19th April 2026 : John ch 16 v 22 - 33

John ch 16 v 22 - 33

Alright everyone. I believe in prayer. I know a lot of people have heard my testimony before of how I come to know the Lord, but I want to share it today because I feel like there's something within my testimony for people within the room.

I gave my life to the Lord about 30 years ago. I was in a terrible place. I had my own business. I was a coal merchant, a successful one, if you like. We had a four-bedroom detached house, MR2s on the drive, holidays wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted. We had a good life. That's all I could say. We had a good life. Everything was really, really good.

I was dyslexic. I couldn't read. I couldn't write. And this meant that I had to let people who I trusted, or who I thought I could trust, to look at me books. And long story short, they helped themselves. And what happened was we started to lose our house, we started to lose everything, basically. Everything that we'd worked for, we started to lose.

We met a couple previous, that was a Christian couple, the year previous to this. We met them in a restaurant and we went to a Bible study at their house. And long story short, I walked in and I thought, what a bunch of nutters. And I literally, I said, come on Paula, get me out of here. This is killing me. Paula went, but the nice people, come on, let's go. I said, I couldn't stand being in that presence, basically. And as I left the place, I said to John, John, you're a lovely man, and this is good for you. But I've got to be honest with you, this is not for me. Please don't ring me again. I didn't want to be in that atmosphere. I didn't want to be in that presence at all. And I left, and a year later, we're now going into a bankrupt situation. My wife's just given birth, and I can't tell my wife, because of pride, because of whatever reason, that we're about to lose everything. And the bills at the back of the microwave that I kept hiding, we can't pay them. We've got receivers, letters. We've got people coming to take the house, to take everything. And I couldn't tell her.

And this guy, John, wrung me out the blue. He said, Brian, God woke me up last night praying for you. And I know you don't want to hear all this, but God woke me up. I want you to come for a meal. "Yes, I'm coming". And I agreed to it straight away because I knew that I was there. I knew I was about to lose everything and maybe God could help me. That's where my heart was, that's where my head was. And we went to his house and he explained God to me in very, very simple format. He explained it, God is like Winter Hill. He's constantly transmitting his love. Love you. I love you. Come to me. I sent my son to die for you. Come to me. Come to me. I sent my son to die for you. Come to me. But you need the radio to receive that signal. And Brian, you need Jesus Christ in your life. And I just called out on him. There and then was in a car at the time. And I'm cutting this down a bit. Was in a car at the time and I cried out to him, Jesus. If you can hear a wretched sinner like me, come into my life. Forgive me for what I've done. And all I can say is, the Lord walked in and straight away, that connection between man and God was broken. That connection was broken. I can now hear God.

And we walked into the house and the Lord spoke to me. Now not forget, I was a man's man. I was very much a man's man. Men hugging you and stuff like that, go away. It's just not me at that time of my life. As we're stood in the room, not forgetting, the week previous to this, I'm on the edge of the bed, losing my mind, bawling in tears with depression, going mmmmmm, I'm losing it. I am losing it completely. Paula doesn't know nothing at all about it. This guy gave me a Bible and I told him, is there any nice pictures in this, John? He went, no. No point in giving me that. Can't read, can't write. That's why I'm in the situation that I'm in. He says, Brian, in the name of Jesus Christ I break this dyslexia over your life. Now this guy's just touched me and prayed for me. I was like, right. Because he was completely alien to me. The whole God thing was alien to me.

We went home and I decided to tell Paula, because I'd woke up the next day with the peace that passes all understanding. I had the peace of God. God spoke to me in John's house. He told me 3 things. Tell John to sell his business. Tell John I will tell him the amount to give to the church in Antigua. And don't pick up the, tell John, don't pick up the girls at the side of the road fighting. At this stage, as God is speaking to me in his house, I'm looking at John, looking at Alan, looking at Paula, and there's this voice speaking to me. I had no idea that God could speak. No idea. And I literally, listen, Luke, come on, Paula, we're going. Because I actually thought from mmmmmm to the rocking, I actually thought that I'd lost my mind. I actually thought, now I'm hearing voices. And we just left the house. I told you on the way out, don't, not be coming to your church. Don't, I'll not be coming to your church. And then I wake up the next morning with the peace of God.

