You do not understand how the kingdom of heaven works.
You don't think you have anything, but what do you have?"
And they said,
well, we only have five loaves and a couple fish.
And he said, give it to me.
And when they gave it to him, he blessed it and gave it back.
That's what Jesus is asking us to do.
We come to him with these attitudes
of we don't have anything to give, I'm not good enough.
Because of the things I've done in my life,
how could Jesus ever use me?
What Jesus is saying to you is,
look, I don't care what you have.
I just want what you have to be given to me.
I'll bless it and give it back.
Then when I give it back, you give it away.
And when you give it away, look what I do with it.
God promises in Joel 2.28
to pour out his spirit on all humanity.
Welcome to global outpouring,
where we contend for that promised outpouring,
we equip for that outpouring,
so that we may engage in that very outpouring.
I'm Philip Bus.
And I'm Sharon Bus.
Welcome to the podcast today.
We're so delighted that you're with us.
And we are delighted to have with us
some very, very special guests,
very, very dear friends of ours, John and Linda Thomas.
They are neighbors and they are close to us,
helping us in lots and lots of ways.
And they have testimonies that are going to help you
to grow in your walk with God as you prepare
for the outpouring.
Thanks so much for joining us today.
We just want to encourage you,
if you haven't already done so,
to go to our website, globaloutpouring.net,
and be sure that you have gotten onto our email list
so that we can be in touch with you,
and we would love to hear from you.
If you want to leave some feedback,
we've got a feedback form there,
or you can email us at feedback at globaloutpouring.org,
and tell us what God is doing in your life,
and how we can help you, how we can bless you.
And if you have some idea of something
that is on your heart that you want us to talk about,
let us know, and we'll pray into it
and see what the Holy Spirit gives us,
just to fulfill the thing that is in your heart.
We want this to be a thing that we do together with you,
our listeners.
Wherever you're listening from,
we would love to hear where you're listening from,
because it's really exciting to hear from the nations
and from different places in America and Canada,
the UK and Australia,
all the different English-speaking places,
but we know that we're being heard
by English speakers elsewhere,
so we'd love to hear from you if you'd give us some feedback.
And if you're feeling led of the Holy Spirit,
we'd invite you to help us to pay this forward
and keep this podcast going.
There's a place to donate on our website as well.
And we've got wonderful things for you to explore
on the website too, our blogs and our bookstore and so on.
So make sure that you have taken the opportunity
to look around there and get fed.
That's what this is all about.
We want to equip you to be ready for the outpouring.
So today we have with us John and Linda Thomas.
Welcome to the podcast today.
Thank you so much. We're so honored to be on here.
Yeah, thank you guys.
We love you and we just appreciate the opportunity.
So God brought you here sovereignly.
Tell us real quickly about how God brought you to this place.
God is so good.
We were in North Dakota, actually.
We're from Washington state originally,
but we had moved to North Dakota.
And through a long story for a different time,
He showed us, He showed John in a dream, Springfield.
And we realized after about a year
that it was Springfield, Missouri.
And so we had God used people in our lives.
We had people we just met give us verses from Him,
like go into the land that I've sent you
and I'll tell you what to do.
And so we were hearing His voice
and we were having confirmation coming at us
from all directions.
And so we packed everything up and we moved to Springfield.
And so He planted us in Springfield,
but the very first weekend we got to Springfield,
there was ministry going on in Jasper, Arkansas.
And so we followed a friend of ours
who was ministering up here
and walked into global outpouring,
brand new in the state, had only been here two days
and got to meet Phil and Sharon and it was amazing.
So that friend of yours is Dean Brexton.
And we have come to love him so much.
That was his first time here
and you showed up for his first time here
and it's like, click, something happened in the spirit.
And we're so excited how God has just knit our hearts
together and so you've been really mentored by Him
in a way that a lot of people
have not had opportunity to do.
So John, tell us a little bit about your background
and how you came to the Lord.
Well, I was raised in the church.
My mom took us to church every Sunday.
And from the time I was very little,
I would say I was very close to Jesus.
When I was like two years old, three years old,
my very best friend in the world was Jesus.
My mom used to say that I would go into my bedroom closet
and she'd go, John, what are you doing in there?
And I'd say, I'm spending time with Jesus.
