SID: Well, I want to know why Bill and his team operate in such extreme favor, I mean with leaders in the political arena and the financial arena and the entertainment arena. Why are they seeking you and your team out?
BILL: You know, the more we discover kingdom culture, the culture of heaven, the more the Lord lifts the veil between the church and the world, because he wants that kind of influence there. Church culture exists all over the world, but it stays hidden, because it’s not kingdom. If you take church culture and how money’s handled or a conflict or any of these things, if those were to be the patterns that, say, Apple Computer used in their corporation, it would collapse or it would have great difficulty because it’s not transferable. But when it’s actual kingdom culture, it’s transferable to every environment, politics, medicine, education, every realm is hungering, whether they know it or not, is hungering for the solutions that his kingdom brings, because his kingdom has solutions, answers, processes, patterns, for every single aspect of life.
SID: Give me a concrete example. Give me one real example.
BILL: Well, a politician calls one of our guys and says, “I’m thinking of running for president,” higher office, another country. And was kind of fishing for feedback. And he said, “You’re asking the wrong question. And he said, “God wants to know what kind of man are you going to be. Are you going to be faithful to your wife, or are you going to continue your relationship with your mistress?”
SID: Wow. I mean, could you picture saying that to someone running for president in a particular country? I mean, do we have one-on-one? That’s called, we Jewish people call that chutzpah!
BILL: So he got by the spirit a word of knowledge. It sounds harsh and confrontive. It wasn’t, and he really led the man into great deep, deep repentance as a result of this conversation. Those kinds of things in the political world are getting stronger and stronger. And one of the reasons is these, many of these guys and gals, they will admit to you they don’t have answers for the dilemmas, the crises that their nation, their city’s facing. And so when they talk to somebody who has hope, which by the way, the people with the most hope will always have the greatest influence. This is one of the things we learn from one of our women. The greatest hope will always have the greatest influence. So whenever they talk to one of our team, and our team member is not swayed by the size of their difficulty but instead lives under being impressed with the size of our God and how practical he is as a father, they tend to gravitate. They gravitate to where there’s hope. And then when you see the Holy Spirit operate in ways like that, where answers, solutions are provided. In this case it was a correction, a mid-course correction, in his life. And when they see that, they gravitate. Because everybody has a hunger, they have a hunger for the wisdom of God. They really do. They have a hunger for God’s answers. It’s really funny. I’ve been with my friend on a plane, and he’s never had an atheist turn him down when he’s told them, “I have a word from God for you.”
SID: [chuckles]
BILL: They are always interested in what God has to say. Because there’s this inbuilt need to hear from God.And so we as the people of God get to do what Jesus did. Jesus only did what he saw his father do, and he only said what he heard his father say. And as a result in John 6, Jesus said, “My words to you are spirit, and that spirit gives life.” So here’s the point. The point is that when we say what the father is saying, the presence of God is actually released.
SID: How does this play out, not the spectacular stories, how does this play out when you’re cutting the lawn, when you’re changing a diaper? You know, when you’re driving your kids to soccer? How does the kingdom play out there?
BILL: You know, that’s the beautiful discover for me. Because as a pastor, I always thought that God was supposed to be number one, my wife number two, my family, my ministry, go down this list. And I discovered in the journey that when God is number one, there is no number two. And the thing that hit me was that every part of my life is ordained of the Lord, and I’m to do them as expressions of worship to the Lord. So now whether it’s mowing the lawn, whether it’s buying my wife a birthday gift, taking my family on a vacation, preaching, being on this show, it doesn’t matter what it is, it is all as unto the Lord. And it all has it’s rightful place.
BILL: There’s always that heartfelt connection with the Holy Spirit. What I call, I turn my heart of affection towards him. And I like to do that when I go to sleep at night. I turn my heart of affection towards him. There’s this engagement comes with the presence of God, and I like to go to sleep in that context. And I like to do that just throughout the day. So it doesn’t matter what we’re doing, if I’m driving down the street or doing some chore at the house or go to my grandkids’ little league game or whatever it is, it’s going to the same thing.
SID: So do you delight in doing these things knowing that God is delighted?
BILL: Oh my goodness, yes. All of a sudden it has added depth, purpose to the mundane parts of life, the mundane that you would write off as not being spiritual, and they are. You write off as not being significant, and yet some of those little things are the most significant parts of our life, because that’s where our character, that’s where our faith, that’s where our affection for him, the ability to worship in unusual settings, that’s all proven right there.
SID: You know, when we come back, Bill Johnson says we are believers are hardwired to operate in the glory 24/7, and it is coming with such a avalanche. I want to find out what he sees coming and how we, who are already hardwired to operate in it, can do it. Be right back.
