David Hathaway

I want you to have confidence in your own future. Confidence that God has got your future mapped out for you. I’m not far off my 90th birthday. I know that, just as my past was planned by God, so is my future - and yours! Put your trust in God! In Philippians 3:13, Paul says, forget those things which are behind, and press forward towards the mark of the prize of the high calling of God which is in Christ Jesus. My past in ministry is a testimony to the Glory and the Power of God – I’ve seen revival come in three nations, I’ve seen enormous, phenomenal miracles, my own life has been a miracle, I have the visible, actual mark of God in my throat where He cut out that cancer in 1964. But I want to forget the things in the past. Because I believe the future is far more glorious! This is my word to you for 2022. Forget the problems of the past, forget the glories. Forget the joys, the pain, and let’s press forward into the future with confidence in God.

Don’t let fear destroy or disturb your life. Don’t cast away your confidence. Confidence is trust. Confidence is the knowledge that God will do what He said. I want you to move into 2022 with confidence that God is in control. 

I want us to have a confidence and a hope for this New Year. I want to share this Scripture with you from Hebrews 10:35, “Cast not away your confidence which has great recompense of reward.” Our faith, our confidence, is based on the faithfulness of God. 2022 is ‘unknown’ and we need that confidence that God is in control. He is! God has foreseen the end from the beginning! 

You never have to be alone again. Jesus is called ‘Emmanuel’ – ‘God with us!’ Jesus lives in our hearts through the person of the Holy Spirit. I talk with Him every day. He is not absent, He is here – like the old hymn says, ‘He walks with me and He talks with me, and tells me I am His own, and the joy we share…!’ I walk with Jesus. I talk with Him. His Presence is with me. When I was alone in a communist prison, Jesus was with me. When I had cancer, Jesus was with me. And Jesus is with you!

God has NOT forgotten His Promise to you. He will deliver you! I’ve had cancer twice, both times God healed me! I’ve been in prison – God has delivered me. Whatever I do, God will always deliver me. All those years, working under communism, God delivered me. And that promise is yours! God is saying to you today, I have come to deliver you! Take it by faith and God will bless you!

“I will be with you!” God has promised He will never leave us or forsake us. It touches me to know that my life was planned from my conception in the womb. At my age I can look back and say, “God must have made this decision for me, God must have done that…” Through all the suffering, all the pain, God will be with you. Yet, what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory He will reveal to us later (Romans 8:18, NLT).

Don't let the Fire of God in your life burn out! Rather, stir up the flame. I love the command to the priest in Leviticus 6:13 that they mustn't let the fire go out! The Fire of God, the relationship we have with God, must NOT change! The Fire must NOT go out! The responsibility is on us. When we receive the Baptism of Fire how long will it last? A few hours, a few days, a few months – and die out? The Fire must NEVER go out! 

“I have seen the affliction of My people which are in Egypt, I have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, I know their sorrows – and I am come down to deliver!” I love that! God is not remote, He’s not distant! God is omnipresent, He’s everywhere, and, as David said, you can’t escape from God! The very Name of Jesus means, ‘GOD SAVES’! He is Emmanuel, God with us!

One of the devil’s strongest, most powerful weapons against us is, not stopping us, but distracting us – until we divert our energy and attention to something that God never intended. It can occur in our families, in business, in so many spheres... I had to become aware of this danger, very much so in the early years of my ministry. Proverbs 4 urges, 'Look straight ahead, and fix your eyes on what lies before you. Mark out a straight path for your feet; stay on the safe path. Don’t get sidetracked; keep your feet from following evil.'

We are living in perilous times and we need the Power of the Holy Spirit to infill us and empower us.  Jesus said to his disciples, "YOU will receive Power!" This is the message to us all today, YOU WILL receive POWER after the Holy Spirit has come upon you! BUT there must be EVIDENCE. Amongst Pentecostals, it is generally agreed that scripturally, the initial evidence of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit is speaking with tongues – but I also believe that integral to the Baptism of the Holy Spirit is the working of miracles. 

