Sid: My guest Dutch Sheets wants everyone everywhere to be red hot for the Messiah. And as you found out earlier this week the statistics of people Christians that have lost their hope; ministers that have lost their hope and are in a cycle. In fact, Dutch if you would share on the stages of hope deferred maybe people can recognize where they are. Would you explain?
Dutch: Absolutely and let me start by saying no one should feel condemned if they find themselves in this pattern. You cannot go through life without experiencing hope-deferred to one degree or another. It begins once we’ve had a setback, a loss, a prayer that we didn’t think was answered. A situation where sickness came in and seemingly won, it could be a thousand different things; but it begins with simple discouragement. That’s the first early stage of this disease, simple discouragement. The next phase if that isn’t checked will be confusion, we begin to question ourselves, question our dreams, question God and His promises. If that goes unchecked the next phase will be unbelief; hope is lost at that point and their expectation is gone. You know you can’t have faith without hope; I’m a strong believer that there’s a difference. You have to move beyond hope to faith, but you can’t have faith without hope. It begins with hope, faith is the substance of things hoped for. The fourth stage and this is real trouble if we get here to this point, but disillusionment begins to come, the first stage of bitterness. Which usually involves questioning even the character of God that’s what I did; “How could You let this happen God when my dad was unfaithful and we lost him and he divorced mom? How could You do this? We were Christians we were serving You? We were faithful to You? We made sacrifices for You? How could You let this happen?” And the first stage of bitterness developed the fifth stage is bitterness. And I tell you Sid I became so bitter, I was such a bitter, angry young man for 2 years when this happened to us. Deep feelings of resentment, blaming God; blaming everyone else; blaming even myself just filled with bitterness. And the last stage and believe me I came this far cynicism, just a complete loss of faith and hope, a dead heart. Now we don’t even try to believe anymore, we don’t even act like we’re trying to believe, we don’t even put on the religious face anymore. I took great pleasure in cursing and getting drunk and doing things that were in appropriate because I had just lost all of my faith. And you can be in any phase of that and hope deferred is starting to set in. If it hurts you when you think about the dream that you once had you probably have hope deferred. If passion has waned and apathy has now taken over hope deferred has probably at work in you. If you find yourself going through the religious motions doing and saying the right things while all the time you’re feeling empty and lifeless on the inside you may be a victim of this enemy. If disappointment seems stronger than joy in your life; if tears come to your eyes when you think about a certain person; if you can’t go to some places in your mind and heart without discomfort and negative emotions. If promises from God now spark disillusionment or cynicism or faith. If somebody’s says God’s going to come through for you and instantly you just wonder “I don’t know if I believe that” you probably have some stage of hope deferred. But I tell you the good news is God has a plan to bring us out of it just like He did for me. You know I was a prodigal away from God and interestingly just like the prodigal in scripture God came to him in a pigpen. God came to me in a bar called “The Boers Head.”
Sid: (Laughing) That’s pretty close.
Dutch: I mean you just can’t make that up; He came to me in a place called “The Boars Head.” And that’s where my journey back to the Father began.
Sid: …give us some practical examples of people that have seen themselves and say “I know that’s me but it’s me; what can I do about it?” Give me a couple of steps.
Dutch: Oh I tell you one lady comes to mind immediately she was one of the most tormented, discouraged, depressed people I had ever known. Counselor, physiologists had told her “You are probably the worst case I have every dealt with, they said “Your mind has actually quit working properly.” The doctor even compared it to heart disease. What happens to a human heart has happened in your mind. She had no hope other than God. She began to meet with me, and by the way she had experienced sexual abuse; she had experienced the loss of her parents, she experienced a spouses adultery. She had gone through a bout with cancer. I mean this lady had been beat up by life. And the first thing we had to do is we had to say “You know what you can’t blame God you’ve got to start reaching out to Him. You’ve got to choose, you’ve got to tell your heart to beat again.” The next thing she had to do real simple she had to forgive, you don’t forgive people because they deserve it. People say “Well they don’t deserve it.” No, we don’t forgive anybody we just turn them over to God; we say “Lord, You’re the judge you take care of this I release them.” And that word in Greek means “Drop the charges, Lord I’m not going to take them to court; I trust You as the judge I release them.” And somehow when we release the people that hurt us or even if we’ve had bitterness toward God. I mean He didn’t do anything to deserve being released but we forgive Him. We say “Lord I let this bitterness go toward You.” When we forgive something happens immediately; we start being released from what happened to us that hurt us. The scripture says in Luke 6 “Forgive and you will be forgiven.” A better translation would be “Release and you will be released.”
Sid: Let me give you an example. Someone believes in healing and they have a husband that believes in healing and the husband gets cancer and then the husband dies. And the spouse says “Well he was such a godly man if he died I don’t stand a chance.” And then they go through those stages that you’d pointed out of hope deferred. How do you reverse someone like that?
Dutch: You know I’m thinking of a lady as you speak that fits that exactly and I walked through it with them and we were so sure God was going to heal this man. And he stood in faith well, but you know what? When he died even though her heart was breaking she never really got to many of these phases because immediately she made a choice. She said “I do not understand this, but I do believe God is faith and He’s good, and He has reasons there’s something I don’t understand but it’s not His goodness and it’s not that He always does everything well.” And she made a choice, and when she made the choice, this is what a lot of people don’t understand. When you make the right choice it allows God to cause your emotions to follow that choice. See we were never given emotions to lead us we were given emotions so that life could be meaningful so that we could feel, so that we could get experience. So that emotions were never meant to control us so when you choose and make the right decision you allow God to change the emotions and the hurt will leave and the healing will come, the release will come. But a lot of people since they don’t understand that they don’t know “I can make these choices; I still have the right to choose life and blessing and God in my life even when I’m in devastating pain.”
Sid: You talk about commanding our soul to have hope. You talk about people in the Bible like David that did this. How important is it for us to command our soul to have hope?
Dutch: Oh, it’s critical. Literally the word confession but the new word confession in the New Testament confessing the word means literally to say the same thing. We have to get to a point though we don’t feel like it or all the circumstances are saying “Don’t do this.” We have to choose to start saying what God says about us. We make a simple choice, and here’s what David was doing. He was saying “Soul I know you don’t feel like it; I know you’re in great pain but you’re going to have to do this.” Because he knew that that choice was the way out of the pain. If I’ll start saying what God says about me I can overcome this. He does love me, I am more than a conqueror, nothing can separate me from His love and on and on and on. When we start saying the same thing “Homalotgea” is the word; when we start doing that it literally releases spiritual power. Confessing God’s word releases spiritual power. That’s how God made the Universe. That’s how Jesus healed people. He just decreed it.
Sid: You know what we’re out of time right now…
