the idea that if you see God's face you'll die there are groups in in christom that believe this the only problem is we're taught to seek his face which again sounds like a really conflicting thing so we're like passionately pursuing his face hoping he doesn't show up okay and that idea the idea that if you see God's face you die puts within us a fear of intimacy and connecting with him and ultimately drives us more to a principal oriented life than a presence oriented life and it's all about his presence it's all about his presence it's all about encounters with him principles and guidelines are good I teach them I have books filled with them however it's about him and plus let's just let's deal with it real quickly uh was there anybody in scripture who so God 's face yeah Moses the scripture says Moses god knew him face to face did he die No in fact the exact opposite in fact let's just let's look at this real quickly just to just to show you and um but anyway this whole series is about that this whole series begins to unravel the wrongly held misconceptions that give birth to fear concerning the Lord that we're not supposed to have Exodus 33:11 says this and the Lord spoke unto Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend and then Moses begins to have this encounter with the Lord he begins to talk to him and he says Lord I want you to show Show Me Your Glory you know you've said that you're going to send us and uh don't go with us uh or don't send us if you don't go with us but show us your glory show me your ways Show Me Your Glory and the Lord says this to him the Lord says I will do this thing which you have spoken verse 17 for you found Grace in my sight and I know you by name and he said I beseech you Lord Show Me Your Glory and listen what the Lord says the Lord says I will make all of my goodness pass before you and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you and I will be gracious to whom I'll be gracious and I'll show Mercy on whom I will show Mercy I want to see what it said about me if there said Ben Dixon was Ministry director I want to see what it would say about me just gives my name and nothing else Life's Too Short not to have fun look at verse 20 and he said you cannot see my face now listen to this last sentence for no man shall see for there shall no man see my face and live so when the Lord begins to show this whole thing to me I go okay what do I do with this verse Lord this doesn't make any sense I I can see Moses you knew Moses face to face it says it in verse 11 other places Deuteronomy 34 it says that you knew him face to face we know that he sat in your glory for for 80 Days 40 days uh pre- breaking the tablets 40 days afterwards you knew him face to face what is this about and now now you're saying that no one can see his face and live and the Lord um began to show me some things again my degrees in Psychology I have a minor or related work in mathematics and philosophy I'm a philosophically driven very logical systemic thinker when I see things that don't fit I go something's wrong here how do they fit because I promise you this in no place contradicts itself I'd like to say that again and get a little bit more juice on it this does not contradict itself okay this is awesome so every place it appears that there's a contradiction there is actually a revelation so I asked what I said what is this about and he said this where it says here you cannot see my face and live or it says for you cannot see my face for there shall no man see me and live I thought you know that doesn't say that if you see me you die it says no one can see me and live so I looked up that word live uh in the Hebrew and I can mutilate the Hebrew just like anybody else but what that word means is this it it doesn't mean just live it means to live or to preserve your life or to keep your life the way it was so let's plug that in no one can see my life or no one can see my face and preserve his life the way it was [Music] before now isn't that the point you see the enemy is trying to keep us from that and he systematizes his lies and he presents them as theological truth are you following this and I'm not against theology I'm for theology I'm just for good theology so look at look at Deuteronomy 34 and I'll actually because we know Moses did not die by seeing God's face in fact something different happened now let's watch this Deuteronomy 34:5 so Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab according to the word of the Lord you know the story uh Moses had miscommunicated the heart of God in Num Numbers Chapter 20 he broke the tablets he expressed that God was angry when God was not angry God said because you did this you're unable to lead the people into the promised land but he let him see it so he goes and he shows Moses he takes him and he shows him the promised land but it says here that Moses died there in the land of Moab according to the word of the Lord and he buried him in this place Moses verse 7 was 120 years old when he died his eye was not dim his vision was undiminished and his natural strength or life force was undiminished or unabated his body was not corrupting he was not going the way of All Flesh he had stopped decaying the aging process had stopped with him he was at 120 and he was as strong as he was when he was younger that's what the scripture says this is the Bible how many of you have ever read that obscure very strange passage in Jude where it says when Michael was contending with Satan over the body of Moses he did not bring in accus how many you read that and you go what in the world is that about I mean there's just some crazy random stuff in there it seems like seems like conservative biblical commentators believe conservative biblical commentators believe that Satan was contending with Michael over the body of Moses because he wanted Israel to be able to find Moses's body because Moses's body according