We need a clear vision of ourselves, of our own powerlessness... But a vision of Christ and His Glory and His Power which enables us! And a clear vision of the world where we have to go! Vision is when God gives you a clear vision of what He and you can do together – and you have to go out and do it! Somebody has to get out there and fulfil the vision, fulfil the prophecy. This is the challenge of Proverbs 29:18, where there is no vision, the people will die! If we don’t have a vision, that threefold vision, the people out there will die! 

We need a vision of Jesus! A vision of His Power, His Glory – of who He really is. If only we could glimpse His unlimited Power, His tremendous Glory, we would fall on our knees in wonder and awe before Him. But we also need a vision of our own selves: the Apostle Paul taught that before taking communion we should ‘examine ourselves’. When you examine yourself and see what you are capable of through Christ, and have a vision of what we can do, not alone, but with God – you’ll declare with the Apostle Paul, ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!’

There is a connection between a vision and prophecy, but there is also a crucial difference. Vision is something you receive, but not every vision is necessarily from God – people can have some very strange visions... In a God-given vision, you see something, almost like a picture. Whereas prophecy is an anointing, a gift from the Holy Spirit, foretelling what will happen in the future, SPEAKING out what God is revealing…

‘Where there is no vision the people perish’ (Proverbs 29.18). We talk a lot about revival – but I want to show you from Proverbs 29:18 that, without a clear vision, we won’t see revival. Revival begins from God as a manifestation of the Holy Spirit – but it usually comes because of someone’s vision in prayer. 

We need to see the reviving of the Power and the manifestation of God in the Church! And we need to see the same evidences that were present in the early Church: the speaking in tongues and the miracles of healing that followed the apostles after they had received the Holy Spirit. 

Some Christian groups are reluctant to recognise Pentecost and its importance to us today. The significant sign of the arrival of the Holy Spirit was and is speaking in tongues – and a very strong move of evangelism. 

What we need to see at this present time is a revival or spiritual awakening in the Church. I’ve been searching my Bible for the word ‘revival’ – in the King James Version it appears only seven times, and is the English translation of at least three different words in the original Scripture, depending on the context. Our English word ‘revival’ comes from the French, meaning to live again, to bring back to life, to revive something! You can revive things that look to be dead. You can revive plants, you can revive people that have collapsed. You can revive things that appear dead, but not yet totally dead…

“The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much”! ‘Effectual fervent’ means this is very powerful prayer. The Greek word used for powerful is ‘dunamis’. We use this word in English for a dynamo (to generate electricity, to generate power, to run your home, your car); and for dynamite (a very unusual explosive which doesn’t waste its energy on the open air, but pushes the wall down, breaks open the rock face). So when we’re talking about prayer, your prayer must not be wasted on the air, but like dynamite, it must be dynamic enough to move the mountain out of the way! 

Faith, like everything else in our Christian experience, must mature and it must grow - and it comes from building a strong relationship with Jesus. Receiving miracles is not dependent alone on ‘faith’, but also on our relationship with Jesus! So when the disciples ask, “Why couldn’t we do it?” – the answer is, “Because of your unbelief. Truly I say to you, if you have got faith as small as a mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, remove from here to there, and it shall remove.” And the last bit is so often neglected, where Jesus says, “NOTHING – this is some Power – NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE TO YOU!” I’m challenging you in your faith, come to the realisation that Jesus ACTUALLY SAID, that IF we fulfil the conditions, IF we act in faith, IF we believe, NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE for us. It’s not just moving mountains, not just healing the sick – this applies in EVERY ASPECT OF YOUR LIFE! 

Jesus says, if you will SPEAK to the mountain and COMMAND it to move, that mountain WILL MOVE! But it will ONLY do so if you DON’T DOUBT! Too many people think they are speaking in faith – but they are NOT! It has to be an absolute certainty. On many occasions when I have seen phenomenal, absolutely incredible miracles, it has been when there was not a shred of doubt – the Holy Spirit was so STRONG in me that I KNEW that what I said would happen! So there is this condition that you must have NO doubt, but you have to BELIEVE that the things that you say will happen.