By John Crist

Mark 11:22-26
And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God.

For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.

Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.

And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.

But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.
(KJV)

I want to preach to you on the subject of “BURNING DESIRE!”

How many of you have a burning desire? I am not talking about something casual, that you would like to see, but something that you intensely want God to do in your life! Do you have a burning desire? Something that you can’t tell just anyone about? They wouldn’t understand just how intensely important that it is to you to achieve success in that particular area! Something that you have down in you that says, “God, I just want to see this thing done before I leave here tonight!” God wants to minister to your spirit today about a burning desire! Look at somebody and say, “You’re going to get it!”

“What things soever ye desire,
when ye pray,
believe that ye receive them,
and ye shall have them.”

That is almost opposite than the way that we were taught. We were taught that when you pray, we were to pray very carefully, asking God for His will. “If it be thy will….” We were taught to be very cautious with what we said, careful to add statements like; “If it be the will of the Lord…,” “Lord willing….,” we were very careful to not offend God in believing that we could do anything beyond His will. We know that the Bible says, “…If we ask anything according to His will, we know that He heareth us!” But then it graduates from the pediatrics of prayer and takes us into the higher realms of prayer, and says, “If ye abide in me, and My Word abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you!” And then He said, “Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bring forth much fruit, so shall ye be my disciples!” It seems to me that the Lord is saying, that if we abide, (hang in there, stick around, have the tenacity to withstand the temptation,) if we abide in Him and let his word lay in the womb of our spirits long enough that one of the privileges of our seniority is the rights to ask whatever we will and it shall be done unto us! This kind of power is not given to spiritual juveniles. It is not given unto us in the elementary stage of our life because God knows that we would will for ourselves some things that He knows is not good for us to have! so He says that He does not release this kind of power until you have been around a while! He does not release this kind of power until His word has laid in your womb for a while, and you have become impregnated with purpose and destiny and you begin to know who you are in relation to the kingdom. then He says that he will begin to untie your hands in prayer, and now you can ask whatever ye will! I know now that you won’t be asking for something that is not yours, and coveting things, because after my Word has taken its abode in you long enough, it will change you, and will bring you to a place where I can trust you with some real power! Not just some jerking and shaking and flipping and flopping, I going to trust you with some real power! I am going to trust you with the power of declaration! You will be able to ask what YE will, and it shall be done unto you!

Now He does hem us in just a little in Mark 11:24, because he says, this is what you must understand about what moves me when you pray! It is not how eloquent you are, though you have spent years practicing your technique. It is not in your vocabulary, neither your Greek nor your Hebrew, not your speech, oratorial abilities, power to sound just right, robust and powerful, that moves people but it doesn’t move God! God says, “I don’t just look on the outward appearance, but I’m going to look into your heart!” “And when I get ready to answer your prayers, there must be a certain alignment and harmony between what your heart is saying and what your mouth is declaring!” Did He not charge Israel, “With your lips ye draw nigh unto me, but your heart is far from me!” He is saying, “When you get ready to pray this time, don’t pray just because you bought somebody’s tape on seven steps to an easy blessing, I don’t want vain repetitions, empty religiosity, when you talk to me I want you to tell me what is in your heart!” Just open up the floodgates and let the desires of your heart erupt out of your mouth! He says, “Do not talk to me about things that you don’t care about!” “If it means nothing to you, then it means nothing to me!” “I don’t just want to hear your lips, I want to hear your heart!” “What things soever ye desire…….!” Look at someone and say, “Desire!” That is a very powerful, potent word; Desire!

In the Book of Romans, it talks about how God judged the heathens, not because they did not read the Bible, but because they did not detect the Lord of Glory by looking at nature! It teaches us that they should have been able to look at the birds and natural things and detect God. One writer said, “The Heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth forth His handiwork!” Jesus spoke to us in parables, natural things that brought about spiritual truths! Let’s look at some natural things, to detect some spiritual truth. Are you with me today?