to Deuteronomy 34 was not decaying and his body would not even after death would not Decay because he had been so transformed physically by the glory of God that Satan wanted Israel to find him and to prop him up and to worship him like Idols like they had been fallen into doing all along anyway are you following this you've probably heard this I mean this is standard Orthodox theology or commentators believe this check it out through his encounters with God face to face Moses had been so radically altered physically that he would not have died had the Lord not taken him into the land of Moab and according to the scripture says he died according to the word of the Lord the Lord had to literally prop him up look at him and say Moses die because he was not going to die naturally I mean that's what it says are you following this and so what what was the Lord saying why did he not let Moses see his face here because if he saw his face he wouldn't be able to to to preserve his if he saw his face he wouldn't be able to preserve his life I believe that had the Lord allowed him to see his glory in this revealed way that he had never seen it before four Moses would have been transfigured transformed but still with an unrenewed mind which would have been a terrible place to live see there are people who think that the Lord kicked Adam the man and the woman out of the garden because they sinned and they think that was punishment it wasn't punishment it was protection he had to place a cheram there so that they couldn't come back in and eat of the tree of the the fruit of the the tree of life and live forever in a place of being afraid of God and separated from him are you following this he's so kind he's so loving he's so tender he's so profoundly different than we believe and we need our minds renewed it's not that we don't need teaching but we need teaching that renews our minds to the goodness of God and so anyway that's what that's about but it's got a whole bunch of more stuff that I confront in there that's just one little piece I got started last night so that deals with who God is because that's what the first deception was about the second deception that came to mankind was that we were not like him and that we need to reach out and do something I have news for you Jesus has brought about that restoration of us being like the father and that's what Christ in you the hope of glory is about that's that there's actually two series I only brought a a small contingent of volume two and this got started out of getting a traffic ticket just outside of Death Valley on the way to Las Vegas a number of years ago absolutely true story the Lord is doing this thing with me on Christ and you he showing me this whole Revelation it's profound and in the process of it happening I get a tra traffic ticket I I got pulled for speeding um just outside of Death Valley you ever been to Death Valley they got these things out there in the desert called dips you know they're these they're not really dips they're they're like gigantic speed bumps in the road and my kids were all young my little girls were like five and seven or six and eight and so I discovered if if I just went a little bit faster then what would happen was it would feel like a roller coaster and and they were just squealing with delight in the back background but then I had that really bad and you know you should never do that that was it was wrong don't get me wrong but it was wrong but I had this I had this uh that really bad sinking prophetic feeling that there was a cop coming and and I had already started slowing down but it was too late because he came over like dip number five ahead while I was still back and so he came up and um walked up to my wife's side of the the car and I just my hands up and said I am as guilty as Sin I am so wrong if you want to put me under the jail I apologize I'm just and he went wow I've never had anybody respond like that thank you Mr Thompson and so he marked the ticket way down and uh told me that I could do a traffic school and get out of it so when I got the ticket it was still in California Near Death Valley it came from Ino County i n yo okay now just listen to me this county is remarkable it has the highest peak in the lower 48 and the lowest place in the entire United States in the same county when I I thought that's that's not physically possible you couldn't have an almost 15,000 foot mountain and Death Valley or bad water in the same place but it's in the same county that's how large it is okay and so the Lord began to speak to me that some of the highest things that we could ever find were in this and what he began to show me was this he spoke to me very clearly he said Steve the body of Christ is speeding through the greatest Revelation that I've given to it Christ in you I N yo the hope of glory see I was speeding through in you County are you following this and so it turns out that there's only one Inu or Ino County in the entire us it is a Native American word which means the dwelling place of the great [Music] spirit oh yeah come on isn't that awesome and see we've got to slow down there's a whole bunch of other stuff related to that but anyway this is a revelation of what's happened to us now in Christ and what's available to us and I'm actually going to spend a little bit of time on that tonight and the last is developing a sustainable Supernatural life it's about how to live and God's plan for us living and not just doing Supernatural Ministry at times but living a holistic integrated sustainable Supernatural life okay you're not just supposed to do Supernatural Ministry you're supposed to have a supernatural marriage come on Supernatural kids my kids have super my daughter has a supernatural soccer career I talked about it this afternoon it's unbelievable it's continuing so that's what that's what those are about that's a better job of doing that than I had done