Bill Johnson _ Pain

Here's part of his latest podcast... great teaching on inner healing in the presence of God... one-step program: meet with God. We need to learn how to tend to our hearts and meet with God. This is something that the Lord has been teaching me the last few years. It's beautiful and there's no other way for true healing than meeting with the Healer.

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Bill Johnson 9/2/08

Matthew 14
Vs.13 When Jesus heard that John was beheaded, he departed from there by a boat to a deserted place by himself but the multitude found him. He met them and then he departed again and went up to a mountain.
This is not a formula, but there is something here…. Jesus was tempted in everything…. he faced disappointments, losses, etc. but he never sinned. In this situation when he heard about john the Baptist who was his cousin (indebtedness b/c he’s a relative and john had laid his life down to prepare the way)…as soon as he heard, he sought to get alone. It’s the one step program. It’s time to get up on the mountain before the father and stay there until I get fixed. There aren’t hoops to jump through, scripture to memorize…all there is is an intense drive to not leave the way I went up.

Jesus sought a place to get alone with the Father. Right away he ran into crowds putting demands on him and what does he do? He ministered to them. Everyone in this room needs to know what it is to minister out of weakness and to write a spiritual check that you don’t think you have the reserves for. You need to let God show up. You don’t have anything left to give but then you see someone and feel the Lord pull you to them and step out to see the Lord do a miracle. Jesus steps out of his need to be alone with the Father and ministers to the ppl out of his own place of weakness and then he sent everyone away and went up to the mountain.

Some things can only be solved through time with the Lord. You can go to a conference, buy the latest book, have ppl pray and prophesy over you but there is some stuff that just don’t get fixed until you go up on the mountain. There are some things that don’t get recalibrated or readjusted and set in our heart and mind until there is time with the Father where things change. How long did he stay there? It didn’t say and I’m glad it didn’t’ say b/c then we’d make it a rule. It’s just not that way.

Disappointment comes. You start to make your way to the Father. If something interrupts you stop and minister to it but you don’t lose your focus. You finally get time with God and you don’t leave until there is a change.

If I’m willing to give up my right to understand then I receive the peace that surpasses all understanding. When I lay down my right for an explanation from God b/c it usually comes out of an accusing spirit where I hold God responsible to meet my description of what he should live like. When you lay down that thing in you that demands earthly justice of God instead of divine justice of earth…when that switch is made then you become positioned for the heart of the father and you receive a grace over your life that is unexplainable to the ppl around you.

What we’ve seen in our own household…two major hits for us…it’s extremely painful and to be facing this..their first declaration after his loss is “God is good.” wow… job’s wife says curse God and die. And while I don’t know any Christians to promote that there are plenty that teach the equal. We are a group of ppl that need some time on the mountain.

You can’t have a gathering like this where there isn’t tragedy and triumph at the same time…so you can preach to either side and always be successful...but our focus is we celebrate what God is doing but when there is loss we have to mourn without going into unbelief and without creating a lifestyle of distancing ourselves from challenges. We look for crisis and impossibilities. This situation of Jesus going up to the mountain is so profound…b/c you have to see the result. When he came down he crossed over and came to the land of Gennesaret some men and when they recognized him they brought to him all who were sick and begged him to touch the hem of his garment. as many who touched his garment were made well.

I want to suggest to you that Moses’s encounter on the mountain when the glory of the Lord radiated….a piece of cloth could cover it… but when Jesus went up on the mountain not only couldn’t a piece of cloth cover the glory but instead released it. Somehow there was something upon him that when he came down a whole group of ppl could see it.

Everyone rushing to touch one person’s coat and everyone was healed who touched him. Where did that come from? When he heard about John’s death he went up to the mountain to pray. Why? b/c it’s time for vindication. Vindication doesn’t come from emotional hype. It doesn’t come b/c we want to see this destroyed. It’s b/c in loss you meet with the one who is good, always.

How many of you have been affected in recent days by loss? See, what happens is that if you don’t deal with it then you just build on it. And if you don’t ever meet with the Father then we weaken the whole deal. Years later you don’t know there is weakness there but something is set on there and is too heavy and you crumble.

It’s a one-step program. Meeting with God. No pat answer, no intellectual answer, but I’m after the presence and peace of the Lord to compensate for the weakness, confusion, and loss and questions etc. Until that measure of grace from the presence of God saturates me then I’ll be poisoned by the disappointments and sting of loss.

We want this healed. Go to your mountain. Go to the place with the Father where you learn in a fresh way in the heart about the one who answers the slightest whim of a request. To a father that is so extremely good that even ones that have experienced extreme tragedy can still declare God’s goodness. Pray to go to the deepest place of loss and disappointment and pray that God will bring resolve and take you to the mountain with Him.