Sid Roth - Heavenly Encounters in Worship
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth here. Welcome to my world where it's naturally supernatural. When my guest plays the keyboard, supernatural things happen. The atmosphere is changed supernaturally. I know this will be hard for you to believe, but amazing signs happen, miracles happen. Are you ready for your breakthrough? Now I have to tell you. When I find out about Steve Swanson's background, it really, there's something in me that I just, it's so wonderful. You see, the music came naturally to him. His mother was a worship leader, his father was a pastor and he came to know the Lord at age six, filled with the Holy Spirit at age six. Age eight, he starts as a little kid leading worship. But that's not the thing that excites me. The thing that excites me, Steve, is you had such a heart for God at such a young age. You would lock yourself in the church to just worship God. Tell me about that.
Steve Swanson: Absolutely. Well the church was actually attached to our house, so you go two steps and you're in the church. And so I would lock myself in there and just play the piano. I started playing when I was six years old and I just played and worshiped the Lord in the church, which was our house.
Sid Roth: But having that tender heart, at such a young age, it almost shocks me, to be candid with you, that the lure of fame and money, when you got into high school kind of drew you away from spiritual things. He even did some work in a studio. He was making a $1000 a minute.
Steve Swanson: That's right.
Sid Roth: And so you're on a train and a total stranger, you know, you're in the car where they serve a meal, and a total stranger sits at the table, doesn't order any food. Very strange. But then she looks at you and what happens?
Steve Swanson: We're sitting in that dining car. She sits down. She had this flowing blond hair and she looks at me, and she points her finger at me, and she's across the table, and she goes, "You're running from God". Woman: Stop running from God.
Steve Swanson: She didn't have any food and as soon as she said that, she got up and left out the back of the train. Never saw her again.
Sid Roth: It does talk in the Bible of, "Watch and be entertained". It may be an angel. Do you think that was angel?
Steve Swanson: It came at the right time. That was an angel. That was an angel sent to me by God to tell me, to remind me that God had the call on my life.
Sid Roth: And there shortly thereafter, just a coincidence, he's invited to play keyboards and worship at a church meeting, and they decide to pick on you. What happened?
Steve Swanson: Yeah, they cornered me. It was a set up. It was a set up. They had me come in and play orchestra parts, string parts and things like that. And they had a gospel choir, and a gospel choir does something to my spirit.
Sid Roth: I agree.
Steve Swanson: I just, I can't contain myself. So after the meeting while I'm in tears after hearing the music, the music is touching me, and they saw that, and they go, this is our chance. And they corner me and they laid hands on me, and they prayed for a refilling of the Spirit. And I was on my knees weeping before God, and that was a transforming moment then.
Sid Roth: What were you feeling when they were doing that, after all those years of being so cold for the things of God?
Steve Swanson: It felt warm again. It felt life again. I felt light. I could feel that light, that same light that I would go in the church there and worship as a little kid. I could feel that returning, and I was on my knees and I kept saying, "like a mighty rushing wind, like a mighty rushing wind", and it was a mighty rushing wind.
Sid Roth: Okay. Then you go to a music conference. Kent Henry is there and then you went to another meeting where it happened to be your home church, he was there. What happened?
Steve Swanson: I'm at that conference and I'm watching Kent sit at the piano, and I really thought I was dying because I saw my head on his body. I'm having a, you know, an out-of-body experience and I'm feeling this warmth again, this like golden thread encircling me. It was God showing me, you know, what was to be. And coincidentally he came to the church we were at after that and he started prophesying about songs and about the sounds over me just a few weeks later after that.
Sid Roth: Now you are a world class worship leader. I have to tell you, I've listened to your music. I love your music.
Steve Swanson: Thank you.
Sid Roth: It literally brings me joy. But you said to me, shocking, he says, "Sid, you are called to be a psalmist". Everyone is called to be a psalmist. It's not just the paid professional. What do you mean by that?
Steve Swanson: We're all called to release the power and the presence of God. We are called as worshipers. You don't have to have a worship leader to do worship. You are a worshiper. You were created to worship God. That is part of your DNA as creator to creation. I mean, it's, he's so beautiful, he's so wonderful you can't help but worship.
Sid Roth: You had an insight that all of nature is worshiping God in harmony with Heaven. Explain that.
Steve Swanson: I was recording a track and the Lord told me to put the sound of the cricket on this track. So I went online and found the sound of a cricket and I put it in my computer, and that allowed me to slow it down and speed it up. I put the cricket, I'm having fun, I'm playing cricket chords on my keyboard.
