Bill Johnson - How to Pursue Your Promised Land (Lessons From the Wilderness)
Good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning. An elderly man in Oklahoma called his son in New York. He said, «I hate to ruin your day, son, but I have to tell you your mother and I are getting a divorce. Forty-five years of marriage; that much misery is enough!»
«Dad, what are you talking about?» the son yelled. «We can’t stand the sight of each other any longer,» the old man explained. «We’re sick of each other. I’m sick of talking about it. Call your sister in Hong Kong and tell her!»
Frantically, the son calls his sister, who explodes on the phone: «No, no, no! They are not getting divorced! I’ll take care of this,» she said. She calls her father immediately and screams at him, «You’re not getting divorced! Don’t do a single thing until I get there! I’m calling my brother back; we’ll both be there tomorrow. Until then, don’t do a thing, you hear me?» she yelled as she hung up the phone.
The old man hung up his phone and turned to his wife. He said, «Okay, it’s all set. They’re both coming for Christmas, paying their own way.»
«Yeah, you were nervous for a while there, though,» she replied.
«I know; so was I! When I first read it, I thought, 'Oh, this isn’t good. This isn’t good! '»
«Alright, grab your Bibles, if you would. Open to 2 Corinthians chapter 1. It’ll take me a few minutes to kind of set up where we’re going. We’re going to look at what I personally think is maybe the most important story in the Old Testament and one of the top two or three in the entire Bible.» Paul made a statement about the Old Testament; he said, «These things were written in earlier times for our instruction.»
The story of Israel coming out of Egypt and going into the promised land is the story we’re going to look at. That story is such a strong prophetic decree and invitation for you and me to step fully into the design for our lives. By nature, we are a people of promise.
Now, I know it’s supposed to be a Christmas message because it’s Christmas, so Jesus is the promised one, and he is the promised land, and therefore, it’s Christmas. Alright, so let’s move on!
All of us have an ambition, whether we realize it or not. We are designed to be able to stand before the Lord and hear him say, «Well done, good and faithful servant.» Faithfulness is measured by what you’ve done with promise. The faithfulness of a believer is evidenced, proven, illustrated, and modeled by what we’ve done with his promises.
There’s a carelessness in theology that says, «Whatever God wills to happen is going to happen.» I hear people say it often, «If God wants it to happen, it will happen.» That’s actually not true. The Bible says God’s not willing that any should perish, but people are perishing.
There are two aspects to the will of God. I don’t want to overemphasize our role, but neither do I want to underemphasize our role. It’s a hard thing to hit in a proper balance, so let me take a shot at it. The scripture makes clear that some things God wants to happen will happen without your obedience or your agreement.
You know, I can just believe it; it doesn’t matter. It’s going to happen! For example, Jesus is going to return. You can vote yes or no; it doesn’t matter. He’s going to come; he’s not waiting for approval.
But there are other aspects of his will that are completely dependent upon our cooperation. Not understanding that causes us to live an inferior lifestyle and then blame everything that doesn’t happen the way we thought it should on the sovereignty of God. The sovereignty of God gets blamed for a lot of stuff that is actually the result of anemic, unbelieving Christians.
Wow! Israel as a nation was given a promise. There were perhaps 2 million Israelites who were held captive as slaves in Egypt. When they were released, I realize that many people come who are not familiar with Biblical stories, and I’m glad for that. So let me just give you a little description. Israel started as a very small group of people, exploded in size, and was very blessed in Egypt, very powerful. But they were viewed as a threat to the political system there. Ultimately, they were enslaved within the nation, with perhaps as many as two million people enslaved.
God raised up Moses to take them out of Egypt into their inheritance, the promised land. Their promised land was a land that was occupied by other nations. These nations would sacrifice children on burning altars; they were involved in some of the most horrific practices ever perpetrated by humanity. God wanted to drive out that evil and give the cities they built, the crops they planted, the vineyards and orchards they planted, and the cattle they raised—all that—as an inheritance to his own people. He gave it to them as a promise.
We’ll go through the story in a moment. The two million people that received the promise didn’t inherit it, which tells us God can give you a promise that you never see fulfilled, but it’s not his fault. What happens is unbelief. Unbelief is the result of fear, and fear is a terrible teacher.