earlier so forgive me for not communicating a little bit better about that turn with me if you will real quickly to John chapter 14 and I appreciate every time that Ben has gotten up and shared um I think he's really you know hit the nail on the head in terms of kind of what the heart of the Lord is and he was talking about looking at fields and then Jesus really taking their Vision away from the natural and talking to them about the Supernatural and honestly if you can hear this what what happened to Mankind in the beginning through the fall was this we fell from from being Supernatural we fell out of heaven we fell from being Supernatural to being natural and here's what you need to understand Jesus did not come to make bad people good he came to make natural people Supernatural let me say that again Jesus did not come to make bad people good he came to make natural people Supernatural let me say it a little bit more dramatic Jesus came to make those that were human Divine now I chose my words very carefully there he did not come to make humans deity there is one deity right but he came to make us Divine we are no longer if you read the scripture we are no longer mere men and women we are now a mixture of the human and the Divine we're part of a race of beings that never existed prior to Jesus's resurrection let that bake your noodle I mean that's unbelievable this is your noodle up here okay that's that's actually a line from The Matrix you know when the when the Oracle said and this will really bake your noodle you know so anyway sorry that's just a stuck in my mind when mankind fell he didn't fall down he fell out the fall wasn't a trip it wasn't an oops look what happened when mankind partook of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil we fell from the exalted place that God had placed Us in heaven with him that place of authority over the Earth that Supernatural component we fell out and we fell down is this making sense to you if not just act like it does and I'll keep talking and it'll make sense as you go okay what Jesus came to do was not just to make God happy with us again God was never displeased with us to begin with he came to give us a new birth he came to birth us from a Heavenly place he came to re exalt replace us where we had originally been placed to begin with all right follow with me John 14 let me show you this and this is the shift that we need we're in the we're in the process of a revolution away from the natural to the Supernatural and it's it's much more thorough than you could ever imagine but not nearly as spooky as it sounds okay John chap 14 14:1 do not let your hearts be troubled you believe in God believe also in me in other words don't be afraid you believe in God believe in me too that's Jesus saying that in my father's house are many mansions some of your translations the more modern one will say what rooms in the father's house are many rooms I think that is actually a better translation because in your father's house there couldn't be many mansions a house has rooms is everybody following this okay if it were not so I would have told you I'm going to prepare a place for you okay my father's house has a lot of rooms places for people to dwell I'm going to go and I'm going to prepare a place for you and if I go and prepare a place for you I'm going to come again and I'm going to receive you to myself now listen to this that where I am you may also be remember this language I'll remind you about it and if I go and prepare a place for you I'm going to come again and receive you unto myself that where I am you may also be and where I go you know and the way you know and Thomas said unto him Lord we don't know where you're going and we don't know how you're going to get there we don't know the way we don't know where you're going we don't know the way now I going to key in on four and five real quickly then I'm going to come back to the other Jesus said where I go you know and the way you know and Thomas said unto him Lord we don't know the way and we don't know how you're going to get there are you ready for this this profound Revelation I'm serious Jesus believes you know things that you don't think you know Everybody follow that Jesus told Thomas you guys know I mean how do you know the Lord was not wrong okay eight of you that's great it's not a trick question okay Jesus is looking at me saying you guys know where I'm going and you know the way and Thomas says we don't know where you're going and we don't know the way when Jesus tells you that you know something you know it okay we are prone to not capture things that we know have you ever been listening to somebody and they're saying stuff and you can feel all over you this is accurate but you can't you have you don't have context for it you can't wrap your mind around it you know it but you're needing that renewal of your mind so you can capture it okay now this should give you confidence that you know things that you don't think you know my kids already got a handle on this I try to tell all the time they go I know they don't listen to one thing my kids are smart as kids but they know they don't need anything I suggest it's awesome all right so anyway now here's what I want to suggest to you how do I say this hold your spot here and go back to John 3 hold John 14 and go to John 3 you guys probably all know this this is by no means dramatically revelatory but listen to this there was a man of the Pharisees his name was Nicodemus he was a ruler of the Jews he came to Jesus by night and he said to him teacher we know that you were a teacher come from God for no man can do the Miracles that you do except God is with him Jesus answered and said to him truly truly I say unto you except a man is born again what do some of your translation say there instead born what born twice somebody else just would say born where Born Again might be margin notes that will say