Sid Roth: I haven't heard that before.
Steve Swanson: I'm having fun with that. So he says, slow it down. I play it again and it sounds like birds. And then you can take it down, it sounds like owls, and then you take it down even further, it sounds like the sound of the whales, woo, woo. And he says, "See all of creation is singing the same song. They're just singing in different octaves". Hallelujah. This whole thing is going on around us all the time.
Sid Roth: I understand you even prayed for people to hear the sounds of Heaven.
Steve Swanson: Absolutely. I told that to a gentleman and he, I prayed for him. I prayed for him, he's sitting there and he goes, "I don't hear it". So I go, I don't know. He went home and he called me back in about 30 minutes, and he calls, and he goes, "I can hear it! I can hear it"! I go, "Hear what"? "I can hear the sound of creation! Now how do you turn it off"!
Sid Roth: Now you say that when we worship it's God inviting us to Divine encounters.
Steve Swanson: Absolutely. Absolutely. God wants to meet with us. We always think that we're coming to meet with God, but hey, he's coming to meet with us. And there's this Divine exchange that happens in worship where the more you give glory to the King of Glory, the more this exchange that happens, and there's this invitation from God to come up to a higher place and just, he wants to show us things. He wants to show us.
Sid Roth: That's like the dream you had. Tell me the dream.
Steve Swanson: Yeah. I dreamed I was at a James Brown concert. And I'm sitting in the front row and he's up there going, "Get on up! Get on up right now"! I got up on the platform and I say, "Stop"! And he goes, "What are you doing? What are you doing"? I said, "It's not get on up, it's come on up, you know like come on up here and I'll show you some things". And when I said that, this scroll rolled down and the verses for this song were unfurled right before me. And I wrote them down as soon as I woke up: "The door is standing open and seated on the throne surrounded by a rainbow" just unrolled right over the whole.
Sid Roth: Okay. I release you now to sing that song. And I'm telling you something, you're about ready to come on up. Steve [music, singing]: I was in the spirit on the Lord's day. I suddenly heard a voice behind me say, come on up, come on up, come on up, I want to show you some things. Come on up, come on up, come on up, I want to show you some things. A door is standing open when seated on the throne, surrounded by a rainbow like a gleaming precious stone. His eyes were gleaming fire, his hair is white as snow. Angels, elders, preachers, call him holy, holy, holy is the Lord. I was in the spirit on the Lord's day. I suddenly heard a voice behind me say, come on up, come on up, come on up, I want to show you some things. Come on up, come on up, come on up, I want to show you some things. I see his hair is crystal that's mingled with fire. The sound of crashing thunder and the river of life.
Sid Roth: You know, Steve Swanson's music, it just flat makes me happy. But you had something supernatural happen and after this happened it was like the supernatural opened in your music. You were at a house of prayer, few people. You were very tired.
Steve Swanson: Yes.
Sid Roth: What happened?
Steve Swanson: Actually, nobody was there except for me and another singer, and the prayer leader. And I would play for two hours of devotional and then two more hours of just praying and singing.
Sid Roth: For three people.
Steve Swanson: Yeah. For nobody, just us, me and the congregation. But I'm sitting there like this and I'm tired, and I've got my head down, and I'm resting my elbows on my knees. And I felt two arms coming underneath my armpits and I heard a voice say, "Sit up and worship me". And when it said that, it's like all of a sudden I could hear female voices on my right hand and we were singing "Worthy". We were just kind of doing this, "worthy". I could hear the female voices on my right hand, the male voices on the left hand, and they were following what I was playing. So I'm going "worthy, worthy" and they're doing all that. And I couldn't tell if they were singing what I was playing or I was playing what they were singing. It was a simultaneous transcription of Heaven. This realm opened up.
Sid Roth: Wait. There's just a few of you. Where is this singing coming from?
Steve Swanson: From Heaven. It's the realm. There's something opened up in the Spirit where God allowed me to hear a taste of what's going on in Heaven.
Sid Roth: So since this point you've had some very amazing supernatural manifestations. He literally sits at the piano, and it starts playing by itself. What other things happened?
Steve Swanson: Well people get healed. People have visions. People always come up to me and they hear the picture I drew of what I saw, what the Lord is showing me. But people have gotten healed and that. And you know, the more you start singing about that, you more you begin to declare and what's going on, it gets bigger. What you're focusing on is being empowered by your words.