Here’s the thing about fear: fear and humility never work together. Fear and humiliation will, and the crazy thing about fear and humiliation is that people interpret that as humility because they feel less about themselves. They don’t have the hope they once had, and that down position is actually translated as a submissive posture before the Lord. Fear masquerades as wisdom.
Anytime we take a dysfunction in our lives and give it a virtuous name, we give it permission to stay. When fear dictates what a person does with their choices, Israel, as they are going into a land of promises, filled with giants and superior armies, think it’s wise not to pursue what God had promised because they see the armies are way bigger than they are. For them, the conclusion was that it is wise for us to stay put; it would have been better had we not left Egypt in the first place. At least we got to eat meals back there—garlic and leeks and whatever it was they ran through.
So they quickly forgot what slavery was like, and it became more appealing. They actually moved in what they thought was wisdom, but it was dictated by fear. How do you know? Because promise didn’t take them there.
Where are you going in your life that promise isn’t taking you? That’s a great question. Any area of our life that is not being driven by promise is being driven by fear. When the Lord gives us a promise, he actually goes into our future, sees where he’s taking us, and comes back to us with a word that will be necessary to get us there.
That’s the reason Paul instructs Timothy in 1 Timothy 1: «Take the prophecies that have been previously given to you and use them as weapons.» This tells me that when God gives me a promise, it doesn’t mean it’s going to come quickly or easily. There is going to be a conflict between now and the fulfillment, and there are many believers who only know one half of Christian advancement. They only know the half of receiving from the Lord, but they don’t know the half of apprehending, taking by force.
There are two ways of advancing in the Kingdom. One is you receive as a child; it’s a submissive response. It’s in response to a good father who loves to bless and take care of us. I’ve stated it many times; what you need in life will be brought to you. Most of what you want, you’ll have to go get.
There is this indignation that rises up in the heart of people who realize they’ve been planted in the middle of a war and need to apprehend what they were born for. It’s not going to come walking into my life. Thankfully, what we need to survive is brought to us, but what we were born for is on the other side of a fight.
Stewarding the promises of God includes memorizing promises, giving ourselves to what God has said. In Joshua 1:5-9, we are instructed not to fear and to take hold of what God has said, not turning to the right or the left. Giving ourselves completely to the will of the Lord is essential.
The word of the Lord, that whole mandate in those passages, is one of the strongest dictates of my life for the last 50 years. It’s about taking what God has said and declaring it, praying it, confessing it, singing it, doing whatever I need to do. I write it on cards and stick it on the dashboard of my car—whatever I need to do to keep it in front of me so that I don’t lose track.
It’s easy to lose track of what God says is supposed to happen in my life, and then when it doesn’t happen like we think it should, we just say, «Well, it’s the sovereignty of God.» I’d like to suggest that God’s about to upgrade our advancement in promises, but it’s going to be because of a surrender, a yielding, a dying, if you will, to self-will in embracing what God has declared over our lives.
There’s something about saying «yes» to the will of God that gives us grace to fight and to fight well. Take a look at this passage in 2 Corinthians 1:20: «For all the promises of God in him are yes, and in him Amen, to the glory of God through us.»
For all the promises of God in him are yes. The previous verse says this was first preached to you when it was not yes and no, but in him was yes. What is that saying? When they preached the gospel, let’s just say today we preach the gospel of the Kingdom of God to everybody in this room, that gospel is not preached with yes and no. In other words, it’s not given to you as a maybe; this is given as an absolute yes! This is God’s purpose; this is his determination; this is his commitment to you and to me. It’s an absolute yes; it’s not a maybe.
Then he goes on and says this promise is given to you as yes in Christ, and the Amen is provided by us to the glory of God. Come on now. Think about this: there are over 7,700 promises of God in the Bible. A friend of mine, Dick Mills, memorized every one of them in multiple translations just because he could.
That’s a lot of promises to steward. Sometimes you’ll be reading scripture; sometimes you’ll hear a testimony; sometimes a prophet will call you out. It could happen in many different ways where a promise of the Lord just seems to come alive to you. Something rises, an excitement of faith, something is activated in your heart when you see this promise of the Lord. What we do with that moment often determines what we end up with.
The scripture says in Hebrews 4 that Israel didn’t enter into the rest of God, didn’t enter into the promise of God. Listen carefully: because they did not unite the word they heard with faith. They didn’t hear the word of the Lord and join it with faith; they heard the word of the Lord and joined it with fear and said, «No, there’s giants in the land.»
