Sid: My guest by way of telephone I’m speaking to him at his office in Redding, California, Pastor Bill Johnson Senior Pastor of Bethel Church. We’ve been talking about his book all week “The Supernatural Power of a Transformed Mind.” Most people would be kind of surprised of the rest of the title. The subtitle gives away what this book accomplishes “Access to a Life in the Miraculous.” Now my friend Jim Gall has some nice things to say about this book. He says, “This book will rock your boat and set you ablaze with a world changing,” that’s powerful, “world changing faith that the contents of this book could start another reformation even greater.” And Heidi Baker who the norm of her life is the supernatural says the same type of thing. Now Pastor Bill I said, “What is God put on your heart for people and you said, “The subject of divine justice,” explain.
Bill: Well, most of everybody I know has experienced some sort of loss or major disappointment. I pray for somebody who dies and they don’t get well.
Sid: If you recall the time that I went to your church in Redding there one of the members of your staff actually died and it was a tough time for you that’s the type of thing you’re talking about.
Bill: Exactly, exactly I don’t ask God why but I never blame him saying well, God just purposed this for a reason or something. You can’t look at a disease person and blame God for that, that he somehow says “Well, this will be good for them.” I don’t buy that, I don’t buy it because Jesus didn’t live that way there was no one who came to Him who was sick that He told them you know it’s just not My will to heal you. You’re just to learn, you know, patience, or suffering, endurance, or whatever. You just don’t see it in the life of Jesus, and He’s the only reasonable example that we have for life. Divine justice is where we learn to take our losses like a seed that gets planted in the ground that will bring forth fruit. If we can go through the experience of a loss without becoming bitter, without lowering the standard of scripture to our experience; If we can learn how to do it without becoming cold or complacent in our hearts spiritually then we’ve walked thru a mind field and on the other side of that it’s what I refer to as a just divine justice.
Sid: And yet Bill, my experience is most people that have that well, let’s take the example that happened at your church they end up getting bitter and they get up. They end up taking years to work it out.
Bill: It’s true but it’s completely unnecessary. Jesus did not leave us a model of ministering to the sick and tormented people where everyone who came to Him was healed. He didn’t set that model up so that we could blame God when something didn’t happen. We have to find out why that anointing isn’t in our lives, why when we pray we don’t get that kind of breakthrough but to blame God is really foolish. We have to use to take our losses and motivate us into the inner courts into the place with God where we learn and we get encounters with Him where we don’t keep repeating the same ministry without power. And it’s not to blame people, what I refuse to do is I won’t blame God on one hand, and the other hand I will not do guilt and shame to try to motivate me to seek God. What I do is use a pure raw hunger for the Name of Jesus to be honored in the miraculous as a motivator to get before God until I get a breakthrough. Now what happens is when you suffer for loss you have legal right to pursue a seven times greater anointing in that area of loss because of the loss itself. And that’s what we’ve been pursuing here for a number of years. And we’ve had some tragic losses and so we use those as motivators to seek God and we use them in prayer saying “Father, we ask now for seven times now a greater anointing.”
Sid: So you have a choice you can either get bitter or you can get seven times better.
Bill: That’s exactly right. I believe it’s I really believe it’s the word of the Lord for the church right now because there are many people who believe in miracles but don’t produce them and when you don’t produce them you either have bad teaching or you have disappointment. You have something going on in the heart that has kept us from the kind of breakthrough God has designed for us. So at some point we have to deal with it with the real issues and the real issue is not God, it’s not the problem of God it’s on our end. We have to just settle into the reality that we haven’t arrived yet. Then take that as a real motivator to cry out and seek God’s face.
Sid: And it’s not something, well for instance I think of a good friend that loved God from a child. Understood that Jesus paid the price for our diseases and He died. When He died a lot of other people lost their faith in divine healing saying to themselves “Well, if he couldn’t get his healing how could I get my healing?”
Bill: Exactly, it happens a lot we have to… “Hope deferred makes the heart sick,” and if we don’t know how to manage the heart in those times of disappointment then we cannot be trusted with the kind of anointing we’ve asked God to give us.
