Sid: Now my guest hast to be red hot for the Messiah, his name is Rob DeLuca he is a pastor from New Zealand. And on yesterday’s broadcast we found out that Rob was saved and spirit filled at 11, but then like many drifted into drugs. At eighteen on the street a women walked up to him, laid hands on him, he experienced the power of God, and he turned his life over the Lord. And he went from ground level zero because Rob it’s hard to believe but you sunk so low from the drug culture that you were living in a cardboard box. You rededicated your life to the Lord and one day and this is fascinating, one day you were praying at a church and you had the presence of the Lord came in, tell me about that.
Rob: I had just got off the streets and I was working at the church as the church janitor. They gave me the keys so at night time I would go over the church and I would pray. And I would lay down prostrate before the Lord at the altar and I would begin to pray in tongues, and pray, I was so hungry for God I would sometimes lay there for two or three hours and just praying and worshipping.
Sid: Out of curiosity when you were praying was it mostly in unknown tongues?
Rob: Much of it was and so I would just worship and cry out in my understanding.
Sid: And also out of curiosity I don’t know about you, but I find many prophets that I interview even before they were saved the gift was operational with them, they just didn’t understand it. Was that true with you or did that come after your encounter with the Lord?
Rob: No it very much so, the gift was already operating in my life, I was able to see things, but I also had a great aunt that taught me and a grandmother that taught me when I came to the Lord they taught me how to hear and see. So that helped because I already had the gift there but they were showing me how to operate in the gift.
Sid: Okay, let’s take you back the church on that particular encounter.
Rob: Well, I was praying and the presence of God was all over that sanctuary and I was lying prostrate before the Lord and I began to pray in tongues and I started to groan in the Spirit and I began to travail, some people call it laboring in the Spirit. And as I did that my body began to shake on the floor, but it started to shake so much that I started to hover off of the ground about two or three feet.
Sid: Had this experience ever happened to you before?
Rob: Never, never.
Sid: It’s never happened to most people I know, but go ahead.
Rob: You know I never ever heard of it, I didn’t know what was taking place, all I know is that God’s presence was so strong on me that I knew that it was God and I was hovering in the air. At that moment my Spirit left my body, went right out of the roof of the church building. I saw the city below, I saw the hills, I saw the clouds and I went straight through the heavens, and as I did I saw this light and as I started to shoot toward the light in the Spirit I saw these huge beautiful doors open up. I went right through the doors and I went into God’s lap, Father God’s lap. And as I did that I felt His arms wrap around me and I began to weep. As that took place God the Father began to speak to me and He told me about my life, He told me about the future of my life and He also shared with me concerning all the people that I knew in my life. And I was listening to the voice of the Father speak to me He said, “I want you to see something” and He pointed His hand toward this big huge jewel that was hovering next to Him and it was a beautiful jewel, it was huge and on every facet of the jewel I saw a person’s name whether it was somebody I knew from school, or from my upbringing or a relative, a neighbor, or just a family name that I knew. The Lord spoke to me and He said, “You see these people?” I want you to pray for them that they will be saved also. And I want you to pray for these that all would be saved and God spoke to me some personal things after that concerning the lives of those that I was praying for and He gave me a big list that night, but as that took place He said, “It’s time for you to go back and share and pray with these.” And as soon as He said that I was weeping and crying as soon as He said that I felt my spirit go right back into my body and I fell to the floor shaking and weeping crying. And I knew I had an encounter with God, what seemed to be five minutes turned into four and a half hours. So I started at a certain time but I didn’t leave this church sanctuary until 1:30 in the morning, I think I went in there almost about eigh’ish and so it was really an encounter that took a long span within natural time.
Sid: Now Rob approximately how long ago was this?
Rob: This was 23 years ago.
Sid: Out of curiosity are many of those people that you were told to pray for saved now?