I'm with Jesus.
I had this little white Bible that had,
it was a kid's Bible, so it had lots of pictures.
And my favorite thing in the world when I was young
was to open up that Bible and read the words in red
that I knew were the words of my Jesus.
And so I was really raised close to Jesus.
I loved Him from the time I was very little,
but then the world got involved and my flesh got involved.
The next thing you know, I was out
really living a lukewarm life.
I spent my teenage years into my late twenties.
Well, really all the way up until just a few years ago,
very, very lukewarm.
What I like to tell people is is that,
yeah, I really believe I was still born again,
but I wasn't operating in the spirit.
I was living by my flesh.
And so I was really my own God.
I was my own God.
I did things the way I wanted to do them.
I did what I wanted to do.
I paid zero attention to what the Holy Spirit
was saying to me other than occasionally,
He'd give me a drain that I would know,
okay, that is from the Lord
and I need to pay some attention to that.
But still for literally decades, I was my own God.
And Jesus was basically somebody
who I put on the back burner.
I don't want you to be Lord of my life.
I do want you to save me and I wanna go to heaven.
I don't wanna go to hell,
but I wanna be in charge for now.
That was basically my attitude.
And one of the amazing things that happened
when Linda and I were in North Dakota,
we had moved there to be near family
and that relationship with my brother who lived there
really fell apart at the same time.
The relationship with my dad really fell apart.
I just was left in a spot where I had to go,
you know what Lord,
I am done trying to please my earthly dad.
I really only wanna please you now.
And it led me to doing a three day fast.
And after I did that three day fast,
basically the Lord moved me into a spot
where he gave me a dream about Springfield, Missouri.
And at that same time,
he was just starting to move in my life.
Basically what it was was I came to this point
where I was done doing things my own way now
because of these relationships that were falling apart.
And you know, when you're doing things your own way,
the enemy just gets to come in
and he operates in these cycles.
Things happen over and over again.
I was involved in addiction to pornography.
And you know, it is so hurtful to Linda
when I was involved in that stuff.
And so thankfully the Lord just got ahold of me
and broke my heart for that.
Like Lord, I don't wanna be this person
that's acting like this anymore.
I'm done doing it my own way.
Through our friend Dean Braxton,
after I had done this three day fast,
Dean texted me and he said,
John, I really believe the Lord wants you to be praying
in tongues for an hour a day for a month.
And then at the end of that time,
do a seven day Daniel fast.
And he's really gonna be showing you
what he wants you to be doing.
Well, not too long before that,
I didn't believe praying in tongues was for me.
Basically, I thought it was weird.
I didn't want to do something that wasn't controlled by me
because I'm still dealing with being in control
of everything myself, you know?
But I knew the Lord, actually,
he had given me a dream during that time period
where he showed me becoming a prayer warrior.
And I knew he wanted me to be praying
in my prayer language in tongues.
And so when Dean reached out to me,
I just said, Dean, help me out with this
because I've basically told the Lord,
if you want me to be praying in tongues,
you have to force it upon me and it just has to happen.
And Dean really outlined the scriptures
that went through praying in tongues.
Paul says, I wish you all prayed in tongues.
It's something that the Lord really has
for everybody that's born again.
And what I came to find out is that really,
anybody who's born again has access to that prayer language,
but so many of us, because we're stubborn,
because we wanna be in control,
we choose not to access that.
We say, if it's gonna happen, it's gotta happen
the certain way that I predetermined, Lord,
that you get to do it.
And if you wanna do it any other way,
then it can't happen.
And just being my own God, right?
I'm dictating to God how this has to happen.
And that's not how things work.
And so thankfully, you know, he got through to me
and I just said, I came to a spot where I said,
Jesus, I trust you.
I don't trust me, but I trust you.
And if you want me to be praying in tongues,
then I'm just gonna trust you and go for it.
And so I had to transition from a spot
where I wanted the Lord to just force it upon me
and realize, no, it's something
that he's already deposited in me.
And by faith, I'm gonna get ahold of it.
So I just started praying in tongues and pretty darn soon,
I'm like, this is my prayer language.
It became very clear.
And so I went ahead and I did that 30 days
of praying in the Spirit.
I did the seven day Daniel fast.
