David Hathaway

How do we please God?

How do we please God? So many think we please God by what we do, and in a sense that’s true. But it’s more. Verse 6 says, ‘without faith it’s impossible to please God’! Wow. So, we’ve got to have a level of faith that’s beyond the simple, nominal faith of salvation. It’s got to be a faith that somehow gets translated into ACTION and becomes a driving motive. 
Faith has been the motivation behind my life! Right from the beginning I’ve wanted to please God. When I received the Holy Spirit aged 13, I knew 1 Corinthians 12 says there are nine gifts, and Paul says choose, covet the best gifts… I can pray in tongues ‘more than anybody’, I can prophesy. But the one gift I wanted more than any other was the gift of faith. I saw faith as a GIFT, not just as a way of ‘thinking’, but as a GIFT that would change my life and enable me to do all the impossible things that, at that time, I didn’t yet know God was going to ask me to do! 

Faith is demonstrated by our actions!

Faith that is demonstrated by what we do! Not just by what we say, but by our ACTIONS. Looking back on my life, I’m suddenly realising that this is what has happened with me. Faith is something practical, it’s substance, evidence – of ‘something’. But remember, right from the very beginning, we’re ‘saved by faith’. But by faith in what? We’re not saved by ‘having faith’… We’re not saved from sin ‘simply by faith’ – we’re saved by faith in Christ! It’s faith in Him, it’s specific. It’s very strong!

Receive power through faith to see miracles

I want you, together with me, to look at this question of miracles, the gift of faith and how to receive healing. Miracles will come, but it’s not always easy. There are times when I am facing challenges so great that I have to say to the Lord, “Why can’t I do it?” Those of you who are seeking to pray with the sick and see miracles… When it doesn’t happen, ask the question, get alone with Jesus… Wherever your ‘place’ is where you go alone in prayer. I’m laughing at the joke that every man should have a ‘man cave’, a place where the husband can get away from his wife… But we need that equivalent with God. The Bible speaks of going into your ‘closet’, that’s simply somewhere where you can be alone with God in prayer…

Facing the valley through the strength received from the mountain

We all walk through the valley of despair and heartache. In our spiritual experience we desire to stay on the mountain, in the glory and splendour – but God needs us in the valley where the problems are! You cannot live forever on the mountain. We have to come down as the disciples did from the Mount of Transfiguration. Recently, somebody sent me a message of encouragement, referring to my frequent prayer times on the mountains, he said that I face the valleys with the strength I receive on the mountain… Isn't that true for all of us? 

Putting faith to the test (Part 3)

We all go through temptations and trials, because, they 'show that your faith is genuine' (1 Peter 1.7). I wouldn’t be where I am now if I had not experienced my cancers and imprisonment. There never comes a point when we are not tested. If you are trusting in God, this does not mean you won’t have trials and temptations and difficulties. You will! Because it’s through the trial and the fiery furnace that your faith grows. It makes me think of the three Hebrew children who were thrown into the fiery furnace, or Daniel when he was thrown in the lions’ den! This is the test of your faith. You go through the fire, you face the lions, you face the tribulations, the difficulties that you will have – tomorrow may be more difficult than any other day in the rest of your life! But your faith must not fail because it is being tested.

Putting faith to the test (Part 2)

Faith is step by step, climbing higher! God can do amazing things! In my life, faith has grown through the trials and tribulations I’ve been through. The more miracles I saw, the more I expected. From my teenage years I had seen some small miracles, but when I was about 21, 22 – pastor of a church in Harrogate – one of my senior men, on whom I depended for support, was found to be terminally ill with bowel cancer. They removed most of his insides and sent him home with a colostomy and a catheter and only 3 weeks to live. The Holy Spirit put in my heart to pray that God would heal him. The miracle was so big, he was totally healed and back in the church. He never died of cancer! So you see, my faith was growing step by step. That’s what Peter is referring to, it’s putting your faith to the test. Sometimes your faith has got to go through a fiery experience in order to prove that it really works.

Putting faith to the test (Part 1)

James 5 says that the prayer of faith shall save the sick. This is faith in a more powerful sense. It’s the action of praying and believing that sees the miracle. People know that I’ve been healed of cancer twice, but on both occasions, it was a far bigger miracle than you can realise. On neither occasion did I have any medication, not a tablet, no chemo, nothing. I took a step of faith and I was completely healed. I was standing very clearly by a very strong element of faith. 1 Peter 1:7 says, the trial of your faith is more precious than gold – gold perishes, faith doesn’t – although it’s tested with fire – this faith lasts! The real question of faith is when it’s put to the test.

