SID: Hello. Sid Roth here. Welcome to my world where it’s naturally supernatural. I have seen my guest Bill Johnson stand in front of a group of people and I have seen so many miracles erupt. But Bill has told me that the greatest revelation he has ever been given for miracles, for you to fulfill your destiny, he’s ready to reveal right now and I promise you if you grab hold of this it will be the most important revelation for all the promises of God in your life. You ready to grab hold? Well actually, this revelation is so simple I can say it in three words, but it’s not an intellectual thing. It’s a supernatural revelation and if you just get in your head that will be good, but not good enough to activate the promises of God, not good enough to fulfill your destiny. So Bill, we’re on the edge of our seats. What’s the revelation?
BILL: God is good.
SID: Have you ever heard [that] before? God is good. Why is this such an important revelation to you? I mean, you spent over two decades known as someone that moves in the miraculous. I mean, the miracles that happen is, I mean, it’s phenomenal. I mean, it’s normal according to the Bible, but it’s phenomenal according to most people.
BILL: What you know about God changes you. It defines your purpose. It defines your destiny. It shapes how you live. It shapes how you think most of all. Everything comes from your perspective on life. And the way you view God changes everything that you see about life itself on Planet Earth, what’s God’s assignment for our life. When we see he is good all revelation comes as an invitation for encounter. None of it is given to us just to make us smarter, just to increase our intellectual capacity. All of it is an invitation to encounter God in that area. So he says taste and see that the Lord is good. Taste is an experience. See is perception. You’ll perceive more clearly what you can experience and the Lord is inviting us to see and to taste, and to perceive his goodness on a whole different level.
SID: You actually, I mean, this is a strong statement, you call it the cornerstone of all theology. Why would you say that?
BILL: Yes, it is. Everything comes from the goodness of God. Everything about him, he is as good as he is Holy. His love, of course, he is love. But that goodness of God, I think is the root system that everything comes from. And when you see that, when that becomes settled in my heart then there are things that I used to question that would happen, that I no longer question because I see everything is defined by his goodness. It’s not, his goodness isn’t defined by circumstances. It’s the other way around. And just seeing that brings a rest to my heart so that I can trust him in all situations. The enemy’s whole thing is wanting me to become introspective. He wants me to be wrapped up in evaluating what I’m doing. And especially for those who have a great passion to know God, to live like Jesus, be like Jesus, it’s an easy trap to fall into because when I look inward, I’m not looking where faith will increase. I actually look where faith will diminish because I become more self-reliant than I am God-reliant. So the Lord longs for us to turn our attention towards him. It’s not that the issues of life that he’s dealing with aren’t important. They are, but he is dealing with them, not us. He is dealing with them and as we look to him we come into a place of rest, and faith comes out of rest, not striving. It’s not the result of works, it’s the result of surrender. And when that is our approach to our relationship with God, faith is much more normal and natural.
SID: You said something a little earlier. You said that God is good, and your heart is settled.
BILL: Yes.
SID: But we have many people that are questioning a lot of things. How can we get where you are and where I am? In fact, even more important, why is it so important to get there?
BILL: Well it’s vital because it changes who you are. It changes your perception on life. And if I mistake God’s nature I will mistake how I live. It’s the whole statement that’s made. Whatever you misdiagnose you will mistreat. And so you’ll always try to answer questions that people are asking. You’ll always try to solve problems [thinking] that really God is not working or he’s taking a different approach on, and so we become people who work extremely hard, but very, very ineffective, because everything comes out of the goodness of God. It’s a vital thing to perceive because it changes how we view, even things we don’t understand, it changes mystery. It changes loss. It changes the questions that we have. I have more questions than I’ve ever had. It’s not that my knowledge increases where I’ve got all these answers. It’s just I have the answers I need and the answer I need is that he is 100 percent always good and he is a perfect Father. Jesus came to reveal him as Father. The greatest revelation that Jesus brought to us is really unveiled to us constantly in the Gospel of John is that Jesus is a father and he’s a perfect father. He came to a planet of orphans to reveal the Father as Father. And once that becomes settled then I may not know the answer to this problem or this challenge, but I know I’m approaching God who is good, who has already worked on my behalf to bring out a right solution.
SID: You know what, Bill, if you knew the answer to everything that would make you God. And have you found out there’s a whole lot we don’t understand. That’s what makes us human.