They took the word of the Lord and said, «Wait a minute, that can’t be possible; that is God’s will for our life because look at our condition! Look what’s going on; there’s no way we could defeat that kind of enemy!»
And oftentimes, fear becomes our teacher, and we actually take comfort in fear because it keeps us from the risk that intimidates and scares us. So here he says the promise of God is in him, is yes, and in him, the Amen is given through us to the glory of God.
What’s the point? God declares a promise, but he’s waiting for human agreement. Now, you have to get this. God can do everything on his own, by himself, better than all of us combined. That’s not what he’s looking for. He designed for his will to be done through human agreement.
I’m not saying we control God; I’m not saying that he is somehow answerable to us in any way. I’m just saying it is his heart from the very beginning. He created Adam and Eve, put them in a garden, and said, «Be fruitful, multiply, and subdue the earth.» He brought them into a place of co-laboring with him, so that his will, his purposes, could be done on an entire planet.
When Jesus rose from the dead, he came with the keys of authority and gave them to his disciples, saying, «Now accomplish what I assigned you to do! Disciple the nations! It’s time to recover a planet!»
What is the will of God on Earth as it is in heaven? What is the will of God? «I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.» He didn’t say a token representation of every tribe. What is the will of God? «And the glory of the Lord will fill the earth as the water covers the sea.»
See, the design and the plan of the Lord is so much grander than any one of us could possibly imagine and explain. For the most part, as the body of Christ, we have much greater faith in the return of the Lord than we do in the power of the Gospel.
Wow! If our faith were in the power of the Gospel, we wouldn’t expect Jesus to return to rescue us; it would be the crowning touch on a victorious church! The gospel is enough to transform an individual life; therefore, it’s enough to transform a family; it’s enough to transform a city; it’s enough to transform a nation.
The point is the power of the Gospel is enough. He’s not coming back to die again to upgrade what is possible in our lifetime; the cross is enough!
Now, in that is the promise of God for us to live a fulfilled life. It’s not a fulfilled life in the sense of, you know, boats and planes and mansions; I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about what we were born for. The promised land is actually a representation of us stepping fully into what we were born for—why we’re alive.
Did you know we were designed to work? But work wasn’t supposed to come out of stress! Come on! We were designed to create; we were designed to be productive. Everything about this journey of God for the people of God was that he was bringing them into a place of productivity, of fruitfulness, of increase—that their labor would be breathed on by God and would have an effect literally on surrounding nations.
Israel traveled through a wilderness, and they come into a promised land where they had to plant crops. In the wilderness, manna just appeared on the ground. God takes us through seasons of absolute trust where we have nothing, so that he can trust us with something.
The measure of what he can entrust to us is determined by our level of trust in him. In other words, as I have grown in my trust and dependency on him, I am expanded on what he is able to entrust to me.
Let’s take one more verse, and then I want to try to illustrate this a little bit better. Let’s go to Exodus chapter 23. Actually, I get to speak to you three times in the next four weeks, counting today, so I’m happy about that!
I think I’m going to keep kicking this dead horse until it comes to life; that’s what I’m going to do! I’ve burned for this story for as long as I can remember—the last 50 years I keep coming back to this.
Now let’s get going. Verse 27 of Exodus 23: «I will send my fear before you; I will cause confusion among all the people to whom you come. It will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. I will send hornets before you which will drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before you.»
Here’s our key: «I will not drive them out before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you. Little by little, I will drive them out from before you until you have increased and you inherit the land.»
Let’s read those last two verses again: «I will not drive them out from before you in one year. How many of you have noticed that you have not become fully mature in one year following Jesus? Quite disappointing, isn’t it?
I thought I would grow faster than this! I figured it out; I can’t speed it up, but I can’t slow it down.»
Later, in verse 29: «I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you. Little by little, I will drive them out from before you until you have increased and you inherit the land.»
What’s the point? I’m not going to drive a people out of a city that you are not prepared to occupy.
Now, just think about this; all of this is written for our instruction. Let me try to illustrate. This right here is Egypt. It doesn’t look like it, but trust me, it is! We’ve got maybe two million Israelites that are held captive—prisoners, slaves, excuse me—in Egypt. Long story short, they get released. Pharaoh wants them out of his hair, and they are given instruction to take a lamb, sacrifice it, and put the blood over the doorpost of their home.