And really during that time,
not understanding all the benefits of doing that,
but during that time, the pornography just melted off of me.
Glory to God.
Linda had an addiction to alcohol
that literally melted off of her.
It was like the praying in tongues in the house
was literally changing the atmosphere in the house,
bringing down a heavenly atmosphere
instead of a fleshly earthly atmosphere.
And it literally was just changing all this stuff,
all the junk that we had been involved in in our flesh.
It was just melting it off.
Praise God.
Glory to God.
That is a key for contending.
Yeah.
Wow.
Absolutely.
It was amazing.
I didn't even realize he was praying in tongues.
And all of a sudden, within a few days,
it was like I woke up from almost like a fog
and was like, wait a minute,
I'm drinking wine every day after work.
I don't need to do this anymore.
I don't need this anymore.
I can actually stop doing this.
And it wasn't just that,
it was even the fact that I was focusing on my own needs
to try to get them met as far as physically,
taking medicine for pain and all kinds of other things,
trying to make myself feel good
instead of letting the Holy Spirit do it.
And once all those things melted off of me,
it was like I had brand new eyes to see and hear God,
and he was able to take care of those needs for me.
It was amazing.
Praise God, amen.
Wow.
So how long was it before you moved here after that fast?
It all happened pretty quick.
The fast, I think, was at the end of the year
prior to when we moved.
So probably in like September or October,
and we were moved down there by what?
June or July of the next year?
Yep, late summer.
And so, yeah, from that point,
when I decided that I was done doing it my way,
and tongues, praying in tongues,
it's not the end-all answer.
It's just part of the toolbox,
the tools that God gives us,
but it is a very powerful tool.
And so you can get to the places
where the Lord wants you to be without that,
but what we saw demonstrated is that praying in tongues
is so powerful.
It was literally shifting things quicker
than they could ever be shifted in the natural.
And I really believe it's because when,
Jesus says if you pray without doubting,
knowing that you have what you pray for,
you're gonna get what you are asking for.
And when you're praying in tongues,
Bible teaches us that we're literally praying out
God's perfect will.
The Holy Spirit is praying out the things
that we don't even know how to ask or what to say.
He's praying it out perfectly in that prayer language.
And so we're getting it,
whether we know what we're praying for or not,
we're getting it.
So it is so powerful.
So I would encourage anybody
if you've been kind of hesitant in that.
You know, the biggest thing is I was worried about,
basically because I was operating through my flesh,
I was worried about having control over it.
I thought, well, if I don't have control over it,
then maybe the enemy could operate through me in some way
because I don't know what I'm saying.
But I would say to you,
if you're someone who is thinking that way,
because I think that a lot of people do,
and that's actually taught by several groups,
is that if your heart is that you do not want to say anything
that's not honoring to God,
then you don't have to worry about it.
If your heart is that you want to honor God
in your prayer language and you're worried
about something coming through that's not from him,
then you're really in the perfect spot to engage in it.
So I would just encourage you to just go for it.
It is so powerful.
Amen.
That reminds me of a scripture.
Luke 11 says,
"'If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father,
will he give him a stone?
Or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a snake?
Or if he shall ask for an egg,
will he offer him a scorpion?'
Verse 13 says,
"'If you then, being evil,
know how to give good gifts unto your children,
how much more shall your heavenly father
give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?'
And that's part of the Holy Spirit,
part of the Holy Spirit is this wonderful gift
of a language to communicate directly
with our Father's heart.
It's wonderful.
Yeah, same there.
I don't know how we have managed without it.
I mean, there's a whole lot of things that God does
that it's just beyond our ability to really comprehend
all the things that he manages to put in place
with such broken people.
That's amazing to me.
Yeah.
So John, you are a master electrician
and God is using you in the workplace.
He's really given you a burden as an evangelist.
Tell us how you came to that
and tell us some stories of what God has done.
Yeah, wow.
He's been so faithful.
When we moved down here, I immediately got a job.
This was a miraculous event in its own right,
but I got a job subcontracting for a company
where I get to drive all over Missouri,
sometimes down into Arkansas,
but I'm going to these mental health facilities
and mostly doing access control work
where you have to swipe a key fob to get in.
