would take turns reading on a Sabbath day. He stood up to read; he opened to Isaiah 61, and he began to read.
But here’s the difference: we know in scripture that Jesus only said what he heard his Father say. We also know in scripture that he only did what he saw his Father do. So here’s a picture I want you to see in this chapter: as Jesus reads the scripture, something happens to the atmosphere in the room because in John chapter 6, he gives an explanation; he says, «My words to you are spirit, and they are life.» My words to you become spirit, and that spirit gives life.
So what happened in the synagogue? They’ve been without a sense of the presence—not only in their lifetime but for ten generations, and Jesus stands up to read Isaiah 61, and he says, «The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,» and everybody in the room starts to realize something is different about this moment. They don’t know what it is; something’s different. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because he has anointed me, and he starts going through the list of the realm of miracles that he is going to be operating in. It’s a very powerful declaration that Jesus makes; it’s actually a declaration of faith.
This hasn’t happened yet; it’s about to happen, and he makes the proclamation that this is about to take place. What you need to see following is we know that Nazareth is known as the city of unbelief, right? It’s where Jesus could do no mighty works because of the unbelief in that city. What you need to know is how they got there because they didn’t start there.
Look at verse 22: It said, «All bore witness to him and marveled at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth.» Okay, look at this again; all bore witness to him. I’ve studied this verse over and over again because I know in The New American Standard, which I love that translation, it says something like «and all spoke highly of him.» I don’t think that represents it well because I want you to picture what’s going on. They’ve got something so profound going on inside of them that they are erupting with affirmative decrees over who this is. So I think the New King James really hits it on the head; it says, «they all bore witness to him.»
So picture this: we’ve got, let’s just say, 50 or 100 people in the synagogue. They’ve never sensed the presence before; they’ve never had words become spirit that gave life. This is the first experience of their life, and they’re sitting there going through the routine that they’ve gone through every week of their lives since they were children. And now he begins to read, and the atmosphere changes. This is what it says; their initial response was they all bore witness to him. Here it is: they all inside of them were shouting, «We’ve waited a lifetime, and here he is!»
And the next phrase says, «And they marveled; they were in awe; they were stunned by the gracious words proceeding from his mouth.» This statement, «gracious words,» is grace-filled words. Grace-filled words: What does that mean? We know the most common definition is unmerited favor, and it’s a great place to start as you study and expand the understanding of what this word grace means. It’s actually the empowering presence of God; it’s that that almost comes alongside of you and enables you to do what only Jesus can do. That’s what grace does; it doesn’t just get you into the kingdom; it enables you to function as the king.
It’s the empowering presence. So picture this: you’re in Nazareth; you’re fishermen, you’re whatever, you know, you’re farmers. You raise animals to eat. You know, just can’t let a Sunday go by without taking a swing at least once, so they’re in the synagogue. They do what they do every week. Jesus begins to read, and they are of no consequence in their heritage, no consequence in their city. But something happens; they start marveling over their own personal awareness that they feel empowered to impact history. There’s an empowerment! They marvel—they’re shocked themselves. They’re marveling over the grace-filled words that seem to energize and bring life to their very being.
And then the next phrase, somebody says, «Yeah, but isn’t this Joseph’s son?» What happened? They were being exposed to the Eternal, and it got reduced to the familiar. Wow! They were exposed to the unlimited grace of God that was sufficient for everything, and it got reduced to Joseph’s son, the familiar. You can picture the people sitting there. If you could imagine, I don’t know what it would be like; I imagine this moment often—sitting in a room with 50 people, and Jesus is reading. You look in the eyes of everybody else, and you realize they probably have the same dumb look on their face that I have on mine, you know, because of the power in this room. The atmosphere has changed, and I feel so encouraged and so purpose-filled, and all of a sudden somebody goes, «Hey, but isn’t that Joseph’s son?»