As they did, they were released under Moses’s leadership, and he took them out, headed towards the promised land. The first thing they came to was a body of water called the Red Sea.
At the body of water, I read recently that there are parts of the Red Sea that are as deep as 900 feet, if you can imagine. So they come to this body of water, and they don’t know what they’re going to do to get to the other side. What makes matters worse is they see Pharaoh has changed his mind, and he is coming with his armies to kill them.
So they have Pharaoh coming this way, and they’ve got a barrier this way. Moses holds out his rod, the water parts, and the ground is instantly dry, and they walk through.
I’m convinced they would not have walked through two walls of water had there not been Pharaoh and his armies at their rear, motivating them to seek the Lord. They were highly motivated to live a lifestyle of risk, and they walked through the Red Sea. It’s amazing what the Lord will use to get us to respond and actually discover he is good.
So they walk through, they come out the other side, and Pharaoh’s army comes right on their tail. The water closes in and destroys all of them. This is called by Paul «the baptism of Moses.»
So what do we have here? We have the blood of a lamb releases from captivity. The first thing they come to is a baptism—water baptism. «Be baptized!» You don’t have to understand it; just do what he says! And in that baptism, they come out the other side, and they are now starting what could have been an 11-day journey into their land of promises. It ended up being 40 years because of their rebellion.
And rebellion was measured—listen to me—rebellion was measured by their unwillingness to unite faith with the word that God gave them. Remember, our faithfulness is seen in what we do with his promises.
The life of entering a promised land is not a prophetic picture of going to heaven; it’s a picture of living in a kingdom lifestyle on this earth, in this body, as humans, limited and restricted, living the kingdom lifestyle that Jesus modeled for us.
Jesus is the promised one; we know that. But he showed us our inheritance. Everything he did, he modeled for us to show us what was available for everyone who was in Christ.
He illustrated the inheritance; he illustrated he is the person called the promised land. When you have a neighbor living under torment and are burdened and concerned for them, and you see the mental anguish under which they live, you set your heart to seek the Lord for an anointing to see breakthrough.
You fast, you pray, you cry out to God; you read the scriptures, you study, you pray, you meditate, you pray specifically for that neighbor. Over time, you have the opportunity to pray for them, and you watch God heal and bring them into a sound mind. Guess what you just received? Your inheritance!
The anointing to set captives free is a part of your inheritance. It must be pursued; it doesn’t always get brought to you and laid in your lap. Thankfully, there are some things that come that way, but a lot of what we ache for has to be pursued.
So Israel now goes through this water baptism, and before they go into the promised land, there is a river. The Holy Spirit is referred to as a river in John chapter 7. So I’d like to suggest they have to go through a second baptism, and this baptism is not a still body of water; it’s a river.
It’s a baptism in the spirit. Remember, these things were written for our instruction. God is trying to give us insights into the principles and processes for us to fully step into our design—why we were created, why we are alive, why he has allowed us to live at a time like this.
So they come to that second body of water. Two and a half tribes live on the wilderness side because the land was suitable for their gifts and what they felt they were supposed to do—they were good with cattle, and the land was perfectly suited for that.
So they chose to live—two and a half tribes out of twelve—chose to live on the wilderness side of the river. Nine and a half tribes went through and lived on the other side. Israel was divided by a river; the church is divided by a river.
The body of Christ has people living on both sides of this river called the Holy Spirit. They were both required to go to war and fight for those on the other side of the river. They were not allowed to set up their own camps, their own purposes, their own independence; they were required to fight for each other.
So here’s Israel: they come to the banks of this river, and the waters part once again, and they go through into what’s called the promised land.
What happens for many believers is that we go through this baptism, if you will, a baptism in the Holy Spirit; we speak in tongues, we pray in tongues—which I just can’t emphasize enough, it’s a glorious gift that God gives us to bring strength and pray effective, powerful prayers.
But many Christians come to this side of the baptism and spend their entire lives on the banks of this river, praying in tongues, not realizing that that baptism was to give them access to an inheritance, to taking territory. It wasn’t just for keeping me comforted; it was that I would be comforted so that I have the confidence and faith to apprehend that anointing to set the mentally ill free.