And because I'm at these facilities for several days
and because the Lord has just made me
so that I'm on fire for him now,
I get to go into these places and pray over them,
pray over these people, pray over their destinies.
But what was happening as I started to do this
is I would go out after work and go to the Minute Mart
or go to the park down the road, spend a little time,
because most of this I'm on the road
and I'm staying in motels.
And so I'm just trying to keep myself busy after work.
And I'd go talk to people about Jesus
and man, it just wasn't going well.
It just wasn't going well.
And what I realized is,
Lord, I'm really trying to do this in my own strength.
I haven't asked you to be involved.
And yeah, I was giving them scripture
and I was talking to them about Jesus,
but I was really trying to do it on my own strength.
And so after going to this Minute Mart for a snack,
this one particular day where I talked to these two guys
and when I witnessed to them,
man, one of them just got angry and bounced out of there.
And the other one, he was nice and listened to me,
let me pray for him, but literally nothing happened
in terms of them giving their life to Jesus
or making a decision or, you know,
it just was hard for me to deal with.
I said, I went back to my hotel room.
I literally just laid down flat on the floor.
I said, Jesus, I cannot do this on my own.
I so greatly want to be involved in getting people saved,
getting people to know you,
getting people to experience your love
the way that you have shown it to me,
getting people to experience getting set free from the junk
like you've done from me.
And so I just, I started crying out for souls.
Literally I was saying, Lord, give me souls.
Father, I just want to have souls and it can't be me.
It has to be you.
I just, however I can help in that, Lord,
just show me.
And literally the next day after work,
after praying that prayer,
I'm working up in Columbia, Missouri,
which is a college town.
They have these electric scooters all over the place.
You can get an app on your phone and rent these scooters.
And I'd never done that.
I thought I'm going to take one of these scooters for a ride.
And so I rode this scooter down into a park
where this young man walked in right by me
with his little German shepherd puppy, tiny little puppy.
And so I had to go talk to him.
I said, man, that is the cutest little dog.
And I just started chatting with him with,
actually I was not thinking about witnessing to him
about Jesus and this is how good Jesus is.
He just set this appointment up.
As I'm talking to this kid, all of a sudden,
I heard in my spirit, here you go.
Here you go, son.
I said, whoa, really?
Okay. And so this is just going on in the back of my mind.
Really, Lord, this is an appointment for me.
You want me to talk to him about you?
And next thing you know, and he just let it in.
Jesus led the conversation so smoothly and perfectly
into this spot where I shared Jesus.
I shared what he's done in my life.
I shared how good he is.
And this kid had been involved in drugs.
He'd been involved in witchcraft.
He told me that at 13 years old,
his mom called him into the living room with his stepdad
and got him hooked on methamphetamines.
Oh, wow.
And so he just had this broken life
and I got to share with him, hey, Jesus is the chain breaker.
Here's what he's done in my life.
He is so good.
He loves you so much.
And that young man accepted Jesus Christ,
gave his life to Jesus Christ right there in the park.
Thank you, Father.
How long do you?
And so immediately I was on cloud nine like, whoa, Jesus.
Thank you.
You mean all I had to do was invite you in
and give it to you?
What a concept, right?
Praise God.
Amen.
When we try to do it on our own, it just doesn't work.
But inviting him in, he brings the power.
And so the little that we bring to the table,
if we'll just give it to him, he brings all the power.
He sets it all up.
He really does all the work.
Amen.
That is so powerful.
So the Lord spoke to you
about starting to have a healing meeting.
And when you preach Jesus as the healer,
he begins to show up as the healer.
When you preach him as the savior, he shows up as savior.
When you preach about him as the baptizer
in the Holy Spirit, he shows up as the baptizer
in the Holy Spirit.
So he will accommodate how we follow his spirit
to present him.
So tell us something about some of the healings
that you've seen.
Yeah, that's been incredible too.
You know, when Dean had told me
that the Lord wanted me to do that,
praying in tongues for 30 days, then do the Daniel fast,
he told me after that, the Lord would reveal to me
what he wanted me to be doing.
And after I did those things,
I had two different dreams about healing.
In the first dream, I was in a place that looked to me
like down on the piers in Seattle, right?
By the Puget Sound there,
there's elevated highways overhead.
And then there's a bunch of businesses underneath
that sort of in a rundown area,
you know, not a very good area down there anymore.
