Sarah J caught up with Bill Johnson & Trevor Baker

Trevor Baker

Bill Johnson Pastors Bethel in Redding, California and has seen numerous healings over the years. Trevor Baker in the recent 'outpouring' has also seen God do many miracles. Having personally experienced healing from asthma and witnessed her mum healed from rheumatoid arthritis in ways that can only be described as miraculous, Sarah J wanted to catch up with Bill and Trevor to find out more of their heartbeat behind the healings. She caught up with them both at the Prophetic Seers conference at Revival Fires in Dudley, where she saw about 75% of people who stood for prayer with medical conditions, indicate that they had received healing after being prayed for. They reported being able to do things they couldn't do before. For example, a man could now move his foot without pain from a breakage!

Sarah began by asking Trevor about the heartbeat of the conference.

Trevor: Over the ten years that we've been here and especially over the past 6 months with the outpouring that has been happening, we've been amazed at the hunger that is in people's hearts for more of all that God is seeking to do. So this conference, (which we have every year), it's really looking to move into that realm where we begin to see the things that the Father wants to do. How do we touch Heaven so that we can change the earth, the real world we live in, the people we're in contact with. We're looking to help and equip people to be able to do that.

Sarah: We've obviously seen quite exciting things over this last year, like the outpouring at Florida and pockets of churches really running with the fire. What do you guys see God doing in this season with the Western Church?

Bill: He's getting us to connect with His heartbeat for people and to learn to live with the risk, to break out of - traditions aren't bad, but when they cease to have life they're working against the very thing that God wants to do. And He's getting us to break out of habits that have no purpose or meaning. And in doing so, His heart for people is becoming seen in caring for natural needs, spiritual needs, physical needs. Great miracles are happening. And that's the exciting thing for me, is to see, you know what's on the pages of scripture come to life right before our eyes, as tumours disappear, deaf ears open, and these kinds of things. So it's really encouraging.

Sarah: How do you see the Church in the UK stepping into the reality of that more and more? What kind of steps do we need to embrace?

Trevor: I think one is our mind set. You know, we can all say that we believe in healing: but it's like, how many people do we pray for, and how many people do we release healing too? If God is wanting to pour that out, He pours that out through people. So there's a lot of things we can subscribe to and say 'yes', we believe that Jesus healed: we believe that He heals today, and yet when you then take it to the point, well how many people have you seen healed through you, that's a different story. It needs to be that it's not just that we believe and give mental assent to healing; it's that it's changed our life and it's become the lifestyle that we live. So we walk past sick people. We don't bother. The first thing that we should do is to say, 'well can I pray for you?' but it's always to talk about it and see the doctors and all those things rather than taking that first step and just praying for them.

Sarah: I guess that relates back to what you talked about earlier Bill when you said about taking risks.

Bill: Yes absolutely! You know we have to get dissatisfied with where we are before we're willing to move into something new. And the real death for the Church is when we're satisfied; when we're comfortable and satisfied. It works against the very things that God wants to take us into. So there has to be a dissatisfaction that takes us into a holy hunger for what's on the pages of scripture.

Sarah: What are some of the challenges for Church leaders in facilitating some of that?

Bill: There's a lot of challenges. It comes down to - I encourage Church leaders - don't try to talk everybody into it. A lot of Pastors they wait for the whole Church to get on board. If I can just get a Pastor to find 2 or 3 or 4 people in his Church, work with them. Because once they start getting breakthroughs it causes everybody else to get hungry.

But if you tried to reach everybody at once, it's really hard to persuade everybody, because we're all at different levels and understanding. I would just rather find a person to get a breakthrough with and then have their story circulate throughout the Church, and it stirs up a hunger because people, for some reason expect and think the Pastor is a different kind of person - maybe they could have that kind of a breakthrough. But the guy they know that lives right down the street, it's really different when they get the breakthrough; then suddenly they realise, you know I could do this too. So that's how I encourage Pastors. I encourage leaders to just find someone who's willing to work with you and then just meet in a small group of people, learn to take risks, look for people to pray for, and then get the breakthrough there and then spread it through the Church.

Sarah: How do you cultivate that? How do you actually start to empower a Church to be that living body and to do the stuff?

Trevor: I think Toronto has really helped in the whole ministry team concept. They really released to the Churches who went to Toronto. I think for us here, we've been in that place of training up ministry teams, so it isn't all done at the front. What happens then is what's spawned from that. We now have a healing clinic, which is just a walk-in clinic. We're currently seeing that every time we open it, we have between 15-25 walk-ins. People just come in off the streets. So it's a developing team, so its not all done at the front.