I wake up with it and to be truthful with you, I'd actually come to a place after telling Paula we're going bankrupt and all the bills at the back of the microwave can't be paid. No way of paying them. I told Paula I've got the piece of God, it doesn't matter about that anymore. I don't care if I'm going to live in a tent, to be truthful with you. So, Brian, we've got a young kid now. Yeah, But I've got the peace of God. Paula did not understand this because she didn't have the peace of God. And then, long story short, I'm trying to cut this down and I'm skipping, I'm going back, so I'm sorry about this. Paula, she was reading me the Bible because I couldn't read. And then, she basically turned around and said, Brian, read it yourself, knowing that I couldn't read it. And I picked the Bible up and I looked at it and everything that used to be with when I was in the dyslexic stage of everything joining together and it was just ink everywhere, had gone. I could actually see it and read it like you read it today. But the truth of it is I had to learn how to read then. But I walked up the stairs reading the Bible to Paula and she just burst out crying. She burst out crying. She went, why is it? We're losing everything. We're losing our house. We're losing our business. We're losing our life. And now you can read. Why does God love you and he doesn't love me? Why does God love you and he doesn't love me? I said, he does love you, love. But you have to come to a place of receiving him. You have to come to a place of making a commitment to him. That's the place that you need to be. She was the first person that I led to the Lord.

And then because I could read, I wanted to ring John up because I actually thought I was the first person to ever see a miracle for 2,000 years. I didn't realise that God's doing miracles day in, day out, second in, second out. I had no idea about this. It really was a new world. So I rang John up and his maid, John was a very, very, very wealthy man. He lived in a mansion. And he was, anyway, his maid picked the phone up. It's Strickland's residence. I said, it's Brian. Can you tell John to give us a ring, please? Said, he'll be home at 8 o'clock. Give us your telephone number. Give him the number. Or give her the number. And 8 o'clock come, John didn't ring. It was the next day when John rung. And he rung me up. He rung me up and he says, Hiya Brian, sorry I didn't ring you last night. Two girls fighting at the side of the road. He said, I've picked one up and brought them back. She was badly bruising. And I'm thinking, I knew about that. I knew about that. He said, but what a great time in Antigua. He said, we was looking out over the balcony. And as we're looking out over the balcony, God showed me a church in the distance. And he said, go and give them X, Y, Z. He said, the good thing about it, three years previous, it was prophesied over that church, that a rich couple was going to come from England and pay off all the debts to the church. So God uses it in this area was chuffed to bits. He says, I said, John, you need to sell your business. You need to sell your business. I knew about Antigua, I knew about the church, I knew about the girls fighting at the side of the road. I believe you need to sell your business.

Right, I made 4.2 million pound last year on that business. God might have to tell me that. Two years later, John went bankrupt. God was pre-warning him. God, he went bankrupt. So my life started with God at that point. And Paula had come downstairs this day. She'd been reading the Bible upstairs. And she come down and she said, Brian, I've just read a scripture in the Bible. And it says that if we can agree on earth and believe it in our hearts, God will honour it in heaven. Do you believe it's the word of God, Brian? Yeah, I do. He says, can we believe this together that God pays all our bills? I says, well, he's healed my dyslexia. Why not? So we literally, in the kitchen, we joined hands and we committed it to God. We said, Father, we cannot pay these bills. We have no way of paying these bills. We can't pay these bills. I pray, Lord, that you pay the bills for us. We're going to give it to you. And we literally went to the back of the microwave, got all these bills, got our cheque book and wrote out the cheques, 1,359 pounds, 2,900, 7,000. We just wrote them all out. We just wrote them all out. We said another prayer and we walked to the post box and we lifted them up before we put them in. We said, Father, we cannot pay these bills, but we thank you that you will pay them from today. And we shoved them through the door. Not one cheque come back bounced. Not one cheque come back bounced. Every single bill was met by God.

