Dave shared…
I was reminded this week about some things that happened to me in the past. Back in the early 80s, I had attended brother Hagin’s Rhema School in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I remember things that happened that were life changing that to this day were turning points in my life. Lots of things. One of the biggest was that my eyes were opened to see things I never saw before. I hadn’t even heard about them before. I was raised as a Catholic. Catholics are very regimented. Everything is in order. There’s nothing wrong with some of these things; however, it could get to the point where there is no power in it. It’s just all ritual. When it becomes ritual, it becomes stagnant. When it’s stagnant, what’s the point? It’s the form of godliness and denies the power of God. I’m not saying all Catholic churches are like that because I got born again at Catholic church. And not all Catholics are like that. The religion as a whole, I would say a lot of it is like that. You go into a confessional and you confess your sins to the father, one of the priests, and then he says, “Okay, say ten hail Mary’s and pray the rosary and I absolve you of your sins. Go do these things and you’re okay.” I kind of know why they tell you to do that, because they want you to “do” something to make you feel better.
Sometimes for some of us, not all of us, doing things is more satisfying than not doing. Because we want to be in control of the outcome. We want to be able to say, “I did this; therefore, the outcome should be this.” “I worked hard, therefore, I should have a paycheck at the end of the week.” That’s just the way we are. In themselves, there’s nothing wrong with that. The challenge is that if we are like that, God isn’t like that. He wants our faith tied to the things that we do, rather than just us doing them and eliminating the idea of His involvement. If that makes sense.
Because if you work hard all your life, you have retirement at the end of your life. You have a pension. You’ve got this good job and you work and work and you did your time and now you get your gold plated watch and get your retirement. And at the end of the day, you retire and feel like, “I did it. I’ve earned my retirement and now I can relax.” And that whole idea is empty of God. Because “you” did it. He doesn’t want us to do it. He’d rather you not have a gold plated watch and a pension. He’s rather you have faith in unlimited supply. See what I’m saying? With a pension you’re fixed on an income. I’ve heard it said before that when you’re older you have to live on a fixed income.
What I’m trying to get to is some of the things that I learned when I was in school were things that I had never seen this idea of letting God be God. I never understood that. It wasn’t something I could comprehend. I knew that you just work, work, work, work. Do everything you can to get as far as you can in your career and then you will succeed. But when I went there, it wasn’t like that. It was all tied to faith. It was a different way of thinking. It was completely different. But in that place, I saw some things that were pretty amazing. That came from that lifestyle.
I remember the first time I was in a place like this. You go to school during the day and at the end of school, they’d have prayer session every day. You come and sit in a room and listen to somebody teach about prayer. I’m sitting there listening to somebody tell me about some things I don’t know anything about. And I’m completely dumbfounded by some of the things they’re saying.
What does this have to do with prayer? Prayer has to do with reaching God and communicating with Him. If you could pray a prayer, think in your mind for a moment. You have an issue that you would like answer to prayer. If Jesus was here and said “I’m handing out answers to prayer right now. Get in line and it can be anything you want, I will answer that prayer.” Most of us would have that. “I got three. Can I get three in?” Some of us would have a lot more than three. So the question is, if God said to you, I will answer any prayer you have and all you have to do is ask it to Me in the correct way and you can have anything you want. And it’s not me telling you that you have to go through these gyrations and figure out. He is a spirit and what He does is spiritual. Things that you recognize in life aren’t necessarily things that are real to Him. So like here you are, right? Talking to a God who has created everything you see.
I’ll give you an example of that. He is the ancient of days and the smartest person you’ll ever meet is like all the people that have ever lived, the smartest people you put them all in a room and He’s way smarter than all of them. We’re still trying to figure out simple basic building blocks, you know, two and three year old, toddler ideas. And God who created the universe looks at that and is like, “Yeah.” They figured out that there is a Gnome and Jesus probably laughs about it, right? And says that’s pretty rudimentary, isn’t it? And it’s not because He withholds from people, but it’s like this. I heard a person say this yesterday. He was talking about God and said scientists tend to look to disprove God with science. If they were to spend as much energy as they do to prove God, think of the revelation we would have in this world and the things we would make available to us in the area of technology and science. They at that Hadron collider. They spend billions and they keep feeding it and they want to know the beginning of life. They want to know the beginning of the universe. That’s their goal. Well, the Bible tells you that. Why don’t you take those billions and put them into feeding the poor or do something productive instead of wasting money on foolishness. The reason they do that is they don’t want God to exist. They want their prowess, their ideas, they want their ideas to be above. They’re smarter than God.
