Sid Roth - This Revelation DESTROYS Fear and Anxiety
My guest says, hidden in the darkness that many of you are facing right now, your mess is your message. My guest was set free and was given keys from Messiah that will launch you into the best part, into the greatest part of the rest of your life.
Sid Roth: Welcome to our most important guest, Holy Spirit, have your way. I pray in Yeshua's Mighty Name that you make this show naturally supernatural. On the surface, Chad Norris's future looked brilliant, graduated seminary, popular itinerant and international Baptist speaker, but Chad, what was going on in the darkness?
Chad Norris: There was a lot going on. So I had my first panic attack when I was five years old, a demonic presence filled my room, and as a little boy, I had no clue, Sid, what was going on. Panic Attack started at five, got stronger at 12, I began to have many night terrors, night tremors, and I also grew up in a little bit of legalism, and so I developed a mindset of God is distant, sadistic, out to get me. Other than that, I was great. So I had a rough go at it: attacks, really bad mindset. This led me to go on medications when I was 18, as a freshman in college, my world fell apart internally. And I didn't have a theology that helped me. I had a theology that I was alone, I felt alone. I went on Klonopin, Zoloft, and Xanax at the age of 18.
Sid Roth: So many even younger kids are going on these antidepressants today.
Chad Norris: It's a bad problem. And these things are powerful, Sid. So from 18 to 30, I was on medications. I went to Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama, and got a seminary degree, and still didn't know the Father, not blaming anyone for that, that was just my journey. And at the age of 30, I was still battling depression and anxiety, and I just decided that we were going to have our first child and I told my wife, I'm ready to come off these medications, and very foolishly did not check with the doctor, came off of them very quickly. And that is just when everything went south. My mind shut down, my body shut down. I can remember like it was yesterday, being in the fetal position on the kitchen floor, my wife was on the phone with my brother. I believed in God, Sid, I just didn't have any intimacy with Him. And I prayed a prayer. And this is where I began to develop a passion for "God's not afraid of our mess" In the fetal position, this is what I said, "Jesus help me". That's what I prayed.
Sid Roth: I have prayed that prayer myself, and you know what? He does.
Chad Norris: And I think a lot of us are afraid to invite the Lord into our mess. And so shortly thereafter, I drove nine hours to Titusville, Florida, with my wife, and I had some spiritual warfare counseling. Now, you have to understand, I was a cessationist that didn't really, it's not that I was against anything supernatural, it just wasn't my experience. It was more of just ignorance than anything. And in the middle of the counseling session, the middle of the afternoon, this counselor just asked me a question, and this Baptist boy had no grid for what an open vision was. And I had my first open vision, Jesus Christ stared right at me, the most kind, tender, it wasn't His power that knocked me out of the chair, it was His love. There was a nine-foot angel on one side with a sword, a six-foot angel on one side, and Jesus says, "I'm your Healer, trust Me". He told me that twice. Now, Sid, I didn't grow up around supernatural stories. And so when this happened, and I fell into the floor under His love, the first thing I said when I came to is I told my wife, "We are not in Kansas anymore". I was like, "If Jesus is that kind, that means His Father is that kind". And it was a matter of days where the Father began to help me unlearn most of what I'd ever learned about Him. I felt like I was in a matrix.
Sid Roth: You told me before we went on the air, "The Father God Himself is here".
Chad Norris: Yes. Right before we started filming, you said, "Do you feel that"? And I said, "Yes".
Sid Roth: Yeah.
Chad Norris: And I know theologically the Father is in us, right?
Sid Roth: Right.
Chad Norris: Greater is He who's in me than He who is in the world, "But when You draw close to Me, He draws close to us". That's what He says. There's a lot of God's kids that believe in Jesus. They don't want to go to hell when they die, but they don't know the Father intimately. And when I began to know the Father, I never went out looking to be prophetic, or walk in signs and wonders, or see feathers drop on people when I pray for them, or see gold dust manifest. I prayed for a blind woman in our church. God healed her. All I said was, "Father show her how much You love her," and 42 families left our church.
Sid Roth: You had the membership drive the wrong the way.
Chad Norris: Yes, I have an anointing to shrink a church, I can shrink anyone's church. I can do it.
Sid Roth: Tell me about the time you were filled with the Holy Spirit, a nice Baptist boy...
Chad Norris: Well, here's the story...
Sid Roth: Seminary graduate.