If a man is going to be potent naturally, physically, and thereby be able to reproduce, he must have desire! He can have all of the physical apparatus that he needs to reproduce, but if there is no desire, he becomes impotent! How fragile desire is! If you lose it, though you have everything else, you are not able to reproduce or to become potent. Desire is power! If you have enough desire, you can reproduce, you can be forceful! You can effect and produce change! What is nature telling us about God? It’s more than scriptures, more than technique, more than hermeneutics and homiletics, it is that innate, invisible, intensity that you must have in your heart. Desire that will cause you to be potent, and if you lose your desire, you go through what we call “burnout!” You’re still doing it but you have lost your intensity. When you lose your intensity, it just doesn’t work! You became impotent! People often do not even know that you have become impotent, because they are so busy listening at your lips, that they do not hear your heart! But God says, “I am not like man, man looks on the outward appearance, but I look on the heart!” When the blessing is about to erupt in your life, it will not break through behind what you said, as much as it will break through behind what you meant! So He says, “It’s those things that have you walking the floor at three o’clock in the morning, those things that grab your mind while going down the road, when it gets so important to you that you had rather have it than anything else, when you are pregnant with it and it has changed the way you look and the way your attitude and disposition is, when you think about it and the tears well up in your eyes and you can’t even talk about it to other people because they don’t understand you and your intensity!” God says, “I want to see your heart, tied up with your lips, and when it’s important to you, then it’s important to me!” Desire! Desire is a powerful thing, but what happens if it gets in the wrong hands?

Jesus said something that I think we need to take a look at! Let’s look at the Book of Luke, chapter 22, and verse 31-34. “And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren. And he said unto him, Lord, I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death. And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me.” (KJV)

He identifies Simon, meaning the unstable one, who would become Peter the rock; you are going to have to go through something to become a stone; to become everything that you need to be; Simon, Satan lusts, craved, longed for, to have you, before he sifts you, he wants to have you! That he may sift you, he wants you with an intensity, he has a lust for you, he’s longed for you, you have disrupted his disposition, that’s how bad he wants you. Sometimes we don’t understand it, and we say, “Lord, I feel so insignificant, why am I on the hit list?” The devil doesn’t have you on the hit list over where you are, he has you on the hit list over where you are going! He has desired to have you that he may sift you, scatter you, make you impotent by breaking down the unified effort of your strength. He wants to have you distraught, disconnected, and thrown to the air like the wheat was thrown to the air in order that the chaff be blown away, he wants to get you all up in the air about everything! Satan has desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat, BUT, (everybody say, “but”), Satan has desired to terminate you, to beat you down, wear ou down, get everything on your nerves, and saving other people and being lost yourself, comforting other people and being disturbed yourself, being there to help other people and having nobody to help you, BUT, (here’s the turning point), I have prayed for you, I have gotten myself between you and him and what he wants to do to you, and don’t think that you are here because you are so tough, or that you know so much, or that you are a prayer warrior or an intercessor, it wasn’t your intercession, it was MY intercession, “I PRAYED FOR YOU!”

Let’s find out what He prayed for. “I prayed for you that your faith fail not…!” I didn’t pray for you that you wouldn’t fall! Because He prophesies in the next two verses, that, “…before the cock crows, you are going to fall three times…” I’m not praying that you won’t fall, I’m praying that you won’t fail! I’m not just dealing with yo8ur circumstances, I’m praying for your faith, that when you go through falling circumstances that your faith will not fail the test. I’m talking about the faith of the fallen, faith for people when they go through chaos and confusion and it looks like you are not going to get out, He said, “I am praying for you that your faith does not fall!” I am praying for you, for those hours, when it looks like your not going to get out, that your faith will stand the test in the furnace of affliction. “Hey! By the way, Peter! You’re going to make it!” “……….When thou art converted!” When you get through, going through what you got to go through to get to where I told you you are going to get; “…When thou art converted, go help somebody else!” When I get through taking you through what I have to take you through to deliver you, you are going to have more power in your latter-day than you had in your former day!

Do you know what it is to have faith in failing circumstances? Everything has come to abasement, and yet there is something in your heart that will not bow. That’s the desire that the Lord has placed in your heart against the enemies desire. The enemy, Satan, has desired to knock you down, but I am praying for you that you will have just that much desire to get right back up! But when it is all over, and you have been changed, converted, turn around and go back to preaching and strengthening your brethren. You are going to know that He is able, not because you read it, but because you know it!

