Bill Johnson - An Invitation to War (How to Fight for God's Promises)
Well, good afternoon. Nice to see you. Um, my mom has been really sick; she’s been in the hospital for the last week. If you can remember to pray for her, I would really appreciate it. We’ve been at her bedside for the last—well, today would be day number eight. So I really appreciate your prayers on that one. Uh, are blonde jokes legal? Are they? No, they’re not. My wife was a blonde; my daughter—not today. It depends on the month. It could be blue, it could be red, it can be brown, black, or blonde. Yeah, that’s why I come to church—just to find out what color my daughter’s hair is going to be. Well, if you don’t believe in blonde jokes, I don’t know what to tell you.
Bob walked into a sports bar. This is very offensive because we’re now in a bar; I just want to get it all out of the way. At about 5:58 p.m., he sat down next to a very attractive blonde at the bar, who stared up at the TV. The 6 p.m. news was coming on, and the news crew was covering the story of a man on top of a 10-story building preparing to jump. The police were trying to talk him down, while fire crews below were setting up nets to catch him. The blonde looked at Bob and said, «Do you think he’ll jump?» Bob said, «You know, I reckon he’ll jump.» The blonde replied, «Oh, I bet he won’t.» Bob placed $20 on the bar and said, «You’re on.» The blonde placed her money on the bar and kept watching the scene unfold on TV. Suddenly, the man stepped to the edge of the building and did a swan dive off the building, falling into the fire crew’s nets below. The blonde was very upset; she willingly handed over $20 to Bob and said, «Fair is fair, here’s your money.» Bob replied, «Nah, I can’t take your money; I saw this earlier on the 5 p.m. news. I knew he would jump.» She replied, «I saw it too; I just didn’t think he’d do it again.»
Not for church right now. For church—that’s what I thought. Okay, oh well. Ruth, I’m sorry. Grab your Bibles, open to 2 Corinthians, chapter 1. We’ve got kind of an anchor verse that we’ll use here to get started today. 2 Corinthians, chapter 1, starting back in December, I started talking to you. I think I’ve spoken five times on this subject since then, on the promised land. This whole concept of Israel leaving Egypt, going into an inheritance, into the promised land is a picture of the Christian life. It does not illustrate entering Heaven; it illustrates living in the reality of God’s kingdom here and now. It is the normal Christian life, and there are things about that journey that are so prophetic for us.
Paul talked about the Old Testament; the whole Old Testament he said, «These things were written in earlier times for our instruction.» In other words, this storyline of Israel has some of the richest instruction about our life and how we’re to walk in following Christ, the kinds of things we face, etc. When the Lord gave them the promised land, it was almost like He said, «I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news. The good news: you see all that? It’s yours. The bad news is it’s occupied by enemies,» which tells me that when God gives you a promise, He’s giving you a promise of enemy-occupied territory. Come on; He’s releasing to you an inheritance that is occupied by the enemy. Understanding how that works is vital for our walk with Christ because we have been commanded to pursue and submit things to God and to watch His lordship, His dominion, be demonstrated over the broken parts of life.
But in this storyline of occupied enemy territory—let me back up. We’ve stated for years that for the believer, the battleground is the mind. So where then is the occupied territory? Come on, we’ll look at a passage in this regard in a moment, but a lot of what has to happen for us to fully enter into what God has promised us is that we have to change the way we think. Come on, scripture is very clear: the renewed mind is the transformed life. We are transformed by the renewing of our minds. A transformed life is capable of receiving inheritance from the Lord and stewarding it well. Many of the things that we ask for would destroy us if He answered us—not because they’re wrong prayers, but because we don’t have the character to steward what He would give us.