You just kind of feel everybody backtracking, going, «Of course it is! How dumb I feel! I actually thought for a moment I was in front of the Messiah.» But thank you for bringing me to my senses! Thank you, thank you! When in fact, they just highlighted the familiar, and it cost them the Eternal. They did that in Nazareth, and that’s how Nazareth ended up as the city of unbelief, but that’s not where they started.
Verse 24 says, «Assuredly, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own country.» That verse is stated in reverse or differently from a different angle elsewhere in scripture, for example, it’s quoted—it’s a statement that’s used: «A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown,» which basically means you can have a prophet; he can change, you know, impact people all over the world, but everybody knows him at home, and so he doesn’t have impact there. Here Jesus uses that same concept, and he’s teaching on this principle of honor and how honor actually gives us access to the Eternal.
Honor gives us access to the realms of breakthrough that gifted people—which is everybody in the room—gifted people have to contribute to our lives. Let me give you one more verse, and then we’re going to read through the next two stories. The other verse is in Matthew 10:41, where Jesus makes his statement; he says, «If you honor a prophet in the name of a prophet, you receive a prophet’s reward.» Reward doesn’t mean applause at the end of time; it refers to the breakthrough that the prophet brings to impossible situations. All right, so I want you to think in those terms. When I honor a prophet as a prophet, I have to give him honor according to not his gift, but his favor from God.
I have to honor equal to the favor God has given and gifted him with in order to draw from him what God has put in his or her life. So what happens? Let’s just say the greatest prophet to ever live—a real, genuine man and woman of purity, of power—walks into the room, but none of us recognize who he is, and we just treat him as a good brother. So I give him the honor of a good brother. What kind of reward do I receive? What kind of benefit do I derive from him? I only derive the benefit of him as a good brother in my life, even though he has the ability to stop storms, even though he has the ability to cease famines. Are you with me?
Because of my value for him, and more importantly, I’m not into people worship; I despise that counterfeit of what God has for us. True biblical honor is not flattery; that’s the counterfeit. True biblical honor is the celebration of the Spirit of God’s choice of an individual in the gift he’s given him. And so here we have this ability to celebrate this person, but when I celebrate them for who they are and how they’ve been favored by God, I receive reward, or I receive the benefit that that person brings to the game.
All right, now this is Jesus' sermon. Had it been any one of the apostles, it would have been considered cruel, but here it is: «But I tell you truly, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months, and there was a great famine throughout all the land. But to none of them was Elijah sent, except to Zarephath of the region of Sidon to a woman who was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.»
Bless the children, Jesus! Amen. Bless the children! All right, let’s read through this again. I tell you truly, «Many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months, and there was a great famine throughout all the land. But to none of them was Elijah sent, except to Zarephath in the region of Sidon to a woman who was a widow.» Next verse: «Many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.»
What’s the context for these two illustrations? First of all, I want to draw your attention to the fact that Jesus is talking now about supernatural provision, number one, and healing, and he’s going to illustrate how the grace for those two realms has been operating in Israel’s history since the beginning. But they lived this far away from it because of the absence of honor for the Spirit of God who rested upon a man of God. Because of the absence of the ability to recognize. He would never correct someone unless they failed to use an ability they had—the capacity for recognition. He rebuked the Pharisees once; he said, «You can look at the clouds in the sky and tell when it’s raining.» He says, «You’re hypocrites because you can discern the weather but you can’t discern the seasons.» Why did he rebuke them? Because they had an inbuilt ability to discern seasons. Otherwise, there’s no point of correction; it’s a matter of education, not correction.
In this moment, Jesus points to two stories: Elijah the prophet and Elisha under Elijah. He says, «Let me put this in my terms. Jehovah Jireh, the God of provision, wanted to display his heart to provide for people in the midst of famine, but among his own covenant people, he could not find sufficient honor to release the miracle that needed to be released to his people. So he sought for a condition outside of his own covenant people and sent Elijah to a woman to minister to this widow to bring supernatural supply.»