And I was down there and I walked into this building
that happened to where somebody was living.
This couple was living in there
and a man was sitting on the bed.
He was hunched over, his whole body was deformed.
And I didn't see him from the front,
but I knew by the spirit that even his face was deformed.
And I just walked up to him in this dream,
I put my hand on his back, I said a real quick prayer.
I didn't even get to hear what I prayed.
I just prayed a quick prayer, put my hand on him
and instantly Jesus healed him.
He straightened up, his body was restored.
And then I knew also by the spirit
that his face was fully restored.
And then I looked at his wife,
who was standing there on the other side of him.
And I said, that is our Jesus.
That is our Jesus.
And then the Lord gave me a dream like a few days later,
same sort of a thing.
I was in a place where actually this young lady
was riding her bicycle and got into an accident
on her bicycle and opened up a wound on her wrist
that was pretty major.
She was on the ground, like in the fetal position
with her wrist underneath her in pain.
And I just walked up to her, I put my hand on her shoulder,
I said a quick prayer again.
And then instantly the scene changed.
She, this young woman was in a bathroom sort of washing up
and all the concerned family was outside.
I was there with them.
She walked out of the bathroom.
And this was really moments after I had prayed for her.
She walked out of the bathroom
and her wrist was completely healed.
Glory to God.
And everybody was just flabbergasted.
And I looked at that girl's mom and I said,
that is our Jesus.
But you know what?
I was still not really understanding of the whole thing.
And so I talked to Dean not too long after that.
I said, Dean, I did this 30 days of praying in tongues.
I did the Daniel fast.
I don't know what I'm supposed to do.
The only thing that's happened
is I've had these dreams about healing.
And he said, John, that's it.
That's it.
Lord wants you to be involved in healing
and move into a healing ministry.
I said, whoa, Lord, whoa, okay.
So, you know, then immediately
I started reading scriptures about healing
and because Linda and I, we came up in churches
that really didn't teach healing.
And we sort of were taught that, yeah,
Jesus is still the healer,
but we weren't taught that we could know
that his will is to heal.
And so as I started studying the scriptures,
it just became more and more clear,
it is his will to heal.
Part of one of his names is healer.
Your name is your character.
If your character is healer, then it is always healer.
He had never changes his character.
The Bible says that he never changes.
If he was healer, he is healer, he always will be healer.
And so our attitude, my attitude just shifted on that.
And then of course, Mark 16, you know,
and to any who believe they'll lay hands on the sick
and they shall recover among other things,
but I was focused on the healing.
So I just said, Jesus, if you say for me
to lay hands on the sick and they shall recover,
that's what I'm gonna do.
And I'm gonna believe you for it.
Amen.
And so, yeah, we started praying for people for healing.
And you know, the Saturday night healing service
that the Lord had a start there
at the Global Outpouring Campus,
that's just been incredible.
We started that last May.
And of course, our good friend, Bob Baldwin,
who's been part of the ministry for years and years,
he joined up with us.
And really quite a bit of the community
had started to come in right in the beginning.
Bob was driving around inviting people
and telling people to show up.
And so it was neat because right off the bat,
we just had a bunch of people from the community
who weren't really going for it with Jesus strongly.
You know, we had a few people who maybe were born again,
but still living in the flesh like I had been.
And we just said, hey, listen,
the Bible says that Jesus is still the healer.
So let us lay hands on you and let's see what happens.
You know, what do you got to lose?
What have you got to lose?
And so we had, of course, you guys know Jesse.
Jesse, I think this is one of the most incredible
healings we had down there because Jesse literally,
he went into the doctor with some chest pain.
He smoked for many years and the doctor said,
after they did x-rays, Jesse, we found two lumps
on your chest or two masses in your chest in this one lung.
And we think it's cancer, but we're gonna send you in
for a more detailed test.
I think they sent him in for an MRI.
And so he came to us one Saturday night and he said,
yeah, I just went to the doctor this week.
The doctor saw these two masses in my chest on the x-ray.
They're sending me in for more testing.
But he said, the doctor also told me, Jesse,
did you know that you were only born
with half a lung on this side?
And he said, no, I had no idea.
Nobody's ever told me that
or nobody's ever x-rayed my lungs anyhow.