Well, the moment we pray a prayer, the Lord begins to set up circumstances in our life to equip and train us to inherit the very thing we’ve asked for. Some things come quickly; I love those. Those are my favorite. I pray, and it’s answered by tomorrow at noon—that’s my favorite stuff. But a lot of stuff that we pray for, we are not ready for, but it’s entirely the will of God. So He begins to groom us; He begins to prune us, puts us in circumstances where we learn levels of trust, where we learn in difficult situations to give thanks in the middle of hard things. Those kinds of things are grooming us, pruning our hearts so that we can be trusted with more. God wants to trust you so He can entrust to you, yes, the more we find ourselves trustworthy in our yielded, surrendered lifestyle before Christ, the more He entrusts to us realms of authority, realms of anointing, power, insight, etc.
What I don’t want to do today is reduce this concept of the promised land to material things. Having said that, it includes them. God will often use a natural thing and bring such a profound and powerful lesson out of it. I have, in my iPad, a list of dreams—personal dreams. I’ve got two of them that are really important to me. One is just a big list of dreams; it’s probably 150 things that are listed in there. I have a second list that is just about 30 things and is just one sentence that represents an entire prophetic promise that God gave me.
So sometimes I’ll just go through those three things. The point is that when the Lord gives you a promise, He’s inviting you to war. He’s inviting you—let me try it over here—He’s inviting you to obtain territory occupied by the enemy. Amen, that’s good. There are many who embrace inferior lifestyles thinking it’s humility when it’s actually unbelief. Wow. Faith looks like arrogance to the unbeliever, an unbelieving believer. If I look to me, I’m overwhelmed with being unworthy. If I look to Him, I consider Him worthy of my obedience, and everything I enter into in that obedience brings Him glory. That’s right, good. I will not withhold obedience from Him that would bring greater breakthrough, that would have a greater impact and call it humility.
Good word. Wow, Israel—I’m going to bounce around here, so just put your seatbelts on, crash helmets too, maybe. We might need it before this is over. In the Old Testament, in the Tabernacle of Moses, if we took an aerial view, we would come through this tent, this gate area, and the first thing you’d run into would be the Brazen Altar, where blood sacrifice was made. The first thing you run into in your approach to God is the need for blood to be shed. So Jesus Christ, the spotless Lamb of God, was slain on our behalf—dealt with the sin issue, the blood issue. But still, on the other side, was a laver, and on the other side of that is a tented, enclosed area: the Holy of Holies and the Holy Place.
The point I wanted to make is you can be completely free of sin and blood-washed and still be unclean because there’s a contamination—you didn’t mean to listen to that joke, this scene came on the TV before you could change the channel. There are things that take place in our lives that just make us feel dirty. The laver represents—it’s a basin made out of the mirrors of women, and it contained water. In the New Testament, we have the phrase 'the washing of the water by the word of God.' You’ve had it happen whether you realize it or not.
As you’re reading the scripture, you just feel this cleansing taking place. There’s nothing to repent for; there’s nothing that I need to confess. I didn’t do anything wrong, but I live in a world that’s dirty. I live in a world where there’s constant contamination, and I need to stay before the Lord, encountering the living Word as I read scripture, and have Him speak to me and minister to my soul. It brings a cleansing. What God wants to do for you is to set you up for Him to do something through you. The renewed mind understands that oftentimes, God will actually resist doing something for us so that He can do something through us.
Yes, all right, let’s just read the scripture, and then I’ll, like I said, I’m going to bounce around—I can feel it already. 1 Corinthians 1, starting with verse 18: «But as God is faithful, our word to you is not yes and no. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us—by me, Silvanus, and Timothy—was not yes and no, but in Him was yes.» East Stanley Jones, a great author and a great pastor from many years ago, wrote a book called The Divine Yes, and he takes this passage and talks about the fact that Jesus is the yes of God. We’ve heard Chris preach on this a number of times from different passages, but he talked about the priest coming with the Urim and Thummim of the yes and no of God. But the instruction was for that priest to bring only the yes of God, and when you come to God’s promises, it’s not yes and no; it’s only yes. There are 7,700 promises in the Bible, and they’re all yes. Wow, thank you! I thought I’d have to wait forever. Just teasing.
