SID: So my guest, at three in the morning, he’s praying, for eight months he’s been praying, “God, I want more at any cost.” If you had known, Bill Johnson, what that prayer meant, do you think you would have prayed it?
BILL: I think so, because I honestly prayed it with that kind of abandonment. As much, you know, as much as I knew how, I was saying, that I will be [unintelligible] and I just have to have more.
SID: Okay. Take me, three in the morning, what’s happening to you?
BILL: Well I, as this presence is on me and this power is shooting through me, scenes begin to pass before my eyes. I could see, first of all, I was reminded of Jacob wresting with an angel, limped the rest of his life. Mary, the mother of Jesus called the mother of an illegitimate child. You know, that stigma. And then the pictures that flashed, I saw myself training to teach for our church. In that condition, realizing there’s nobody there that’s going to believe this is God. No one. And the next scene, I’m standing in front of my favorite restaurant in town in that condition. I could see myself realizing I’m going to be a mockery to the entire city. And I could tell what the Lord was after is, He was reminding me, I said, at any cost. And what I was coming to realize is that if I say yes to this, I may be in bed the rest of my life. I can’t function. I can’t do life if I say yes. I’m giving up my right to dignity. I’m giving up my right to function as a normal human being. And I lay there for probably I believe for 20 minutes with tears going down the sides of my face. I said, “I’ll take it if I get more of you. You can do anything you want with me, any way you want me, anything you want, I don’t care. I’ll take the exchange if I get more of you.”
SID: So you’re processing obviously. You go back to bed. The next night, what happens?
BILL: Same thing.
SID: Same thing.
BILL: Same thing three nights in a row.
SID: After this encounter…
BILL: Yes.
SID: What was God expecting from you?
BILL: I, as simple as it is, He didn’t want me to be concerned about how I looked to somebody else. He really wanted me to fear God and not man. And the strange thing is, is there’s not one of my closest friends that would have said I fear man. But the Lord could see something, it was still there that had not been dealt with. And he seemed to be, entrusted with me knowing a breakthrough, to minister in any measure of revival. You can’t be controlled or influenced by the fear of man. It will cripple you. And I feel that the Lord is really wanting me to set all of us free. And for me, it just needed to be something dramatic where I could love people, but not fear them, where I could serve people, but not be controlled them. And I think it’s essential for what God is wanting to do on the earth. He’s wanting to raise up a generation that can fear God only and love not the life to the death.
SID: I see this aspect about you, but I see another aspect. I see a man that has compassion for people that are suffering.
BILL: Yes.
SID: Where did this come from, this compassion? Jesus had this compassion.
BILL: I would think it’s from him. It’s just you get close and you feel his heart. You know, you feel his heart for anything. You feel his pleasure. I sometimes, honestly, I’ll do an experiment. I’ll put my hand on somebody’s shoulder just to affectionately touch them. But what I’m really doing is I can sense the pleasure of the Lord for that person. And when you sense the pleasure of God for people, it’s so hard to criticize them. It’s so hard to think evil of them or, you know, all you want to do is to sow into their best, to call them into their destiny. When you discover that pleasure of the Lord for people, I think it’s closely connected to this compassion thing that Jesus was moved by compassion. Compassion always brings a miracle. Sympathy just brings comfort in a problem.
SID: You told me that sometimes before you’ll enter a store, you’ll just be still. Explain what you’ll do before you go into a retail store or someone’s home, or something like that.
BILL: Yeah. Well sometimes I realize, for example, I’m going into a store. It’s kind of the people who own it are involved in all different kinds of strange things. So I’ll pause for a moment on the outside, not to bind, not to loose, not to engage in any kind of warfare. I’m just turning my attention towards the Holy Spirit, my affection towards Him. And as soon as I recognize His presence resting upon me, then I go in the store. And I don’t have to say anything. Things, there’s an atmosphere shift in the building when He rests upon you. My whole deal is the Holy Spirit is in every believer, but He doesn’t always rest upon every believer. And that’s what I think are challenges. Learn to be a person that hosts Him in the sense that He rests upon us, because He’s in me for my sake, but He comes upon me for yours. He comes upon me for the sake of people around me.
SID: So correct me if I’m wrong. But what I’m hearing you say is you come to your senses, my terminology. You come to your senses. You begin to tell God how grateful you are for all He’s done in your life. You begin to just have your heart touch His. Then when you walk into a retail establishment, He’s in the whole atmosphere around you. You must change the atmosphere in some stores.
BILL: Well I hope so. We’re supposed to.
SID: Tell me about the time you went to a gas station.
BILL: I was just, this was back when we had to stand in line at a particular station to pay. You couldn’t pay at the pump. And I walked into the gas station and the two people in front of me started, they were laughing, just uncontrollably. And I thought maybe they knew each other. I thought maybe one of them had told a joke to the other one, or something, you know. And finally, one of them broke loose, ran out of the store, pushed through the glass doors, turned around and just stared at me from the other side of the glass. I, you know, I don’t know what happened. But righteousness, peace and joy, the joy part became manifest there and they didn’t even know what they got a taste of. But they really did get a taste of the liberating presence of the joy of God.
SID: I have to tell you something funny. My uncle I gave a video to, and he’s no longer here right now. But, and the video was a Rodney Howard Brown video, and people had that same joy that Bill is talking about right now. But they, but Rodney wasn’t doing anything funny. And he called me on the phone and he said, “These people are crazy. This guy is not funny. I’m funnier than him, but he’s getting more laughs than I’m getting.” We’ll be right back.
