David Hathaway

I want to encourage you to seek the Lord in a new way. I know we are going through difficult times. Throughout my life I’ve been through difficult times. But through it all God has always made a way of escape, that’s His Promise, 1 Corinthians 10:13. In your greatest difficulties, God makes a way through. We’ve not been called to live a life of comfort and luxury, but we are called to ‘live a life’! In Psalm 37 David is urging a confidence in God. This is what I want you to have – confidence. God is in control and will give you the desires of your heart if you will commit your way to Him.

When your delight is in the Lord, when your pleasure is in the relationship you have with Him, He will give you the desires of your heart. When you love somebody, you ‘delight’ in them, you are happy with them. If your relationship with the Lord is like that, then, Scripture says, He will give you the desires of your heart. Many times when I’m praying, I’m asking for things which are not just my needs, but which are also the desire of my heart… I’ve always from my youth desired to be an evangelist. I never dreamt my ministry would be as amazing as it is. My dream was just to do it. To get on with the job. But it was my dream – it was a delight, and my delight was in the Lord! And God has given me far more than I could ask! 

When we commit our way to Him, even our steps, our direction, are ordered by the Lord. They are planned by Him, in advance, fore-ordained. Because the Lord knows the end from the beginning. And if a man’s steps are ordered by Him, v23 says, ‘He delights in his way.’ This means, God will be delighted in the way that you are going! We need to put our lives in God’s Hands!

‘The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures… Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.’ The valley of the shadow is where the light of the sun is cut off. I love walking in the mountains. On the mountain top the sun can be bright, but when you drop down into that valley, there’s no sunlight, it can’t penetrate the valley walls – that is the valley where the light of the sun is cut off! I want to tell you that wherever you go in your life, whatever trial, whatever problem, whatever difficulty you are going through – even if you feel the light of the sun is cut off – then God will not fail you. He says His rod and His staff will comfort you, and you will come safely through.

I love the promises in Psalms. There comes a time in your life and mine when only God can satisfy. In my teenage years my prayer was, “My flesh longs for You Lord, I’m thirsting for You, I’m hungry for You,” – but more, the next verse, I’ve never forgotten it, “to see Your Power and Your Glory, NOW, as I have seen You in the past, in the sanctuary” – this is my heart’s desire, NOW! That just as I have seen the Power of God in the past, I want to see MORE, NOW, IN THE FUTURE. I have to live, I cannot die, they can’t take me until I see Your Power, Your Glory, NOW – GREATER THAN ANYTHING I HAVE SEEN IN THE PAST!

When our delight is in the Lord, there will be a tangible, physical evidence! We will be like a tree planted by rivers of water that brings forth fruit in season! Our leaves shall not wither! And whatever we do shall prosper! That’s a phenomenal promise and encouragement! 'Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper.' (Psalm 1.1-3, NKJV)

The Lord’s Coming is as a thief in the night. But for the believer, the Apostle Paul teaches that we should be living in expectation and anticipation of that Great Day, because in 1 Thessalonians 5 verse 4, he writes, “YOU, brethren, are NOT in darkness that that day should overtake you as a thief!” Paul is saying, as far as the world is concerned, the Coming of Christ will be a sudden unexpected happening – but you, brothers and sisters in Christ, should not be in such darkness that the Coming of the Lord will overtake you as a thief! The suddenness of the Coming of the Lord is a shock to the world, but not so to the Believer, who should be expecting it, because we are children of the Light and children of the Day.

If we are looking for revival, for the Power of God, it will come through a greater outpouring of the Spirit, a Latter Rain just as Joel prophesied. The church celebrates Pentecost year by year, as long as you think of it as something that happened two thousand years ago, you will never experience the fullness of what God intends. The prophecies, the Words of Jesus are quite clear, a GREATER outpouring MUST happen in the last days before He comes back.

I believe we are now literally living in the days of the latter rain, and that we should experience those same things the prophet Joel and Peter describe – but with an even greater anointing now, than happened originally with Peter and the disciples in the Acts of the Apostles! I have always believed this. From my earliest days of seeking the Holy Spirit, I always believed that there would come in the ‘last days’ a further and even GREATER outpouring of the Holy Spirit before the Lord returns. In my own ministry, I’m always looking for the increasing, GREATER miracles. I have seen phenomenal things, but I don’t want to say that they have been greater than the miracles Jesus did – but they ought to be, they HAVE to be! Come on! If Jesus was right in what He said, “YOU will do GREATER miracles than I do”, then we MUST…

What happened on the Day of Pentecost was an explosive start to the Church! Too many say, “That was in the past, it’s over, we can’t expect that to happen today.” Well, I’m sorry, I believe it CAN, MUST happen. I have seen most of the things outlined in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles HAPPEN, and I EXPECT to see them happen in my life, in my ministry – NOW! We are all so familiar with Acts Chapter 2, we know what happened on the Day of Pentecost. We know Peter described it very clearly, saying, “This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel, And it shall come to pass in the last days, God says, I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.” Acts 2:16-17. We are all so familiar with this and with its fulfilment. But I want to deal with something which I believe is becoming something of a controversy. I expect these things in Acts 2, spoken of by the prophet Joel, to happen in my life and ministry. That’s what the Scripture says!

Why did God bring Israel out of Egypt into the Land by such a difficult route? They could have gone a different way. But God WANTED them to cross the Red Sea. Firstly, because it needed a miracle that God opened the waters, and once the Israelites had crossed over, there was no way back! But secondly, in opening the waters, the Egyptian army – at that time, the most powerful army in the world – was drawn into the sea with all its might, its chariots and warriors – so that when God released the pent-up water, the whole of the Egyptian army was drowned! The power of the enemy was destroyed! I believe the Red Sea typifies the Blood of Christ. God opens a way into the Promised Land through the Blood of Christ – and also destroys the power of the enemy! But we have to fight to possess the land. I challenge you – your life needs to be a spiritual battle. The reason I have so much strength and health at my age it because I haven’t finished the battle yet! 

So many look at the Promises of Scripture, at the Promises of Pentecost, and they say, “That’s for the past, it’s historic, it doesn’t apply today.” It is so easy to know what is in the Bible, but then dismiss it. We read it, study it, preach it, ‘spiritualise’ it, until there is a danger that we make it mean something else. But everything in the Bible can happen today! Don’t limit God. I want to challenge you to a new kind of faith. We are commanded to go in and possess all the blessings which God has promised.  1 Corinthians 12:31 says, ‘Covet the best gifts’. When I first received the Holy Spirit, I was thinking, “What gifts do I want?” I said, “Lord, more than anything else, give me the Gift of Faith” – because I saw that one gift as the major key that would open the door into all the rest of them! I can never claim to have the Gift of Faith, because I want to tell you quite bluntly, that gift is only as good as your ‘today’ – you have only got the Gift of Faith if you can put it into action today!!!

What is our inheritance through Christ? According to Paul in Ephesians, our inheritance down here is the Power of the Holy Spirit to fulfil the ministry of Jesus. Yet the Scripture is also very clear – we DO inherit the land! The question is, which ‘land’ do we inherit? The Gospel message we preach is of the Kingdom of Heaven. Scripture is clear, the teaching of Jesus is clear – our inheritance is in Heaven. In that sense, our inheritance is not in this time period on earth – it’s in the Kingdom of God! 

I’m personally coming out of this lockdown with a massive prayer for another baptism of the Holy Spirit! So, like those early believers, who are realising that Jesus IS alive and that EVERY prophecy IS going to be fulfilled, let’s wait in our ‘Jerusalem’ to receive Power – let’s come out of this time of lockdown and recession, waiting and seeking for another outpouring of the Holy Spirit, another revelation of Power and of Glory! Come on! I’m raising a challenge: 'Father, open people’s eyes, and Lord, let us see another Pentecost transform a Church coming out of lockdown. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.'

Jesus was always preaching on the coming Kingdom, to such an extent that the early church that they believed Jesus was going to return within a very short period. But Jesus told the disciples in Acts 1v7, “It’s not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has put in His Own Power.”

Coming out of lockdown, we are moving into a very different world. Everyone from the government down is assessing what our future is. I’m concerned about the future, and concerned about the Church. What condition is the Church in? How will it emerge after lockdown? I want to look at the Church, beginning in the Acts of the Apostles. Luke, as he begins writing the Book of Acts, reminds us that he has already written an account of all that Jesus ‘began to do and teach, until the day in which He was taken up into Heaven after the Resurrection’. Luke tells us that Jesus taught His Disciples, the Apostles, after the Resurrection. I want to look at this fact that Jesus clearly taught right up until His Ascension. 

We should look on our future positively, full of God-given opportunities. What I’m seeing and believing and praying into is a future that is far more glorious than the past! But ONLY if we take advantage of what God can do! We’ve got to change our thinking, go back to the beginning, rethink everything until we can take advantage of the future God has planned: forgetting those things which are behind, press forward to what God has got in front, towards the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus!

We have to accept suffering. We need to teach this more to Christians, that suffering is an ‘acceptable’ part of our lives. We are called to KNOW Christ, the Power of His Resurrection – AND the fellowship of His sufferings! If you are called to suffer – it is because Christ suffered! You don’t hear me grumbling about the fact that I was in a communist prison for one year. The fact that I didn’t suffer any after effects is because when I came out, I was filled with the Glory of the Resurrection! I know what cancer is, I’ve had it twice – but God took it away! I’ve had so many other things. But I have health, and I’m not afraid of suffering. In the early days of my Bible smuggling, people were afraid for me, “What are you doing? You’re going behind the Iron Curtain, you’re going to be put in prison!” But what is that? Jesus got put in a prison! If I go in a prison, I’m only sharing HIS suffering. Paul is passionate about identifying himself with Christ’s suffering, even to His death.

Our experience in Christ cannot be defined by obedience to physical observances and ceremonies. Today so many within the Church call themselves ‘Christians’, not because of a born again experience, a new birth, but simply because they are adhering to the teachings and traditions, of the ‘Church’. Church, as the world sees it, is more identified by its ceremonial, than by the reality of the new birth. So many things are considered to be the way into salvation, even the Roman Catholic Mass (communion) is seen as a sacrament, adding grace upon grace each time it is received. I take communion, I’m sure you do, but this does not replace Christ’s command that, in order to enter into your salvation and to see the Kingdom of God, you must be born again!

Our God SO LOVED! It’s not ordinary love, it’s not human love. Young people get so taken up with what they think is ‘love’, but it’s infatuation. Love, real love is something deeply emotional, life-consuming, life-changing. Jesus didn’t just say God ‘loved’ the world, but that God SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE GAVE! He gave the most precious thing that He had. And what God wants you to do is give back to Him the most precious thing you have – your own life, your own soul – that’s what He wants in return! Give yourself to Christ!