It Took Me 10 Years To Learn What I'll Tell You In 10 Minutes – Smith Wigglesworth

[music]

>> Here's what I want to tell you today.

And I pray you hear this deep in your

spirit.

What I'm about to share with you took me

10 full years of ministry

to truly grasp.

A decade of praying for the sick,

standing in the gap for desperate

people,

watching breakthrough happen,

and watching breakthrough not happen.

10 years of wrestling with God,

wrestling with scripture, wrestling with

my own unbelief.

And the revelation I received in that

journey changed everything.

Because here's the honest truth that

most of the body of Christ has

completely missed.

We've been praying backwards.

We've been approaching the throne room

with a beggar's mentality

when God has already seated us at the

table as sons and daughters.

We've been pleading when we should be

proclaiming.

We've been begging when we should be

commanding.

We've been trying to convince God to do

something when he's already given us the

authority to do it ourselves.

Now, I need you to really lean in here

because this is not a small adjustment.

This is not a minor shift in your prayer

life.

This is the difference between a life of

constant spiritual struggle and a life

of supernatural breakthrough.

This is the difference between the

mountain

staying firmly planted in your path and

the mountain being thrown into the sea.

And I'm telling you, beloved,

the church desperately needs to get this

right because the enemy is not

intimidated by begging.

He's not threatened by pleading.

He doesn't care how many tears you cry

or how loud you shout if you're

operating from a place of desperation

and fear.

But when you stand up in the authority

that Christ has given you and you speak

to that mountain with the confidence of

a child of God,

that's when hell trembles.

That's when things shift in the

spiritual realm.

That's when mountains start moving.

Let's go to the scriptures and look at

what Jesus actually said and did.

When he came across that fig tree that

had leaves but no fruit, what did he do?

Did he fall to his knees and beg the

Father to make it wither?

Did he gather the disciples together for

an urgent prayer meeting? Did he send

word to heaven and plead for

intervention?

No. He did something that should stop us

in our tracks every single time we read

it.

He looked directly at that tree and he

spoke to it.

He said,

"Let no fruit grow on you ever again."

And here's what I can't get over.

Mark tells us that the disciples heard

Jesus speak those words.

They were witnesses to this moment.

And instantly, the tree began to wither

from the roots upward.

It wasn't a gradual process. It wasn't

something that took time.

The moment Jesus spoke,

something shifted in the spiritual realm

that immediately manifested in the

physical realm.

Now, you might be sitting there

thinking,

"Well, that was Jesus.

He's the son of God.

He had authority that I don't have.

That doesn't apply to regular people

like me."

But, I need you to hear what Jesus said

next because it changes everything.

When the disciples later came to him

amazed and asked how the fig tree had

withered so quickly,

Jesus didn't say, "I did that because

I'm special and you could never do

that." He didn't say, "That was a

one-time miracle for my benefit."

He said, "Truly, I say to you,

if you have faith and do not doubt,

you will not only do what was done to

the fig tree,

but even if you say to this mountain,

'Be taken up and thrown into the sea,'

it will happen."

Let me ask you a question.

When Jesus said you, who was he talking

to? He was talking to his disciples. He

was talking to ordinary people.

He was talking to fishermen and tax

collectors and ordinary folks who had no

special training and no special status.

And he said, "You can do what I did. You

can speak to mountains. You can tell

them to move and they will move."

He handed us the keys. He gave us the

same authority that he operated in.

And somehow,

we've been standing outside the door of

breakthrough

begging for someone else to open it

when we've been holding the keys in our

hands the entire time.

This is not religious rhetoric. This is

not motivational speaking.

This is the word of the living God, and

it is absolute truth.

But here's where it gets real.

There's something inside of us that

defaults to desperation.

It's part of our fallen human nature.

When we're afraid, we beg.

When we're desperate, we plead.

When we don't see a way out, we try to

emotionally manipulate God into helping

us.

We think if we cry harder, if we pray

longer,

if we fast more intensely,

maybe God will finally listen. Maybe

he'll finally be moved with compassion.

Maybe he'll finally do what we're

asking.

And I want to be gentle here, because I

know this is where many of you are

living right now.

But I also need to be honest with you.

That kind of begging is not

[clears throat] faith.

That kind of pleading is not believing

prayer.

That's actually revealing what you truly

believe about God's character.

Think about it this way.

If you have a good father who loves you

and provides for you,

you don't have to beg him for food.

You don't have to cry and plead and

manipulate him to feed you.

You trust that. Because he's your father

and he loves you, he's going to take

care of you.

So when we're constantly begging God to

act, somewhere deep down,

we're not convinced that he really wants

to help us.

We're not convinced that he's actually

good.

We're not convinced that he's already on

our side.

And that's exactly where the enemy wants

to keep you.

He wants you stuck in a cycle of begging

because begging produces no results.

Begging keeps you in a posture of

weakness.

It keeps your eyes fixed on the problem

instead of fixed on the promise.

It whispers in your ear,

"You just need to try harder. You just

need to be more desperate."

Maybe if you prove how serious you are,

God will finally listen.

But that is not the gospel.

The gospel tells us that we are already

seated with Christ in heavenly places.

The gospel tells us that we have already

been given authority.

The gospel tells us the same spirit that

raised Jesus from the dead lives inside

of us.

You are not a beggar at the gate. You

are a son. You are a daughter.