Brother Dave Testifies

Greetings in the name of Jesus! This is Rob Haymes. This is 15 Minutes With Jesus. 

Today I have the privilege of having my Brother Dave with me: Brother Dave Hickman. He’s going to testify today, so, open your ears; open your hearts, and let the Holy Spirit minister to you. Dave, it’s all yours.

Dave:

Amen! Thank you Jesus. Let’s pray first: Thank you Lord for just showing forth your will here Lord. Open the hearts of the people to receive; open my mouth; fill it Father with your Words and your truth, according to the Truth, Lord.  Reveal the things that you have revealed to me to the hearts of the people Father. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

What happened to me according to the scriptures? You know, God has been in my life, according to His Word, probably since I was six years old. The first thing I can remember is: I was watching a television show about Lucy (I Love Lucy). I was probably five years old. And Lucy was lying to her husband, and I turned to my Mom and Dad and said, “Mom, Dad, Lucy’s lying!” They looked at me and said, “Well, this is just a show David. They're just pretending on there”, and I was thinking, “No, that’s not true”. That was my heart and conscience: it was the truth in me; it was the Spirit of Christ in me. I was born of God by that time. I don’t know exactly when I was born again, but I believed on Jesus. I believed He was the Son of God. I knew He was raised from the dead. And I was bold enough to speak something like that to my Mother and Father, and my whole family was sitting there watching that show. So I said it in front of my whole family. 

That’s the first thing that I can remember that I did according to the scriptures in my family. My Mom told me I always had a tender heart. That’s her testimony of me. I’m not so sure about that myself: you know the heart is desperately wicked, deceitful above all things; who can know it?  My Mother Eleanor was baptized in the Holy Ghost when she was a child, and  my Grandmother Lois: both were baptized in the Holy Spirit. 

Probably the next thing that happened to me was I went to a kid’s camp when I was about 11 years old in August of 1969. I had been seeking the baptism in the Holy Spirit for probably a year. I would go to the front, when they would call people to the altar and I would pray, and ask God, and I would even beg God!, “Give me the Holy Ghost. Give me the baptism in the Holy Ghost.” And I just stayed after God and pursued it. I ended up going to this kid’s camp, an Assembly of God kid’s camp in Hot Springs, Arkansas. I guess the preacher was preaching about the baptism in the Holy Spirit, and he had faith, and I had faith. Well, God baptized me with the Holy Ghost that night. The power of God just came on me. It was like hot oil coming down over my head and down my body, and I just started speaking in tongues, like 90 miles per hour: a whole other language, not just like a few words, it was like a whole language. And I just kept speaking that language, and speaking that language, and it just kept going like a river, like a river flowing inside of me, up from my belly, up, and then out of my mouth, and even out of the top of my head, there were these words and this power coming and flowing like a river. It just kept going, and kept going. We left the church and it just kept going. That river just kept flowing and going and going. We went to where we slept there: it was like a dorm room, and there were probably about 30 kids in there, and that river just kept going; those tongues just kept on flowing. I was weeping and praying in tongues, and the Holy Ghost was just washing me and cleansing me, and whatever He was doing. The other kids in the room were just trying to get me to shut up: yelling at me and throwing candy across the room at me. And then finally I went to sleep. That’s how I was baptized in the Holy Spirit.  Then immediately the Devil will come and try to steal it from you. You know, like in the Parable of the Sower: The sower sows the Word, and the enemy, the Devil will immediately come and try to snatch that Word out of your heart; I mean immediately! Every Word, not just the Gospel, it’s every Word out of the mouth of God, he will try to steal from your heart if you let him. You have to fight the good fight of faith and lay hold on it; lay hold on eternal life; keep it and not let it go. You’ve got to do that with every Word of God that He speaks to you. You’ve got to grab it with your faith. He gives it by His grace: it’s a gift. Every Word out of the mouth of God that He gives is a gift and you’ve got to grab it with your faith, and you’ve got to lay hold on it, and it’s your faith that you’ve got to use. You have to use your faith. Jesus said, …your faith…

Always it was your faith: according to your faith be it done to you. See, God responds to faith. So that’s what I was doing: I was grabbing ahold of that promise of the Holy Ghost. I grabbed it and I kept after it; I kept after it; I kept after it until I laid hold on it. It’s like when Jacob wrestled with that angel. He got that angel and he wrestled with Him, and he had him down. He had him in a headlock, man, and he wouldn't let Him go until He blessed him. The day was coming and the angel said, “I’ve been wrestling all night, I’ve got to get back to Heaven”, or wherever He was going, or to His next job, and Jacob said, “I’m not letting you go until you bless me.” And he received the blessing from that angel. And he put a stone there, and he saw a vision there of Heaven opened, and the angels ascending and descending on a ladder to Heaven. And Jesus said, later, He said, You’ll see the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.

See, the Son of Man, His Words are of Heaven; His Words are from Heaven, and His truth is from Heaven. The Gospel is from Heaven. And His Kingdom is the Kingdom of Heaven. You receive it by faith: mix it with faith; mix every Word of God with faith, and you’ll receive it, and receive His mercy and receive His grace. Thank God. Amen.