born from above anybody have that okay handful of you except a man is born again or born from above he cannot see the kingdom of God Nicodemus said wait wait a second how can a man be born when he's old can he enter the second time into his mother's womb that won't work he'll be too large I'm not being I'm not trying to be cute that's literally what he was saying it's it's awesome these guys were just blunt okay Jesus said truly truly I say unto you except a man is born of the water and of the spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God and people have tried to say well that means being baptized in the water and being baptized in the spirit no it doesn't it means being born of the water being born from the amniotic fluid the the bag of water being born naturally and then born from above born of the spirit which is born supernaturally you can't enter the kingdom of God that which is born of flesh is flesh that which is born naturally is flesh that which is born of the spirit is Spirit do not Marvel that I said to you you have to be born from above and he goes on and Nicodemus basically begins to come unglued and says I don't understand how this stuff can be and Jesus said are you a master of Israel you don't know these things Nicodemus means literally Master of the people or conqueror of the people and so Jesus is using a play on his name there saying are you a master in Israel you don't know these things truly truly I say unto you we speak that that we know we testify what we've seen and you don't receive our witness now listen to this if I've told you Earthly things and you don't believe how will you believe if I tell you of heavenly things are you ready for this and no man has ascended up to heaven but he who came down from heaven even the son of man who is in heaven are you capturing this Jesus is saying to him Nicodemus no one has ascended up to heaven except the one who came from Heaven the son of man stand here talking to you right now which what was that tense of that verb it's present which is who is in heaven Jesus was saying Nicodemus you were saying to me that you know I've come from God because no one can do the Miracles that he does except God's with him I'm telling you he's not with me I am with him right now in a Heavenly place he was answering Nicodemus is question but he was saying this it's something much greater than you've ever imagined God's not just with me he's not just endorsing my life he's not just I'm not just down here doing the right thing and because I'm doing the right thing the cosmic tumblers are lining up and a little bit of Heaven drops down I'm actually living walking on the earth while at the same time seated in a Heavenly place with the father I've been born from above i' so I'm in heaven right now while I'm walking on the earth is this A New Concept okay all right this is biblically grounded in the scriptures I will go a little bit further with this let's let's flip over to John 14 Jesus said in my father's house are many rooms if it were not so I would have told you I'm going to prepare a place for you and if I prepare a place for you I will come again and I will receive you unto myself that where I am am not where I'm going but where I am he was saying I am there right now and I'm going to prepare a place for you and then I'm going to come and I'm going to receive you unto myself so that you too can dwell in these Heavenly places he was not in this instance talking about his second coming in order to come and to take us all to live in heaven he was talking about the new birth and the sending of the holy spirit that would enable us to live an exalted life a Heavenly life while walking on the Earth are you following this okay and I can prove it to you I mean I'm a philosophical guy I'm a logical guy I'm a context guy if I prepare a place for you I'm going to come again and receive you unto myself that where I am you may also be so let's go on down and of course this is where you have this awesome promise John 14:12 is truly truly I say to you he who believes on me the works that I do he shall do and greater works that's unbelievable I'm going to skip that because I don't have time verse 16 and I will pray the father and he will give you another comforter Advocate booster promoter that he may abide with you forever even the spirit of Truth whom the world cannot receive because it does not see him neither know him but you know him for he dwells with you and he shall be in you okay I will not leave you comfortless I will come to you Jesus equates here the sending of the Holy Spirit who will abide with us forever to him coming to us you following this so in verse 18 he says I will not leave you comfortless I'm going to send the comforter he says I will not leave you comfortless I will come to you that's what he said right there Verse 18 I will come to you that's what he was referring to in verse three when he said if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you unto myself that where I am you may also be we were created to live in a Heavenly realm we were created to Live Like Jesus lived we were created we were created naturally and then God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life and when he did it we became a living Soul the natural man made from the earth became Supernatural it placed Us in an exalted position in heaven with God which gave us authority over the Earth Supernatural naturally when we disobeyed God when we believe the lies and the deception of the enemy in Adam and we ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil our connection with God was broken and instead we fell and we become natural beings at that point being born from above being born again being born of God re exalts us up to that Heavenly place that we were originally created to dwell are you following this Ephesians 2 says that we have been raised up he quickened us when we were dead in our sins