Verse 20: «For all the promises of God in Him are yes and in Him, Amen, to the glory of God through us.» All right, let me read it out of the Amplified version, just verse 20: «For as many as are the promises of God in Christ, they are all answered yes. So through Him, we say our Amen to the glory of God.» I don’t know if this is making sense to you. God says, «Here are my promises,» and He’s waiting for something—an Amen. See, from the beginning, the design was that God would make people in His image, He would empower them to rule over what He made, and there would be a co-laboring relationship. It’s from the design in chapter one of Genesis all the way through scripture. The battle is over—the battle is not Satan against God; that’s not a contest. It’s against those made in His image because he wants to block the flow of those who can co-labor to partner with Him and represent Him well in purity, passion, and power. So here’s this passage where the Lord says, «Here are my promises,» and He waits for something—it’s an Amen. Amen means so be it. It’s our coming into agreement; it’s two-part epoxy. It’s not going to grip, it’s not going to hold unless there’s the second part—it’s the role you play. It’s the role that I play is to say, «Yes, God! Amen! I come into full agreement with what you’ve just declared.»
The Lord uses promises to draw us into occupied territory, to draw us into victories that glorify Him. He can—let’s be honest—show up and fix everything in a heartbeat; that’s not the design. The design is for you and me to come into a place of responsibility—a place of maturity—to represent Him well in purity, passion, and power. That threefold strand helps us as we work to illustrate who this Jesus is, this purpose, and this plan of the Almighty God who spoke the worlds into being and crafted and designed, and He created you, and He created me. The Apostle Paul makes this statement in 1 Timothy, chapter 1, verse 18: «He said to Timothy, 'Take the prophecies that have been given to you, and with those prophecies wage war.'» So what is a prophecy? It’s a promise. So he says, «Take this promise that God has given you; use these as weapons because for you to go to where God designed you to go, there’s going to be conflict.»
I don’t want to make this all about war because the fascinating thing for me is this: if you read through Israel’s engagement into the promised land, first of all, why did the first generation miss out on going in? They were all afraid of the giants. How many battles did they have with giants when the second generation went in? Zero! Sometimes all you have to do is show up. Sometimes the only thing you need to do is just show up. I don’t know what I’m doing; I don’t feel qualified; I don’t feel filled with faith, but I’m here. I’m showing up; I’m just here for whatever God says. And all of a sudden, God shows up and completely annihilates the enemy. He will either annihilate the enemy on your behalf or through you. None of it is based on human strength, human intelligence, or human strategy planning. None of it; all of it is dependent on Him.
But there are times where, if you read in scripture, all they did was send a choir out, and then God sends the angel of the Lord out, and He destroys like 185,000 of the enemy soldiers. Wow! And the choir is going, «That was a mean song we just sang. That was awesome! Don’t sing that at home; whatever you do, don’t sing that at home.» But there are times where that’s exactly what would happen—the Lord would show up and fight on their behalf. Other times, they would engage in an intense and difficult, challenging war. In both processes, God is trying to mature us, and He knows the moments that I need to see Him work on my behalf, and He knows the moments where I need to see Him work through me. Each of these two kinds of engagements with difficulty, challenges, and conflict are to mature us and strengthen us because we are to become a people that actually occupy territory. Obviously, it can be land and all that stuff; I’m not thinking of that. I’m thinking more in terms of, let’s say you come from a long line of really dysfunctional families—just not healthy family life. You’ve survived, but relationships aren’t healthy. And the Lord leads you into honestly conquering the enemy of your soul that has been in your family line for five generations, and suddenly you’ve got a marriage that works; you’ve got children that grow up healthy. What’s happening? You just occupied territory! You just took over territory that was occupied by the enemy. There was a lying devil that occupied that territory that said you are bound to failure for yet another generation. And you came up against that lying devil, and through radical obedience, and through prophetic decrees and declarations, that thing no longer exists in your household. You are now set up to have multiple family generations that honor the Lord, living in purity, and all of that—it’s changed. Why? Because it’s promised land. Promised land is the ability to take the fact that your family’s lived in poverty forever, and all of a sudden, you have a job that’s prospering, and you have the opportunity to take Kingdom principles and actually build momentum—that’s promised land. I wouldn’t call the dollars the promised land; it’s the fact that there’s an internal triumph and victory that creates momentum for a family line.