Sid Roth: The Glory is released. What are some of the things that happen when the Glory is released?
Steve Swanson: You mean like now?
Sid Roth: I think I asked the right question.
Steve Swanson: You know, the Glory is a realm of the ease of the Spirit. It's a wave that we all get into this place where God is manifested in his beauty and his power, and his majesty. That is the Glory of God. God is the Glory, the Glory is God. And when he reveals himself people get healed, people get delivered, people get set free from bondages. It's the Glory that creates that atmosphere where everything can change for us as we begin to just worship him and that exchange comes from Heaven.
Sid Roth: You told me in the Glory you don't lay hands on people, you don't pray for people, they just get healed. You were just telling me about someone that was legally blind.
Steve Swanson: Yeah. There was a gentleman, we were, I had, we were going for healing. I had a word of knowledge for arthritis and actually somebody got healed from arthritis during the worship. But this gentleman in particular was on the floor and without anybody laying hands on him, he had been a car wreck where his actual eye socket got crushed and was legally blind in his left eye. And he could feel the warmth of the presence during the worship. And he took off his glasses, and he said, he covered his eye and he could see the fibers in the carpet from where he was laying down and he could feel the presence of God. Another lady had metal in her wrist. And were singing "High Praises" and she came up and testified before the whole congregation. She goes, "I have metal in my wrist. I couldn't move it, but now look". And the place went crazy because God is doing it. It's God gets all the glory. It's not touched by a man's hand. It's all God.
Sid Roth: I'm going to release you now to play "Songs of Deliverance" and I'm going to tell you something. The Glory is going to come upon you.
Steve Swanson: Yeah.
Sid Roth: And I already know this. People with arthritis in their fingers, as he plays, the arthritis is going to just dissipate in your knees. Any pain in your body, it's going to just vanish. Ready for your deliverance? "Songs of Deliverance".
Steve Swanson: I hear the love song of my king. I hear your song sung over me. The light in your eyes, your heart is set on loving me. And your joy is in my life and your joy is my faith, and your joy is in my worship, and your joy is in my praise.
Sid Roth: Randy Clark, who has been a guest here has a ministry to impart, he has imparted anointings over some of the strongest ministries, traveling the globe. He prayed for an impartation for you. What happened, Steve?
Steve Swanson: I was in the back row because I saw everybody falling and shaking. So I'm trying to hide back there because I don't want to touch anybody. Oh thank you. But he's a worship leader from Florida. "God is going to open up a realm for you like you've never heard before. What you've heard in the past is nothing in comparison to what he wants to give to you today. I bless it, what Jesus is doing, what the father is doing right now in the name of Jesus". And when he said that to me, I had my hands up like this, and I heard this sound like a fax and all of a sound from the side came these notes like on a piano scroll, and they're going by me like this, and I start following the notes with my head. And they said I did this for 45 minutes, I'm just, my head is like that. Nobody is around me. And then after a while, it just shut off and I just fell.
Sid Roth: You thought that they were strange. That's what they thought about you.
Steve Swanson: I heard, I hope he's okay. People were saying, I hope he's okay. Forty-five minutes of that. And my neck was sore the next day, but God was downloading, downloading exactly what he prophesied. what I heard in the past was nothing in comparison to what he was giving me that day. And ever since then I've just been on this quest to release the sound of Heaven to line up with what's already going on in Heaven and releasing it on the earth. That's the place of worship where we all come into agreement with what is going on.
Sid Roth: I have to tell you, your song, "Changing the Atmosphere" is my favorite of all of your songs because I believe it actually changes the atmosphere.
Steve Swanson: Absolutely.
Sid Roth: You call it a song of breakthrough. What do you mean by that?
Steve Swanson: Absolutely. This song carries the breakthrough. There's a line in it, and it's from a friend of mine, the line in it says, "It's not about what you're going through, but it's where you're going to". So your breakthrough is right there.
Sid Roth: And your breakthrough right now, "Changing the Atmosphere".
Steve Swanson: Let the high praises of God be on my lips and to two-edged swords be in my hands. Hey, your word and my words are mangled together and they're cutting into the atmosphere. Well it ain't about what I'm going through, but it's about where I'm going to because my praise is changing the atmosphere. Yeah, my praise is changing the atmosphere. Putting my future into now by the Spirit of God within. Heard that time is running out but eternity is running. Putting my future into now by the Spirit of God within. Head that time is running, but putting this moment in.