“The Super Suddenlies”

As you remember, the Lord spoke to us that 2015 was going to be a year of “suddenlies”. But I didn’t realize it would happen so fast! This week, as I was driving pastor Gershom to his next appointment, we stopped at Starbucks to get coffee. I started having a lively conversation with Pastor Gabriel about the upcoming United States championship football game, the Super Bowl, and how expensive the commercials were that are broadcast during this huge event.
Suddenly Brother Gershom remembered that he had been offered an advertising spot at the Super Bowl Gospel Celebration to share Jesus. Within a few minutes he was on the phone with the event planner that had contacted him numerous times over the last month. Gershom asked the godly gentlemen if the space was still available. He checked and, yes it still was, but Gershom would need to respond within two hours or it would be too late, for the NuGospel Network Gospel Celebration event was just a few days away.
All this appeared to be so impossible that we all just sat there looking at each other and wondering what we should do. For fun I quickly checked my account and to my amazement the sufficient amount of funds was there! In less than an hour we sent the funds to the appropriate account. Just as miraculous as it was for God to open the eyes of the blind man at the gate Beautiful in Jerusalem, the Lord has provided a special advertisement about Jesus that will be seen by millions of people on national television.
The ad will be on display at the only faith-based Super Bowl sanctioned event, where over 50 NFL players shed their rough image and share their testimonies. Football and Grammy-winning gospel celebrities have put together a “Faith & Football” message that gets a bigger turnout every year ~ at the NFL Player’s event the night before the Super Bowl, at the Super Bowl charity golf tournament and dinner, and at the Celebrity Super Bowl viewing parties sanctioned by the Super Bowl. This advertisement with Dr. Gershom Sikaala and Prophet Timothy Snodgrass will also be on banners and flyers talking about A Place To Meet Jesus.
There is no doubt about it ~ God is getting ready to shock us this year. We know that in the book of Acts the Holy Spirit descended upon the first Christian church and suddenly the whole place was filled with God’s glory and presence. I believe that Jesus is about to visit A Place To Meet Jesus in the same way. This Sunday we are going to have a wonderful service where five pairs of shoes from Nordstrom’s will be given out as a prophetic act ~ signifying that all of us are going to walk and possess the land that God has given us. It will be amazing when you see the blessings and surprises that God has waiting for you this year!

Intercession And The Weight Of His Glory

As I mentioned to you last week, intercession is all about being intimate with Jesus Christ. But there are things that you must consider when you are expecting God to get close to you. This is why true intercessors must be willing to change much of their personal character and attributes that they might of be proud or protective about. Let me explain.
 
Years ago I invited a famous evangelist, Billy Cole, to preach for us. He had held world-famous revivals in Thailand and in Ethiopia, and now he was coming to our church in San Francisco. I asked him up to the platform but he politely refused. He continued standing until he had finished speaking prophetically to the church and then we took him to his hotel. I never quite understood why he did not sit down on our stage, and it later caused me to remove all the seats on the platform that we had reserved for ministers.
 
Later, when I was visiting Billy Cole at his church on the East Coast, he told me that he never sits down at people’s houses when he visits them. He explained to me that because his personal weight was so heavy (over 400+ pounds) that he was afraid we might break the chair if he sat on it. Years later, when I ran across the Scripture where Moses described the ark of the covenant, where the presence of the Lord would descend upon the holiest of holies, I remembered the incident with Billy Cole.
 
On top of the ark of the covenant Moses placed, between two cherubims, a “mercy seat.” This was where the presence of God would fill the holiest of holies. I could see the divine picture that was being shown to us in this biblical metaphor. The weight of God’s glory is so great that only mercy is strong enough to support its weight.
 
As I mentioned last week, only the person that has a close relationship and intimacy with God is someone who can be considered to be an intercessor. But this close relationship with God requires personal holiness. This is not achieved by obeying religious rules, but it is achieved by extreme obedience to God’s will. You cannot find this type of purity by reading someone else’s religious book or copying some other person’s example. It is only by your observation in obedience to the little things that God asks you to do.
 
