Sid: So my friend Dutch Sheets is feeling sorry for himself and as he says “He was letting his father’s failure define him. You were so close to that which would have cost you everything. What did you mean by that?
Dutch: You know the word Goliath, the name Goliath means reveal or expose. And that’s what giants do when they come to us they expose what is inside of us. And I had been exposed as not having a strong enough faith of my own. My faith was in my father’s God. When he fell that was the beginning to define me the bitterness, the resentment. And I realized when you finally came and I was able to listen and I was able to allow God to begin to heal me I’m going to have to get my own faith in God, my dad’s faith is not enough, my granddaddy’s faith is not enough. I need a personal encounter with God. And I need to let Him define me not my past hurts, not my past failures, not my father’s failure; not my unfaithfulness. I need to let God define who I am and He walked me through a 2 month process of healing; I really didn’t give my heart back to the Lord immediately. He and I talked a lot over 2 months, and finally I just said to God after this time; you know I don’t understand it all yet. And that’s key by the way we don’t have to understand everything to be healed.
Sid: You know what the older I get the less I know. (Laughing)
Dutch: That’s exactly right. To understand why, how could this happen I don’t understand; well I didn’t understand. But I didn’t have to; I said “I didn’t understand this, I didn’t know why it happened; I don’t know but I know this You still love me and somewhere deep down in my heart I found out I still love You. And God started redefining me and I went on this glorious journey. Two months later I gave my heart to the Lord and I felt like I’d never been saved. When I came back to the Lord it was so glorious and so wonderful I just felt like I don’t know if I had ever been saved. I know I was but the love of God filled my heart. I don’t think He ever left me Sid; I just think I had a renewal in my heart. And that started me on a path to where I am today.
Sid: Well let me ask you a question looking at your material I am overwhelmed of the statistic that you present on the loss of hope by people. Tell me some of them.
Dutch: Oh it’s devastating. Figures tell us that serious depression has the affect has the same effect as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day; it’s 3 times more likely to die of heart disease if they have serious depression. Even mild depression they are 50% more likely to die of heart disease than normal people. Those figures are in a Readers Digest, these are documented facts; depression, hopelessness will kill you. And it’s killing a lot of people; the divorce rate has risen almost 300% in the last 27 years. 2.5 million in America divorce every year. One million children are affected by divorces every year; we can’t work things out; we can’t stay together. Fatherless homes account for 63% of youth suicide; 90% have run away children. And 85% of youth in prison because they come from a fatherless home, they have no hope, they have no anchor, they have no identity. Approximately 19 million people just in America have a depressive disorder. The youth suicide rate has tripled in the last 30 years; 25% of high school students seriously consider suicide every year. Even our spiritual leaders are discouraged Sid; 70% of pastors in a recent survey said they constantly fight depression; 80% of their children seek professional help for depression. Adult children of pastors seek professional help for depression. 50% of pastors say that they would leave the ministry today if they knew of another way to make a living, and 1500 of them do leave the ministry every month. No one is immune from this disease of hopelessness. I call hope deferred in the book the common cold of the soul. You can’t go through life and not be hit with something.
Sid: Well what you’re doing is your quoting Proverbs 13:12 which says “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” Explain that.
Dutch: You know when we experience something like I did or when someone loses a loved one or a divorce or a bankruptcy and it could be a thousand different things. If we don’t guard against it a process begins in our souls, our emotions, our mind, our will. Just like heart disease in the soul we begin to lose our faith; we lose our courage and then we begin to lose our God connection. Even if we don’t turn away from the Lord completely like I did our faith suffers. You think of heart disease, you can’t run, you can’t work, you can’t move forward. Well hope deferred does the same thing to the spiritual heart, you can’t run life’s race. We can’t perform the way we need to, we struggle, we are weak. And then we start dreaming and when we stop dreaming we just exist.
Sid: And what you’re saying is unless it’s stopped it goes all the way to you end up being a nonbeliever and you probably end up dying.
Dutch: Dying physically but first we’ll die physically and emotionally just like heart disease does to a person physically. And there are thousands, millions of people including believers who have lost their faith. I don’t mean they’re not saved, I mean they don’t have no faith to dream; they have no faith to reach out and be used by God to move forward. And if we don’t dream, one of the interesting studies I did showed me that the word dream or imagine in Hebrew comes from the very same word root as the word create. Yetsere and yetsar the same word; can you imagine God put the same word the concept of dreaming in the concept of creating. And if we don’t dream we don’t create; we won’t more forward; we won’t come up with new things; we won’t look at the future with hope because we have lost our hope. Hope deferred has set in and God wants us to dream again.
Sid: Well the thing that I love about your book is it’s a how to book with supernatural prayers. But how does someone become a prisoner of hope as you say instead of a prisoner of depression and despair.
Dutch: You know it starts with and I know this sounds simple to people but it really begins with a choice. My brother was watching an open heart surgery; he was literally standing at the head of the patient; they had the heart out working on it; machines were doing the work of the heart. They put the heart back in; then they had to get it pumping; beating and pumping again; they couldn’t do it. And they had exhausted everything to try and get this heart to beat. And finally the doctor leaned over to this obviously unconscious person and in their ear said “I need your help Mrs. So and so we can’t get your heart to beat please tell your heart to beat again.” Instantly her heart started pumping; he looked up shocked, the nurses and other doctors around the table looked up shocked. The doctor just looked at them and shrugged like I don’t understand it either. And they went back to work. My brother said “I’ll never forget it as long as I live.” That’s what we have to do spiritually; you know there comes a point in time where we have to say “I don’t understand it; I don’t have everything figured out; I may not even want to in parts of who I am but I’m going to make a decision that I’m going to live again. I’m going to believe again; I may have created Ismael through Hagar but I’m going to start believing for Isaac again. My father may have failed me; someone may be saying my spouse left me they were unfaithful. I don’t care what it is you may have lost everything; you have to say “I choose to believe, I’m going to live again; I’m going to dream again. That’s where we start the process…
Sid: Now, just out of curiosity as you explain in your book in your teaching there are cycles or stages of people slipping backwards into hopelessness. What if you have a spouse or a child that’s… there’s no such thing as beyond the point of no return but have slipped so far; they don’t even have the ability to choose. What do you do about them?
Dutch: Well in that case it’s going to require faith-filled prayer; my hope is going to have to be in the God of salvation. My hope is going to have to be that he loves that child more than I do. And I’m going to have to anchor my faith in not what I can do as an early parent because I can’t change the way they think; I can’t follow them everywhere they go but God can. And what I began to encourage people to begin doing in a case like that is, hey you’re not trying to convince God to save this child He’s ready, He wants to he needs something to work with. He needs your prayers; He needs your faith. Your faith doesn’t have to be in your….
Sid: So you know what your book does if I can put it in different words; it gives the person praying for the other person hope and faith that God will move where that person can’t where no person can. It’s having faith in the supernatural hope of God. And I’m going to tell you something you’re not like that person I described, but have you lost your dream? Are you hopeless? Have you really been wounded? Well get ready to be super infused with a supernatural substance from God called hope. And I have to tell you Dutch your teaching is magnificent on it. We call it “The Hope and New Beginnings package.”
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth