Impartation

This is one of my favorite topics to teach on because it is the most in line with the call of God on my life.

Twenty years ago I was the pastor of a small Baptist church in Southern Illinois. A man named James Robinson, who was a still a Southern Baptist at the time, organized a conference to introduce Southern Baptist Pastors to another man named John Wimber. (You may have heard of John Wimber as he wrote several books on healing and founded the Vineyard Christian Fellowship movement.) There was something special about John because he did not just talk about the power of God, he lived and demonstrated it.

I had never met John before this conference, but I was looking forward to hearing him speak because I had heard of John. I was excited to hear him speak, so I took some of my friends with me and we went. There were about 500 Southern Baptist pastors at this conference. We arrived early and got a seat on the second row. I couldn't even wait to watch this. I had never seen power except for convicting power for salvation. I understood that, I had seen people shake under convicting power, needing to get saved and wet and tears and everything, people sweat, you know. But I had never seen power touching someone for something other than conversion.

John prayed for this woman and her elbow began to shake, with the slightest tremble and her dress elbow began to shake a little. I told my deacons, "Do you see that? That is real POWER!" I had never seen that much power before. And then he told the woman to put her hand on this guys shoulder and he began to tremble more than she was trembling, and he got healed.

Then John said, "There's three of you men that are pastors and you are struggling with homosexuality and if you will see me during this conference I will pray for you to be delivered of that." I thought, oh, gosh, he really sees the secrets of peoples' hearts. I was not one of the three men he was talking about. But just hearing him say that convinced me that he really had an in with God and he really saw the secrets of men's hearts. I did not fully understand the prophetic at that time, but it was clear to me that this was a demonstration of the power of God.

God began dealing with me as I listened to John speak, so I went up to him. "John," I said, "I'm not worthy for you to even pray for me, but I brought my deacons, would you pray for them?" He grabbed me and said, "No, I'm going to pray for you!" He looked me in the eye and he began to prophesy secrets of my heart that nobody knew about, saying things that had just recently happened.

I did not want to look John Wimber in the eye, because I did not want to let him look into my heart because he might prophesy to me. I was sure that if I got a prophetic word it's going to be a bad one, and a strong corrective one. But he turned me around and he looked in my eyes. I braced myself, preparing to be embarrassed. I was ready for God to just shoot me with the prophetic word of correction and condemnation. I didn't understand that prophecy is supposed to build you up and comfort you and I didn't understand its purpose right yet.

Then John said, "You're a prince, in the Kingdom of God." Now I felt like a pauper; I had an orphaned spirit, pauper mentality in the Kingdom of God. When I heard him say, "you're a prince in the Kingdom of God," it just undid me. And then he told me many things. I wish I could have written them down because there wasn't a tape recorder or anything. I don't remember everything he said to me, but I remember that all of it was positive. It built me up and encouraged me.

That experience turned my life around. I had been a pastor for 14 years and I felt that nothing of any significance was ever going to happen in my life. When I first started ministry, I had this dream of going to a city and planting a church in a city. But I had never gotten out of the cornfield and the biggest town I had ever planted a church in was a village of a 120 people. I used to have dreams that God would use me mightily. But fourteen years later, I still hadn't gotten out of a village of 120 people. I had given up.

But that word changed my life; it gave me hope that somehow God would use me.

I ended up linking up with John Wimber and the Vineyard movement. I had just started a brand new church that had almost 50 people. That was a big church to me at the time. Then I was invited onto the council of the Vineyard movement. Everybody else on the council had 500 to 5,000 people in their congregations, and I only had 50. I was embarrassed about being on the council because what John taught about was Church growth. He talked about how to pastor pastors and teach them what they need to do to break the 200 barrier. Then he talked about what they need to do to break the 400 barrier, then what they need to do to break the 800 barrier and what they need to do to break the 1000 barrier. And I was sitting hear thinking, "This is crazy. I'm trying to break the 50 barrier, myself. What am I doing here? This is crazy."

I was embarrassed by the size of my church in comparison to the sizes of all other counsel member's churches. So I went up to a friend of mine who God had used to touch my life, and I discussed it with him. I said, "I don't know why I am on this council. Every body here has 500 to 1000 people in their congregation, and I don't even have 50 people and I am just starting a new church and this doesn't make sense. I'm embarrassed sitting in there with those guys. Why would I be on the council?" And Blain Cook looked at me and said, "You are not on the council for what you have, you are on the council for what's going to happen." And I said, "What do you mean, what is going to happen?" He said, "You mean, John's not told you?" I said, "No!" He said, "well, maybe I shouldn't tell you this but I'm going to. John told me twice, that he heard the audible voice of God, about your life. And John told me, that when he first met you that he heard God say to him in an audible voice 'Randy will go around the world, and lay his hands on pastors and leaders, to stir up gifts, and impart anointing.'" And I heard that in 1984.

The next 10 years were some of the hardest years of my life, but they were a time when God built faith in me. Church growth did not come quickly for me. Two years after I joined the counsel, I was still trying to break the 100 barrier. When I went to Toronto ten years later, there were just a little over 300 in my congregation. But God worked on building my faith in other ways.

I had this friend who helped out when I struggled financially. We would not tell him about our need, but God always seemed to tell him at just the right point. My wife and I had made this commitment that when we didn't have any income (no job, and we were living by faith), we would never tell anybody that we have a financial need. I wanted to see a miracle of God that would build my faith instead of Christian mercy. (It is just Christian love when someone helps because you have a need and that means the help is coming out the natural instead of from the supernatural. If you're a Christian and you go to where Christians are at, and you let people know you have a need, they are going to help you. That's not miraculous that is just the way it is, because we love each other.) I felt like God said, "don't do that." And so I wouldn't tell anybody about my financial needs so God could meet them supernaturally. And He did.

I remember one time when I needed a $1040 and all I had was the $40. The money was due within a week, and I was really struggling with it. My wife was discouraged and said, "I don't think God loves us, I don't think God loves us anymore." Then I went to the mailbox. There was a letter from this guy in Texas that I had met one time. He had written me a check for $1000. And he wrote a little note on the bottom of it…"I just wanted you to know that I love you and God loves you." "Honey", I said as I came from the mailbox, "look at this!"

Another time we had saved up for several years a couple of $1000 in a church checking account and I had spent it all on an evangelistic outreach and my wife said "are you sure it's God?" and I said, "Yep, I'm sure it's God". We only had 40 people in our church at that time. Two days later, I got a check from this same guy in Texas. He wrote, "God told me to send you $2000". I called him and told him, "Your timing is just amazing." He said, "Well, I'm just doing what you're doing, you're living by faith and so am I. What I am doing is nothing greater than what you're doing. I just do it with money because God has blessed me with money. By the way, something else is in the mail." A few days later we get another check. This one is for $10,000.

By the way, what we spent the $2000 on worked! All of a sudden we had over 90 visitors on one single Sunday --and we had doubled the size of the church!

I had been praying for two years for God to send me worship leaders. We were in the Vineyard and worship was our number one priority. My wife and I couldn't lead worship. Once a month an old coal miner who only knew three guitar cords would come from our old church , and he would lead worship for us. I ran the church service that way for two years, praying for God to send me musicians that had a heart for Him. God answered that prayer by sending us some unsaved musicians. Once they got saved, they really developed a heart for the Lord.