Chad Norris: Father tells me all the time, He says, "I supernaturally gave you humor to disarm the religious spirit so people can hear you". I wish I could tell you that my baptism with Holy Spirit was dramatic. It was the most non-dramatic baptism in the Spirit ever. This is after having an encounter with the Lord. I said, "Father, I want to pray in tongues. I want to see the baptism like Jesus did". And He said, "Just go". Well, I took Him literally, I literally took off in the morning, got the keys to my wife's black Honda Pilar, or Honda Accord. I drove around town, nothing happens for an hour. So I go back home. I sit on my black futon couch and I said, "What do I do"? And He said, "Just go". And I just started praying in tongues. My wife woke up the next morning. I said, "Babe, I prayed in tongues last night". She said, "Are you kidding me right now"? And then all of a sudden, I started walking in, I didn't know what prophecy was. I got a seminary degree and didn't know First Corinthians 14:1. I'd walk up to people, I would tell them everything about themselves. I would give words of knowledge on a level... I could hear the Father laughing. And what He started showing me was, He said, "I respond not just to faith, but childlike faith". And it was overnight, I started operating in the supernatural.
Sid Roth: What happened to your broken heart?
Chad Norris: That was, I wish I could tell you it was some long drawn out process, Sid, I had a love encounter the next day. It was as though I could literally feel condemnation fall off of me. People say all the time, "Where do you get your passion from"? It's not just the anointing. I remember what it was like to be that guy who was tied up, who thought God hated my guts. And now I minister as much from my past wounds. It's like Henri Nouwen said, "The Wounded Healer", if people just knew that the Father not only was real, and listen, I love the Lord, I love Jesus, but Jesus was manifested on the earth to show us the Father. And this next move of God, this entire move of God is not just about Jesus, it's about His Father. Jesus exists to this day to take us to the Father, that's why even Christians don't have tons of peace. Because if you just believe in Jesus, that's one thing, but when you know the Father, that's eternal life.
Sid Roth: There are many that are watching us right now that say, "I have a broken heart". And there are many watching that say, "What do you even mean by a broken heart? What are the symptoms of a broken heart"?
Chad Norris: Self-hatred, confusion, doubt, condemnation.
Sid Roth: When someone's in self-hatred, do they know it?
Chad Norris: That's a great question. Many times no. What has to happen is the Holy Spirit begins to eliminate that, and there's a metric to everything in life, right? Now, there's not- everybody's not at the same level of self-hatred, but I teach all the time, if Satan has a mission in his existence, it's to condemn us, to condemn the saints. To some degree, and this is me being a lead pastor for almost 10 years now, I hardly meet anyone who has not struggled with that. So Luther called Romans 8, the gateway to the Bible, I call Romans 8:1 the gateway to the gateway. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for Sid, for Chad. You see, here's the deal, a lot of God's kids, they start off in the love of Christ, but then years later, it says though, we think that we're supposed to be self-made people with the Father. The key to the prophetic healing intimacy is truly believing Romans 8:1, not for your brother, not for your spouse, in the mirror. And that's what God began to...
Sid Roth: No condemnation.
Chad Norris: Let me tell you a funny story, the Lord told me one day, He said, "You want to know what Satan's favorite biblical passage is"? I said, "What"? He said, "Satan's favorite biblical passage is John 3:16, when Jesus was talking to Nicodemus". The devil realized he couldn't defeat the church early on, so he just joined it, and he stands behind many, many, many pulpits. Most people believe John 3:16 is about the afterlife. It's not. It's about eternal life. It's a deep intimate friendship with the Father. And so when Nicodemus sneaks around and knocks on the door, the Lord is talking to Nicodemus about this Zoe, this deep connection with the Father. This is what drove so many religious leaders crazy around Jesus, "Who is your Father? Who you keep talking about your Father"? Jesus existed then and now to introduce us to the Father, that is eternal life. the supernatural began to really open up. You were in a restaurant with a waitress. What happened?
Chad Norris: This has happened so many times. My wife laughs about it now, but we're at the beach, we're not in a ministry event. I love food a lot, Father talks to me about it a lot. He's trying to get me skinnier, and I order some shrimp. Waitress comes up, and I said, "You weren't coming to work tonight. You've been suicidal. You live with your grandmother right now. You've been self-cutting yourself emotionally, you have no desire to live".
Sid Roth: There's a Baptist pastor that doesn't even believe in miracles today. I want you to know that. Go ahead.
Chad Norris: I said her name, and I said, "The Father wants you to know you will never be able to doubt His goodness the rest of your life". And I gave her some more words. She starts weeping. I start weeping. My wife takes a picture of us together. Sid, here's what's fun about when you walk in friendship with the Father, wherever you are, there the Father is, and if you bond in intimacy with Him, you don't have to try to be prophetic or even charismatic. You just be friends with God, He'll show you things.