We sat back, our financial advisor rung us. My mum had been on the phone saying, our Brian's in a terrible place, he's joined a cult. He's joined a cult, he's gone Jesus mad. Can you ring him? His business is suffering. So he rang me and with the intention of sacking a few people, et cetera, get a wagon off the road and to basically pull the business in. And me and my wife sat down and we worked out all the bills that have been paid and not paid. When we looked at it, it was, the sum of the amount was 27,300 pounds that we wrote out, out of, and it was paid out of a bank account that was 10,000 pound overdrawn. Every bill was paid completely. But the truth it is, and maybe this is why I'm to share this, me and my wife never spoke about it. Once we committed it to God, once we committed it to God, and we went, Father, we cannot pay this - push, and we put it in the post, from that point, we never asked each other has it been paid? Have you checked your bank account? Have you done this? We just praise God. We just praise God. We left it at God's feet. We left it at his feet. And we did not go back to it, ever until we realised that all everything had been paid. The only time we went back was to give him the glory. And we drove round for years, we still do, to be truthful we are, giving God the glory for rescuing us out of a place that we couldn't come from. We were going bankrupt.

So that's my testimony, for whatever reason, anyway.

Margaret, can I ask you to come up, lovey, and read this for us, darling? It's not as if I can't read, 'cos I'm going to go back through it in a bit, but all is good.

So it's John 16, 23 to 33.

And in that day you will ask me nothing. Most assuredly I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask and you will receive, that your joy may be full. These things I have spoken to you in figurative language, but the time is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language, but I will tell you plainly about the Father. In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you, for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came forth from God. I came forth from the Father, and have come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go to the Father. His disciples said to him, See now you are speaking plainly and using no figure of speech. Now we are sure that you know all things and have no need that anyone should question you. By this we believe that you came forth from God. Jesus answered them, Do you now believe? Indeed, the hour is coming, yes, has now come, that you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.

I'm just going to go over that with you the way it's in my head today. I'm just going to go over that and then give my understanding to what is there and what I believe I've received in prayer.

And in that day, you will ask me nothing. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you. Until now, you have asked nothing in my name. Ask and you will receive and your joy may be full. And I look at that there, to be the power of the name of Jesus. He's declaring there the power of the name of Jesus. And when we're asking in the name of Jesus, there's clearly there a joy that comes. See, something happens when we're in a bad situation in life, when we are in, whether it be a financial one, a sickness one, in whatever situation, when we commit it to God and we leave it with God, we instantly get a peace at the back of it. We instantly get a peace at the back of it. So if we've not left it with God, for an example, Debbie, For example, Debbie, with the cancer situation. And on many times, I would smile when she'd said it because I fully understood where she was coming from. I've got a peace. I've got a peace. She knew that God was doing something. And when we commit it to God, and fully commit to God, and we leave it at his feet, God gives us a peace at the back of it. And it's a peace that passes all understanding.

And then he goes on to say, Jesus Christ has overcome the world. Jesus Christ has overcome the world. That's the title to it. At the end of it, I'll just read the end before I read the beginning because I'm a bit weird. And I'm reading this because on Friday, this scripture keeps coming up. So these things I've spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.

And the point I want to, I believe God's trying to bring out in a sense, is that God has already overcome your problem. He's already overcome my problem. And yet, We've got a problem in front of us. It's when we commit it to God, when we commit it to Him, and we leave it at His feet, and we rejoice around His feet, knowing that He's in control, that the problem disappears. The problem disappears. And we've seen this many a time with it in our life, with many different situations.