This is the heart of the Lord: that we can enter into these realms of life and find out what it’s like to win. The word «proverb» in scripture comes from a word that means to reign—it’s to rule. So wisdom is actually to enable us to reign in life—not reign over people. Reign in life. Money doesn’t control me; I manage money for the glory of God. Relationships—I’m not at the mercy of other people’s opinions; I manage relationships for the glory of God. In 2 Corinthians 10, there’s a passage concerning the mind and the warfare over the mind; it’s the cornerstone passage, certainly in the scripture, for this subject. He says, «The weapons of our warfare,» verse four, «are not carnal, but they’re mighty in God for pulling down strongholds.» What is a stronghold? If you could picture, you know, medieval days, you’ve got castles and huge walled cities. Those strongholds are places where the enemy inhabits. The weapons of our warfare are for pulling down strongholds. What did Paul say to Timothy about his prophecy? It was a weapon. What is he doing? He’s pulling down strongholds where the enemy occupies territory. He is wanting to invade on, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. If you think differently than God, if you think about yourself differently than God thinks about you, you are holding to an idea that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. Amen!
It’s all good. If you entertain or hold to a self-perception that is different than what God says about you, then you are holding to something that is actually at war with God. It is knowledge lifted up against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. So here’s this concept: a bad thought does not create a stronghold; it needs to be repented of, but it doesn’t create a stronghold. If you can imagine a wrong thought, a wrong value, as being these big stones—you’ve got one in place. If you continue to think that way, pretty soon you’ve got enough for a wall; you have enough for an enemy to hide behind. Repeated, illegitimate thoughts create hiding places for the enemy. Good word! Wow. Those territories—some of you know—all of us need help. Some have been raised in certain environments where you were trained to think and to react and to feel a certain way. Since you’ve been born again, you have the good news: all things have become new. All things have to become new. And then you have not the bad news, but the challenging news: work out your salvation daily. The promised land, it’s all yours; it’s occupied by enemies. Now, let’s go in and take over. That’s right!
So you’ve got this way of thinking that every time this crisis comes up, you react this way. Well guess what? You now have access to a different way to live, a different way to think. And it starts with the strongholds of thought. We see this problem come up, and our initial reaction is to react and to be angry and to accuse and to do all this stuff. The Lord brings that stuff to the surface—not to shame us—but to let us see what He sees. He sees it without bringing it to the surface; He lets us see what He sees so that we can confess and repent. Because the Lord is trying to bring us into a place where we actually occupy these territories. Chris said it best years ago in his book about the dogs of doom barking at the doors of our destiny. Where you hear oftentimes the loudest resistance to what you have a hunger for, that’s really where you are called to go. Oftentimes, you are called to do the very thing that you fear the most. For me, it was talking in front of people; it was writing and reading—the three things I hated most. This is called divine humor!
I’ve got dreams in here. I don’t separate my dreams from, say, material, natural answers and spiritual things. I’ve told you through the years, you know, we tend to separate things—natural and spiritual. He doesn’t, because He only has one. It’s all natural—come on, it’s all His natural. Good word! I don’t separate the two because if I do, I will think He prefers one answered prayer over another. I have found, at least in my journey with Him, He doesn’t pay any attention to how I categorize things at all. At all. I was looking through a fly fishing catalog some years ago, because God’s will is fly fishing. I was looking through each page to see if I could hear the witness of the Lord as to what I should buy next. I have to admit, I went through the entire catalog; I never heard Him speak once. But I hung on because I got to give Him a second chance. So I went through page after page, looked at all the amazing things, and I got towards the end. If you make it to the end, you’re die-hard; you’re in it for life, because in the back is the stuff that has nothing to do with fishing but could.