It’s a great story that the Bible celebrates, but Jesus uncovers why it was to another nation. It was because of familiarity with the prophet in their own nation. Familiarity means I can be this far away from the answer, but I’m clueless as to what’s there. «Isn’t that Joseph’s son?» Or worse yet, «We know that prophet; I knew him before he could before he knew Jesus; he was trouble.» Familiarity strips away the capacity to give honor for the Holy Spirit in his choice of a person.
Sometimes people get angry with me because I don’t get mad at fallen believers, and I don’t want to get into that a lot, but I could, but I won’t. But let me tell you why I won’t. First, I’m not going to forsake a friend even when he’s been dumb. People do things that are just inexcusable, but they’re not unforgivable, and so I don’t want to abandon a friend when they’ve just been dumb. But the second reason, to be really honest with you, this motivates me more than probably anybody in the room would know. I fear God in them.
It doesn’t mean I am not willing to correct or speak into their life. I just—it just means, listen, I have watched the Spirit of God use that individual, which never condones wrong choices. But I do fear the Spirit of God’s choice. I’ve seen him rest upon this individual, that individual, and I’m not going to throw stones. I’m going to serve that individual because I want Samson’s hair to grow back again; I want his hair back again.
Off subject—back to this one—he then moves to the second part of the story, and now it’s not material or financial provision; now the subject is a miracle. And so Jesus is saying to his citizens of his community, Jehovah Rapha, the God who heals, has been so passionate to heal all through the Old Testament, and you existed this far away from the very thing you prayed for, but you didn’t recognize it when it was given to you. Jesus wept over Jerusalem because the prophets were sent to her, and they didn’t see what had been given to them.
How many times did the prophets come with the word, but they just treated them as a familiar friend, or «Oh, you know, so-and-so»? The disrespect or the dishonor that was given to that individual caused them to miss out on divine purpose. And so here God actually sends Elisha, the double portion guy from Elijah’s training, over to a general of an enemy army to bring healing of leprosy instead of healing the lepers in Israel.
I’ve heard people say that just reveals God’s heart for evangelism. No, don’t ever say that; that’s just totally stupid. It’s totally stupid! If I provide Christmas gifts for the neighborhood kids and I ignore my own, you cannot call that generosity; you call that stupidity. People say, «Well, maybe God doesn’t make people sick, but he allows it.» All right, what’s the difference? If I beat my own children up or allow the neighbor to do it, we’ve got to rethink some of the stuff that we’ve tolerated in our theology for decades. It’s absolute nonsense; he either is who he says he is or he’s not.
It’s not one or the other; I mean it’s not in between; it’s just he is or he isn’t. All right, sorry I vented for just a moment. I feel better. I enjoyed it; I did. I feel edified, encouraged, ready to pray for the sick or something. All right, so here’s the strange situation: Jesus says Elisha was actually sent to the general of an enemy army, another nation, to minister healing to him. Why? Because the Spirit of God that rested upon Elisha was not recognized to the degree it needed to be recognized in order for a nation to tap into a healing anointing to destroy leprosy in their midst.
But it was there! We didn’t know it. All through the Old Testament, we didn’t know it was there until now. Now we know the entire time Elijah and Elisha were present, there was both financial and physical healing available, but they didn’t get it because of the absence of honor.
Years ago—well, in fact, I’ll back up; I’ll back up even farther. Benny and I have been married for 43 years this next month, which is a glorious celebration time we will have. We were both raised in generous lifestyles. As a child, I could give anything away. I don’t ever remember a time when giving was a challenge. So I was raised that way, and when we got married, we were very poor, very broke; we made very little money. But we never gave as low as 20% of our income. We always enjoyed the giving, no matter how broke we were. What’s needed, we would just give first. So that’s been our lifestyle.
So the whole issue of giving was something that I learned early on, but it doesn’t mean I learned everything about finances, and I made my share of dumb mistakes. How many of you have realized that if you put things on credit, if you make the minimum payment, in approximately 4,000 years, you can pay that bill off? Some of us have realized that; it’s like omnipresent; it never goes away. It’s just everywhere, and it goes with me everywhere!