he made us alive and has raised us up and seated Us in Heavenly places in Christ Jesus ladies and gentlemen when you got born again people spend their lives trying to figure out what to do to get to heaven when you got born again you got planted there just like Jesus when he walked the Earth did what he did not by being on the earth and simply doing things that were pleasing and and God would you know shoot little boom little little Heaven missiles down and and no Jesus was moving in the Heavenly realm while on the planet remember the original plan of God which never changed was for God to supernaturally transform the planet through Supernatural people is everybody okay with this so what I'm saying is you're in heaven right [Music] now what we have to lose is the mindset that we're down here natural people walking in natural life trying to figure out how to get God to answer our prayers we've got to break out of feeling separate from him we are the scriptures are clear we are no longer separate from him we've been brought in we've been made close Eugene Peterson in the message said it this way this way you who were sometimes aliens are now made insiders we are insiders in the kingdom of God insiders I I was I was all over this several years ago I'm still all over that's all think about every day is just I'm in heaven I'm in heaven and so when I lay hands on the sick I'm not laying hands on the sick strictly from Earth wondering if God is paying attention at the moment I'm seated with him in a Heavenly place in Christ and when I lay my natural hands on them my heavenly hands are being laid on them as well do you understand what I'm saying yeah I mean we're Supernatural people we're not we're not trying to live a better natural life we're not trying to live a good natural life we're living a completely different kind of Life while on the planet when Jesus said I came to give them life and life more abundant he didn't just mean a whole lot more life he meant a different quality of life eternal life is not just a quantity of time that we're going to be with God it's a quality of relational existence in a different a completely different expression of life now it's not born of our efforts it's by birth what are you saying I'm saying you're in heaven right now and one of the things that we're going to discover is when we have a vision it's not God shooting a vision across the heavenlies and it smacks Us in the back of the head and we have a vision when we have a vision we're seeing with the eyes we don't normally see with are you following me that's why when when we're worshiping and when we're praying and we're waiting on the Lord we have visions and we hear from him much more clearly because we're slowing down we're acknowledging I mean worship face it just just look at this for what it really is when we worship we are moving in an amazing place of Faith we're singing to an invisible God and believing that he is honored by it that's remarkable faith and he invades it or is is it him invading it or is it us beginning to experience where we're already dwelling ultimately it doesn't matter it's just encouraging which is what we need now what this does is this takes healing out of the realm of the natural and places it into a supernatural place it gives us great confidence which is what we need but Jesus did what he did as a man living on the earth but a man filled with the spirit which is what mankind was created for which made us Supernatural are you following this so what are you saying I'm saying when you got born again you got planted in the heavens you got re exalted I'm old but I'm okay the cheer may not be though so if you feel like the enemy is just beating on you then the bottoms of your feet must be really taking a [Applause] beating and if you feel distant from God your feeling is not accurate it's a product of the deception or a product of how prominent we're viewing the natural world instead of what's really real and so what happens is this right now when something bad happens in our life or it looks like God's not going to show up most of us panic but if you have confidence that you're already seated in the place that most of us have been spending our lives trying to get to just listen if we start from the place that most of us have a goal to end up did you catch that God plants us there at the beginning how much more is he going to release to us what we need and how much can more can we have confidence in him to come through so when something bad happens instead of panicking and thinking everything's terrible we can just go oh there is an amazing upgrade coming for us in this season see when you got born again you didn't just get a new shot at life it wasn't Steve Thompson version 1.1 go get them pal I wiped your past away go take another shot at it no that me died and there was a brand new upgraded me a brand new version of me that was born not just a natural me a supernatural me with new abilities new capabilities this is what happened to you when you got born again and see we all see when John is talk when Jesus is talking in John we're imagining this as us going to heaven when we die it's not see Jesus Jesus didn't just come so that we could get to heaven he came so that God could get reinol in the earth and he needed a supernatural people to do that with that was always his plan but see what's happened is most of us in capturing a vision of our task in capturing a vision of what God wants to do with us we can get all excited about that but we can also feel pressure you can feel pressure because how many of you know if we're trying to transform the world naturally we should feel some pressure but we're not trying to transform it naturally we're transforming it supernaturally and we don't have to produce that Supernatural quality of life it's already been granted to us let me give you a couple of examples are there any questions about this great thank