Going back to the beginning again now. These things I have spoken to you in figurative language. But the time is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language, but I will tell you plainly about the Father. Figurative language. He spoke to his disciples in riddles, because there was other people there. And then later on at night time, they would ask him, what does it mean that? Well, it means this. And he spoke to people so not everybody could understand it. Not everybody could understand it. But God says in these days now, he'll speak to us clearly. Now, I know that in my life, there's been times when God's given me a picture or a vision or a dream. And he's spoken to me And it's not made sense for years later. And then all of a sudden, the dream or the vision or the picture that God gave me, all of a sudden I re-get it and I re-understand it. I now understand it. But God is highlighting it to me. He is pouring it on me. So God will always prepare you into whatever you're going into. He'll only ever give you the next step. He'll only ever give you the next step. Because the next step, that's all our brains can control, is the next step. While God knows the last step, because He's the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega.

In that day, you will ask in my name. And I do not say to you that I shall pray to the Father for you. For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved me, and have believed that I came from God. And when I read that, the father loves Brian Hesketh. The father loves Brian Hesketh. He loves me. He loves me. He loves me. But he loves you too. Now my understanding as a young Christian, when I first become a Christian, I used to read the Old Testament and think, I'm glad we're in the New, because it seemed to be so vicious. And it was only when my brain really clicked in properly to it that I realised just how much love, how much grace God has got for us. And he really has. He really, really has.

One thing I didn't say about my testimony, about how much God has actually changed me, and he really has changed me. Because I loved me drugs. I loved me women. I loved all sorts of things that I shouldn't love. But I did. And God took all them desires from me. He took the drugs away from me instantly. And I thought that was peace. I wouldn't give it up, to be truthful, with you. And it was only when God told me through scripture, what would happen, right? I'd be rolling a spliff. I'd be rolling a spliff and I'd be convicted about rolling the spliff. And then as soon as I lit it, I'd be even more convicted. By the time I got half rolled around, didn't care. But then next day when I'd be rolling another spliff, I'd be rolling it up and I'd be convicted again till it come to a point of like, Lord, this is peace. Do you not like this? And the Lord gave me a scripture. Can't tell you where it is, but it actually says that anybody of a drunken mind cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. I walked straight to the bin with all of it. Me skins me, ID child. It went straight in the bin from that time. Something that I believed that was peace, I literally got rid of instantly and I got rid of it because it was a false peace. It was false. It was from the enemy. And I realised at that point that it was, so I got rid of it and I don't even know how I'm getting on to this. So yeah, God does love us. Thank you. I just realised that you just reminded me. God loves us. That is the truth of it. He loves us with an undying love. He loves us beyond. Beyond.

I came far from the Father and I've come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go to the Father. His disciples said to him, see now you are speaking plainly and using no figurative of speech. Now we are sure that you know all things and have no need that anyone should question you. By this, we believe that you came from God. You know, the disciples spent three and a half years with the Lord. And slowly but surely, they started to realise, hey'd on, there's something different about this guy. He gets a bit of water and turns it into wine and it is a belter. I mean, they realised that there was something special about him. But it was only right towards the end that they realised that he was the Messiah. They realised that he was the Christ, realised that he was the chosen one. Even when he went to the cross, they didn't realise that he had to rose from the dead, even though he actually tells them in the gospels. They didn't realise all these things. They weren't scriptural men. They were men picked out from different walks of life. Men picked out like the bin man, the electrician, different walks of life. They picked, God picked on different people, fishermen, et cetera. He picked people that he could use in his kingdom to his glory. And when he does that, you actually get his peace. you actually get his peace. But then Jesus goes on to say, Do you now believe? Do you now believe? And I sometimes wonder me, especially when there's a question mark on it, how does God say that? How does the Lord say that? Does he like, do you now believe? Or he's like, so you now believe? Thank you. know what I mean? I don't know how the Lord is putting that. But to me, I think it's more of a like, it's about time. You know what I mean? Because he was with them 3 1/2 years. They saw a wonderful thing, the raising of the dead, et cetera. They've seen all the miracles that the Lord did. And there were so many miracles that he did, the word of God says that there's not enough books that you could put it in. You know what I mean? You'd be felling trees all day just to write what the Lord does.