Sid Roth: Okay, this begs the question...
Chad Norris: Okay.
Sid Roth: How do you become a friend of God's? You just say I want to be a friend? What? I mean, is it that simple? What do you do?
Chad Norris: I wish I can make it complicated. Let me tell you through my own story. It's just, it's so simple. You have to hire someone to help you misunderstand it. You're ready?
Sid Roth: Let me take notes.
Chad Norris: There's two verses that changed my life. Colossians 1:21 and 22. I personalized it. "Chad was once alienated, hostile in mind, and performing in evil deeds, but Jesus now presents me before the Father holy, blameless and beyond reproach". The Father has a sense of humor, people, there are a lot of people more spiritual than the Father is, they're more, it's just so religious, that what we turn this into. I'm driving down the road one day, and I said, "Let me get this straight, Father, you're telling me You love me as much as You love Jesus"? You know what He said? "Yes". I'll never forget one night, He said, "There's so many of my kids that have to wipe tears away from their eyes when they realized what they left on the earth, what they didn't have with me". Why do we have to wait to go to Heaven to have intimacy with the Father? So you take just one passage, maybe two, and you just say, "You know what, I'm like the kid, the 12-year-old kid with fish and bread. I'm just Jesus going to believe this verse". And what I started doing is personalizing these passages. And for about three months, I didn't feel anything in my emotions, but I kept at it, Sid, and I would just say, "No, He loves me". And one day in the shower, I began to cry, and I didn't know why I was crying. And I said, "Father, why am I crying"? And He said, "My Word, my Logos Word has taken root in you, and it is breaking up the stony places". Well, then I started devouring. Sid, I didn't ask for feathers to drop. There was a 90-foot gold dust cloud that appeared above our stage in the service one day, people ran out of the room yelling; I don't ask for that.
Sid Roth: So you had another membership drive, I guess, to throw some more people out.
Chad Norris: Yes. Well, I'll tell you a friendship with God too, He'll take you through seasons that you're like, "Man, this is rough". And He says, "Well, fellowship, of my sufferings is a high form of friendship with Me". We just got to get to the place where you want the Father on His terms, but He loves to connect with us as kids. I hope to be 100 years old to torture the devil down here in ministry, but even when I'm 100, I'm still a kid. He's my Eternal Father. And so relating to the Father, Abba as a child, signs and wonders, and miraculous, it'll happen on accident.
Sid Roth: So you don't even have to read a book or have a big library of books, all you need, if I'm hearing you right, oh, gee, you know what we do in our ministry... If I'm hearing you right, all you have to do is cultivate a friendship with your Father that knows everything you've ever done...
Chad Norris: Yeah.
Sid Roth: ...and loves you beyond any love you've ever experienced in this life.
Chad Norris: Yep.
Sid Roth: Simple.
Chad Norris: And invite Him into your mess. You may not have had a nervous breakdown. You know, not everybody's had a dramatic story like mine, but you're probably aware of your own brokenness. All I'm saying is invite the Father into it. He's always yearning for connection. He provided connection pre-Jesus, Jesus and now, but this is what I believe I'm on the show to say, Jesus loves us, but He wants us to right now continue to ride His back like a kid to His Father. The first two words of the Lord's Prayer, "Our Father," supernatural will happen on accident when he becomes your Abba, Daddy.
Sid Roth: You relate to Paul, briefly, why?
Chad Norris: Paul, Paul's fascinating. I had a man crush on Paul for like five years, I read every book I could get my hands on about Paul. You know what? Sid, he boasts about his weakness. And he said, "I am the chief of sinners". Not I was. And I looked it up one day and I said, "Father, I've heard so much teaching on identity, hang on, Paul's boasting in his weakness, and I am the chief of sinners". And then the Holy Spirit had me do something. He had me take the staff that I lead, and he had me take them to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. And I wasn't really sure why because it wasn't about alcohol. It was in that meeting, when a culture vulnerability began to infiltrate our faith community. I began to weep in the back of the room and I said, "Father, I don't like the fact that there's more vulnerability in this AA meeting than there is at our church". And He began to sovereignly open up my eyes to Paul's vulnerability. "What I want to do, I don't do, what I do, I don't want to do". All I'm saying is instead of trying to keep that mask on, just invite the Father into your mess. I got a funny story to prove how real God is and how it's not about me. A woman flew from Australia for me to pray for her. That is a long way. She walks into our prayer meeting. My wife and I, we had some intense marital fellowship that afternoon about a situation with our kid. I walk into this prayer meeting off the heels of some intense conversation. The woman gets healed as she walks towards me. I never laid hands on her. You know what the Father said? He said, "Chad, I did that for you because none of this has ever been about you. It's pointed at Jesus".