you all right good now you're you're starting from the place that most people are trying to get to you're starting from being planted in heaven that ensures success about two years ago two and a half years ago maybe three years ago I began to feel a stirring from the Lord in 19 in the 80s I had an encounter with the Lord the Lord began to speak to me prophetically I didn't know what the prophetic was lifelong member of a Baptist Church I didn't do it very well it was a great church um you know I struggled I was a nominal believer at best I began to when I was with in the University I began to make some steps towards the Lord I had a really radical encounter with the Lord began to have dreams began to have visions began to move prophetically began to have words of knowledge and all this stuff did not know what it was ministered for three years outside of the church before I ever ministered prophetically in a church because we didn't have any context for the prophetic so we just did it in public we prophesied to people and they got born again so 86 87 we LED hundreds of people to the lord it's pretty cool stories okay but that's not my purpose so that that's where that's kind of where I came from and and then the lord gave me this Vision he told me that if I would come aside and learn from him and stop doing this on the streets but instead began to train a group of people that he would release a generation who could do what I was doing then in the 80s on the streets and he was just saying that was my part in it so I played a part in helping usher back in an awareness of the prophetic Ministry in the church okay lots of different people doing it so that's where we are about three years ago the Lord began to capture my attention about something and he began to show me that there was a new assignment that I had and I was very excited about it because he showed me what it was he showed me that where the prophetic gift had been taken out of the mystical realm and made accessible for every believer that he was going to do that with the supernatural life he was going to make the supernatural life beyond what any of us imagined uh real and Power appable and tangible and attainable instead of something mystical and weird are you with me and he showed me okay there's new things you need to do you need to begin moving in this realm blah blah blah blah blah and I'm okay great so I thought it was I thought I was going to do it in the ministry that myself and another gentleman had developed for 20 years or 18 years at that point I was very excited I thought oh this is great we're going to make this shift and then the Lord began to speak to me and said you're not going to do it here and I thought this is not very good I've spent 20 years my wife and I had been married six months when Rick and I began working together that's a lot of time that's a lot of history and so fall of 2009 the Lord spoke very clearly to me and said you you need to leave what you've developed you need to turn over everything you've done and I'd already been doing that as a as a practice and he said I'm I'm I want you to step out of what you know and he said I want you to take a year invest in your son take a break after 20 years and I want you to begin to develop some other things I want you to write on some some other aspects other than just prophecy and this kind of thing so I just go okay and then he speaks to my wife on my birthday and speak to me he speaks to my wife on my birthday and tell us that we're supposed to move to California and I thought ah this you know this is really not that cool so we ended up moving last year from the north part of the southeast to the South part of the Northwest a major major life shift we had to explain to our kids that we were going to uproot them out of the lives that we had developed um I mean you got to understand I was a number two guy in an organization that was having International influence and with had 200 employees I absolutely loved what I was doing and the Lord said you need to walk away I would I mean he'd been giving me this Abraham thing for about 3 years and I went yeah this is an awesome thing I can't wait to teach on this I knew I mean I was lying to myself because I knew he was asking me to leave what I knew and what was established to go into something I couldn't see yet now ultimately I'm trying to share with you a story that will just encourage your socks off so we're in the process of doing all this we don't tell people we're going to move because even though we've left we were concerned if we left the area quickly it would destabilize the organization we didn't want to do that because we invested in it for 20 years and so we haven't told anybody we're going to do this so my daughter Madison who some of you know her story she turned 13 last year so she wanted to go to England so we went to England and a guy who's an executive with Manu Manchester United heard the stories of her soccer thing contacted me and said if you're ever in the UK I'd like to host you guys at a Manu game at Old Trafford and so um I was doing a conference in London so I took my wife and my my 13-year-old daughter and we celebrated her birthday there in London and we went up and they hosted us at a Manu game it was a very very cool story and so the last night of the conference while my wife and my daughter are doing all the sightseeing stuff I'm doing a conference it's the way it works for dads we work while everybody else plays and so we love it it's wonderful my my wife and daughter come to the last meeting at the conference that I'm doing and so woman this woman runs up we're having a big Ministry time this woman runs up to my wife and she says the Lord has given me five components of a word for you would it be okay if I share them with you and no one knew we were moving and no one we our kids were only ones that known they had known a weak this was in April of last