Bill Johnson - Living in the Abiding Presence of God
If I could take the three most important portions of scripture in the Bible for me over the last 50 years, this would be one of the top three. For me, it’s like a refrigerator—I go to it when I’m hungry; there’s always something in this refrigerator to eat. Joshua chapter 1 feeds my soul. I remind you that Joshua is one of the two who entered the land of promise and came out with a good report. Tragically, Israel could not enter to take the promised land, and every person in the nation died, with the exception of Joshua and Caleb, because promises give you a reason to live. Promises insulate you from what destroys others; it does not destroy you. Why? Because you have a reason for being alive, and God protected it and honored their faithfulness.
Verse five: «No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you.» Stop right there. Let’s change this for a moment: instead of «Moses,» let’s put «Jesus» in there and read this again, because that actually reflects the reality of the New Testament. «No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life, for as I was with Jesus, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you.» Do you know that this is absolutely true? Do you know that the promises given to the Son, Jesus, have been given to you? Do you know that Jesus said, «All things the Father has are mine, and I give them to you»? All things—the entire realm of sonship that was upon Jesus—He passed on to you and me. It’s called Grace. None of us could ever earn that; we could never jump through enough hoops to get it. It was a gift, a gift from God.
Verse six: «Be strong and of good courage, for to this people you shall divide as an inheritance the land which I swore to their fathers to give them.» Do you understand? Your obedience positions you to redistribute the inheritance of God to many others. All those under your influence come to promotion and blessing because of your «yes.» If you don’t see that, you’re not thinking right. Hello, Bethel TV online community! Bless you! If you don’t see that, you’re not thinking right.
I wanted to welcome you into this joyful experience that we’re having here. Verse seven: «Only be strong and very courageous, that you may observe to do according to all the law which Moses, my servant, commanded you.» I realize we’re not under the law of Moses, but we are under the law of love, and in the law of love, we find the capacity to obey everything Jesus said to do, according to all the law which Moses, my servant, commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or the left, that you may prosper wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you will meditate on it day and night.
Stop right there. If you want to impact what you think about, change what you talk about. The book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you will meditate on it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it, for then you will make your way prosperous, and you will have good success. You will make your way prosperous. Many believers are waiting for the Lord to make their way prosperous. Can you imagine a farmer planting 10 acres of corn and being angry because he didn’t harvest 100? That was really good, Bill; if I were you, I would try it again. It was worth attempting again. You can’t harvest what you don’t plant. God has given His word to us to use—not in manipulation for self-glory, prosperity, and success. Unfortunately, we usually define those words by society around us; it’s the mansion on the hill, the five cars—whatever. We translate prosperity and success in those terms, where biblically it is so much richer.
It may include the nice house and the nice car; it’s never the point. The point is in here—I am alive, abundantly alive; my relationships are healthy; they complete who I am, and I complete who they are. Our family life is creating a sense of destiny and purpose. There is momentum in the generations because of our «yes.» My friendships are solid; I have people around me who would take a bullet for me, and I would take a bullet for them. I like that little joke I saw a while back: «I would take a bullet for you, not in the head, but maybe like in the leg or something.» I thought that was funny.
Success and prosperity involve possessions but are never the focus; it’s the abundance of heart. What would it be like to be prosperous in your mind? I can tell you what it is: it’s creative thinking. Creative thinking—we need a whole generation of creative thinkers. God has a solution for every problem on the planet. He would love it if the people who become so preoccupied with the fear of failure would actually start asking the question, «God, how can we solve this problem?»
Verse nine: «Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage. Do not be afraid nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.» That last phrase is critical. Years ago, I did a study where I tried to find every place the Lord said He would be with somebody. We see it with Moses when the Lord says, «I’m going to be with you.» We see it with Gideon, who’s facing this insurmountable task with an army of only 300 soldiers. The Lord says, «I will be with you.» We see it throughout the scriptures: with the prophets and different individuals put in challenging positions; the Lord says, «I will be with you.»