Do you now believe, indeed, the hour is coming. Yes, and has now come that you will be scattered, each one to his own, and will leave me alone. And yet I am not alone because the Father is with me. Indeed, the hour has come. Yes, has come now that you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave me alone. And yet I'm not alone because the Father is with me. These things I've spoken to you that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. And be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.

It doesn't matter what problem we've got. It doesn't matter what problem that we have got today. Jesus Christ has conquered it at the cross. It doesn't matter if you've got a bad back, a bad head, cancer, it doesn't matter because he's literally conquered it at the cross. All we have to do is claim it because he's actually done. He's actually conquered this over 2,000 years ago. And us as Christians, go all to him with, please Lord, help me. And that's good. That's right. Please Lord, help me. We should always be in that place of submitting to God. Please Lord, help me. But the truth is, he's already done it. So the miracle that we are about to ask the Lord for, or the mountain that needs to be removed within our life, if we change tactics a bit and thank him, Because he's already done it. He's already done our problem. He's already removed our mountain. All he wants us to do as the body of Christ is attack it. Attack the problem.

Yesterday, I pulled my back out, helping a woman get some logs in the back of her car. I went to lift it up. It was too big. It went crack. My back went down. I couldn't jump in my car. I literally walked around my car twice before I plucked the courage up to sit in it. It were that bad. And driving home from there, I couldn't even put my clutch in. I was crunch, crunch, crunch, because I couldn't put my clutch in. When I get home, it took me I don't know how long to get out the car. This is only yesterday. My wife started to pray for me. Our Dom started to pray and massage me. Last night I'm sleeping with my legs up in air to keep my spine straight. But I'm praying and I'm praying and I'm commanding the pain to go. And this morning when I woke up, I still had pain. I've still got a bit of pain now, to be truthful, I'm not going to lie. But when we have pain in our body, the pain speaks to you. And the pain tells you, I'm hurting. It tells you, Brian, your back's hurting because you pulled it out. And what we need to do is to speak back to the pain and tell the pain to go away. Tell the pain to go away, out the body. And as the pain reminds you, remind the pain that Jesus Christ has already conquered it. He's already beat it and removed the pain by commanding it to go, basically. And that's where I've been for the last day, really, with our, and I'm going to kind of wrap it up here, I think.

A few things that come to me that I'm just going to read out. I'm just going to read out. One thing, you know, the testimony at the beginning. Sometimes when we're up here and we speak, we have no idea of who it's speaking to. No idea. That's the truth. Me and Roger's had come, conversations about this. That's the truth of it. No idea what God's doing in the room because we're not God. We're just silly bin men, basically. We went speaking in Wales a bit back. It was about four months ago. And without going into it, was testimony, all testimony. And when we'd finished going through the different testimonies, a guy got up and he got up and he come to me for prayer and went, I can't believe it. I watched my dad die, just like you, but I didn't trust my God, so he didn't come back. My brother robbed me, just like you. It was 27 grand, just like you, but I went bankrupt. He says, I've got cancer now as we speak. He says, I really believe God is telling me today, here, to trust him, instead of trusting whatever, or trusting his thing. And the guy in Wales, we literally, all the testimonies that I believe God gave me to show that day, he had experienced them. He'd experienced all these problems in his life as a Christian, but decided not to trust God. And yet he saw the other example of myself where I decided to trust God and God delivered me out of every single one. Delivered me out of every single one.

I'm just going to read this. God himself, the Father, loves you. John 3.16, for God so loved the world, he gave Jesus his only begotten Son, only begotten Son, so that we can be free today. We can be free today. We can have salvation in him today. If you're not saved today, if you don't know Jesus Christ today, it's time to get serious with him, because time is running out. Time is running out. Seek the face of Jesus in prayer. Ask and believe in the name of Jesus. Speak to the pain. I've just said ... Speak to the pain. Your sickness, your debt, speak to your mountain and remove it. Your pain speaks to you, speak back to it and command the pain to get underneath what's written. Command your debt to line up. Command your emotions, your depression, your habits. Command them to go.