So I got to this page; I finally got to this page, and there was a flask—a flask is like a silver bottle that’s curved because it fits right nicely on this part of your anatomy. And it goes in the back pocket, and apparently fly fishermen like to have whiskey or brandy in there to encourage them when they’re not catching fish. That’s all I can say, and they stick that in there, and then when they’re at the stream, they just make a day out of it, see. And, uh, so I’m turning the page; I looked at the flask, and I actually paused. I looked at it and went, «That thing looks so cool.» I looked at the price, and I could afford it. And this—I thought in my head, I thought, «I can afford it, but I have no use for it.» So I turned the page, went on, finished the catalog; God never spoke, and I went on with life. A week or so later, I’m in the UK with Benny, and I went over and did a conference. At the end, I think in the first meeting, a lady came up with gifts for us— a gift for her and a gift for me. So I had my wife open hers first, and it was a shoe box with all kinds of stuff you buy for a godly woman. You know, like I don’t even remember this stuff— a picture frame with the name Jesus on it, you know, oil from the Holy Land, you know, earrings that are crosses—Christian paraphernalia, the kind of stuff that we love. So then when she was through, we of course expressed thanks, and then I opened mine. There’s only one thing in mine—it was a flask!
First of all, I didn’t look like that to her. I said, «Oh, that’s so awesome! Thank you so much; it’s beautiful,» and I genuinely thanked her. But my heart of hearts, I’m going, «You’re kidding!» I have an urgent list of prayer requests—these are life and death! I have. It would be good. These are important things—not life and death, but they are important. And then I have a bonus round list: if things are going well, you might want to answer these prayers, and then underneath all that prayer list is a pile of things that are not worthy to get on my prayer list. And at the bottom of that pile of things that are not worthy to make it to my prayer list, God reaches, and He pulls out a flask and says, «I’m just going to show him who I am—that no thought that he thinks gets past me.» That’s good! Wow! No desire, no value goes unrecognized. Wow! I have that thing to this day. I have it sitting there, prophesying to me about a Father who is different than I thought. He’s just not as religious as we are. He’s as likely to answer an insignificant desire—not a prayer, not even big enough to pray—as He is to answer the mighty thing that would change everything. Because everything that He does, He does to reveal who He is.
And this land of promises that we’ve been invited into—I just feel like we’ve got to up our game. I don’t know how else to say it. Let me put it this way: Israel did not fully inherit their promised land until David was king. Did I already share that part with you? No? Okay! Talked twice, so I don’t know what I’ve said. David is the one who actually introduced Israel to the fullness of their inheritance. They didn’t fully inherit the promised land until David became king—he’s several hundred years after Joshua initially led Israel into the promised land, so we’ve got several hundred years go by. David introduces them to the full inheritance. This is probably just a coincidence, but the word «meditate» and «meditation» is in the Bible I think 21 times. Of the 21, I believe it’s 16 times mentioned by David. Why? Meditation is when you engage heart-to-heart with the Living Word. You are actually engaged with a person over what they have said. Very good! There are many in this room, many in the church around the world—you can ask them a question; they understand the scriptures; they can give you a Biblical answer, but they can’t demonstrate the power behind the answer. The memorization of the scripture is important; learning the concepts is important. I don’t want to ever put that down, but there’s a difference between being able to give the right answer in a Bible quiz and having the default of your heart, when a crisis comes up, be a Biblical response—not merely because of correct theology, but because I have become one with what God has said. God wants the word to become flesh again. He wants it to be so immersed in us that we meditate.