There were a lot of lessons I needed to learn, and I still need to learn, but that one area we had down. But what we did experience for the first 25 years of our married life was we really lived hand to mouth. We were always generous; we’d always sow here, sow there. But there was never abundance; there weren’t great seasons of abundance and then challenging seasons. It was just always barely enough and sometimes not enough. But we’d make up for it.
I remember one Sunday night, Benny and I were standing up here somewhere, and friends of ours who have been a dear part of this church forever and a good friend of our family have been personal friends of ours—no position, they weren’t board members or on the board; they didn’t teach a special class—nothing that would make them stand out except we knew them. We knew their life story, and we have watched them for years. It just seemed like everything they touched turned to gold.
You know, they had that Midas touch. I mean, they would try to help a family member that was in trouble, and they would put some money into their business, and it would so prosper. They’d get a whole bunch more back than they ever intended; it was just a gift to help! It just seemed everything they touched was blessed.
So they were walking right at the back over there, and Benny and I saw them. We had discussed it beforehand; we wanted to have them pray for us. Now remember, they’re not titled people; they’re not board members. They’re not having a prayer line for prosperity or any of those kinds of things. So they were just friends of ours. But here’s the deal: if I have—I don’t have a friend who knows what I’m learning, then I have to experiment. If I have a friend who has experienced it, then I can draft from their experience and have them mentor me.
Much of what I’ve had to learn in recent years, I haven’t known anyone going through the same thing or even asking the same questions, and so I’ve had to just experiment, which means sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. In this particular case, I felt that there was a lesson to be learned. So Benny and I went back. We stood right back over there, and we said, «Hey, we just admire the grace of God that’s on your life, and we believe that if you would pray for us, that God would honor that and bless our lives.»
We just asked them to pray, so I just put my hands on our shoulders. You know, they prayed a very simple prayer. We didn’t shake, scream, cry—run around the building; didn’t fly, didn’t do anything. You know, we didn’t get a new release in our prayer language; nothing like that at all. It’s just a very nice prayer, and I don’t know what happened, but everything has been different since that night.
It wasn’t like waking up in the morning with a big inheritance; it wasn’t that! It was like it was everything was this way, and they prayed, and now everything is this way. I can trace it back; I thought about this in recent years, and I realized it all changed at the moment we gave honor for what the Holy Spirit was honoring them with—and that was an anointing for increase.
And when we recognized it and honored him as the giver of that grace, it changed us. I’m not asking for you to increase honor for me or the team. You’ve honored me so much; I get embarrassed. In fact, I’m embarrassed to talk to you about giving honor. You’re champions at that; that’s not my concern. My concern is the one you’re familiar with, the one sitting in front of you, the one sitting to the side.
Why would I even point it out? Because according to the examples of scripture, it’s possible to have Elijah as your neighbor and starve to death. You can be praying, «Oh God, provide for me, provide!» and he says, «I have Elijah as your neighbor. What are you going to do?» I provided it for you; it’s in the person I gave you! «Oh God, heal my leprous relative. God, we just need a break—the— we know this isn’t your will.» And God says, «I gave you the answer! It’s Elisha, the guy who lives right down the road!»
«Oh, not him! We knew him when he was just a kid. Couldn’t be him!» And that’s the answer! The answer is, «I, God, said I sent you the answer, the thing you prayed for, the thing you fasted for, the thing you cried out for.» I just put it in a really familiar shape—a real familiar form.
Paul talked in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 about the gifts of the Spirit, and he talks about the need for one of the gifts for discerning of spirits. I always grew up thinking that whenever he talked about the discerning of spirits, it was the ability to recognize a demon, you know, in somebody or recognize that the devil’s involved in this situation or whatever. And it’s actually not what the scripture says; it’s discerning the spiritual.
