How do we seek God? King David wrote, ‘You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.’ The Psalmist knew how to seek God. I leant to seek Him through my cancer diagnosis, in my imprisonment.
I believe in prayer and in a God of miracles. But in 2003 I was faced with a challenge: do I really believe God or not? The doctors discovered I had a shadow on my lung. On a Monday I had to go for a bronchoscopy when they would put a camera down my lung and take a sample of the growth. The doctors had already fast-tracked me into a process which would lead to an operation to remove all or part of my right lung – on the Wednesday I was booked to go in for the final verdict. The only question, how much of my lung they would take away?
I said, ‘Lord, how can I go back into Russia and preach like I preach and say that You are a mighty God of miracles who’s got power to do everything, including healing cancer, if I have got half of my right lung cut out, followed by chemotherapy? If You have finished with me, if my ministry is over, then don’t heal me, because if I can no longer evangelise I might as well die, I have no other reason to live! But if You want me to go back into Russia and Ukraine and finish the work You gave me to do, then I want You to heal me completely!’
On the Monday I was in the hospital, tubes down my lung looking for cancer – but God had already given me the answer, I knew it was gone. The doctors looked at me in amazement and said, ‘You have no cancer!’
I didn’t go to a healing evangelist, I went to the Word of God and God completely healed me – no operation, no treatment – I only had God and the Bible, and that’s all I needed to confound the doctors. They were shocked, they didn’t believe God. But I do, I believe in a God of power, of miracles.
God has been revealing to me the difference between receiving what most are seeking, which is power from God, and what is even more powerful, how we can receive power with God. In Genesis 32:28, we have the story of how Jacob wrestled with God all night. At the end, God turned to Jacob and said, “As a prince, you have power with God and with man and have prevailed!”
If you want to be active rather than passive as a believer, then you need to have power not only from God, but also power with Him! You cannot have real power with men until you first learn to have power with God, hence this wrestling (in persistent prayer). That is why I have so many battles in my life – in the communist prison, cancer twice – so that I can learn how to have power with God! The result – it has transformed my life, my ministry – so that these last twenty years have been the most effective in my whole life!
Some years ago I was invited to speak at a conference. The theme was how we can know God, how we can come into His presence. Most of the speakers were saying you need to have holiness, quietness and peace. I caused some revolution because I began preaching from Deuteronomy 4:29: ‘If from where you are you shall seek the Lord your God you shall find Him, if you seek Him with all your heart and all your soul.’ You will find God if you search for Him from just where you are! When you are in tribulation, when all the problems of life have come on you!
When everything’s going well, when you’re not sick, when you have no financial problems – you don’t call upon God as much. But when you are in difficulty, when you’re sick – that’s when you begin to call on God more intensely. I have had long years of experience with God and I know personally that I learned more about prayer when I had cancer, when I was in prison, when I had financial problems, than at any other time! Prayer becomes more urgent when there is no other way – no alternative. When I had both experiences of cancer there were two ways – an operation or a miracle! I chose to go the hard way of asking and believing for a miracle – but this meant a total commitment – not accepting ‘no’. When I was in the prison, there were two alternatives: either accept the inevitability of five-to-ten years incarceration or ‘barnstorm’ Heaven until I got out! That’s not holiness, it’s just following the prayer principles Jesus laid down for desperate widows and people like me! – Luke 18:1-8.
‘The Lord appeared to him at night and said: “I have heard your prayer”’ (2 Chronicles 7:12)
It is not about how much you pray, I want you to have the assurance that God has heard your prayer, the confidence where God says to you, ‘I have heard your prayer and I will answer’. God has heard your prayer and He will answer. For so many reading this, you have prayed for so many years, I want to encourage you, God has heard your prayer.