That anointing to restore broken families, that anointing to set up businesses that prosper and thrive and bless entire communities—that anointing that God has opened for us. He gives us access to these things through promise, and the Bible is filled with these things from beginning to end because he is a good father.
This baptism, if you will, into the second baptism—the Holy Spirit baptism—is positioning us or posturing us to be able to see what we want to take hold of in our life. What was I born for? What am I designed for?
There are so many people who have great evangelistic anointings, but they say, «Well, I just don’t have a gift of healing.» Well, guess what? You need it for evangelism! Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 12; he taught on the gifts of the Spirit to a group of people—the Corinthian Church—that had been accustomed to serving multiple gods.
So the emphasis is on one Spirit manifesting through people in all these different ways. Great—the most profound teaching on the gifts of the Spirit in all of history is there! 1 Corinthians 12, 1 Corinthians 14 starts with this verse: «Pursue earnestly spiritual gifts.»
The point is the teaching didn’t release the gifts; the teaching let you know what was on the shelves of the grocery store. The ache that you have in your heart to see mental illness healed is on aisle three! You must pursue earnestly, lustfully, recklessly the thing that you feel you were born for.
You’ve got to see that neighbor healed; you’ve got to see that person you work with healed! That family member—you’ve got to see the deliverance come, the family restored, the business established on good footing! You’ve got this ache in your heart.
Why is the ache there? It’s the Lord motivating you much like Pharaoh’s army motivated Israel. The Lord is putting the ache in you so that you know what you have legal access to.
«Well, I don’t want to pursue the wrong gift!» It’s impossible! It’s not possible! If it’s in the book, it’s yours. If it’s in the book, it belongs to you! You have the Spirit of God living in you as a believer, and he has all the gifts, and they are for you to function in to help display.
Now listen carefully: When you pray for that mentally ill friend, and they get healed, what you’ve done is you’ve introduced them to your inheritance, which now is their inheritance. For those of you who have faced crises or tragedies in raising a child or really difficult situations and you walk through that season—taking those promises of God, crying out to the Lord, spending time before him, and seeing that healing in that child—that broken condition that just devastated them, and you see them come out of that? Guess what?
That’s your inheritance! You now can give it away. You are now positioned to minister to other people to introduce them to what God gave you. You pursued earnestly spiritual gifts; you pursued earnestly your inheritance that was identified by Godly hunger.
Godly hunger reveals inheritance—so good! Godly hunger! It’s the reason Jesus says four times in three chapters, «Whatever you ask for, I’ll give to you.» He’s acknowledging the father is going to ignite a passion in you for something, and it may seem unreasonable to you; it may not be in your family line; you may have never seen it before, but something is awakened in you that will match a promise that God has given.
That which is awakened in you is matched by a father who says, «Whatever you ask for, I will give to you.» Our faithfulness is measured by what we do with the promises of God, and this whole concept of the promised land is really found in the person of Jesus. Does that make sense?
It really is his perfect theology. When we see that the scripture says Jesus had more joy than all of his companions around him combined—that’s actually what the scripture says! He has more joy than everyone around him put together. Amen!
That’s not the Jesus I see in movies; the Jesus I see in movies is more like Spock! But the scripture describes him living in the atmosphere of Heaven, which is an atmosphere of joy! He’s received a promise; he lives in the reality of this promise, even before the cross! He lives in the reality of that promise, and he is illustrating what you and I have a legal right to ache for.
But it’s wisdom to realize I have the ability to ache for, to pursue, to dream of, and to pray for the massive breakthrough, but I also need the wisdom to know most of the time it’s little by little.
It’s a progressive advancement in all things Kingdom! I don’t know if that makes sense to you. Let me put it this way: The church in the book of Acts! Jesus used 50 days between the death of Christ and the resurrection, and Pentecost—Pentecost is the great outpouring of the Holy Spirit!
Jesus appeared and reappeared for 40 days, which leaves 10 more days. The 120 spent time together, praying, seeking God. This was a group of people—the 11 remaining disciples—who couldn’t get 20 feet away from Jesus without competing with each other and arguing over who was the greatest.
So when you have 120 of them praying together for 10 days, when it says they were of one accord, you see the first miracle; you see the first that had to get some sorting out—a 120 of them in a room praying together! They had to get some stuff sorted out because they all thought they were better than the other, and they came into this place of humility, tenderness, brokenness.