We see it in the Great Commission, Matthew 28:19–20: «Go into all the world,» and it ends with, «And I will be with you always.» The point is every time I could find that God revealed He was with an individual or a group of people, it was always connected to their impossible assignment. He revealed His presence because He told them to do something they could not accomplish in their own strength.
Let’s rephrase this: We sing the song, «I love Your presence,» and we do; we love the presence of the Lord. But the manifestation of the presence of God is the guarantee you’ve been assigned to the impossible. He can comfort us in many ways, but it’s more than just His presence to comfort me. It is to equip and enable me to confront things that Jesus would confront if He were in my shoes. He says, «Be strong and courageous.» Do you understand that He would never command me to be strong if it wasn’t within reach? In other words, if my will, if I could not will my way into it, then it would be a cruel command. He didn’t say, «Feel courageous.» He didn’t say, «Hover until you feel strong.» He said, «Just be it. Be strong.»
Yes! Now, if God is commanding me to do something that is the product of ten years of obedience, then it’s a cruel command because I have a problem right now. He comes to us with a command: «Be strong and don’t fear. Yes! Be courageous. Do not be dismayed.» Why? Because I’m with you. For me, the implication is that if I am overwhelmed by the size of my problem, I have lost sight of the presence of God and His promise that prevails over my life. It’s what helped the ten spies to lie—no, to emphasize the size of the giants, the magnitude of the problem.
Yeah, it wasn’t a lie. They just described the problem without the prevailing word of God over their lives, without the abiding manifested presence that was visibly seen among them every day in the wilderness—manifestation of the glory of God: the pillar of fire by night, the cloud by day. It was there day after day after day, but they didn’t remember that when they got into the promised land and saw giants; they saw big people instead of a big God. I’ve told you in recent weeks that most of our miracles, our breakthroughs, begin the moment we stop being impressed by the size of our problem.
That’s right. Many people define themselves by the size of the problem. «Oh, it’s been rough.» And I don’t mean to imply we shouldn’t share and pray with each other; I get that. I know this could be misapplied, but it’s worth the risk. If I can get some of you to apply it, it’ll be good. Your giant is your next meal. «Give us this day our daily bread.» God, create the table in such a way that I am so overwhelmed by who’s at the table and what You’ve put there for me to eat that I never again become impressed with the enemy who is watching.
Something I learned to do quite a few years ago was right at nighttime. I’ve been asked by our students, «What’s the strength of your life?» If I were to reduce everything that I am into one thing, I would say probably the strength of my life is my affection for Him. It’s my adoration. What happens is you find your heart burning for Him in ways that don’t require works; it’s not a song I sing, it’s not my hands raised, it’s not kneeling—it’s just a burning heart for Him.
King Solomon made this statement in the Song of Solomon. He said, «Though I sleep, yet my heart is awake.» A number of years ago, I learned that as I was going to sleep at night, I could lay there and turn my heart of affection towards the Lord. In that moment, there would just be this engagement with Him, a sensing of His presence, and there would just be this connection with Him. I began to discover that you have a better day if you have a better night. In Genesis, it states that during creation, there was night and day, which made up the first day. Biblically, our day actually begins the night before; that’s when it starts. So I’ve been learning that I just turn my affection towards Him, and in that place, such presence and peace comes over me. It’s very easy for me to go to sleep.
If I wake up in the night for whatever reason, it’s been—I don’t want to say it’s 100% because I don’t think I do anything 100% successfully—but the majority of the time by far, if I wake up in the night, I instinctively turn my affection back towards Him. One particular night, I didn’t. When I got up in the morning, I felt like the Lord spoke to me, and He said, «Worry replaced worship.» I’d probably done that a thousand times in my life, but it was the only time I had Him actually speak into the situation that I recall. «Worry replaced worship.» It’s like sitting at a table of worship, and instead, I chose to give seat to fear, anxiety, and worry. When you have the Lord speak to you, things become clear that have been cloudy forever.