And Paul talks about it elsewhere; he says he talks about us coming to know one another after the spirit. Yet, instead, we know each other after the flesh. To know one another after the spirit—this is a challenging one because so much of what we are asking for in God actually requires discernment to recognize because it comes in familiar shapes, familiar forms.
The disciples were really challenged after the resurrection because Jesus kept showing up differently than he had appeared to them the entire time he was with them. They had to learn to actually recognize by presence, not by form. When I first went to Toronto, it was overwhelming. I saw 5,000 people in the room; it was overwhelming what God was doing there. It didn’t register. I closed my eyes and I recognized, «Oh, this is the same anointing of breakthrough we’ve been experiencing!»
Actually, I learned to recognize what was happening by presence, not by form. How do you recognize in Elisha that you saw grow up, that you saw quit plowing fields one day to join Elijah’s group, and he’s just the guy who washes Elijah’s hands? How do you ever get him out of that role? «Oh, he’s the guy who washed Elijah’s hands!» How do you ever get him out of that role to where he’s the one who releases the miracle for the healing of leprosy?
How do you get him out of that role? Only by recognizing presence! I think, as a people devoted to worship, if we can just not worship worship, if we can just not worship the vibe of being in a good atmosphere but actually come face to face—there’s something in the presence that assists us in yet another circumstance, and that is to discern the spiritual resting upon a person.
I have had a friend—actually, I didn’t know him well. I had the privilege of having a meal with him; he was a hero of mine. I had a meal with him and my dad a bunch of years ago. He’s at home with the Lord now, but one of my favorite stories is he is walking through the airport with his wife—they’re carrying suitcases—and he stopped. He put his suitcases down, turned to his wife and said, «Honey, just watch over these for a moment.»
A very crowded airport—his wife watches her husband as he circles around, then he goes back. This whole crowd is going this way; he goes way back, circles the crowd, and she watches him as he stops a man that was in that crowd. She watches as he hugs this man, kisses him on the cheek, and they talk for a few moments. Then he comes back, joins his wife, picks up the suitcases, and they continue towards the gate or towards the desk.
His wife says, «Who was that?» And he said, «I don’t know; I just—I when I walked past him, I smelled a fragrance on him I’ve only smelled in the throne room of God, so I knew he was a man of prayer.» You’ve got to be exposed to it here before you’ll recognize it there.
Let’s stand, y’all! All right, I want to learn. I have things in my life that need to be fixed just like everybody else, and I’m really close to some of the most anointed people alive today, and I don’t want them to be a neighbor ever. I don’t ever want them to be the familiar friend that I can fish with only; I’ve got to recognize the fragrance on them that I have only smelled in the throne.
I’ve got to recognize the grace that he would release over people; they actually carry the miracle I need. I’ve cried out to God: «Oh God heal our finances! Turn things around for us! Oh God, we need a breakthrough!» I prayed it for years; I wept before God. I memorized promises; I quoted; I declared. But it wasn’t until I honored who the Spirit of God honored that it was changed. Some things are reserved for that moment.
Some things you just get freely; we have people who come here for a period of weeks or months. Some of them are healthy as long as they’re here. As long as they’re here, their impossible disease just disappears because they’re in an environment. But they came as a guest, and sometimes when you live in it, you don’t realize what’s been given.
So Father, help us again and make it new again. Help us to discern the spiritual, to recognize what you’re saying, what you’re doing. We don’t want to miss our moments. The things that we’ve asked for for years: we don’t want to miss our moments. Thank you! Thank you! Amen! Amen!
I believe that the Lord highlighted this for me today and for the next few weeks because I believe it’s time, and it’s legal for us to expect greater breakthroughs. I feel there’s a grace for this, and if you’ll just—I can’t answer all the questions. I have more questions than I’ve given you answers, believe me. But if we can just ask the questions of the Lord, he will speak to you and show you exactly what to do.
All right, anybody ready for more hometown victories? Amen! Increase the hometown victories!