After that I was going back to that same church: First Assembly of God Church, in Russellville, Arkansas, and I decided, with the attack of the Devil, the Tempter: he’s going to tempt you to sin; he’s going to temp you to not yield to the Spirit of God and not be led of the Spirit, and then he’s going to start trying to get you under the Law. He’s trying to get you to turn to the Law to justify, and to cleanse yourself of sin. That’s what happened to me. The Law can’t help you. The Law can’t save you. The Law can’t cleanse you. The Law can’t take away sin. All the Law can do is say, you’re a sinner and you’re going to Hell. That’s the office of the Law: you’re a sinner, and the wages of sin is death.

That’s all the Law can do for you. It can’t help you stop sinning, but the Devil wants you to turn to that Law. He wants you to seek to be justified by that Law. And it says, if you seek to be justified by the Law, you’ve fallen from grace. Ok, so, if you’re born again, you’re under grace; keep the Ten , you’ve fallen from grace. The Devil wants you to fall from that grace. The Devil doesn’t want you to have help. So I decided I was going to stop sinning, and I started embracing the Law more, and of course, you know, every year they probably went through the Ten Commandments at that church. They do in just about every denomination. I don’t remember that, but it’s probably true. So I decided that I was going to have a “Thou shalt not” club. Well, I started this “Thou shalt not” club, and the next thing I knew, that club lasted about a day and everyone else was out of it. You know: you can’t smoke, you can’t drink, you can’t cuss if you want to be in my club, so it took about a day for everybody to get out of it. It took about a week for me to get out, and the next thing I knew I was in sin. And what was that about? It was about the Law. I was seeking to be justified by the Law. I was looking to the Law to stop sinning, and the Law can’t help you with sin. All it can do is say, “You’re a sinner.” That’s all it can say.  By the Law is the knowledge of sin. Any time you see the word Law in the Bible, you can just replace that with knowledge of sin, because that’s what it is, that’s exactly what the Law is, it’s the knowledge of sin. Knowing it’s sin does not help you stop sinning. It’s not going to help you. The only thing that’s going to help you is to come to Jesus, to the Throne of Grace, to receive grace to help in time of need. When’s the time of need? When you’re being tempted. The time of temptation is that time of need, and that’s when you need to run to Jesus for help. And you come to the Throne of Grace to receive grace for help in time of need. That’s what grace is: grace is the gift of God. In Eph 2:8, grace is the gift of God. Eph 2:8 defines it as the gift of God, and that’s what is going to help you: to receive that gift of His grace. And the only place that you can receive it: that true grace of God, is, and this is what God said to me: no Gospel of grace, no grace; no Spirit of grace, no grace; no Throne of Grace, no grace. You have to come to the Throne of Grace for grace to help, and the Gospel of grace is the reason that you get that grace. You’ve got to come to Jesus to receive that grace, and where do you come? You come to the Throne of Grace. Amen. That’s where you receive it. And what’s that? That’s Heaven. That’s Heaven, man! You come to Him. He said, They will not come to Me that they might have life; that they might have it more abundantly. If you want that life, you’ve got to come to Jesus at the Throne of Grace, and He will give you grace to help; to overcome that sin. So, what you have to do is, be ready to anticipate that sin always. If you want to overcome sin, you have to be after it. You have to be after holiness. And if you will be fully after holiness, then, when that sin begins to be manifest, when that temptation begins to be manifest, (Temptation is not the sin. Sin is yielding to that temptation), when that temptation becomes manifest, you need to come to Jesus; you need to immediately come to the Throne of Grace, and receive grace to help in the time of need. He will give you the victory to overcome that sin. It’s pretty hard to sin when you’re praising Jesus: Hallelujah! Praise you Jesus! Praise your Holy Name Jesus! Glory to your Holy Name! When, with all your heart you are praising and worshiping Jesus, it’s pretty hard to go ahead and do that sin you were thinking about doing, don’t you think? Well, it is. It’s impossible when you are doing that. If you’re praising and worshiping Jesus; the Holy Spirit is bearing witness to Jesus, and that’s who He bears witness to. The Spirit bears witness to the truth, and the truth is in Jesus.

When you come to Jesus, you’re going to be in the truth, and the Spirit is going to be with you, and He’s going to bear witness to Jesus, and you’re going to overcome that sin. Praise God! Amen! And, the more you do that, the stronger you’re going to get in the Spirit, and the weaker the flesh is going to get: your flesh is going to diminish in power over you; sin is going to diminish in power over you, and your spirit will be strengthened, and you’ll be strengthened with power in your inner man by the Spirit, praise God, and you’ll get the victory over these things, more and more and more and more. It’s going to be a process. It’s not going to be immediate. It’s going to be a process; you’re going to have to work out your salvation; you’re going to have to walk through it. You’re going to have to yield to the Spirit; you’re going to have to put to death the deeds of the body through the Spirit, and you’re going to have to yield to God. And, as you do that, more and more and more, you’re going to get the victory.