Rob: I’ve seen many saved some I have not seen since then but I’ve prayed for them. Matter of fact one night I ran into a man that I was praying, his name was Greg Fernandez. I was praying for him, praying for him, praying for him hadn’t seen him for three years. I walked up to him outside a store and he looked at me and smiled and he said, “I heard that you’re a Christian.” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “I’m a Christian too I just got saved recently. The Lord showed me that my prayer were working even though I didn’t see the man and somebody else, another laborer in the harvest crossed his path and led him to the Lord.
Sid: Now let me ask you a bit about your gift of prophecy. How does it usually operate? Do you hear something, do you see something, is it confirmations there of when you deliver a prophetic word to an individual?
Rob: Well, I mostly a seer, I see visions, I see symbolic pictures, or you know different types of visions. God will give me symbolism within a vision and it will be interpreted. But I also hear I really believe that we are spirit beings and just like we have natural ears and natural eyes we have spiritual ears and spiritual eyes and that we can see and hear. So it does happen mostly with my seeing it, I see like sometimes my Great Aunt Celia said it was like seeing a television screen with your eyes closed and that’s how I would see.
Sid: And also out of curiosity have, you were shown your life at this encounter have any of the things come to pass yet that you saw?
Rob: Very much so.
Sid: Could you tell me one?
Rob: The Lord showed me that I would be a minister to ministers and at the age of 18 you kind of you can’t really fathom that. Like my pastor won’t listen to me, I’m 18 you know. But now that I look at my life twenty something years later just in the last week I’ve ministered to probably over a thousand pastors and preachers.
Sid: Rob, tell me about this teaching that I believe you told me God said that it was so important that He was going have this teaching go throughout the world called “Breaking the Power of Covetousness.”
Rob: God spoke to me and He gave me this message and I really do believe that it needs to go around the world. He spoke to me and said it would so I’m just waiting and watching what takes place. But there is a wrong spirit in the body of Christ where we believe that it’s okay in the name of prosperity to have covetousness. Covetousness is like a type of lust or wrong desire. Now God doesn’t have a problem with us having a home or a nice car or you know being blessed, but we have to have our motives pure in our hearts concerning the blessings of God. Our prosperity message must be pure we cannot have greet, covetousness, or any type of selfishness in us. We need to be a blessing to those that are around us and part of prosperity is to have abundance to be blessed to have success, and you know deal well with everything that we do, but we can’t have this thing where it’s all mine, I want it, I want it and that hoarding spirit can’t be in us. We have to be able to be a blessing and if God gave it to us then we should be able to be willing to pass it on.
Sid: There was quite an experience where you actually broke that power of covetousness over your own life and God told you to give a very large sum of money. tell me about that.
Rob: Well, a couple of years ago I was staffing and praying and I was going to be go on vacation, but instead my wife and I and my business partner we decided to buy a boat. We were going to buy a $30,000 boat. As I was praying I felt like the Holy Spirit said, “I want you to give the boat, the amount you were going to buy for the boat, I want you to give it.” And I said, “Oh, Lord how am I going to do this?” But as soon as I thought that I said, “You know if I will sow this, if I will give this then I know that the Lord will multiply it and the Lord will bless me because of it.” And right there I had to choose “Am I going to have my boat as an idol, or am I going to obey the voice of the Holy Spirit?” And as soon as I did that something broke in my life where I knew that no boat, no car, no house, and no material thing was ever going to influence me in a way where I looked at that more than I looked at trusting in the Lord or the blessing of God upon my life from my giving.
Sid: What happened to you as a result of your obedience?
Rob: Well, I gave a $30,000 offering to the Lord. Within a matter of days the favor of God came upon me in such a way that the University of Auckland, in New Zealand, came and approached us and asked us to build a restaurant in the University. Now the University has 46,000 people, but the government allocated to us ¾ of a million dollars, they gave us ¾ of a million dollars to build this restaurant for free.
Sid: You know there is such miss understanding on prosperity, and what God means by prosperity, and what God wants for you and it’s such a wonderful plan that God has. It’s time for you to get in balance.