Suddenly, in that moment, I knew, and it helped me understand something that happened a week or two before that. If you can imagine, once again, I’ve already said I don’t do this 100% of the time, but it is a predominant feature of my life—this sense of affection for the Lord in the middle of the day. Just driving down the street, sitting in my office, it doesn’t matter when; I just consciously turn my affection towards Him. He’s such a lover; He’s just drawn to that. I don’t know if He comes or if I go, or if I just become aware; I don’t care. I let the theologians figure it out right now; I just enjoy turning my affection towards Him. He will come and rest upon me, and it makes such a huge difference in my life.
That burning affection for Him—I love that song by Martin Smith, «My Heart Burns For You.» That phrase is actually one of my favorite phrases in all of church history. Imagine doing that day after day after day for an extended period, and then I remember waking up one day. It’s very hard to explain, but let me do my best. How many of you remember when you were small kids and spent the first night at someone else’s house and felt homesick? Or you went to summer camp and were just dying for home? I remember that. Maybe some of you were just glad to get out of the house, but there were a few of us who struggled with homesickness. Chris probably had to get out of the house; he never felt homesick!
Well, I woke up that morning, and this is hard to explain, but I felt homesick, and I wasn’t sure why. In that initial moment, I felt homesick—just empty. I woke up and began to ponder, and I realized, «Oh, last night I didn’t turn my affection towards Him.» It’s hard to describe where abiding presence actually becomes home. Abiding presence is like a room you’re in; it’s like the place where you live. I woke up with that homesickness feeling. Thankfully, I could see it clearly, so I knew what to do. The point I want to make is that there’s something about this affection for the Lord. The subject for today is prayer, so we’ll get there.
What I have found in my own personal life is that being a worshiper positions me to pray effectively. How many of you remember back in the caveman days when there were cassette tapes? Remember those? And even before that, eight-tracks. Yeah, all right, we’ll just go to cassette tapes. I remember getting a cassette tape of a teaching by a great man of God named Derek Prince. Does anybody remember Derek Prince? Great Bible teacher, especially from the '70s. I remember listening to this tape, and he was talking about worship and prayer. He made this statement: «If you only have 10 minutes to pray, take seven or eight of them to worship.» Then he said, «You can pray for a lot of things in two minutes.» As crazy as it may seem, that statement changed my life because it marked me.
It marked me with the value that if I have 10 minutes or I have an hour or two hours—whatever it is—if I say I have an hour that I’m going to pray, I’ll take 40 or 45 minutes just to worship. Why? Because you can pray for a lot of stuff in a short period of time, and I would rather live from that connection of presence because in that moment something happens—where you subconsciously become aware of the heart of God. It’s not that you strive to pray; you find yourself instinctively praying His heart with insight on what He wants.
What happens to the person who learns a lifestyle? A man named a Catholic priest from many years ago called Brother Lawrence wrote a book called «Practicing the Presence.» His whole ambition was to stay conscious of God 24/7. He never claimed to have arrived at that, but his point was that whether he was washing pots and pans or praying in the prayer house, his awareness of the presence didn’t change. There’s something about the presence. If you can look at it this way, there is nothing in heaven that is separate from the presence of God. Yes! So, in essence, God Himself is the person of heaven. That’s how we are seated in Christ. It is a foretaste of eternity.
In Psalms 27, he says, «One thing I have desired of the Lord; that will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple.» When I talk like this, especially if I’m in school or some CL where there’s interaction, almost always there will be a follow-up question: «But practically, what should we do?» This is practical. You can’t get more practical than dwelling in the manifest presence of the glory of God. It doesn’t mean there are no other actions; it just means they follow this. There is something about taking all your options and reducing them to one thing and saying, «You know what? I will live and die on this mountain.»
«One thing I have chosen is to dwell in the house of the Lord.» He’s not talking about coming to church; he’s not talking about going into some facilities. He’s talking about living in this presence of God, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord. Why? Because I want to behold Him. If I can see Him, then everything else I see is put in place. If I don’t see Him, I’ll be suckered into the inferior. I will find things appealing that shouldn’t be appealing at all. But once I’ve caught a glimpse of Him, once my heart has exploded with an awareness of His heart, of His face, of His nature towards me, everything else falls into place.