For example, God has asked me to personally make sacrifices concerning little things that other people usually do as parts of their lives.  But when you give up the little normal things that other people do, you can start to think that you are personally holier than they are.  Suddenly pride begins to take control and mercy has no room in your spirit. If God’s glory was to rest upon you at that time you would collapse under its weight because there is no mercy in you to support the glory.
 
What I have just described to you is a complexity in the spiritual world that is hard to understand. It has been especially hard for me because I have met many powerful men of God who do not possess the mercy of God. As a result they are very judgmental concerning others and it has caused confusion in my spirit.
 
Now I understand that at this place of God’s power and glory my mercy must be even greater and I must depend upon obedience to God to a high level. When He says, “Be friends with that person and treat them with love and kindness,” I must move aside all of my human intellect, reasoning power, and sense of personal justice and bathe myself in God’s mercy and forgiveness led by obedience to His perfect will.
 
I realize that what I’ve just said may cause a few of you some difficulty, but I feel it is time for us to enter into a new level of Christian maturity where we can be around sinners, powerful transgressors, and still love and treat them with God’s love and mercy. That means we must lay aside all issues of judgment and self-righteous justice. These things must be turned over to God Himself, for God is the Judge ~ not me, the church, or anyone else. Only God.
 
Some of you who have a clear intellectual understanding of right and wrong may read what I am saying and feel troubled by it. Just remember this: the goal of intercession, and the reason for this article, is for you to experience the glory of God’s presence. It is easy for you to determine if what I am saying is true. When you come to our church, “A Place To Meet Jesus,” do you feel His glory? Are real genuine miracles happening? That is the test!  
 
This Sunday morning, on January 25, 2015, we are having a special service just for you ~ to introduce you to A Place To Meet Jesus. The service will start sharply at 12 noon and will end at 1 PM. Please come and meet us there this Sunday and see if you feel His glory. If you do, then God’s mercy is in the house!

“Intimacy In Intercession”

In the Executive Office of the President of the United States, the highest ranking employee is called the Chief of Staff. And essentially, that person acts as the nation’s intercessor. An unknowledgeable citizen they would think this person’s position is just to introduce proposals for the President to consider. But this is not what their intimate responsibility is at all.

The Chief of Staff must fully understand the office of the President, the unique personality of the President, and the political concerns that the President feels are important. This type of insight can only be accessed by a person that is close to the President in a personal way. Because the Chief of Staff has been given this quality of access, it also means they have the ability to shield, or reveal, certain crises that the nation might be facing.

Abraham was the first patriarch that was called and intercessor, when he made intercession to God concerning Sodom and Gomorah.  The Lord said, “Shall I keep back from Abraham what I’m about to do? Abraham is going to become a large and strong nation; all the nations of the world are going to find themselves blessed through him.” In this example, God respected the call and the blessings that were already upon Abraham’s life. This caused Abraham to have such an intimacy with God that God shared his intimate plans with Abraham before he even committed them to action.

Abraham’s role as an intercessor was kind of a heavenly Chief of Staff for God. Of course there is no way that any human enterprise can reflect the vast array of authority and power in the kingdom of God,  but He gives us an insight of how you and I ~ if we are to truly become intercessors, must be in a place of intimacy with God that causes us to understand what God is concerned about on earth.

Usually prayer warriors are concerned about things that affect them personally ~ their church, or their individual concerns ~ whether they be national, economic, or business. For example,  if they work at an accounting firm they would be concerned to intercede about the financial situations around them. But this is not what a true intercessor is.  A true intercessor will leave their own sphere of influence, their own area of responsibility, their own world of understanding and start to enter into the world and dreams of God Himself. They only become concerned about that which concerns God.

