Alright, so someone asked me about my journey with Bill Johnson books. It wasn’t exactly a straight path, let me tell you. It’s one of those things you stumble into, almost by accident, or maybe when you’re looking for something and don’t even know what it is.
My First Brush With It
I first heard about Bill Johnson, you know, the Bethel guy, years ago. Folks were talking, some super excited, others a bit wary, raising their eyebrows. My initial thought? “Hmm, sounds a bit… out there.” You hear snippets, things about miracles, heaven invading earth, and honestly, part of me was like, “Is this for real, or just a lot of hype?” I tend to be a pretty down-to-earth kind of person, so anything that sounds too pie-in-the-sky, I usually give it a wide berth.
So, for a long time, I just filed his name and books under “maybe later, or maybe never.” I had my usual go-to authors, my comfortable spiritual routine. Didn’t feel any burning need to shake things up, you know? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, was my motto back then.
What Pushed Me To Actually Read One
Then, life, as it often does, threw me a curveball. I hit a patch where things felt… well, stale. Yeah, stale is the word. My faith felt like it was on autopilot. I was going through the motions, ticking all the right boxes, but there wasn’t much heart in it. I was praying, reading the usual stuff, but it felt like I was talking to a brick wall half the time. Ever been there? It’s a pretty bleak spot to be in, makes you question a whole lot.
I was grumbling about it to a friend, someone I trust, who’s usually pretty level-headed, not prone to flights of fancy. And he said, totally out of the blue, “You know, you might actually get something out of Bill Johnson. Maybe try reading ‘When Heaven Invades Earth’.” I almost laughed out loud. “That stuff?” I thought. But he was serious. He wasn’t trying to push some agenda; he just figured it might give my thinking a good ol’ shake-up, in a good way.
So, after a bit of internal debate, I thought, “Heck, what have I got to lose?” My current spiritual “practice” wasn’t exactly setting my world on fire. I was feeling pretty stuck, like a car with its wheels spinning in thick mud. Couldn’t go forward, couldn’t go back. Just making a lot of noise and getting nowhere.
Diving In: The Actual Practice
I got myself a copy of “When Heaven Invades Earth”. Plonked myself down with it, a hefty dose of skepticism still bubbling away, I’ll admit. The first few chapters, I was like, “Whoa, okay. This is… different. Really different.” Some of the ideas were seriously challenging, really pushed against the neat little theological boxes I’d unknowingly built around God. I’d read a bit, then have to put it down, walk away, and then come back to it later.
I made a conscious decision not just to passively skim it. If I was going to invest time in this, I was going to try to actually engage with the material. So, I started mulling over what he was saying. Not just the big, headline-grabbing miracle stories, but the underlying principles about perspective, about what we genuinely expect from a relationship with God, about our own part in things. I started asking myself, “Okay, if even a sliver of this is true, what would that look like in my ordinary, run-of-the-mill Tuesday?”
- I deliberately tried to change how I prayed. Less of a wish list, more of a “Alright God, what are YOU actually doing around here, and how can I get on board with that?”
- I started actively looking for the small stuff. Not expecting to part the Red Sea in my backyard, but maybe noticing God’s hand in everyday situations, in conversations, in little nudges.
- I actually plucked up the courage to talk about some of these ideas with a couple of trusted friends, just to bounce things around and process them out loud. Didn’t want to go off the deep end all by myself!
It wasn’t about suddenly trying to become some kind of miracle worker overnight. For me, the “practice” was more like an internal wrestling match. Chewing on the concepts, arguing with them in my head, questioning my own long-held assumptions. And then, trying to observe if a shift in my internal thinking changed anything, anything at all, in how I experienced my day-to-day life and faith.
What Came Out Of It For Me
So, did angels start throwing parties in my living room? Nope. Did I suddenly develop the ability to heal people with a touch? Definitely not. But you know what? Something did shift. It wasn’t like a massive earthquake that brought the whole house down, more like one of those subtle tremors that just re-aligns everything on the shelves a little bit.
The biggest thing, looking back, was that it helped me break out of that spiritual rut I was in. It forced me to ask some tough questions I’d been avoiding. It made my faith feel a bit more… active, less passive. Less about just nodding along to a set of doctrines and more about an ongoing, sometimes messy, but dynamic relationship. It kind of blew the dust off my expectations, which had gotten pretty low.
I still don’t find myself agreeing with every single thing I’ve read in his books – I’ve skimmed a couple of others since that first one. I firmly believe you’ve got to chew the meat and spit out the bones with any author, any teacher, really. But I’m genuinely glad I took that initial plunge. It challenged me, and frankly, I needed a good challenge at that point.
My main takeaway from this whole experience? Don’t be scared to explore things, even if they feel a bit outside your usual comfort zone. Sometimes, that’s precisely where the most important growth happens. It’s not about blindly swallowing everything you read or hear, but about engaging with it, wrestling with it, and seeing what resonates, what stretches you, what makes you think. For me, Bill Johnson’s books, or at least that first one I picked up, served that exact purpose. It got me unstuck, and that’s a pretty significant outcome when you’ve been spinning your wheels for a good long while.