The guy in the wheelchair, Hawkins. He said God does not exist. Not only does God not exist, there is no proof that God exists. And there never will be. The commentator was making a comment about that and this is how it went. This is how arrogant man is in his ideas and thoughts. That a finite man who knows finite information, he may be the foremost astrophysicist in the world at the time, right? But relative to how much God knows, how much does he know? Not even a drop, right? So here he is making a definitive comment of God’s existence. How does he know that? He only operates on this much information. Not only does he not know it because he’s limited in his knowledge, but he doesn’t know the future. The knowledge that is coming. He doesn’t know what there is to come. So how can he make that comment.
The commentator said, “That’s how arrogant we are as human beings and the ideas of trying to come up with our ways of thinking and thoughts about things. And how much more advanced God is and how we need to be more humble about it and recognize “Master, You know more than I do.” “Father, You have exceedingly above all I can imagine or think in wisdom. How about imparting me with a little wisdom so that I might know the hope to which I have been called to?” The prerequisite for seeing God and having God’s voice speak to you is humility.
Humility is the number one thing to get you into the presence of God. To get you into the knowledge of God. To get your revelation. You have to, first of all, say “I don’t know.” And somebody who thinks they know everything, it’s kind of like a teenager. When they’re young, they don’t know anything. But when they become teenagers, they know everything. We all were like that until we got older and realized how stupid we were. How embarrassing we were. I actually thought that way at one point. The reason you are here today is because you have recognized that you and your own ability is finite. And to receive from God in a way that is transforming and revelatory where God becomes real to you, it’s going to have to be, I don’t know. You know and that’s why I’m seeking. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the doors shall be opened.
So I’m coming to Tulsa and I know nothing. I’m in my young 20s. I at this meeting and they’re talking about the move of the Spirit and I’m like, “What is that?” And a person said, “Today we’re going to do something different.” She said, “I’m going to sing a song and the piano player is going to play. He’s going to play a song he’s never played before. And I’m going to sing a song I’ve never sung before. And I’m going to sing a verse of the song and then I’m going to give the mic to somebody and they’re going to sing the next verse of the song. So I want you to get up and line up because when I’m done, the next person will do this. I’m like, “What is going on here?” Okay, I’d like to see this. It was entertaining to me. He’s going to play a song he’s never played before. She’s going to sing a song she’s never sang before. Then every person in the line will sing that same song. They’ve never talked about it, whatever. No rehearsal. They did exactly that. I was completely floored. I was like, how is this possible? How is it possible for them to do this? Some of them weren’t as articular as others but some of them, man I’m telling you, they really stepped out. What that proved to me is this is something you know nothing about. And this exists. But you don’t have to not know anything about it. You can know this too. And you too can be in that line and you can sing in the spirit under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and sing out a song that you have never heard before. With lyrics! And it sound good.
So that snapshot I’m going you is that was an exposure to something that I didn’t know. And once I was exposed to that, it was like, oh my goodness. If they can do this, then I probably could do it. And if I can do this, I don’t know how in my mind that’s even possible, because I don’t know anything about this. But we’ll have to see how that works. And then a few months later, they had services. Brother Hagin would have services at the campus and the people that were singing that day in the meeting, these people were like… these people were skilled. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in any of brother Hagin’s meetings but it wasn’t uncommon for brother Hagin to get up and say, “You got something. Come up here and take over the service.” And it turned the whole service around. And spiritually speaking. It wasn’t just for a show, but there was a purpose for that ministry. Because there was somebody there that had a need for something and this person got up and started singing about that need and the person would get delivered and that person would get delivered, that person supernaturally… things started happening in these meetings. And all of a sudden, the whole place was just filled with amazing miracles. How is that possible? That’s because these people learned how to be led by the Holy Spirit and learn about the things that they were unaware of. Once they got a hold of them, they started practicing them. They started expecting them.