To the average person this would seem be a dream world where only a chosen few enter into the glory realm of Jesus Christ. I agree with you, yes, it is a dream world  ~ but it’s an accessible dream world for any person desiring to become a true intercessor. If you leave your own realm of concerns and focus totally upon God’s will and purpose,  guess what? God takes care of all of your problems and fixes everything in your own personal life.   That’s what the Lord was saying about Abraham. Bear with me, at first this is something that is hard to see.  God knew Abraham was going to become the father of a mighty and blessed nation. And because God had spent so much time blessing Abraham, He would not do anything bad to Sodom and tomorrow unless he first talked to Abraham about it.

By default, God’s blessings and intimacy with Abraham ~ based on Abraham’s personal obedience to God ~ actually put him in the position of an intercessor. It was never Abraham’s goal to be an intercessor.  It is something that occurred to him by default.  And so it is with you and I.   If you’re trying to be an intercessor, you may miss the mark, if your desire is just to control others.  But if you are trying to be intimate with God, to bless the Lord and fulfill his purpose in the earth, then by default you become an intercessor.

Intercession is a very deep subject.  In next week’s blog, I hope to share much more of how important intercession is in your life.

“Jesus – Instead Of Worry At The Center Of Your Life”

The prophetic word given to Pastor Richard on New Year’s Day by Timothy Snodgrass: “As I was praying for you today, I saw a significant lightning strike which would hit your ministry  between 12/25 – 1/25. Although there will be many breakthroughs, this one particular lighting strike with be greater than all the others. It may be a …[private word to Pastor Richard], if you cast off all negative mindsets in 2015, live totally in the Spirit, and be moved precisely by the Wind as it blows.”
As you can tell this was a significant word given on January 1, 2015. It tells us as a church that God is going to visit the house in a special way. God has been calling me to a significant time of intercession and I have really been looking at the role of intercession in the actions of Christ. Intercessors are chosen because their lives are close to the presence of God.
It is this closeness to God that gives them access to intercede before the Lord. Obviously if a person is going to intercede before a king, they must first have a very close relationship with the king. They are chosen to intercede because of this previously established relationship. So it is in the church. An intercessor’s relationship personally with the Lord must come first before they ever consider being an intercessor.
Timothy’s word to us for the year 2015 was to prepare us for a sudden visit by the purpose of God to us as a church. But he also told us that there are things we must do for that preparation. One thing was to get rid of all negative mindsets. What this means is that we need to remove all forms of worry from our minds and fill them with Christ. Listen to how the apostle Paul instructs us in this area:
“Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.”
Timothy was instructing us that this is exactly the way each one of us should think as we come into this New Year. God is going to bring a lightning bolt of the events in your lives that are going to be blessings to you. But don’t allow any sliver of doubt in your mind, or negative mindset, so you don’t miss any of the great blessings that God is bringing to you.
This now brings me back to the intercessor. If you are an intercessor then you already know that God is a gentleman, and that He is kind, thoughtful, gentle in every movement, and cares for the littlest details of our lives. So with this knowledge you know how important it is how each one of us is to treat other people and their needs, and that our intercessions that we bring before the Lord for them are done with such care and concern. Our intercessions shouldn’t be filled with annoyances, quick jerky movements of attitude and responses, or a desire for quick fixes.
Instead, we want all intercessions to become perfectly in line with God’s will on the earth. Remember Jesus prayed what we call “The Lord’s Prayer” and He said these important words: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The intercessor knows God so well that they are aware if they are praying for God’s perfect will. It is the gentlest merciful kind action that could ever be done. This is why the intercessor does not pray “their will,” but rather God’s will.
Now I believe you understand the reason for this blog. If you put Jesus at the center of your will, purpose, and prayer ~ you will also remove all worry, doubt, fear, and negative mindsets against you. If you are an intercessor you already know these assets of God personally. If you are not, you now may want to become intimate with the Lord, learn how kind and gentle He is, and how glorious the music of intercession will be in your life. The secret to becoming an intercessor is spending time praying in the Spirit (other tongues). It is during these times that you come to know the Lord personally.