Sid: What type of feedback are you getting from people that understand really and truly what a transformed mind is and start walking into truth versus fiction?
Bill: Oh, goodness their lives are just absolutely completely changed. It’s not just regarding miracles, that’s a real legitimate proper expression of the transformed mind, it’s just there’s a different way of living when you live from Heaven towards earth it makes all the difference in the world. And as people experience this for themselves it changes everything, it changes everything about finances, everything about relationships, everything about church life. Suddenly a culture of honor is instituted where instead of trying to dangle people over hell to get them to repent, we realize it’s the kindness of God that’s to lead to repentance. While one is effective the other is better. One is plan A the other is plan B it’s important for us when we see from divine perspective that we’re able to demonstrate kindness, demonstrate love, demonstrate power, demonstrate wisdom and character. These things are all expressions of the transformed mind, and they’re needed every part of society; not just every part of the mind or diseases of the body it has to do with the malfunction of families, the greed focus in business, all these areas, education that is godless in nature. All these areas we are seeing transformed simply because of a transformed mind.
Sid: You use the term a lot and I do also a you want everyone to be normal according to the Bible. Would you describe what that would look like?
Bill: It looks like Jesus. Jesus just loved everyone no matter what. He was eager and ready to forgive and He was always ready to serve and to minister with authentic love and authentic power to change the situation. Jesus messed up every funeral he attended including His own, He just did not adjust you know into a place of toleration. He learned how to demonstrate the heart of the Father in every situation. And that’s what the Christian life is.
Sid: Okay now wherever Jesus went and he prayed for people he got results, but He was Jesus, what would you say to that?
Bill: John 5 Jesus said in John 5 “That the Son of man could do nothing of Himself.” Philippians 2 says “He emptied Himself or He set aside divinity.” What it basically means, is that every miracle Jesus ever did He was incapable of doing in His humanity. He could only do it yielded to the power of the Holy Spirit on His life. In other words, He was giving us a model that could be followed, once we were forgiven of sin and the sin issue was dealt with the only other question that remains is how much under the influence of the Holy Spirit am I willing to live? Jesus became a model for us to follow. If He did His miracles, as God I’m still impressed, but I’m not compelled to follow, when I realize that He did them as a man yielded to God then I’m completely dissatisfied with life as it is and I pursue and seek Him so that I too can demonstrate the life that He said we were to live. He’s the one that said “Greater works than these would you do.” He’s the one who said, “As the Father sent me I send you.” He was the one who set the high water mark, and then He said, “Alright this is going to be a generation that goes past it.”
Sid: We’ve spoken about your Bible school and you have a lot of young people and older people that go there. Do they all move in the supernatural?
Bill: Yes, yes in some measure, I mean that’s our whole thing, we require as much as we’re capable of requiring. We require people to come and to learn and that we require them to fail, if that makes sense. We actually require them to take risk beyond their comfort zone and we even applaud them if they don’t get it right. Because our interest is in them learning to take risk because if they persist in that area God will instruct them and teach them and they’ll have something authentic to give.
Sid: And you find that every can hear God, everyone can move in the supernatural that is a believer.
Bill: Absolutely.
Sid: Real quick one of the most recent testimonies you’ve heard of one of your students.
Bill: We had a young man that was sitting in front of our shopping mall who was in a drum circle that’s where a bunch of people show up with bongos and things of nature and they just play. He saw a man walk by who was limping quite severely so he left the circle and followed him into the mall and asked him what was wrong and the man made a hand motion signifying that he had been shot. And he asked if he could pray and when he prayed for him he was completely healed. But that which brought great joy to the family who was with him, he was an adult male. So he asked, so he says can this man not speak because he noticed that he never spoke to him. And they said, “No he’s never spoken a word in his life.” So he said, “Can I pray for that?” And the family excitedly said, “Yes,” because they had just seen a miracle. He laid hands on the man prayed for him and the first word out of the man’s mouth was “Jesus.” The family was so excited they said, say something else so he said, “God.” And I figured that was a great way to start speaking.
Sid: Do you see more miracles going on in the streets than in your church?
Bill: Yes, yes.
Sid: I think that’s normal also. Okay so it’s time for you to be normal.