We are a people who emphasize the presence of the Lord constantly. I believe it’s truly part of our value system. Now at this very moment, I’m very aware that Chris is here. I recognize his presence; I recognize that he is here, and I value him being here. But there’s a difference between my awareness of his presence and my awareness of his face. There’s a difference. It’s a refined focus. It’s something more than mere consciousness of God; it’s locking into the One who has called me to Himself.
Later in this particular Psalm—let’s look at it right now—he says in verse eight, «You said, 'Seek My face.' My heart said to You, 'Your face, Lord, I will seek.'» I want you to see this particular Psalm in this way. Look at verse three: «Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; the war may rise against me, in this I will be confident.»
What’s the point? This one-thing decision is made in the middle of intense conflict and distraction. Moments like this are when we scramble for options. «If only I could do that. If only I could write a check for this. If only I could call this person. If only someone would help me get this reconciliation to happen.» Whatever—we have a long list of things that need to be done. Yes, but this impresses me so much because the one who has the unlimited resources to take care of his son, should he need to relieve the pressure that he might experience, chooses not to do that to eliminate King Saul, who is chasing him around the countryside for 13 years.
He has the ability and the God-given opportunity to remove that problem, and He does not do so. Instead, He refines His values down to this one thing. One thing, yes. One thing I ask of the Lord; there is one thing that I seek. I’ve reduced it to this: to dwell in the house of the Lord, to behold His beauty, and to inquire in His temple.
I want the presence of God to shape what I see and then to shape how I pray. At the end of the psalm, in verse 13, he states, «I would have lost heart unless I believed I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord; be of good courage. He will strengthen your heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord.»
Verse 13 is important for me. David is confessing to us; it’s like he’s saying, «I know me. I would have been depressed. I’d have given up. I would have thrown in the towel unless I had this one thing going for me: I expected to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.»
I anticipated and expected this one thing to keep me out of the ditch. This one thing kept me out of the hole. This one thing kept me out of this place where I’d be in a constant emotional mental battle that I wasn’t equipped to win. This one thing was my anticipation of seeing the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. What he saw in the temple affected what he saw in the land of the living.
Beholding Him changes everything. It is practical. In recent days, by «recent days,» I mean the last year plus, I’ve been awakened at night and have often taken one of three approaches. I will usually either take one of the scriptures—the Lord brings to mind any scripture probably from Psalms 25-35—and begin to quote them. I often just turn my heart towards the Holy Spirit who is with me, and in that place of adoration, in that place of affection, His presence begins to manifest.
Something I started doing maybe a year ago is quoting what we refer to as the Lord’s Prayer—the disciples' prayer, the prayer that He taught us to pray. I’m not even sure why; I mean, I think it’s always a good prayer. I don’t think He taught it for us to memorize and pray it, but it creates biblical prayer boundaries for me in my thinking. So, I’ll lay there in the middle of the night and just start praying, «Our Father.» Sometimes, I’ll pause on each phrase and kind of expand: «God, You’re our Father; You’re not just my Father. I pray this for my whole household. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed, revered, celebrated is Your name; Your kingdom come; Your will be done.»
It’s Your heart; it was always Your plan to let Your world influence this one, and I’m in agreement with You saying, «God, let Your will be done here in my home, in my body, in my family, in my city, in this church.» Let Your will be done just like it is in heaven. «Give us this day our daily bread.» Let us not lack in anything. Let the abundance of Your kingdom be seen and measurable in everything we say and do.
Yes, give us this day our daily bread! «Forgive us our debts—God, we need forgiveness constantly—and we determine to forgive others, so forgive us as we forgive others. Lead us not into temptation; God, You know where we’re weak. You would never want to make us stumble, but You also know the things that are appealing to us. They shouldn’t be; protect me from situations where I would have undue pressure on my decision-making. Lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from the evil one, because it’s Your kingdom, it’s Your power, and it’s Your glory forever. Amen.»