Sid Roth: Chad was given supernatural keys that were taught to him by the Messiah to make our mess our launching path into the miraculous. Be right back.
Sid Roth: I want Chad to tell us some of these supernatural keys. He told me one the other night, you have to talk about imagining you're a three-year old.
Chad Norris: A lot of people ask me, Chad, "How do I deal with warfare"? And I always give them an answer that they stare at me like I'm kidding, and I'm not. And I said, "You need to stop trying to be so mature in your prayers, and you need to be a three-year-old, climb up on the neck of the Father and just hide there". I prayed a prayer one time, I said, "I want to hide so deep in you that the only oxygen I have is from your nostrils". You see, the devil is not as afraid of anointing as he is friendship with the Father. Anointing he can outwit, but when he finds one of God's good friends, it's like the sons of Sceva, "Hey, Paul, I know Jesus, I know who are you"? The devil doesn't like messing with people who are really close to the Father.
Sid Roth: How does someone be a three-year-old at your age with God the Father?
Chad Norris: I'm not trying to be funny when I say this; ask the Father to help you. When my son was... I have two boys and a girl, Sam, Ruthie and Jack. And Sam, he's my oldest. Now he's 19. And he used to love to put on a Superman cape, and he would climb up onto the top of the swing set, and there were times I'd have to run out there and say, "Sam, don't break your neck". What I've learned is you never have to train a child on how to be a child, but you have to train adults how to be a child all the time. And so there's something about just being a child, "Father, where are my keys at"? And He'll show you. I have got stories upon stories of that.
Sid Roth: Yeah, I know your major premise that you teach from is inviting God into your mess...
Chad Norris: Yes.
Sid Roth: ...and causing your mess to become your mentors.
Chad Norris: He loves it.
Sid Roth: I mean, you're going to drive the devil meshugah! It's a Hebrew word for crazy. If the mess he's put you in gives you a proficiency in helping the world in that same mess.
Chad Norris: The name of the church that I pastor is called The Garden Greenville. We have a college there called Garden college. And the Holy Spirit told me to plant a literal garden about a year and a half ago on the back of our property. I'm laughing now thinking about this, I'd forgotten about. And the Father said I love gardens. And he said, "Chad, I love compost". You know what compost is?
Sid Roth: I do.
Chad Norris: Manure, it's manure. God takes manure and grows beautiful things out of it. But you know what we do? We still do the same thing that Adam and Eve did in Genesis 3, let me clean myself up. And when I'm around other people, I'm going to be a fake version of myself. I'm too old for that. I've already had my nervous breakdown, I'm not going to have another one. And you know why I did? Because you get exhausted trying to be somebody else, Sid, and I just drew a line in the sand, I said, "The Father loves me". I went to a conference two years ago that I didn't want to go to, the Father made me go to it. He said, "I'm sitting here because I'm giving you a word for the leader of the conference". And I said, "I'm not going to make it happen. You just bring her to me". And God brought her to me, this woman who is known all over the world began to weep. She said, "How do you know words like this"? And I said, "I'm just a kid". He makes me go to a Voice of the Apostles Conference. I go there, I pray for a young kid, never asked his name, he had an incurable disease. He gets healed on the spot. And he said, "How do you operate in stuff like this"? I said, "I'm just a kid". This is the key to the supernatural because the Father is supernatural. Last time I was in Israel, I was in Jericho, I realized that this is the lowest elevated city in the world. How funny is it that the Father said to Joshua, "Give me the lowest elevated city first and I'll give you the rest". A childlike heart is humility. It's contrite. It's playful, and the Father will pounce on that.
Sid Roth: Very important. Remember the prayer that I prayed, Chad prayed? It's two words, "Jesus, help". Pray that right now as we go off the air. Chad, pray something that God has on your heart, look in the camera and pray it right now.
Chad Norris: Father, I thank You so much for just who You are. Lord Jesus, thank You for revealing the Father to us. Father, I ask in this end-time move of You that You would unleash spirit of wisdom and revelation for so many friends. The Father is calling His family back and His friends back. There have been believers for so long. There are so many people that believe in Jesus, but there's not as many friends of the Father and I declare and decree as a prophet, that over the coming days before the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, you will see the movement of friendship with the Father. The days of eternal life are not just when we die, they're now, and there is a fresh move of the Father on the earth to take normal ordinary broken people and bring them into His bosom and I pray that that would be your reality.