David Hathaway

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! 

We are ‘two times’ God’s!!! He made us. And when we were launched onto the ocean of the world, when we were caught by the wind and blown far away, the Bible says, we were lost! And the only way God could get us back was to find us, pay the price and buy us back! So now we belong to God two times! Firstly, because He made us, and secondly, at an incredible price, He paid a ransom! There is a story I love to tell. It’s about a boy who, with his dad, made a toy sailing boat. They carved the wood and shaped it, painted it, made sails for it – took it to the seaside and launched it. It was wonderful! It was floating and the wind caught the sail – and took the boat out of reach! They couldn’t get it back. It was lost! The boy was so sad. A few days later, looking in a shop window in the town, he saw a boat – HIS boat! He went into the shop, “Hey! That’s my boat in the window, I made it!” The shopkeeper said, “You can’t have it, it’s mine! I bought it. If you want it, you’ll have to pay the price!” The boy went bac

WHO IS JESUS? It’s still a question today, definitely among non-Christians and even in some churches. Yes, we celebrate ‘Christmas’ and ‘Easter’, and everyone recognises it’s all connected with Jesus. But so many, like Nicodemus, don’t recognise WHO JESUS REALLY IS, and why He came! John 3:16 is not an isolated statement, but part of the answer that Jesus is giving to Nicodemus. HE, Jesus, not a ‘preacher’, is saying – “For GOD SO LOVED the world…”  This one verse, John 3:16, has been in my mind so much that I am bursting. I have to speak about it. It’s as if the Holy Spirit is burning something into my mind, and yet it’s probably one verse in the Bible that is preached more than any other: ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’

“We are all members of one Body in Christ, and everyone members of one another. We, being many, are one Body”, and although we have different gifts, we should employ the gifts as God gives us the grace! This is the Body of Christ; we are united not just in ‘love’ – but honouring and respecting the ministry of the others. Paul also urges us to “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, instant in prayer…” and to “Bless those who persecute you, bless and curse not!” It is all part of our Christian witness and service.

The perfect Will of God is something which is in your heart to do! According to the measure of faith He has given you. Wherever you are, God is with you. But is where you are right now simply according to your mind and your will – or according to the perfect Will of God? When I launch out and do some of the crazy things I do, people ask me, “How much time did you pray? And did God tell you to do it?” But so often I’ve done it because it’s in my heart! 

What is the Will of God for your life? Speaking to the Christians in Rome, Paul says in his letter to the Romans, Chapter 12:1, “I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” When I was growing up, we used to sing a song, ‘Lay your life on the altar for God’! I don’t hear this teaching from preachers today. Later Paul was to literally lay his life on the altar, he died as a martyr in Rome. But here Paul sees that as followers of Christ – and he’s appealing to us – to lay our lives on the altar of sacrifice!

'What shall separate us from the love of Christ?... For I am persuaded that neither death not life, nor angels nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord!’ Nothing! This was to comfort me when I was in the communist prison, because the whole time I was in prison from 1972 through 1973, I KNEW that what I was doing, what had brought me into the prison, was by the WILL OF GOD! Whatever they did to me, however they tortured me and beat me – all the time I was there, I had the peace of God which passes all understanding! When the other prisoners were suffering – broken marriages, broken lives, suffering with the ‘prison-shake’ – the peace of God kept me, because I was persuaded, and I KNEW, that neither cancer, nor death, nor danger, nor principalities, nor powers, nothing – no height, no depth – could separate me from the love of God in Christ!

The Spirit helps our weaknesses, for when we don’t know what to pray for correctly, the Holy Spirit Himself makes intercession on our behalf, with groanings that cannot be uttered! There comes a time when the Spirit within us, who is transforming us, helps us! In v27, ‘He that searches the hearts, knows the mind of the Spirit!’ Here is the direct involvement and action of Jesus Himself, who searches our hearts, and knows our hearts, and at the same time, He knows and understands the mind of the Holy Spirit! Do you understand how powerful this is? Christ knows our thoughts, knows our desires, and at the same time He knows the desire and will of the Holy Spirit! 

I want to talk to you on a subject which is very dear to my heart and encourage you to pray, based on a very strong and powerful experience in my life from Romans 8. In 1964, as many of you know, I was diagnosed with throat cancer. I had refused ALL medical treatment. Yes, I had had the X-rays and the camera down my throat, many different tests, and every one of them confirmed that I had throat cancer. But I determined to pray my way through, in part because I was pastor of a church which had been founded on my evangelism and the miracles that took place in that evangelism. The miracles were recorded in the local newspaper – blind eyes, deaf ears opened, cripples healed! So I determined, NO medical treatment, I’ll fast and I’ll pray and God will heal me!

We need to pray one for another, encouraging each other in the faith. The Apostle Paul exhorted in Romans 1:9-12, “God is my witness, that without ceasing I make mention of you in my prayers that I may be able to come to you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, to establish you, so that TOGETHER we may be comforted by our mutual faith.” This has been one of the problems with the lockdowns, when we haven’t had the normal services – because the whole purpose of our faith and our meeting together is to strengthen one another. Not to criticise, not to condemn, but to come together to build ourselves up, to grow spiritually in the faith.

We are called and set apart for a purpose: it is a divine calling. We are to regard ourselves as a servant of Jesus Christ, following the Master’s Voice. Jesus Himself said, “Many are called, but few are chosen!” We need to serve in such a way as to be considered worthy of the calling of Christ. 

God is saying to Jeremiah, “Call unto Me and I will answer – and show you great and mighty things you don’t know!” (33:3.) Not only will God answer, but when He answers, He will show miracles, powerful things, bigger than anything we can imagine! And in v6, God is saying, “Behold, I will bring health and healing, and I will heal them and reveal unto them the abundance of peace and truth – the abundance of blessing!” It jumped out at me, I knew God was saying that to ME!!! Health and healing! God promised me healing – I knew at once He would heal my body of lung cancer. But not only that, He would also give me health – that means, I don’t get sick! Come on, nearly 20 years later, I’ve got more energy, more vitality now than at any time – it was part of the promise! God does what he says!

God does what He says! When I am seeking the Lord in prayer over some specific issue, I want to see His answer in writing: I don’t want a ‘word’ or ‘impression’, I want it written in the Bible! Twenty years ago, when I was battling lung cancer, God gave me the clear answer that I would be healed from the very Scriptures that I want to share with you in this message!