Sid: Hello. Sid Roth here with Leif Hetland. And Leif, you had an experience in the year 2000 with the Father’s love. Tell me about that.
Leif: Well in year 2000, I had just gone through a very difficult time. And I was invited actually by a group of leaders. It was just going to kind of be a casual setting. And I showed up in that meeting, didn’t have an understanding what was about to take place. And I had had a baptism of water experience that represented death, burial, resurrection. I even had a Baptist mob the spirit experience where I received power to live the Christian life. But this baptism of love I had never even heard of as a Baptist pastor. And it was an amazing time when Dennis Jernigan, he is a well-known musician, we were just a small group of people in a room, and he said, “Leif, I have this song for you and it is a daddy’s song.” And he started to sing this song and it was just for me, and it was like Father God Himself singing over me. And I went down on the floor and I laid there, and it was like liquid love just flowing up and down my body. And then the next moment when I was laying on the floor, I just started to weep and I could feel the pain of that 12-year-old boy that had been abused. And suddenly it was like the love just took it away. All that pain was gone. And in the next moment, I’m back to that 15-year-old boy, and it was liquid love that went back to the incident that took place where there was love deficit. And it was like a journey that he took me through. And for about a two-hour period of time as I was laying there in this liquid love just continued to flow up and down into my body, into my soul, and into my spirit. When I came up to that very place, there was a word that he spoke. He said, “Leif, you’re my beloved. You’re my beloved son. I love you.”
Sid: What did it mean for God, for Father God to say to him, “Leif, you are my beloved son and I love you.” What would it mean for Father God to say that to you? What did it mean to you?
Leif: Well for me, I knew that Jesus loved me. I could come to the cross. I knew that the Holy Spirit, and I learned to be comfortable with the Holy Spirit. But when the Father Himself opened up His arms and said, “I love you. I am well pleased with you,” pretty much what happened is like I have an “F” on my report card and no matter how hard I was working I never did enough.
Sid: And yet you had a good natural father.
Leif: I had a good natural father.
Sid: I mean, what happens with someone that has an absentee father or someone worse even that has an abusive father, or someone that has a father that’s home and never embraces them, never says, “I love you”? What happens with that person? If you had a good father, what change did it make in you?
Leif: Well I was totally transformed. I think the first change that I saw, first of all, I was weeping. I’m from Norway and even have a nice Norwegian sweater on today.
Sid: I saw it. Nice looking.
Leif: Yes. I wanted to give some advertisement for my country. But one of the things that is not good being Norwegian or European, we don’t show emotions. We are from the very cold temperature and we learn how to protect. And similarly, spiritually speaking, there’s not a whole lot of emotion and I couldn’t cry before. So I just started to weep. And when I came home and I saw my wife I just realized that it was not just me that had to perform, that they had to perform because if I had that kind of expectancy from Father God, I realized what I had done towards them. So I then started to express to them how much I love you and how sorry I was. The same to my children. I went to each one of my children and I wept, and I started to tell them I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all those areas in my life that I was uncomfortable with love because those areas I was not comfortable with God. And to very God Himself, that’s what I had expressed to them. And then they started to see God in me. And I repented. I made thing right. And I started to live my life like I had a home. And I created a Heaven on Earth. I created a home for my family and it was just totally transformational for all of us.
Sid: Did your wife see a difference in you the moment you came back or did it take a while for her to trust your behavior had changed?
Leif: I think a combination of both things. I think that she was so used to the high achiever and I was always going and always achieving. And now you’re coming back to be a lover. That’s her husband that she used to lean towards me and want to cuddle, and I kind of froze up. And today I go around kissing people, hugging people, loving people. So it’s almost like is this just an act?
Sid: Has it continued even to today at your home?
Leif: Oh yes. Ten years into this journey, and I’ve traveled all over the world doing these Father loves you conferences, actually, and also in my home, in my office. Every single one in my office, we are family when we’re together.
Sid: And yet, in 2002, he had an encounter with God that showed him something he didn’t realize. Tell me about that.
Leif: Well I still didn’t know to the root that I was living with this orphan spirit, that I had still some of that orphan heart. I was comfortable with love, but at that moment, I became the son. And ever since, I’ve been living with sonship I told people that there is many different ships, and I had an apostleship or stewardship and discipleship. But all these ships got shipwrecked and there was only ship left and that was sonship. And that was actually what Jesus did. He only did what the Father was doing. He only said what the Father was saying. So I started at that moment and it was an encounter that had lasted about four and a half hours with Father God, with His son. And there was almost like it was surgery taking place in my soul. And I realized at that moment that I am not an orphan. He said, “I will not leave you as an orphan. I will come to you,” in John 14:18. And that’s what he did. He came to me. And on a consistent basis since then I’ve lived my life like a son. And when I do that the dove remains there. I don’t have to live like an orphan with pigeons all around. And that’s the different between pigeon religion or when you’re a son like Jesus, the dove remained up on him.
Sid: When you walk in this supernatural love, evangelism is easy, isn’t it?
Leif: It is. It is and I don’t have any agenda when I go to people.
Sid: So you’re not going to evangelize them. You’re going to love them.
Leif: I’m there just to represent His love. I exist to receive love and give love. That’s what I exist. And that’s what had changed in my life. I had become a lover that just existed to receive daddy’s love and give it away. So then some of the miracles and everything else that flows out of that, it opens up a tremendous door. People, they don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care. And I do believe that love is the language, that blind eyes can see and the deaf ears can hear.
Sid: How many Muslims, by loving them, have come to know the Messiah over the last decade or so?
Leif: We have seen literally hundreds of thousands of Muslims having an encounter with Jesus and experiencing Jesus.
Sid: But without this supernatural love, how many do you think would have?
Leif: I do not know even if I could count it on my hands because it’s never been any discussions or arguments. All I do is to love them then and then in the next moment show them Jesus, and they see the Jesus that is in me. So I have no agenda. I love Muslims and I love any other faith. That’s just what I do. I just exist to go there and love on them.
Sid: Leif, there is such a sweet presence of God on this set right now. When we come back if it’s okay with you I would like Leif to pray that you have an immersion of this love. Don’t you dare go away.