We think—meditate means to mutter. You take the word of God and, it says, «By His stripes we were healed,» and several times in history, some of the great healing revivalists—with their families were sick—they were sick, and yet that scripture they took seriously. They began to pray over that one verse and they began to meditate. Eastern meditation, you empty your mind; biblical meditation, you fill your mind. Yes! That’s good! They would take that one verse and just prayerfully meditate over that one verse, «By the stripes of Jesus, I was healed.» It’s already been accomplished, and they would rehearse in their mouth, they would converse, they would ask questions, they would dialogue, they would quote, they would mutter, they would proclaim, they would prophesy, and over time, that which was external, on a printed page, became a part of who they were and how they thought, and they found themselves healed. They found themselves many of them leading ministries for countless thousands upon thousands, with a taste of the miracle power of Jesus. How did it happen? It’s because somebody was interested enough in—can I say—the promised land that they would prayerfully meditate their way into it, becoming what God had said, illustrating, modeling, being able to display. This is the heart of God.
It’s not just a point of theology; this is what He’s like. He provides unnecessary, unusable flasks to remind you what He’s like. I just—I ache for this. I’m actually—every time we speak, we speak to ourselves, but this particular time, if there was nobody in the room, I would have to speak it because the Lord is wooing us into what He’s designed for us. He’s wooing us; He’s drawing us into promises that have been left unfulfilled. I was sitting up by Whiskeytown Lake—for all of you that are not part of reading my flask illustration—and now Whiskeytown Lake—it’s not a common theme, but it does come up. Whiskeytown Lake also has Brandy Creek, so I don’t know what to do with that; these are actual names. All right, I was sitting up by the lake many, many years ago and my Bible. Sunny day, I was sitting on one of the rocks on the right side as you go west, just a little pool back there, and just sitting in the hot sun and reading my Bible, worshiping God, just having a wonderful time, honestly. I was the only one there, and I watched these little bluegills swim around—little perch swimming around in front of me. I finally would take these tiny little pebbles that were next to me and I’d throw them into the water, and they’d come up and eat it and spit it out; it was my job to torment them. I was assigned by God to torment—not really—but I’d keep doing that, and then I had this thought, «I wonder if they would eat a bee?» Because bees have stingers. No sooner did that thought cross my mind, a bee comes from this side, right in front of me, loses the ability to fly. I’m serious, drops right into the water; the fish comes up and eats him! All right, I’m impressed! It scares me, though; that he could know our thoughts that well!
I don’t want to say I didn’t know it, but I learned it. Why? It’s possible to have your thought life so ingrained with His heart, with His mind, that what you think announces the possibility of the next season. It draws us into the triumph that God has designed us for. Draws us into taking the promise; quote, meditate, get the word of the Lord, put it in your mouth, confess it, declare it, proclaim it, pray it because there’s a promised land that’s not coming to you—you’ve got to go to it. Amen? Stand, stand! Good! All right, don’t leave me yet! I’ve got such a list of promises! Goodness gracious! What I do is I have these two lists, and whenever one gets answered, I just put the word «» at the end of it. So I prayed for this for years; I prayed for this for months, and it was answered. It’s done; it’s been done! I want to have it done by the time I’m done! Thank you, Lord, I want to have it all done! I want to have all the things that He declared over my life, over our life as a family, fully accomplished for His glory.
So Father, we ask for that. We ask for the grace to take promises seriously—to embrace what You’ve declared over our lives. And I ask, Lord, that You would heighten our awareness to what You’ve promised. I pray this for our online family as well—that You’d heighten the awareness of everyone who watches in this moment—that they would become so clearly aware; You’d bring to our remembrance the things You’ve said about our lives and family lines and that they’d be fully realized in Jesus' name. If there’s anyone here who doesn’t have a personal relationship with Jesus, but before you leave this building, you would say, «Bill, I don’t want to leave the building until I know I found peace with God.» If that’s you, I want to ask you to just put your hand up where you are. If you want to know what it is to be forgiven, you want to be literally a disciple—a follower of Jesus. If that’s you, don’t miss your chance because this is it. All right, so Father, I ask that You would exponentially increase our awareness of what You’re about to do, what You’re saying. I pray this in Jesus' name.