The Intellectual Cost Of A Quantum Leap

A few weeks ago when I was in intercession the Lord spoke to me and asked me a simple question, “Richard, are you willing to ignore all of the laws of science and intellectual theories that have been taught to you, and learn the ways of God concerning innovation?” At the first receipt of this question I was immediately shocked by its contexts and implications. And then my flesh responded, “Who’s going to believe me?”

The intellectual cost of true innovation is priceless. The reason for this is simple because most the masses of population just seem to want better sameness. Haven’t you noticed this whenever you’ve gone to a church where the service was repeated from the last week, and the week before that, and so on? This is nothing but the drone of repertory sameness! But believe me it does have its benefits. If a pastor can get his congregation to faithfully continue to give in the offering without ever being upset or disrupted in their weekly routine, he actually has a pretty good and clear set of finances coming to him most of his life.

What a way to live, right? That’s why literally hundreds of thousands of churches throughout the world operate in this repetitive process. The only thing that messes this moneymaking system up is if the pastor is trying to connect the people with the living Jesus Christ. That’s because the Lord is a person and He does not like having a relationship with a machine, even if the machine is run by religion. Now you can begin to see the struggle I am going through.

I realize the premise that I just described to you about a church, is the predicament I am also am facing in my own personal life. Think of this absurd example. A farmer wants a field to look perfect every day so he plants plastic wheat, which always looks the same. But it can never fulfill the purpose of what real food was designed to do, and that is to feed the hungry. Oh, it’s nice to look at, but it has no reality. Now you see how God might look at dead churches. What is their real purpose?

This is where the true cost of making an intellectual quantum leap comes into play. Its expense is actually felt in your daily dying to intellectual premises that have supported your fleshly reasoning and have been the foundation of your own personal ego. This is why one of the breakthrough moments that I had in 2014, was the day the Lord told me I was narcissistic.

That statement explained to me why I was having such a hard time receiving the new innovations that God was downloading into my mind. It was really a battlefield going on in my thought process because any idea that was truly innovative was intellectualized in my mind by my personal pride, which was based on my previous understanding of scientific law.

But this is the new premise that I now must live by in the year 2015: my entire foundation of intellectual law and knowledge will be based upon the relationship that I have in Christ Jesus ~ through the salvation experience which is described in the Bible as being born again, which includes the infilling of the Holy Spirit by the evidence of speaking in other tongues. Through this experience God lives inside me and talks to me about new innovations.

When God talks to me about these innovations I realize they will not make sense to my intellectual understanding that emanates from my flesh, so I must be willing to move forward on these new premises in spite of my own restrictions and confusion. This is going to cost me, and I must be willing to pay the high price of being rejected, mocked, and even persecuted by the intellectual community around me.

Yet if I can do this and exude the fruit of the Spirit in every communication, then I will receive the greatest prize that a man in my time can receive. And that is innovations, which will increase man’s ability to extend his existence, enjoy the pleasures of life, and live well with his family and loved ones. I believe this will be the same group of people who will spend eternity with Jesus.

“Theorized Second-Guessing God”

The Lord spoke to me this week to stop theorizing on what He’s about ready to do. God had spoke to me to just do it and stop thinking about it. Just obey Him and act! But as the message increase in revelation, it became much more clear that what He was saying was turn your mind into a blank page and don’t try to figure things out first.

A good example of this is Sherlock Holmes. He would approach a crime scene with no previously conceived idea. Instead, he would follow the facts as they occurred and spoke for themselves. This method of investigation changed the entire world of criminal CSI investigations. Today every criminologist knows that they must approach a crime scene with an open mind and not allow preconceived ideas to influence their investigation.