BILL: Yes, that’s right.
SID: This word trust is such an important word. You were in Brazil speaking and you got a call no son ever wants to get. You have meetings and miracles are going on, and you get a phone call. What were you informed?
BILL: I got a call that my dad had had what we thought was going to be a minor procedure. When they opened him up they found that he had pancreatic cancer, which is one of the worst kinds of cancer you can have. I was there with my really dear friend Randy Clark, joining him.
SID: Now you have two great miracle ministries and your own dad calls, and he has an impossible situation. Just out of curiosity, what went through your mind when he said that to you?
BILL: It’s time for a miracle. It’s time for a miracle. So I got released from Randy to fly home immediately. I caught the next flight out and flew home, and then over the next several months spent many, many times ministering to him, praying for him, away from him as well in prayer, and just contending for that breakthrough, for that miracle.
SID: But you didn’t have a miracle.
BILL: No. No.
SID: So your dad died. What are your conclusions?
BILL: You know, I don’t ask God why on these things. I just know he didn’t cause the disease. I know he’s big enough to use any problem, so he can turn any situation around, for his glory. And it’s a win-win in this kind of a situation because my dad is a powerful man of God. He’s a believer. To go home with the Lord, to remain on earth with us, to help us, it’s a win-win situation. So that part is settled. As far as—
SID: How about the part of “God is good.” Is that really settled with you when your dad dies?
BILL: Yes, it is. The Lord wasn’t really speaking to me about that then. But I will admit I’ve had to learn more about the goodness of God since that loss than all the years previous. It was something he was already working on in me to show me, but it really exploded after that. When my dad died we gathered around his bed. He was there in our home. We had our entire family. I forget now, 20 to 30 members surrounded his bed, and we began to give God thanks. We began to honor him for his goodness. We began to give him praise because he is the one who heals the sick. He raises the dead. He does all these things. And we just lifted our praise because I wanted…I know that in Heaven I’ll never have a chance to give God an offering out of loss, out of pain, out of confusion. I’ll never have that context in which to give him an offering in Heaven. I only have a chance to give that to him now. So as a family, we grabbed our moment. We made a covenant to walk in the anointing that my dad carried, which is primarily as a worshiper, and we made a covenant as a family to carry that mantle, and then we just offered up an offering. It was a sacrifice, but we offered the sacrifice of praise for his goodness, and it unlocked something for me.
SID: I’m going to tell you what it would do for me. What it would do for me, I would go after cancer, I would go after heart trouble, I would go after diabetes with a vengeance.
BILL: Exactly. You either run away from it in reaction to your pain, to your loss, or you run after it. It’s like David picking up the stones and running at Goliath. Cancer has been the Goliath in the church, and we’ve got to pick up the stones and run at the problem instead of avoiding it. I agree.
SID: Did you see an increase in the miraculous?
BILL: Yes. It was not immediately, like the next week or two weeks. Because I believe there’s an important season of mourning. Mourning that’s wrong takes you to unbelief. Mourning that’s right brings you to a place of receiving comfort and healing, and that’s what we did. We just took a brief time to mourn until we felt that things were settled in our heart and then began to pursue. And yes, so we’ve been seeing that.
SID: You told me that your model is Jesus.
BILL: Yes
SID: What was, what did you learn from your model about healing, not necessarily with your dad, but what did Jesus model about healing?
BILL: Just in general, he healed everyone who came to him, number one, and he healed everyone the Father sent him to. He did not heal everyone who was sick, who was alive, because we know he healed the one man at the pool of Bethesda and there were many others around the pool. Tragically, our theology today tends to be built around what didn’t happen instead of what God did do. But Jesus healed everyone who came to him, healed everyone that the Father directed him to. That’s the only standard that I’m willing to follow.
SID: So will you lower your standard any because of what happened?
BILL: Well I can’t. I can’t. I may do horrible at my assignment, but I can’t change my assignment so that I feel good about myself. I have to accept the assignment God gave me, [which] is the standard that Jesus set. I have to embrace that. I can’t lower the standard of Scripture to my level of experience. I’m spending my lifetime trying to raise my level of experience to the standard of Scripture.
SID: How would you like me to turn Bill Johnson loose as payback time on what happened to his dad? Anyone interested? Be right back
Tags: It's Supernatural, Sid Roth