When you have a word from the Spirit of God, most cases when you have a word, it’s “a” word. One word. And you get up and say that word and then another word comes and then another word comes. Pretty soon, you’ve got this whole prophecy. That’s how it happens. But when you get up and give that one word, you don’t know more than that. If they have experienced this, they know that’s how it works. That’s how God uses every one of us. He’ll tell you, “Go talk to this person.” Or He’ll lead you to go speak to someone. You don’t even know why. You just go talk to them. You don’t know what you’re going to say or if they have a problem. You go talk to them. All of a sudden, they start saying things and then you start getting information about the situation and pretty soon, you’re exchanging. Then the Lord says to you, “Tell them that I’m here to heal them.” That’s why you were sent. Then you tell them and their eyes get big. Then you lay hands on them or speak into their life and all of a sudden, as you prophesy, you start seeing tears come down their eyes because the words you’re speaking are making changes in their lives exactly for the need they have at that moment. And that’s a supernatural event.
This is normal. Our lives should be filled with this normality. The supernatural needs to become natural in our lives. So much that we expect to see it everywhere we go. So that when you get that leading of the Spirit to talk to that person, you know you don’t know what’s going to happen but you know something is going to happen. And you go in faith and get excited about it because it’s like an adventure.
My wife and I were at someone’s house years ago. This man was vexed with a lot of problems. I could tell that he was really depressed. I picked it up when I first met him. It was a Craig’s list thing and we were picking up something at his house. I looked at him and said, “Are you okay?” He says, I’ve been having some challenges. He went on to explain some of his problems. His life was in a world of hurt. I didn’t know that but I just could sense that something was wrong. So I said, “Can I pray for you?” He said, “No, you can’t pray for me.” I said, “But you have a need here.” He said, “Well, yeah, I just am not a religious person.” He’s making excuses. So he goes on for another ten minutes explaining his problems. The Holy Spirit said, “You tell him that you were sent here to pray for him and you don’t ask him to pray for him. You tell him you’re going to pray for him.” So right about ten minutes I said, “Okay, here’s the deal. I’m going to pray for you because I know God sent me here and I know I’m here for a reason and that is to help you. When I pray for you, this is going to happen.” I started saying these things out of my mouth, and the things I said happened exactly I said them. My wife and I laid hands on him. By the time we left, this guy was like free! I mean, he was in a world of hurt but by the time we left, he wasn’t like that anymore. And he was so grateful that we laid hands on him that we prayed for him. He knew that God came to visit him.
Why am I saying all this and what does it have to do with? It has to do with the thing that the Lord showed me this earlier this week. This preacher friend of mine was preaching and he said, “I remember back in the day when we were at Rhema and all of these events and supernatural things happened all the time and it was always happening. You just expected things were going to happen or change.” My wife and I would go there every year for years. Supernatural events like this. But when we went, we expected it all to happen. What this has to do with is expectation. First of all, knowing something different than you don’t know. A word of knowledge or wisdom. How many here would like to flow in the word of knowledge? Fluently? The word of knowledge is knowing things that are in a person’s life or knowing things that you could not know. Like me saying to somebody, “The Lord told me you have a sickness you’ve been dealing with in your shoulder. You had a car accident and the Lord wants to heal you of that problem.” There’s no way for me to know that but the Lord spoke that to me and therefore I gave that word to him and all of a sudden his eyes got really big. “You don’t know me. How would you know that?” I tell him, “The Lord told me to come here and lay hands on you and you’d be healed.” You see how powerful that word of knowledge is? Okay if you want to have that fluently in your life… how many would like to have that? It’s a huge deal because to have that word of knowledge fluently, think of the lives you could affect with that. That will change people’s lives. The word of wisdom is knowing the future. “The Lord sent me to you and He said He’s got this thing coming up here and you don’t have a job right now but the Lord says he’s got a job coming in a month’s time, you’re going to have a different job. It’s going to pay you a lot more and you’ve been asking the Lord about…” That’s a word of wisdom. That needs to happen in the body of Christ all the time. Every day! Every person. There’s no, “Well, I’m not a preacher, brother Dave.” No. You! You! God wants to use you this way. Because you affect people and you are affected by people. And He wants to use you to reach people other people can’t reach.