This same phenomenon needs to occur among Christians that are following the prophetic word of God. Too many times when we receive a dream, vision, prophetic word, or maybe just a word from opening our Bible, we can jump to conclusions which result in expectations that are in themselves proper and accurate ~ yet are much less than what God is promising us.
Sometimes following logical consequences actually causes us to try to fulfill the prophecy or the dream that was given to us by our own means and for own purposes ~ and then we take the chance of missing the plan of God completely. This kind of thinking has been one of my most difficult problems to understand. But I have also seen that if I patiently wait for the Lord to perform the word that He gave me, He not only fulfills my expectations but He exceeds them!
2015 is now before us, and until the last few weeks I had not heard any word concerning what was going to happen in this coming year. Last week Gershom Sikaala gave us the word, “2015 is the year of suddenlys”. Then I received a prophetic newsletter from Timothy Snodgrass who is in the Philippine Islands. He said, “Miracles are not planned, they explode unexpectedly. Do not plan your breakthrough ~ just expect it.”
This seems to be the directive that God has for us in knowing Him in the year 2015. It is important for you and I to keep our minds as blank as we possibly can, to allow God’s plans to occur before us every day. Yes, it is going to be a year that is full of unexpected breakthrough miracles!

The Still Small Voice

Sometimes the most valuable nuggets occur when a simple stone in the pathway is overturned, a breath of wind changes your direction, or a comment is shared off-the-cuff among friends.  Such a moment occurred this week.  In a conversation with friends, this statement was made that came from a long-term and very accurate memory:

“I still remember Miss Kathryn Kuhlman’s sermon about the still small voice of God,” Aileen Wilkerson said.  She then continued in a whispering voice of respect as the conversational din among the group lowered to near silence:

“I can still see Miss Kuhlman flowing across the circular Melodyland stage in her pink flowing dress. But it wasn’t made out of chiffon as I thought it was. I think she had six of those dresses.  In her sermon you could see how much she valued the voice of God and how many times it took the distraction of an earthquake and wind to recognize the importance of the still small voice.”
“I want all of you to see this video that I took at Melodyland,” Dr. Ralph Wilkerson interjected.  “It is of Miss Kuhlman responding to the laughter of God when it came upon the people that were healed by the Holy Spirit.”
Wilkerson’s daughter Debbie, who is quite an electronic wizard in her own right, quickly flipped on the video. There before our eyes was Kathryn Kuhlman giggling on the stage of Melodyland with Ralph Wilkerson standing beside her. Suddenly Miss Kuhlman backed away from the two microphones and gingerly sat on a chair behind her, still laughing with the lady who was just healed.
“With such an attractive personality she almost looks like a princess,” my wife Sandy commented.
As the video continued Miss Kuhlman suddenly jumped back up to the two microphones that were on the stage. Sandy put her hand over her face and giggled as she said, “Look! Miss Kuhlman is trying to cover both microphones with her hands. She looks socute.”
“We were broadcasting live over the radio so Miss Kuhlman didn’t know if the radio audience should hear the laughter or not,” Bro. Wilkerson commented. “Remember, this was the 60’s and things like laughter were never heard of in church. But notice she takes her hands off the microphones and gives a look of, ‘Okay, Holy Spirit, I will let them hear whatever You want them to hear.’ That is her listening to the still small voice of God.”
The scene that was just played out before the group that was present was awe-inspiring because of its delicacy, and the rarity of seeing such precise observation of such a great woman patriarch of God ~ and also hearing the insight from such intimate friends as the Wilkersons. Gershom Sikaala then broke the silence.
“When I was 9 1/2 years old and was living with my grandparents, I was offended so deeply by something that was said to me by a perturbed and distraught relative.  It troubled me so much that I ran aimlessly out of the house and into the African bush. I cried out for God or someone, whomever, to help me. It was out of that trouble and despair that I saw Jesus. I knew it was Jesus and I knew that He was truly my best friend.  It was the gentleness, quietness, and stillness that gave me security in knowing that He was the one person I could always depend on.”
At that point I saw a slight tear run down the corner of Gershom’s eye.  Since then I have learned that the more I obey the still small voice the more frequently and loudly He speaks. But if I choose to disobey or ignore Him I don’t even notice He is gone.