The Word that we pray over, study, read, must be made flesh in our lives! In order for it to be made flesh in our lives, we have to face sifting circumstances whereby we look as though we are not going to come out! The enemy has to be made to understand that even at our lowest state, God remembers us and raises us and brings us up! Even though my circumstances might come to abasement, there has to be something in my heart that keeps talking about resurrection while in the middle of crucifixion! There has to be something in your heart that keeps talking about healing while in the middle of sickness! Life in the midst of death! I’m praying for you that your faith fail not!” Touch someone and tell them, “Keep on believing!”

It might not look like you are going to come out, but keep on believing! You might go through a breaking, you might deny Him before the cock crows, but there’s got to be something down in your heart that says, “I’ll trust in God where ever I may be, I’ll just keep believing!” KEEP YOUR DESIRE!

Gen 3:16
“Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” (KJV)

The Lord steps on the scene in the garden and begins to deal with the task of failing circumstances. Man in his humanity has lost many of the vestments that was bestowed upon him in creation. God begins the task of restoration and redeeming of man back into His purposes. In the 16th verse He addresses Himself to the woman. He says, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children;” God is saying several things here! First of all, he says uniquely to the woman something that He did not say to the men; …”I am going to multiply your emotions…” Your going to have more emotions. that’s why we have so much trouble understanding the woman sometimes. Men like to deal with the issues, women deal with how they feel. You are talking about facts and she is saying, “But that’s how I feel!” That’s why we feel like strangling them. I mean we love you, but we want to strangle you! We really don’t understand why you have such intense feelings, but the Lord said, “I have multiplied your sorrows (feelings, emotions).” Then He says, “In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children…” I want you to understand that the process of birth is going to be painful! Any time you produce anything that is invisible into the visible, it is going to hurt! If you have something in your heart that hasn’t been birthed yet, as it passes through the birth canal, it is going to hurt you. It is the pain of birth that produces appreciation for the object of birth. If it were easy, anybody could do it! If you are going to bring to birth the hidden treasure of the Lord in your life, it is going to hurt! Some of the greatest experiences of my life was the times that I accompanied her through the birth process. It was absolutely incredible! At a time like that, you are so very thankful that you are a man! If I had to bring a child, there would not be anybody, I would walk this earth alone! Mama went through changes, she looks good today, but she didn’t look that way in the delivery room! I tried in every way that I could to help! Anything worth having, you can’t be cute and have it! We are trying to have a baby, but we are also trying to be cute! But in your final hours, everything in you is going to swell up, and you are going to grunt and groan and holler, just like Jesus travailed in the Garden of Gethsemane, everything in you has got to suffer when you get ready to produce the mystery of God. He said Woman, I want you to know that it is going to hurt! Seems like to me that it would hurt so bad that you would say, “This is it! We are finished! Don’t come near me! Ever – again – in- your – life! I’m leaving! I want out!” But the next phrase explains why we stay, after all the pain to bring forth the child, He starts talking about; “….And thy desire shall be to thy husband…” After all of that, the thing that gives you the ability to do it again, here comes desire! You have to have enough desire to go forward to make you able to forget past pain! When the desire in front of you becomes stronger than the pain behind you, nothing you have been through will be able to terminate you! When you get a desire to go forward you will break loose from every tear, every sorrow, and every depression, and say, “Through it all, God, I suffered and I cried, but you healed me, and I’ve got to forget those things which are behind and reach for those things that are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus!” Have you ever gone through anything that should have taken you out of here, and yet in the middle of the night, God renewed your strength, and you said, “Let’s do it again!” Just when the devil thought he had knocked you out of the way, sometime in the middle of the night, “…weeping may endure through the night, but joy cometh in the morning!” Something hit you in the morning and you said, “I think I preach again!” You got to have something in you. I call it my getting up power, my going on power! Have you got a desire? When you develop a desire down in your spirit, it’s hard for anything that anybody did to you, to stop you! Let’s go deeper!

He says to the woman, “…Thy desire shall be toward thy husband…!” This is where we have been missing it all along. We have had a desire to get the promise of God, but if you are going to get the creative power to do it again, you have got to have a desire for the promisor! You can’t just have a desire for the healing, (that’s the baby), you have got to have a desire for the healer, (that’s the daddy). There has to be something in you that turns back to the source and says, “Thank you for the baby, but it’s you I want!” That’s what God wants to know! Can I give you a baby and you will still turn back to me? A ministry? Joy? Favor? When it’s all over, I want you back! I want you back! I want to know that I am your everything! I want to see you praising me! I don’t want to see you getting so many responsibilities that you lose your joy, and quit clapping your hands, and quit praising me and lifting me up! I don’t want you to go through so much in the ministry that you lose the sensation of the relationship that caused you to get what you got! When you get through dealing with people and whatever it is that you have to deal with, just shake it off, and turn to the Lord and say, “Lord, I still love you!”