But first of all, you have to know about it. You have to know that it’s possible for you to actually do this. So when I came to Rhema, I didn’t know any of that. I had never flowed in the word of knowledge or wisdom or any of these things. I was learning about them. I didn’t even know they were in the Book. As I learned them, I thought “brother Hagin does that. So and so does that. They could do it. that’s not me.” Until this minister in that first service got up and said, “We’re going to sing a song that we’ve never sung before and he’s going to play…” Okay wait a minute! I don’t know about that. How is that possible? That sounds like you’re going to do it. And how is that possible? Well, brother Dave, it’s as the Spirit wills. So the spirit hasn’t willed me to walk in those gifts so therefore I’m okay to not walk in them.
WRONG!
That’s wrong. Is it God’s will that we have salvation? Yes. Is it God’s will that we be healed? Yes. And I can sit here for 20 minutes going “Is it God’s will…” and every one of them you’re going to say yes to. We know the will about God’s will about these things. So if we know the will, it is the will of the Holy Spirit if it’s God’s will. And all He’s looking for is somebody to stand in a place and say, “I will that you use me in this manner that I may be effective in this life.”
Why are all of these important in our lives? Because you’re here to know God and God is at the end of those things. If you want to know God, you walk in the gifts of the Spirit and you will know God. If you want to know God’s heart, you hang around people where you can minister to and you’ll find out God’s heart. You will know Him as the lover of man. You’ll know His compassion. You’ll know who He is. But it will only come with you stepping into these things that the Holy Spirit leads you to. I can promise you this. You can pray all the rest of the days of your life and not know God in the way you will know Him by doing these things. It’s not going to happen. You’re not going to know God as the revelator in the area of… He gives you a word of wisdom, you start flowing in that gift, I promise you, you’re going to know Him in a different way. In your mind, you’re going to think, “Man, this is just too much for me.”
Yeah, I am too much! But I have created you as a vessel to contain my “too much.” I created you in My image so that you can see Me as I am. And you can become like Me. I will honor… that’s the Lord. He wants to honor our steps. For you to move in compassion to the people around you, that’s what He wants from all of us.
So here’s the deal. I’m done here. Basically what the Lord was trying to give to me this week was this. Remember the things that I have done in your life. Go back to those moments were I delivered and set you free. Remember the things that I have done for you in times past. Meditate on those things. And expect them again. Because I’m not done with a one-time deliverance. I’m not done with a one-time provision. Meeting your need one time. I don’t want to meet your need one time. I want to meet your need every single day. And I don’t want to meet your need to pay that bill for you. I want to start believing for the work of the ministry in the harvest. You’re spending all your time and faith believing for your world. I need you to start believing for My world! Because it’s not about your world. That’s my responsibility. My responsibility is to meet your needs according to My riches in glory. That’s my job. That’s not your job. So stop meeting your own needs. You don’t need to do it. I’m well capable of handling that job. Ask Me, “Lord, what can I do? Where can I put my faith so that I can help that brother that’s in the field or help that ministry and reach those people?” You start putting your faith on that stuff and all of a sudden, you’re going to start knowing everything. Your barns are going to be filled. Your bank accounts are going to be full. And you’re not even thinking about yourself. When was the last time you prayed about your needs?
I remember brother Hagin saying, “I don’t pray for my needs anymore. I have more than enough. My faith is in the ministry that God has called me into for the people that go out in the field.” That’s where he put his faith.
Prayed…
Father, we come to You in the name of Jesus… Your desire is for us to get out of the world and start living in a world that you live in… that we come to see with the eyes of understanding and enlightened to know the hope to which You’ve called us to… that is the glorious inheritance… the saints… salvation and deliverance… those who are hurting and dying… You provided all sufficiency in all things to feel the whole masses, to take care of the poor… to open the sight of the blind… for us to walk in the light with You in such a way that we are outward, not inward… our lives are a reflection of who You are… let us walk in the light with You… our hearts open…