Jesus has resurrected, and they prayed, and they were faithful for 10 days. The crowning touch of those 10 days of prayer was the explosive breakthrough that God brought on the day of Pentecost.
The Christian life is faithfulness, faithfulness, faithfulness, faithfulness, crowned by an explosive advancement, followed by faithfulness, faithfulness, faithfulness, crowned by an explosive touch of God.
We all want the explosive touch; it’s the faithfulness that sets the stage. So when he says, «Look, little by little until you increase,» he is really describing a people that become mature enough to steward the inheritance well.
I personally think that much of what we experience in life—in our relational journey with God—much of what we experience in life is determined by what we’ve become. What measure of Heaven on Earth can I actually live in without becoming independent, arrogant, and proud?
What measure? I’ve watched as people will come into giftings quickly, and people just don’t value or appreciate their gift enough. They become very arrogant, independent, and proud. They got their inheritance quickly but haven’t learned the relational component of maturity.
You know, if I don’t have people in my life, I really don’t need the fruits of the spirit! And the scarier part of that equation is I can think I have the fruits of the spirit if there’s nobody close to me in my life. I can live under the illusion that I’ve got it together when I don’t at all.
True! And so he says, «I’m going to take you in little by little until you increase!» Can I just say it this way? Until your inner world becomes bigger than your outer world! Your inner journey—your inner relationship with the Lord becomes stronger and more established than all the things you want to see happen through giftedness in your life.
When that becomes increased, he can entrust more to us. I think the scripture is pretty clear that it has never crossed our mind what he has intended for us. Of course, that makes sense as it pertains to heaven, but that’s not the context!
The context was here and now. The context for that kind of a promise would have no shock value if it had to do with heaven, but it has a lot of shock value when we discover that is actually his intention for me now, today, in this life.
Developing trust is what qualifies me to be entrusted with something. The measure in which I trust him in challenging situations is the measure he can trust me with responsibility, with anointing, with calling, with assignments. And so he’s working constantly to measure us to see what we can carry faithfully.
And again, faithfulness is measured by what we do with promises. I’m hoping for the Holy Spirit to aggravate every one of you! I’m praying that for you! Just say, «I receive that for myself!»
Yeah! Seriously, sometimes we have it too good to ache for more! When the circumstances around us demand more, it’s not until I’m inconvenienced and brought out of my place of satisfaction into a place of hunger for the more that God has intended.
So I do pray that; I pray that. I pray that for everybody in this room; I pray that for everyone in our whole online family! That there would be a real visitation!
God, I pray for a visitation of the God of promise! That somehow we would become prisoners! I used to sign my letters «prisoner,» but now we don’t write letters anymore.
I used to sign my letters «prisoner of promise!» God, that you would imprison us with promise! That we would become captivated by your heart of promise over our lives, our family lines, our church family, this movement—that we become possessed with promise in a way that we have never known before!
I ask this in Jesus' mighty, mighty name. I want to ask before I turn the service over: if there’s anybody in this room that would just say, «You know what? I don’t know what it’s like to actually be forgiven of sin by God! I don’t know what it’s like to have the Holy Spirit change me from the inside out, where he takes up residence in me and makes me a different person!
I don’t know what that feels like to wake up in the morning with a purpose and a sense of promise, but I want it! I want to follow this Jesus!»
If that’s you—if there’s anybody in the room that would say, «That’s me! I want to follow Jesus!» and you don’t know what it is to have a relationship with him, but you want that? I’m going to ask you to put up a hand right where you are, real quickly. I want to make sure.
«That’s why right down here!» It’s wonderful!
«Anybody else? Right over here’s another! Wonderful! Real quickly!»
Yeah, yeah! «Lord, we give you thanks, we give you thanks for this!»
«There’s one more; where is it? Is there somebody here?»
«I didn’t see it! Alright, I’m going to ask you to stand!»
«Oh, it’s right way over here!»
«Alright, wonderful, thank you!»
«I want to ask you to stand with me, if you would. Now, please hold on a moment; it really does help us a lot if you can just be patient for a moment!»
«Who’s coming up to rescue me? You are, Leslie.» «Is that alright? Okay, hold on just a moment.
I want to ask this of all those who raised their hands: I’m going to ask that you come over to this banner. We have people that we know and trust that will pray with you, and you will have an encounter with the Lord that changes everything in your life!»