year we had told anybody where we're going but the Lord had spoken to us well I guess we'd actually told Bill and Benny Johnson but no one else knew at that point so here here's what happens this woman comes up to my wife and she says this she says don't worry about your housing God has every detail of your housing covered then she said I saw a vision of a house and it was like the kind of house that you would see in the Pacific Northwest in Washington Oregon or Northern California and then she goes on with two other words and then she says and the last thing I saw was a blue door and those were the five five parts of the word that was on a Saturday we flew home on the next day Sunday I flew on Monday out to reading to meet with some people on Thursday of that week a woman comes up to my wife at one of my daughter's soccer games and says do you know of a five-bedroom large house in your neighborhood that is available for rent I need to rent one for two years and I'm willing to pay this amount of money now we when the Lord said don't worry about your housing we've got I've got every detail covered I told my wife I said that means our house here and the house that we need in California 5 days later unannounced no one knowing anything a woman comes up to my wife and asks that she ended up leasing our house for two years a month and a half later when we moved okay how many say that's Supernatural superal That's not even the beginning of the story I thought it would be simple to find a house in the reading area Northern California I wasn't thinking about the fact I was moving from Charlotte a metro area of 2 million people to a non-metro area in Northern California of 100,000 people so if you just do the math there's about 5% of the number of houses in reading that there is in Charlotte area not only that I found out that they don't have houses for people with five children except houses that are like2 or $3 million which you know you can count the money in my pocket it's my pockets are not that deep and so we had asked my kids I said to work what do you want to do and I I felt like the Lord said your kids need to have an investment in this and they need to have a voice in the move and I went okay so I said to them what's important to you they said we we like a lot of land we don't like living on the golf course now it looks like we have a lot of land but we don't we liked it when we lived in the mountains more we had 10 acres to play on and all that we like land I said okay what else they said a pool I said okay I flew out to reading four times to look at every I looked at every house imaginable I could not find anything that would work for my for my family to buy or to lease I couldn't I mean I looked at everything I two real estate agents they I would communicate with them I look I couldn't find a thing the clock is ticking did I mention that we had already leased our home our home was to be least effective July 1st we had a short season we had a very short window to move on July 11th I had to leave to go to Australia for 3 weeks and so we were going to leave near the end of June to get settled in reading by July 1st because I had to leave July 11th but the Lord said don't worry about your housing so he comes through and he provides on the first end I flew out here four times couldn't find anything during one of my trips out here somebody contacted me to reading somebody contacted me and said listen A friend of mine has bought a house as an investment it's a five-bedroom house it's furnished he knows you he just heard you're moving out here and he would like to make it available to you for 9 days so you don't have to stay in a hotel when you're moving your stuff into your house and I said that's incredibly kind just we'll pray about it but we'll probably do it so I felt good about it so we told the guy and it was just it was great so it gave us a place to land for 9 days meanwhile I can't find a place you got to understand I'm a longrange planner we have vacations planned out with five children a year and a half in advance because you have to it's the only way to make flights work and all that I mean I can tell you where I'm going to be almost every day for the remainder of this year I'm a planner I may look a little haphazard but I'm a planner okay so we get to the end of June and I have still not found a house I said to my wife I I this is really disturbing I said but I have zero concern in my heart she said you know Steve honestly I don't have any either she's certainly not like that okay so we actually got we loaded up our stuff we loaded up a huge truck full of stuff because I could not hire a moving van I didn't have an address to give them I told people for years don't you ever do anything like this you understand I mean I was a pastor planted five churches don't ever do anything like this the Lord tells us you have to do this he he literally told me he said you're just going to have to go I acted like I didn't hear him you know I was like Lord I just cry out to you again you know I mean I'm I'm just blocking that thing I'm not listening to that we couldn't find anything I wasn't I mean I kept looking I wasn't concerned I finally said to my wife I said we're just going to need to put this on hold I'll need to catch a flight from here instead of she said we need to go and I thought this is definitely God so the day before we left I just thought I've got to check and there's one thing I haven't Che I haven't looked on Craigslist like I'm going to find a five bedroom house on six bedroom house on Craigslist you know so interestingly enough I get on Craigslist and there it it has a 25 acre property a 5500t house and guest house with a pool a lighted tennis court it's gated with security system and a 3 Acre Lake on Craigslist [Music] and I thought this this just can't be this has got to be a scam cuz I'd seen other scams you know what I'm talking about and when