Useless Warnings

I am learning that the most valuable part of my iPhone and iPad is the Notification Center. For that reason, when iOS 8 came out, Apple focused its introduction almost entirely upon the Notification Center. The reason it is so valuable to the operation of the iPhone is because it notifies you about fresh communications you are receiving concerning phone calls, emails, text messages, and all other types of notices ~ even down to operating applications. Once you become aware of how valuable the Notification Center is to your daily communications, you suddenly realize that you must turn off all useless warnings.
I realized that the Holy Spirit also has a very sophisticated notification center running inside my human interface, and it is powered by the Holy Spirit Himself. The trouble is, your personal interface has to filter through many notifications, which are sent to you by various flashes. For example: television news reports, newspaper articles, personal letters, phone calls from friends, people you meet along your daily life, and the list goes on and on. Matter-of-fact, all of these notifications could be put under the category of “worry.”
But remember that Jesus said, “Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.” God has programmed your human interface, through the infilling of the Holy Ghost, to give you the most sophisticated notification center that has ever existed in the universe. Yet it is your human responsibility to turn off the notifications that are coming from your flesh.
I am personally discovering that it actually takes a lot of human and spiritual discipline to filter out all of the negative influences that bombard you with “useless warnings”. The real danger is that many of those warnings come from people who are just wasting your time, wanting you to worry about some problem that doesn’t really exist.
This is why the character of the Holy Spirit is like a dove that will instantly fly away with the slightest bit of resistance on your part. Because of this, it requires incredible skills of sensitivity and listening to catch the notifications the Holy Spirit is sending you. But what is even more amazing is how the Holy Spirit notifies you about events that haven’t even occurred and still remain to happen in your future.
A few days ago I woke up and was sitting in my room when the Lord said that I was to tell a particular person, who worked at a nearby place of business that they would receive a miracle if they would come to church at a certain time. Later that day I drove my car to that neighborhood and found a parking spot.
When I stepped out of the car my wife Sandy said, “There’s the person that the Lord talked to you about!” They were walking right by the front of the car, so I was able to go out and relay to them exactly the message that the Lord had told me to give them. It was amazing to see the Holy Spirit notifying me about events three hours before they occurred!
I found out that the secret to getting your personal notification center in operation is to turn off useless warnings ~ so that your spirit becomes clear to only hear the notifications that the Holy Spirit is giving you. This is vitally important turn off useless warnings.

Dedication, The White Paper

This morning was different. I knew that God had woken me up at 4 a.m., but I was not sure what He wanted. After a period of aligning myself in contemplation, I remembered that my daughter Misty had asked to be awakened so she could see the sunrise. I woke her up and we drove to the top of Twin Peaks.

As we watched the golden glow of a spectacular sunrise over the city of San Francisco, the Lord spoke to me, “Return home and go back to sleep for I’m going to give you a dream.” I have learned through years of experience that the setup word is almost as important as the forthcoming word itself because it prepares you for the power of God’s words.

Still in my pajamas, I climbed into bed and immediately fell asleep. Instantly I was dreaming that I was in the sanctuary of our church, A Place To Meet Jesus. Everything was completely white, including the floor! Coming out of the foggy ceiling was a long cable with a microphone attached at the end. I somehow knew there were people in the church even though I didn’t see anyone sitting in the seats. I thought, “Wow! This place is as white as freshly fallen snow!”
I then walked up to the microphone and repented, asking God to forgive me for not being completely obedient in everything He had asked me to do. When I was done I looked beside me and there were other people waiting in line to do the same. At this point I woke up from my sleep.

God had spoken to me Sunday morning in church and said that He was going to give us 15 minutes of miracles on Tuesday night.  It wasn’t until that Tuesday morning that I realized what He meant. I knew then what God was giving to us as a church. It was the ability to be as clean and pure as a white sheet of paper. On this God can write whatever He wants ~ and that means anything can happen!