In the middle of the night, what happens more often than not is I go back to sleep somewhere between «Our Father» and «Yours is the kingdom.» But the point is, we were created to be a house of God. We were designed—we’re actually designed to host and carry the presence of the Spirit of God. So, when David prays this prayer: «God, one thing I’ve desired,» he’s actually defining the fact that this is what we were born for. Yes, there are many things we get to do; there are decisions we get to create. We get to build; we get to do all these things, but it all comes out of this one place, this one place of habitation, this one place of abiding, this one place of connection with the Holy Spirit.
That’s what I pray for every individual in the room, every household. I feel there are about to be anointings released over households. It will not just be individuals who have encounters and breakthroughs, but there will actually be a sense of presence that rests over households. Some of you will have neighbors come to you because they see a glow, something happening around and over your home. They will walk into your house—like we’ve seen happen—and have oppression leave their bodies and different torments leave their minds because there’s something of God that’s about to mark the house of God; this place, yes, but also your house, yes!
Yes, yes, yes! Your business—every place that the sole of your foot treads, that has God given to you—that we would be a people who carry the mark of presence in every part of society, every part of our city, every part of our culture. I pray this over you. I declare this over you, over me—that our households would be known for the manifest presence of the glory of God. I ask this in Jesus' name. Thank you, Jesus.
He is called the Christ. Jesus Christ. Christ is not His last name; it’s not like Jesus Johnson or something. The term Christ is a title in the kingdom of God. Titles point to experiences; titles point to happenings. So, when it says Jesus Christ—the anointed one—it’s referring specifically to the fact that He’s been smeared with the Holy Spirit. The word anointing means to smear. Here is Jesus, the one completely engulfed in and covered in the Holy Spirit of God—the dove that rested upon His shoulder and remained; He never departed. Doves are nervous, flighty birds, easily spooked, and yet Jesus walked in such a way that there was never a compromise or threat to the presence of God upon Him, and He modeled this well to illustrate something for us.
He didn’t just try to show us what God could do; obviously, everything comes from Him. He was trying to illustrate what could happen to the person who surrendered. Many people surrender in the fact that they give up, but they don’t respond by obeying, by taking risks, by being courageous. So, in other words, I give up; you’re right, I’m wrong, I confess my sin, then there’s supposed to be something that we put on, called this thing of courage and faith, where we work to represent Him accurately and well.
Jesus only said what He heard the Father say, so imagine for a moment we’re standing in Jerusalem, and Jesus is here. He’s talking, and He begins to speak; He calls out a condition that is to be healed or He speaks a word into a family that’s in trouble or whatever it might be. We can feel the life from every word.
See, the one thing that was so different when Jesus read this in the synagogue, when He read Isaiah 61, is that there was a 400-year silence from heaven to earth. I don’t understand this, but it talks about «the 400 years of silence» until John the Baptist and Jesus. It was 400 years of silence. There were no prophets, no prophecies, no dreams, no visions—nothing. Everything was shut down for 400 years. Imagine you’re going through the routine, just out of raw discipline. You know it’s right, and you do it because it’s right, but there’s not this overwhelming sense of the Spirit of God upon them. They’ve committed themselves; they’ve recognized somehow in their heart of hearts that this is true—that the law of God was true—and they’re embracing that as their responsibility and privilege in life, but they’ve never had a divine encounter. It just hasn’t happened for 400 years.
So Jesus stands to read in the synagogue on that one day; it’s in Luke chapter 4. He begins to read out of Isaiah 61, «The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; He has anointed me to bring release to captives, recovery of sight to the blind,» and He goes through this scripture. But here’s what I want you to realize: when Jesus spoke, He spoke what the Father was saying, and when He spoke what the Father was saying, the Spirit of God—the word of God—became presence.
Jesus gave us insight into this in John chapter 6 when He said, «My words to you are Spirit, and they are life.» My words become spirit, and that spirit gives life. All right, so we’re back in the synagogue. We’ve never had a vision, a dream; we’ve never sensed the presence of God. We don’t know anyone who has because it’s been 400 years of silence. Jesus stands up, He reads, and the presence is released. So it says, «All bore witness to Him.»