So we just started praying over him
and several of us prayed over Jesse
that not only would those lumps be gone,
but that his one half lung would be turned into a full lung.
Our good friend, Pam True saw in the spirit a full lung
appear right in front of him.
And by faith, she just moved her hand toward it
and pushed it into his chest.
And-
I love it.
And so, you know, that might seem out there
for some people, but you know what?
She did this and what was the report?
Jesse came back after this MRI.
I actually got a call from Bob Baldwin who's 85 years old
and he was giggling like a little kid.
He said, Bob, what's so funny?
He said, I just talked to Jesse
and Jesse just talked to his doctor.
And the doctor after doing this MRI said,
not only can we not find those lumps in your chest anymore,
but you have two full lungs.
Wow.
That's just awesome.
I love that.
Yeah.
Incredible.
That's Jesus.
That is our Jesus.
Yeah, that's my Jesus.
Yeah.
You know, and one of my other favorite ones is
we got word from someone that was coming to our
Saturday night healing service that a good friend of theirs,
actually a niece of theirs,
really had been told by the doctors that
they couldn't do anything more for her.
She was at the hospital down,
oh, south of us, Linda, do you remember that town?
Outside of Little Rock.
Yeah, Conway.
And she was down there in the hospital.
She had two masses in her, inside of her stomach cavity,
not in her stomach, but inside of her stomach cavity.
Each mass was the size of a watermelon.
They'd grown so large, she could no longer eat.
She hadn't been able to eat for weeks.
She couldn't keep anything down.
The doctors could not do anything for her.
They said, we're gonna send you to hospice.
You probably have a couple of weeks.
Get your affairs in order, basically.
And so Linda and I and Bob Baldwin went down there
and we were fired up in the power of the Holy Spirit.
When we got there, we were proclaiming healing.
The Lord just had us so confident that we knew
we were getting what we prayed for.
That was just one of the coolest times
because there was no doubt.
We knew we were getting what we prayed for.
Jesus was gonna touch this woman.
And as we were praying for her and talking to her,
her countenance just completely shifted.
She went from no hope to all of a sudden
she had this incredible hope.
And this woman has an incredible singing voice.
She went from having no hope to singing
and praising the Lord with this beautiful voice.
And I said, you know what?
When you get out of this hospital, you're gonna come
and you're gonna sing for us at our Saturday night
healing service and do worship with us.
And she smiled and she said, I will, I will.
Well, a couple of weeks later, we heard back that
almost instantly things started shifting for her
and the doctors started seeing enough change in her
that they decided, well, we probably aren't gonna send you
to hospice now.
All of a sudden she was able to start eating food
and keep it down.
All of a sudden her strength started coming back.
And then fast forward, you know, a few weeks later,
we hear that she is doing just miraculously well
and the doctors are just flabbergasted.
A few weeks later, we hear that she was driven to her church
on a Sunday where she got up and sang at her church.
And yeah, they took her back to the hospital,
but the hospital is just, these doctors are going,
we don't even understand how this is happening.
You know, a few weeks ago now, the doctors went in
and they were able to take one of those masses out.
The other mass, I think it has some blood vessels
wrapped around it where they're concerned about
how they're gonna do that.
So we just continue to believe for her healing completely.
We've seen what Jesus has done and we know that
He's gonna complete that work that He started in her.
And so we're just so excited about this.
Amen.
He's literally just, He's just waiting for people
to believe His word when it says that He's still a healer,
when it says to go pray for people and they'll be healed,
when it says to lay hands on the sick and they shall recover,
when it says to have the elders anoint people with oil
and the prayer of faith will heal the sick.
He's just waiting for people to believe it.
And He's so excited to do it.
Yeah.
Amen.
Oh, that's powerful.
Powerful.
Yeah, solid.
You know, there's one other story I want you to tell.
And that is how you were the answer to someone's prayer
when you were on vacation.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, that was good.
Well, Bob Baldwin and I and Linda,
we were down on vacation at the Gulf Coast
and Bob and I had gone for a walk.
I think we were trying to do a little bit of shopping.
There's some shops across the street there
and we were just walking around checking them out.
And because of our Saturday Night Healing Service,
we had these shirts made that say, how can I pray for you?