A few Sundays ago the prophet Vello Vaim prophesied that our sanctuary and building, A Place To Meet Jesus, needed to be dedicated. It is the perfect place and time to do it because Ralph Wilkerson, the founder of Melodyland (which was located next to Disneyland) is going to be here with us. A while ago the Lord told me He had chosen to finish the remodeling of our church with an architect whose vision is to build theme parks and churches like Disneyland. God also said that the architect is young and lives in China.

Through a series of precisely timed perfect miracles, I was able to meet a young architect in San Francisco, who is now in China awaiting her visa.  Soon she will begin the architectural drawings of San Francisco’s “Renaissance Cathedral.” It will be a wonderful place to meet Jesus at 1970 Ocean Ave, for I believe the building will last for 1000 years to declare the reign of Jesus Christ. And, as Timothy and Gershom would say, “Let’s do it in the ‘spirit of goof.'”

“The Sound Of A Going ~ Defeating Insurmountable Odds”

My daughter Rocki Starr answered the phone and said, “Daddy, I’m at a place of prayer. Would you like to join me?” “Yes, “I replied with excitement burning in my heart as I thought of being in the Lord’s presence. I then added, “How about us going to the mountaintop and seeking Him all day long?” I could sense the same excitement in her youthful voice as she said, “Daddy, that’s so exciting! Come and pick me up and maybe Misty and mommy will want to go too!”

As I sat in the driver’s seat waiting for the family to pile into the car, for the first time in my life I felt the Lord’s excitement about meeting us at the place of prayer. I could hardly believe what I was feeling. You mean the God of the universe was excited about meeting us? As I was sitting there contemplating the immensity of the moment my cell phone rang. It was Dr. Ralph Wilkerson and his wife calling for a moment of Face Time fellowship.

I immediately blurted out my sense of all that I was feeling, at the excitement of God and His response to our planned meeting that day. Dr. Wilkerson, who is considered one of the fathers of the charismatic movement, has spent much of his spiritual life with close friends like Kathryn Kuhlman, Oral Roberts, and Benny Hinn to name a few. He responded with a laugh and said joyfully, “Richard, that’s the way He is! The closer you get to the Lord the more you will discover how excited He is to be with you.”

The wisdom that came out of Dr. Wilkerson’s mouth cut through all of the traditional religious formalism that was still lurking in my spirit concerning my personal intimacy with God Himself. As my family listened into my conversation with the Wilkersons through the car’s speakerphone, my thoughts went to the Lord, and how I was beginning to feel like a little tiny baby being cuddled in the arms of his father. Everything I was to experience with God would be comfortable to me. After all, He was my Creator.

When I got to the mountaintop that day I realized it was going to be special, and that there was some message Jesus was going to speak to me. Then it happened. He spoke quietly, “When you hear the going.” I instantly remembered the story of King David. After he had just become king of Israel he went into a valley and saw the massive army of the Philistines arrayed against him. The Lord then spoke to him and said, “Compass around behind this army and listen for the wind going through the tops of the mulberry trees, for I the Lord will go before you and you will defeat the army.”

I knew the Lord was speaking to me and that He was going to give me a sign of something “going through,” like a whisper, and it would mean that the victory had been given to us. While I was contemplating this my wife Sandy walked over from her place of prayer on the mountain and said to me, “Richard, did you hear that sudden rush of wind that just blew upon the mountain?” She had absolutely no idea of what the Lord had just been speaking to me about, so I knew her words were a confirmation that God was about ready to give us a sign that would signal that I must act at that moment to obtain the necessary victory.

There currently are many insurmountable odds that stand in front of all of us, that are resisting the great revival that God has promised us in San Francisco. Our group of faithful saints at “A Place To Meet Jesus” might be small in number, as David’s soldiers were on that historic day. But one thing I am doing is, “listening for the sound of a going.” On the mountain that day I also realized that it was a sign for you to become sensitive to the minute signs and signals that God is going to give you concerning your victory ~ and accomplishing the task of walking into it.