God takes pleasure in expectant faith. He likes hungry children who come back for more and more.
Think how your heavenly Father feels when He knows you delight in His blessings and in His ways. He takes pleasure in pleasing His children. When He sees that pleasure exemplified in your praise and your worship, when He sees that you are satisfied in Him, that you are happy, that you are full of joy, that you are thankful, it causes God to give more and to pour out more of His goodness upon you. Gratitude provokes blessings.
I crave the things of God as well as the blessings of God. That hunger for Him causes God to show His power and goodness to me.
In my book, Revivalmakers, I discuss a moment I had with God in early 2021 at Fresh Start Church in Phoenix, Arizona. But I had another one of those moments in Chicago in 1999. I was a younger preacher and I was hungry for the miraculous. I had grown up seeing God do miracles in our church. I had seen people baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit. But just like I talked about in the potato soup story, there was this hunger for more. Every time God moved in our service, I was never satisfied—I wanted more. I said, “What else, what else can You do?”
We would have these great moves of God where we were literally drunk in the Holy Ghost. Young people would carry us onto the bus after youth camp because we were just flat, sloppy drunk in the Holy Ghost. And I remember sitting on the bus thinking, What else can You do?
I was not satisfied that He had just moved in a service; I was expecting and hoping that He would move on the bus home from youth camp. Sunday morning service, I would come in with this wild expectation: “God’s going to do something.” There was just this hunger for more of the Lord. And back when I was a kid, most Pentecostals did not have televisions. And if you did have one, you did not tell anybody that you had one because it was the one-eyed devil and you were not supposed to have one. Thankfully, we had a “monitor” (a TV without cable) that I could rig with paper clips to pick up channels.
I used to watch Christian television for hours on end. I would watch those services with a holy frustration stirring up on the inside of me. I would watch those healing crusades where 20 and 30 wheelchairs were brought to the front emptied. In a moment, people were healed here and there, and scores of people lined up, ready to testify of how God had healed them, God had delivered them, and God had done miracles. I was captivated by and hungry for the miraculous. I needed to know if it was real or fake.
When I got to the stadium in Chicago that day, I saw a lady in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank. I saw her husband help her out of the car and wheel her into the stadium. God allowed me to see that because He was going to show me something later in the service to prove to me this was really Him.
The Holy Spirit filled the stadium as the people began to praise and worship God. During that time of worship, I heard a lady shriek. I turned around to look and it was that lady from the parking lot. She was disconnecting the tubes that were in her nose. She was disconnecting everything from the oxygen tank. I watched her pull herself up and stand up out of the wheelchair, her husband crying. And I saw her begin to lift her legs and walk, completely healed. Nobody laid a hand on her. Nobody spoke the word of faith to her. She was just healed in the presence of God. And I watched as she and her husband just started celebrating.
I heard a shout come from the other side of the stadium. I do not know exactly what healing they received, but it was obvious something miraculous was happening. Pastor Benny said, “Yes, Lord, do it again.” Miracles started happening like popcorn all around the stadium. No one had to pray. No one had to ask it because, in the presence of God, anything and everything is possible.
God took me to that service to encourage my faith and change how I approach God with my needs. That service confirmed what my father had always taught me about praise and worship—when we praise God up, blessings come down! God inhabits the praises of His people. When He comes, every blessing and benefit comes with Him! It is only a praise away! At a miracle crusade, I saw it. It was like the praise went up like a magnet and literally pulled heaven down to the earth. The atmosphere of the miraculous was created through praise and worship, and all of these miracles started popping up and taking place all over.
Overwhelmed by everything God was doing, I stepped into the lobby of the arena. There was a lady beating on the door demanding she be let into the service. Apparently, the arena had reached maximum capacity, and they were not letting anyone else in, but this lady was persistent. She yelled, “Let me in! Let me in! Don’t you understand? If I get in there, I’m going to get a miracle!” That moment marked me. This lady was not coming with her fingers crossed hoping that God would move on her behalf. She was convinced—if I can just get in the room, I know I will be healed!
She did not have hope. She had expectation. So did multiplied thousands who attended and received miracles that day. They showed up confident—if I can just get in that room, I will be healed.
That service changed my life because that day God revealed to me the highest level of faith that exists—expectation. They expected to get a miracle. They expected to get healed.
It changed my perception of how I approach the Father. For years I have been coming bashful, timid—“If You would, would You please heal me? Would You please bless me? Would You please make a way?” But the Bible says to come boldly before the throne of grace. He is your Father and we are His children. Revivalmakers expect God to answer. Revivalmakers expect to see miracles. Revivalmakers expect revival. We are not hoping, we are not praying that it might happen—we are looking in expectation! That is how you should approach every service—expecting there will be a moving of the Spirit, expecting revival will break out.
I am fully aware of the times we are living in, the trouble that has surrounded us, the opinion of our naysayers in the world regarding Christianity. But here is where I stand today—like the woman trying to enter the crusade in Chicago, I am knocking, I am pressing, I am pushing to get into the presence of God. I just know that in His presence anything is possible!
I expect miracles. I expect healing. I expect revival.
There is an old song that not everyone remembers, but it is the song of my heart for this season:
I hear the sound of abundance of rain!
God’s going to pour out His Spirit on all man! Like the days of old
Revival’s coming again
I hear the sound of abundance of rain!