God has overcome your problem. It's time to trust him and claim it in the name of Jesus. We've heard within this here, in quite clearly saying within these scriptures about the name of Jesus, and that you're going to start asking the Father in the name of Jesus. When we declare the name Jesus, I watch people me at work blaspheming Jesus Christ this, Jesus Christ that. And it frustrates me to death. Because if they actually, and I tell them, I mean, when I have people at work, they don't do it now because they know they're going to get the gospel straight up back. But when they do, and they come out with, oh, Jesus Christ, I always say, what church do you go to now? Did you come to the Lord Jesus Christ? I'll tell you how I... And I just give them the Bible. I give them testimony, and I give them the Bible. And they just look at me and say, not doing that again. Take every thought captive. I've skipped a bit here, but we're going in. Take every thought captive. Remove unclean thoughts and replace them with the mind of Christ. And you know, we've been talking about pain. We've been talking about this, talking about that. The enemy speaks to us. The enemy speaks to us. He speaks to us within our problems. And when he speaks to us, he always puts doubt. He always puts fear. He always puts fear.

Some of our looked up today, fear. 365 times in the Bible, fear not is in the Bible. One for every day. Fear not. God doesn't want us to be in fear. He wants us to be in faith. And when we're in faith in God, we then get that peace. Not that stone peace, real peace. We get the peace of God. Another one.

Submit your will to God and watch the enemy flee. As we submit our way and will to God, the enemy has to leave. He has no authority. He has to leave. Find quality time with God and don't let the enemy interfere with your mind. The element of salvation we spoke about last time, of where the enemy comes in and speaks to you and puts doubt in you, puts fear in you, of how to distinguish that. Be renewed by the spirit, by the mind of Christ, be renewed by Christ, be renewed by the word of God, be renewed by prayer, be renewed by worshipping God. When we do these things, the enemy has to flee. Once we submit our will to God, the enemy has to flee. And if that's temptation or sin or whatever, the enemy has to flee. He has to go.

Find quiet time with God and don't let the enemy interfere with your mind. Do you know what I find me? I'm comin to the end. I know when I find me, sometimes I'll go to prayer, right? And I'll say, right, go and have me quiet time now with God. And I'll go, and I go, oh, I didn't reply to that text. I'll just reply to that text. And I'll go, and I'll reply to that text. Go, oh, I'll go in there in a minute. Time's gone. It's missed. And what I've actually done, I've actually put me phone or me text before I put God. That's the truth. And then you've got social media. My phone when it's, I put it on don't disturb, but I'm so popular it's always going off. Do you get like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding coming, with message coming through, your WhatsApp coming through, we've got everything that's coming through. If you actually left it on all the time, all you hear is ding, ding, ding, ding, and it's alertin' you. Let's have a look, let's have a look, let's have a look. It's about spending that time with God. Put your phone to one side, put the TV to one side, put everything to one side, and spend that quality time with God. And what you'll find is, if you get serious in that area, if you get serious in that area, and you spend that quality time with God, and I'm speaking to myself here as well here, I'm speaking to myself as I'm speaking to you. If you do that, you will learn to hear the voice of God much better. Because the distractions that are around you are there no more. They're not there anymore. So it's only going to be your voice, the enemy's voice or God's voice. All we've got to do is distinguish which is which.

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. and forgive those who trespass against you. Forgiveness. Sometimes the hardest thing to forgive is yourself. That's the hardest thing to forgive. With me, with the things that I did before Christianity, the hardest thing is to forgive yourself.

Gonna call it though. Yeah. Jobs a good 'un. Can I just go through, just read the Lord's prayer? Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, And forgive us our debts, as we forgive those debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the kingdom, and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.