it showed what they and it wasn't for sale but it was for lease and when I saw the lease price on I thought that has got to be a scam that's ridiculous that's about a third of what a house like that would would re rent for so I I called and couldn't get an answer I thought it's definitely a scam so we packed up a truck and we moved our family 2500 2900 miles the way I had to drive because of the um the route we had to take with all the stuff with only nine days to stay in a place while we obtained another house and it wasn't like I had extra time because I was flying to Australia on July 11th so my son and I arrived with the stuff my wife and the four other kids took a different uh path across the states we got there a day before they did by that time I had located the name of the property management group that was this house and so anyway I go and look at it it is unbelievable 25 acres gated lighted tennis court pool outside areas decks and porches that you can entertain 250 people on this piece of property I found I found the old place where they were had it for sale and they didn't sell it they were asking $2.2 million for it so I began to talk to the property management group the 3 Acre Lake this is beautiful piece of property so I began to my wife got in the next day I said I got a place you I want you to look at so she came and she said I like it so we negotiated we negotiated back and forth it was it was honestly we got this thing for just a fraction above what our mortgage was Back East now for that property we pay about what or maybe a little bit less or about what the property taxes are annually that's what we pay in in rent and it has a blue door people have come now people have come from reading people have Danny silk and his wife were over and others have come over and they go we didn't know anything existed like this in Reading I've bumped into people now I bought a car from a woman who's a banker and she said now where do you live I told her she said I know that property she said that belonged to that neurosurgeon I went yeah she said he did surgery on my my husband and on my wife I know this guy he's the toughest businessman in the area I said I don't think [Laughter] so it's an unbelievable story I can't even go into the other parts of it but here are there are places that the Lord has for us to dwell that have been prepared for us well before we ever thought of this there's something that you can't imagine there's an abundance there's a type of life and I'm not talking about material Prosperity I'm talking about a supernatural quality of life in some cases it may have to do with material abundance but that's not the big deal does everybody understand what I'm talking about listen that's that's a type of prosperity but that's not the type of prosperity and for us this is just about a message about other things and so at the same time when I I I left a successful organization that I had developed with another guy for 20 years I had a great place I walked away from that I walked away from a lot of money I walked away from a salary I didn't join another organization I did the exact opposite I turned down offers to go and do things at other organizations and just did what I felt like the Lord said to do and in the process of doing that the school that I was telling about last night I I'm the 50% owner of that school I now make 150% of what I made at Morning Star and I work one hour a week how many of you know that's Supernatural and that school is having dramatic impact in that Community literally well some some days it's or some weeks it's two hours now what it's doing it is enabling me to not have to run and do a bunch of things so that I can dig into the scriptures and I can strip back the traditions and the other things so I can see what's there and I have time to do what I need to do are you listening to me there's something new that's available for I'm just sort of Joe everybody I'm not one of the I mean I grew up in the inner city neither one of my parents graduated from high school my parents were 15 and 17 when they got married they've been married for 54 years this October and so I mean but we're very insignificant as a family I'm sort of like Joe everybody this is not just about me this is about what's available for us in terms of God opening up a supernatural life I'm seeing people healed I'm seeing people delivered I'm seeing businesses trans formed we're see and it does not take the effort that it took in the past I'm not saying that this is not about working and preparing and studying do not believe that I'm saying don't study for tests God will give you the answers I'm not saying don't work hard that's not the case at all it's that I don't have to work hard now to make a living so that I can work and spend my time on these other things that he's given me is everybody is everybody following this in our school I need to tell you this when they asked me to buy the school I turned it down I said no I don't want to do this I'm I had consulted with them for eight years and helped them become successful they were losing a lot of money they asked me to help them I have a business understanding and a prophetic gift and so I I helped them and they became very profitable so when I moved into California they said we want to start paying you I said no I don't want to take any money I've been your friend all along I never took a dime I'm not going to do it now plus I don't have time so I turn and then they wanted to pay me so then one of the guys the junior partner contacted me and said why don't you buy half of the school I'll buy the other portion that makes up half and we'll do it together I'll run it and you won't have to do that much and I said I can't do this four days later I had a dream in the Lord said you're supposed to do this and so this is not about getting it all right this is about the kindness of God to fix our thickness [Music]