Now we know the end of the story: this is His hometown that rejected Him, but it didn’t start that way. He reads; presence is released. «All bore witness.» What does that mean? Everyone in the synagogue had something happen in their heart of hearts where they realized, «This is Him.» They’d been raised from childhood to anticipate and pray for the coming of the Messiah, and they all bore witness. They all had this thing inside of them—they maybe couldn’t have explained it, they could never have taught on it—but they had something going on inside that said, «Wait a minute. This is different than anything I’ve ever experienced before.»
They all bore witness to Him, and they marveled at the gracious words coming out of His mouth. Here they are, first of all, deeply impacted by presence, and now their brains are on hyper-speed as they are stunned by the grace-filled words coming out of His mouth. What is grace? Grace is the enablement of God; it is favor, but it is favor that enables. It’s the enabling, favoring presence of God. So here He’s reading, and in their heart of hearts is going: «This is Him!»
Then they began to feel empowered under what? Under the realization of why they are alive. Are you with me? Do you see this picture? So He’s reading, and nothing has happened like this for 400 years. He’s reading, and life goes into the room. People are stirred in their heart of hearts; their faith is ignited, and they are marveling, pondering, meditating on the grace-filled, empowering words that are coming out of His mouth. Then someone said, «Isn’t this Joseph’s son?»
You can imagine the entire crowd. They’re at this moment where they’re recognizing in their heart of hearts that they have just heard the voice of the Messiah, and then somebody says, «Yeah, but isn’t this Joseph’s son?» You can just see them go, «Of course! What was I thinking?» So glad you brought that up, because you won’t believe what I was just thinking. I was actually thinking this could be the Messiah, but obviously, this is Joseph’s son. What was I thinking?
They reasoned themselves out of a place of faith that would make that city Jesus' home base for His miracle ministry that would reach all over the known world. When it states, «And He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief,» just remember that verse. The unbelief that took place in that city couldn’t shut Jesus down. He still had enough anointing on Him to lay His hands on a few sick people and release healing to them. What could not happen with that unbelief was the corporate anointing, where there’s exponential increase.
So the corporate anointing was shut down because of corporate unbelief. Good! But personal faith still brings healing and deliverance, and I’m sure the few handful of people who were healed were thankful that He was still able to minister to them in spite of the atmosphere of the crowd.
Jesus Christ—the one anointed of the Holy Spirit—is the mark of divine authority. The presence of God, the manifested presence of God upon a married couple, the presence of God that rests upon that couple in unity before Christ; they carry a governmental responsibility to represent Him and to bind here what is not free to rule there, and to loose here what is already loosed there.
It is a God-given mandate and responsibility. It is the backbone of our assignment to disciple nations. It is very specific responsibility, and it is essential. This is not peripheral; this is not extra. It’s like buying a car with a sunroof; this is not extra. This is the heart and soul of how you and I were designed. We were designed and assigned by God to be on this planet as citizens of another world. As citizens of that world, I’m to look for one or two others with whom I could meet—come into a place of agreement so that the manifest presence of God would settle upon our gathering together.
In that position, we make decisions that actually shape the course of history. In John 15, I’ve been messing with these verses for so long. I don’t know if you’re tired of hearing me talk about them, but John 15 provokes me because do you ever read a portion of scripture that blesses you so much, but you know you don’t get it yet?
That’s kind of how I approach the subject of abiding in Christ. I know I get it, and I know I don’t know what I’m talking about. I know that I have some experience there, and I’m so thrilled with what I’ve experienced, but I also know I’m in preschool, and I have barely started this journey. That’s how I feel about this whole subject. So just take one verse: the entire fifteenth chapter is worth the read, but we’ll just take this one verse. «If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.»
It goes on to say, «By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit.» The fruit in this context, I believe, is answers to prayer. I owe God answers to prayer. The lack of answers to prayer is not on His end of the equation. The lack of answers to prayer is on my end of the equation, and it is connected to my ability and willingness to abide. The felt presence of God is the absolute key to continuous answers to prayer—living apart from this, doing our best to mimic God’s will and doing our best to pray for things that we think ought to happen. It’s not that the prayers are wrong, it’s not that what we have requested is against His will; it’s just that we’re missing the strength of abiding.