It says, how can I pray for you on the front?
And on the back it says, Jesus loves you.
And I just love wearing these shirts because quite often,
people will say, hey, you can pray for this
or you can pray for that or, wow,
thank you for wearing that shirt.
They see on the back where it says, Jesus loves you.
And they say, wow, thank you.
He loves you too.
So anyways, I love wearing these shirts around
and I was wearing this particular shirt.
And so when Bob and I were walking back
to where we were staying,
there's a safety gate that closes at night
and it hadn't been working.
And so there were some people from the condos there
that were working on it.
And I believe she had just prayed for some help.
Yeah, she had.
She wrote us a letter afterwards and she said,
I need help here.
God sent somebody.
Yeah.
And so I walk up and I've done so much access control
as an electrician, I've done a lot of gate access control.
I've done gate installs.
And so here come Bob and I and she sees the shirt
that says, how can I pray for you?
And she was basically like, well, I was just praying
for somebody to help us fix this gate.
And I said, well, actually I'm an electrician
and I work on these things.
And so she was just blown away by that.
And so it was really neat because I got to sit there
and work on that gate for probably a good hour,
hour and a half.
And meanwhile, Mr. Baldwin was able to just talk
to those people and share Jesus.
And it didn't sound to me like they were fully going for it
with Jesus.
And so that encounter would just,
they had the faith to say a prayer, boom, we showed up.
I was able to help with the gate.
Bob witnessed to them and shared the love of Jesus.
I just know that was so powerful,
powerful enough that you guys got the letter afterwards
as a testimony.
It meant a lot to them what happened.
And that's really just a picture of how much Jesus
cares for and loves each individual person so much.
There's nothing too small that he doesn't care about.
He just wants you to reach out to him,
father, here's what I need, help me.
And boom, here we go showing up to help her out.
Yeah, that's so amazing.
Yeah, awesome.
The reason why I wanted you to tell that story
is to emphasize how important that it is
that we simply give ourselves to the Lord
and make ourselves available so that,
cause he knows how he wants to use us.
He knows what's out there.
He is the amazing strategist and knows how to put
all the pieces together of every puzzle
so that all things will work together for good to them
that love him and that are called according to his purpose.
So that thing of being available for whatever the Lord has.
And you were the man with the right skillset
to walk into that situation in answer
to that person's prayer.
So as we close here, I would like for you, if you would,
to pray for our listeners, to have the thing
that God has for them, to turn that into something
that he can just shine his glory through,
like he's been doing with you.
And it all started when you finally said,
okay, I'm done, you do it, Lord.
You take over.
Can you pray that for our listeners?
Yeah, and I'm gonna share a scripture if I can
that the Lord gave me that goes right along with this.
This is so powerful.
I hadn't really looked at this this way until yesterday.
I was just asking the Lord what he wanted me to share
in the scriptures.
And this is what he gave me.
It might seem a little weird at first,
but I'll go back through and tell you what he gave me in it.
This is when Jesus fed the 5,000.
Jesus had just found out that John the Baptist
had been killed.
And it says, now when Jesus heard it,
he withdrew from there in a boat
to a lonely place by himself.
And when the multitudes heard of this,
they followed him on foot from the cities.
And when he went to shore, he saw a great multitude
and felt compassion for them and healed their sick.
And when it was evening, the disciples came to him
saying, the place is desolate and the time has already passed.
By the way, this is in Matthew 14.
I should let you all know that.
Matthew 14, starting in verse 13.
Back to verse 15.
And when it was evening, the disciples
came to him saying, the place is desolate
and the time has already passed.
So send the multitudes away that they may go into the villages
and buy food for themselves.
But Jesus said to them, they do not need to go away.
You give them something to eat.
And they said to him, we have here only five loaves
and two fish.
And he said, bring them here to me.
And ordering the multitudes to recline on the grass,
he took the five loaves and the two fish.
And looking up toward heaven, he blessed the food.
And breaking the loaves, he gave them to the disciples.
And the disciples gave them to the multitudes.
And they all ate and were satisfied.
And they picked up what was left over of the broken pieces,
12 full baskets.
And it says that this fed about 5,000 men,
plus the women and children that were with them,
five loaves and two fish.