Put your confidence in God

I want to encourage you to seek the Lord in a new way. I know we are going through difficult times. Throughout my life I’ve been through difficult times. But through it all God has always made a way of escape, that’s His Promise, 1 Corinthians 10:13. In your greatest difficulties, God makes a way through. We’ve not been called to live a life of comfort and luxury, but we are called to ‘live a life’! In Psalm 37 David is urging a confidence in God. This is what I want you to have – confidence. God is in control and will give you the desires of your heart if you will commit your way to Him.

Your steps are ordered by the Lord, Psalm 37 (Part 2)

When your delight is in the Lord, when your pleasure is in the relationship you have with Him, He will give you the desires of your heart. When you love somebody, you ‘delight’ in them, you are happy with them. If your relationship with the Lord is like that, then, Scripture says, He will give you the desires of your heart. Many times when I’m praying, I’m asking for things which are not just my needs, but which are also the desire of my heart… I’ve always from my youth desired to be an evangelist. I never dreamt my ministry would be as amazing as it is. My dream was just to do it. To get on with the job. But it was my dream – it was a delight, and my delight was in the Lord! And God has given me far more than I could ask! 

Your steps are ordered by the Lord, Psalm 37 (Part 1)

When we commit our way to Him, even our steps, our direction, are ordered by the Lord. They are planned by Him, in advance, fore-ordained. Because the Lord knows the end from the beginning. And if a man’s steps are ordered by Him, v23 says, ‘He delights in his way.’ This means, God will be delighted in the way that you are going! We need to put our lives in God’s Hands!

The Lord is my Shepherd

‘The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures… Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.’ The valley of the shadow is where the light of the sun is cut off. I love walking in the mountains. On the mountain top the sun can be bright, but when you drop down into that valley, there’s no sunlight, it can’t penetrate the valley walls – that is the valley where the light of the sun is cut off! I want to tell you that wherever you go in your life, whatever trial, whatever problem, whatever difficulty you are going through – even if you feel the light of the sun is cut off – then God will not fail you. He says His rod and His staff will comfort you, and you will come safely through.

Delighting in the Lord, Pt 2 (Psalm 37 & 63)

I love the promises in Psalms. There comes a time in your life and mine when only God can satisfy. In my teenage years my prayer was, “My flesh longs for You Lord, I’m thirsting for You, I’m hungry for You,” – but more, the next verse, I’ve never forgotten it, “to see Your Power and Your Glory, NOW, as I have seen You in the past, in the sanctuary” – this is my heart’s desire, NOW! That just as I have seen the Power of God in the past, I want to see MORE, NOW, IN THE FUTURE. I have to live, I cannot die, they can’t take me until I see Your Power, Your Glory, NOW – GREATER THAN ANYTHING I HAVE SEEN IN THE PAST!

Delighting in the Lord, Pt 1, (Psalm 1)

When our delight is in the Lord, there will be a tangible, physical evidence! We will be like a tree planted by rivers of water that brings forth fruit in season! Our leaves shall not wither! And whatever we do shall prosper! That’s a phenomenal promise and encouragement!
'Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper.' (Psalm 1.1-3, NKJV)

The Coming of the Lord

The Lord’s Coming is as a thief in the night. But for the believer, the Apostle Paul teaches that we should be living in expectation and anticipation of that Great Day, because in 1 Thessalonians 5 verse 4, he writes, “YOU, brethren, are NOT in darkness that that day should overtake you as a thief!” Paul is saying, as far as the world is concerned, the Coming of Christ will be a sudden unexpected happening – but you, brothers and sisters in Christ, should not be in such darkness that the Coming of the Lord will overtake you as a thief! The suddenness of the Coming of the Lord is a shock to the world, but not so to the Believer, who should be expecting it, because we are children of the Light and children of the Day.

The outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Part 3

If we are looking for revival, for the Power of God, it will come through a greater outpouring of the Spirit, a Latter Rain just as Joel prophesied. The church celebrates Pentecost year by year, as long as you think of it as something that happened two thousand years ago, you will never experience the fullness of what God intends. The prophecies, the Words of Jesus are quite clear, a GREATER outpouring MUST happen in the last days before He comes back.

The outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Part 2

I believe we are now literally living in the days of the latter rain, and that we should experience those same things the prophet Joel and Peter describe – but with an even greater anointing now, than happened originally with Peter and the disciples in the Acts of the Apostles! I have always believed this. From my earliest days of seeking the Holy Spirit, I always believed that there would come in the ‘last days’ a further and even GREATER outpouring of the Holy Spirit before the Lord returns. In my own ministry, I’m always looking for the increasing, GREATER miracles. I have seen phenomenal things, but I don’t want to say that they have been greater than the miracles Jesus did – but they ought to be, they HAVE to be! Come on! If Jesus was right in what He said, “YOU will do GREATER miracles than I do”, then we MUST…