You can’t have live church with a dead pastor! It took praising God to birth you, to bring us where we are! Now that we are beginning to feel the blessing, let’s not allow the pain of childbirth to rob us of our joy! God said, “If you will go back to praising me, I’ll let you do it again!” Look at someone and say, “God wants to do it again!”

I am convinced that we have forgotten how to praise Him! We are always telling everyone else to praise Him, but here we are up on the labor table, moaning and groaning about what we have been through, talking about how bad we were hurt! You have got to get down off the table, turn back to God and say, “God, I still love you!”

God wants to restore you! He wants to set you back on fire! He wants to put a burning in your heart, and an anointing in your voice, and a tear of joy in your eye! God wants us back! He’s been waiting on us in the Garden, in the cool of the day, to minister to Him the way you did when he first begin to bless you! He is waiting on you to return to Him! Look at someone and say, “I’m going back to the father!” Thank God for the baby, but I’m going back to the father!” Thank god for the work that you gave me, but I’m going back to the father! I’ve got to go back! I don’t know what you are going to do, but I am going back! You may be to busy to go, but I’m going back! Throw out the TV, turn down the blinds, turn off the radio, shut everything else out, and let’s go back! Let’s go back to God and say, “Let’s do it again!”

Ps 37:4
Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. (KJV)

Notice that He did not say that He would give you the objects that you desire! He said that while you are delighting yourself in Him, He will give you the desires of your heart. He is going to put desires in your heart! He’s going to put visions in your spirit! He’s going to put treasures in you! While you are praising Him without ulterior motive, He is going to give you direction, a hunger in you to go right or to go left, or up or down, while you are praising me, I am going to be putting desires in you! I am going to move on you, overshadow you, and you are going to become impregnated with your future. Through your praise, I am going to impregnate you with what we are going to do from here! You have been talking to me about what we have already done, “It is finished!” When you praise me, I don’t want to just talk about where you have been, I want to impart where you are going! I am going to do it through your praise! You are going to get through praising me and you are going to come out with desire! You are going to go into worship because you are depressed, and you are going to need to be refreshed, but while you are praising me, I am going to give you direction, and when you are through praising me you are going to shake yourself and say, “We are going on from here!” I am going to give you desire! Can you see why the enemy doesn’t want you do delight yourself in the Lord? The enemy knows that it is a place of impartation! He doesn’t mind you delighting in people because he will yank them out from under you, but he doesn’t want you to delight in the Lord because the Lord he cannot move! He wants you to delight in the things that can change, but not in the Lord because he never changes! He wants you to walk away with the baby saying, “Oh! Isn’t he cute!” and neglect the daddy! You’ve got to have your baby, but you have got to keep your relationship with the father!

You see, when you were born, you didn’t have to learn to cheat, there are some things that were just innate within us by birth. We were born in sin and in iniquity did my mother conceive me. And when you were born again, what God does, He says, “While you are praising me, I am going to place within you new desires! Old things are going to pass away and all things are going to become new! A desire for holiness! For truth! for righteousness! For forgiveness! You are praising the Lord and suddenly, the thing or grudge just doesn’t matter anymore!

The Holy Ghost will show you some things that haven’t even happened yet to motivate you to get up and go on with your life! God wants to put a desire in your heart, in your spirit! While you are in the delighting experience of praise, the Holy Ghost is going to show you things that are to come! You are going to wake up with desires for something that hasn’t even happened yet! The very fact that you have a desire for it is a sign you are going to get it!

John 16:13
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. (KJV)

This is the key, the qualification to His ability to lead you into all the truth. “….He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall he speak:” If the spirit of the Lord comes to you and shows you something in your spirit, He cannot speak to you anything on His own, He can only repeat what He heard! He is not just trying to say things to make you feel good! He has heard something in glory, something that you are going to have to have in order to continue the fight! He tells you-you’re going to come out of this! He has to hear it from us! Where does He hear it from? From our praise! He heard what I couldn’t hear, and told me what I couldn’t know, so I could do what I couldn’t do!