And so what the Lord was showing me about this
is right off the bat, when the disciples came to Jesus
and said, hey, we need to send these people away.
It's desolate, it's late.
We need to send them off to give them something to eat.
Lord told me, John, that's how you operated
before you gave your life to me.
This is operating in the flesh,
not understanding how the things of the kingdom work,
not understanding how this full surrender to me works.
So the disciples came to him and said,
there's no way that this can work in the natural.
So let's do it in the natural way.
Let's send them to get food in the cities,
get them out of here so they can get food in the cities.
And really what Jesus said to them is,
look, you guys don't understand how this works.
You do not understand how the kingdom of heaven works.
You don't think you have anything, but what do you have?
And they said, well, we only have five loaves
and a couple fish.
And he said, give it to me.
And when they gave it to him, he blessed it and gave it back.
That's what Jesus is asking us to do.
We come to him with these attitudes of,
we don't have anything to give.
I'm not good enough.
Because of the things I've done in my life,
how could Jesus ever use me?
What Jesus is saying to you is, look,
I don't care what you have.
I just want what you have to be given to me.
I'll bless it and give it back.
You give it to me, I'll bless it and give it back.
Then when I give it back, you give it away.
And when you give it away, look what I do with it.
Watch what I do with it.
And so that's really the picture of where we came from.
You know, we had these excuses and Jesus took them
and said, no, you just give whatever you have to me.
I'll bless it and give it back.
And then you give it away.
So that's how we live our lives.
We just want to give our lives away to him.
We say yes every morning when we wake up,
Jesus, you have our yes, do with us whatever you want.
And that is so powerful.
And so for those of you who are listening,
I just want to encourage you, you know,
if you're at this point where you're feeling the same way
that we felt before,
look, you're tired of being your own God.
You're tired of doing things your own way
and making your own decisions
and not letting Jesus Christ be the Lord of your life.
Then now's the time to say, Jesus, I give it all to you.
I give it all to you.
So you can just repeat after me if you want.
You know, it really is more about what's coming
from your heart than the words that you say,
but you can say, Jesus, I'm done doing it on my own.
I want you to have your way in my life.
I want to do things your way now.
I want to learn from your word
and learn from your Holy Spirit
and start living my life
according to how you would have me live it.
Because Lord, I know that you are the only one that is good.
And when I've tried to do it on my own,
it's nothing but a mess.
So Father, I give to you all that I have,
even as little as it is, I give it to you.
I ask you to bless it.
And now Lord, I will give my life away.
I will give my life away for you,
whatever you want me to do,
however you want me to do it.
I say yes, in Jesus' mighty name.
Heavenly Father, I thank you for each person
that was listening today.
I thank you that they got
and are getting everything you want
for them to get, Lord God.
I thank you that you are working in their lives,
that your Holy Spirit is speaking to them now.
I ask Father that you would help them
to surrender to you completely and wholly,
that everything they have, Lord God,
that you would give them the wisdom and the strength
to turn it over to you,
that they would just fall at your feet
and say, Jesus, I will make you Lord of my life.
And Lord, I ask that as they come to you
and just give it all to you, Lord,
that you would show them who they are in you,
that you would show them who you made them to be,
that you would make it clear.
The day that you created them,
you spoke over them, Lord God.
Here is what I have created you to be.
Maybe an evangelist, maybe a pastor, maybe a teacher,
maybe somebody who still works in a trade,
but is just so on fire for Jesus
that those people around them can't help,
but catch fire too.
Whatever it is, Lord God,
I just pray that you would reveal to them
their identity in you,
that they would be so clear on their identity in you,
that the identity that the world has given them
would just fall off, melt away in Jesus' name.
And that they would be able to operate
in the identity of who you made them to be, Lord God,
that they would be able to just glorify you
in all that they do.
I ask for a blessing over them now, Lord,
that you'd bless the work of their hands
and the meditations of their heart,
that as they seek you out,
that you'd protect them from the evil one, Lord,
and that you would just allow them to grow
so in love with you, so in love with your word,
that they couldn't help,
but be absolutely on fire for you.
In Jesus' mighty name.
Thank you, Father.
Amen.
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Until next time, this is Sharon Buss.
And I'm Philip Buss.
God bless you with his overwhelming, loving presence.
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