When you have the manifested presence of God upon you like Jesus did and you come before the Father with a request, there is this clout, if you will, that we have been invited into, «Abide in Me; let My words abide in you.» What is that? It’s the acknowledged felt presence of God, and it’s not just a recognition of the Almighty God being here, but it is my engagement with Him. Abiding is an engaged participation with a person.
There is this encounter; there is this exchange; there is this fellowship; there is this intimacy; there is this connection that is otherworldly. In that connection, I am positioned to think differently, to feel differently, to see differently. I’m sitting here with another brother, sister, family member—whoever—and He says, «In that context, the weight of the Government of My world is upon your shoulders, and for that reason, you can bind anything here that’s already bound there.»
In that position, we’re much more prone to see and discern the reality of that world. We do well with binding here what’s already bound there; we do. Because we know, for example, that someone who is demonized—that does not exist in heaven. We know that somebody addicted to alcohol, drugs, or whatever—that doesn’t exist there. We know the Devil’s work well. We know what it is to bind. We know, for example, that if someone is addicted, they can be free, so you pray for your cousin or whatever that is addicted to drugs.
You pray! I remember one Sunday night we had this fairly quick altar call, and about 20 people, as I recall, came forward and stood right here. We just prayed a corporate prayer over them. I don’t recall; I don’t think there was any laying on of hands. We just prayed over the group, and six months later, one of the individuals came to me and said, «Do you remember when you had that invitation for prayer concerning addiction?»
I said, «Yeah, I do.» He said, «Well, me and another person, both of us have been addicted to heroin for over 20 years, and we were both instantly set free that night in a corporate prayer.» We sometimes have degrees of difficulty in our minds that He doesn’t have in His. You know, this one’s easy; this one’s hard. It wasn’t any harder for God to set two people free from heroin addiction in a moment, probably a five-minute moment of prayer; it wasn’t any more challenging for Him than it would be to bring encouragement to someone who is discouraged.
It’s all in His wheelhouse, so what we do is bind here. So you’re praying for that relative of yours or a close friend or whatever that has that addiction, and we bind here what is already bound there. We’re familiar with that responsibility to measure our problem; the problem is on the other side of the responsibility we are supposed to loose here what is already loosed there. Without heavenly encounters and heavenly experience and heavenly perception, we have no idea what we’re supposed to release in the place of what we just bound.
The whole concept is I’m removing something, and I’m replacing it. Jesus taught this in the Gospel of Luke when He said, «When a house is clean and swept, it’s got to be filled with something, or the enemy comes back seven times worse.» So sometimes we perpetually have a problem because we bind but we don’t replace. How do we know what to replace?
Forgive me for the hunting analogy, but if a flock of ducks goes by, a lot of hunters just shoot at the flock. You don’t get any; you have to pick one out. It’s not guesswork; it’s very specific, very strategic. Addressing an issue, replacing it. There has to be ongoing increased understanding of how His world works and what our responsibility is. We are not leisurely coasting downstream; we are aggressively going upstream against the tide because we represent another world.
We continuously run into things that He has nothing to do with; they don’t exist in heaven. Sometimes you’ll see a dear friend of yours a part of the very thing that doesn’t belong here. Sometimes I’ll see a well-meaning believer a part of something and they have no clue. Most of the time, I feel that my responsibility is to go behind the scenes, pray, and try to break that thing because if they saw the spirit that was behind what they said yes to, they would never participate.
But generally, a debate doesn’t convince anybody. It’s better that if you see there’s a demonic power behind something, love the person, but get behind the scenes before God and bind and loose. If you can see with me, I don’t think it’s a careless joining of unique scriptures—Matthew 16 and Matthew 18. Both carry the theme: whatever you bind here has to already have been bound there. But then to loose—the increased heavenly perception, where does that come from?
Well, I think there are unique experiences that people have before the Lord. I’m actually reading a book right now about heaven that is just mind-boggling. I love seeing glimpses of how He works, how He thinks, and how His world works. Because every glimpse of His world, His ways, and then His world equips me to release His influence in the earth.