Words from Bill Johnson

Jan 8,2010
“…the awe has to be restored. If we understand everything about our Christian walk we have an inferior Christian life. There has to be mystery. Things we can’t control, we can’t explain, we can’t understand….You don’t need signs if you’re traveling on a road you're familiar with. But if you’re going to go where you’ve never been, you’ll need signs to get there. And if there’s no signs on the road you’re traveling on, how do you know you’re on the road you think you’re on?”

There’s a story of a lady walking into a healing room & seeing a painting with the word Hope. She starts weeping and is immediately healed of brain cancer. “The interesting thing about creative expression is any time your creative expression functions out of an encounter with God, it can bring others into that same encounter.”

Our ministry has a lot to do with our relationship with the Holy Spirit & our ability to let him use us as a tool. In Judges it says that God clothed himself with Gideon. God put him on like a glove. Jesus teaches us in Matthew 11 to let our peace come to a house that is worthy to receive it. In the natural, peace is the absence of something, the absence of war, conflict, noise. But in the kingdom, it is the presence of that person. Jesus is talking about the presence of the Holy Spirit to be imparted, released into that atmosphere & change the atmosphere it enters into. It’s the privilege of the believer to host this presence & then learn to release it. The release of this presence comes through speech, through touch, & prophetic acts. Jesus was the word become flesh & his words when he spoke became Spirit. That is why when he said the kingdom of God is at hand it really was b/c he was releasing the dominion of heaven making it available & in reach to all.

The Power of a Promise- Sermon by Bill Johnson from Bethel Church in Redding, CA
Isaiah 45, 60
When God gives us a promise He comes from our future to our present with a word to get us to where He sees us going.
When we bring an encouraging word to someone we are extending the favor of God on our own life to them. We’re making them a target of God’s blessing asking the Lord to strike it. The Lord will sometimes give us a word, a token that He intends for us to give to someone else. He will not speak everything to us one on one, b/c if He did we would have no need for each other. So He orchestrates things in such a way that what He releases to one person is to be delivered to another. All of the gifts of the Spirit work in that way. King David is a perfect example of how God arranges things to function this way. He was a king, priest & prophet. He wanted to know if God had given him permission to build a temple, but the Lord would not tell him. He did not find out until he sought out the counsel of other prophets. We weren’t designed to do it on our own. If you have a vision you can accomplish on your own, it’s not big enough.

Isaiah 45-Prophetic Word for 2010
The good news is you win. The bad news is there’s a fight. The Lord says, “I will go before you. And make crooked places straight. I will break down gates of bronze.” What happens when gates are broken? Entire groups of people are ushered into a breakthrough. “I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places.” Do you sense something good is coming but you can’t see it? The real treasure is people. The Lord has connections, alliances prepared for us that will come to light at the right time.
There’s two ways to apprehend the kingdom of God: the violent take it by force-there’s a battle we are to learn how to fight. And then we must learn to enter it as a child, to receive our inheritance. A people that are possessed by promise. Return to the promises. Every time someone steps into divine destiny they learn something about God: that He calls them by name. This is His purpose, that we may know that He made us & calls us into His love.