Sid:I have on the telephone a man that has one of the missing ingredients, his name is Al Houghton and I’m speaking to him at his home in Anaheim, California. Al has a new… I’ll call it a new old paradigm.You see the first church understood this but over the centuries we’ve lost what the first church had in a lot of areas. And I believe Al has touched a necessary ingredient that has been hidden for so long to Christians that will literally turn the history of the United States of America from going downhill to being the country that God created it to be. Now Al tell me a bit about yourself, how did you, and I know that God works with us as individuals and you’re a prophetic type of person. How did you even come into understanding this ancient understanding of the first church?
Al:Well Sid I started out as an ex-military type who God got a hold of and said, “I want you to go into ministry instead of being an airline pilot.” And I said, “Oh no,” so I had to give up one career and pick up another and so the faith movement for me or the what’s called the word of faith, the promises of God if you put them into your mouth confession brings possession was a natural message in my early days. And I got a hold of that and I pushed that for 7 years.Then the Lord spoke to me, I still remember where I was, when God comes upon you it’s like His thumbprint can touch you and he just turns your whole direction. And he said to me the year was 1983 in Lancaster, California.He said, “Abraham was a father of them that believe and he didn’t know any of that stuff you’re preaching.” And I thought “Oh my God he just wiped out 7 years of ministry and five hundred messages.” I went back to find out how Abraham used his faith and he didn’t use his faith just to get everything he wanted, he didn’t call for pleasure, he didn’t call for all these different things that we’re teaching and allowing people to do today in the application of their faith. He had to use his faith on his flesh to obey God and come against his very culture.It was unthinkable to leave your patriarchal father and go your own way but that’s what Abraham, God called Abraham to do. And so it was through God’s intervention that I began to look at the scripture in a whole new way, plus I discovered that Jesus was not only Savior, healer, baptizer in the Holy Spirit, deliverer, but He was also Judge. And I had taught people for seven years and never said anything about Jesus the Judge.
Sid:Alright, help me to understand something, I believe that it is Biblical and it is scriptural to meditate on God’s word day and night, to speak God’s word out loud in the Name of Jesus, especially the promises and have things change before your very eyes. That is Biblical, what is the missing ingredient from that message that you were giving previous to that word from God?
Al:The missing ingredient was in the way I was preaching it I never brought, what I would call the serving God serving others mode, and I allowed people to use their faith and all the promises for anything they wanted to satisfy their flesh verses serving God’s purpose and serving others. Now Jesus called that denying yourself and taking up the cross and follow Me; it’s simply the issue of who am I living for, am I living for me or am I living for family, am I living to serve others…
Sid: But isn’t that what Jesus said the most important commandments were to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself?
Al: Yes, He certainly did but He also had a plan for service where we lay our life down for Him and He said, “Seek ye first the kingdom then all these things will be added unto you.” I taught people how to get the “things” and they went out to get the “things” and they missed the kingdom, and they missed the servant side.
Sid:Is it possible to get the “things” and to miss the Kingdom and miss the servant side?
Al: It is very possible to do Sid.
Sid:That’s kind of scary.
Al: Well, it was scary to me.If God had not intervened sovereignly and supernaturally I would have gone a way of so many others; building this building that for me versus the issue of using my faith for God’s purposes. Any minister today in America has a choice, we can use our faith to extract from God’s people a level of living we want, or if we go the service route we can use our faith to lift them into a whole different dimension in Christ where they can change the course of history of nations and cities. And that’s the call that God has right now and it’s also in the covenant of sure mercy.
Sid: How did you find out about how this covenant of sure mercies operates; how did God lead you this way?
Al: Well, the Lord spoke to me… the impression you get in your spirit all of sudden a strong impression to do something and it hits your mind and you think “I have to do that.” Now when that happens to me I believe that’s God speaking, I had this strong impression that I had to go study covenant and it came actually in Stuttgart, Germany in 1998 with this question “When did I speak to my servant David about his son Solomon before or after he met Bathsheba?” And I thought “I don’t know.” And then the impression came go find out. Well, it was four chapters before, four chapters before the greatest failure of David’s life God gave him a covenant of sure mercy in 2nd Samuel 7:15 it’s the essence of it.It says “I will not take my mercy from you as I took it from Saul who was before you.” Now I thought “Well, how did God take His mercy from Saul?” So I went back to 1st Samuel 15 where Saul had a failure militarily he refused to execute God’s judgment on a city, on everyone and he lost his office, he lost his call, he lost the anointing of the Holy Spirit to walk in the office and fulfill the call, three things. So when David had his major failure, then those were the first three things he stands on in Psalm 51.Then the Lord said, “Now look what I did for David, I redeemed his failure and made it the platform for his ultimate success.” What he wanted to do was build God a house and this had to tweak every Pharisee in Israel because the son of David and Bathsheba a relationship that started in murder and adultery. God redeemed through the covenant of sure mercy and after David’s repentance and brought out of it the wisest man who ever lived; who built a temple of mercy that promised any time the Jewish people found themselves in captivity if they would turn towards Jerusalem and toward that temple and repent God would hear, see answer and restore them. He would remember His covenant of sure mercy.
Sid:Briefly what does that covenant of sure mercy mean to the 21st century Christian?
Al: It means two things Sid, it is the answer to the promise of Psalm 149:6, 7, 8 and 9. “Let the high praise of God be in their mouth and a two edged sword in their hand.”A two edged sword. Edge number one is two cut away all shame, and guilt when repentance or when failure comes and people turn and they acknowledge their sin then God promises if we repent that he will cut away all the sham, he will cut away all the guilt and through forgiveness He will bring us into justification, righteousness of redemption. Actually he did for David because he said “He made him a witness to the people,”He will make that sin become a platform for our future ministry and calling and fulfilling our impact in the earth.
Sid:Now what is the 2nd thing?
Al: The second edge of the sword and that’s the edge that has been lost to the New Testament Church in our day. I mean they had it in the book of Acts but we don’t have it today and that is “The authority to what I would say go judicial, what I would call going Judicial.That’s when you evoke the covenant of sheer mercy you bring a person or situation into the judgment seat of Christ. For example, God kept saying to me “You know David, You don’t know David.” I said, “What do you mean I don’t know David I’ve studied David for years, what are you talking about, I don’t know David?” I went back to look at how David used his covenant of sheer mercy.
Sid:I’ll tell you what, they’re going to read your brand new book literally right off the press called “The Sure mercies of David, this will give you such confidence before God literally change the destiny of yourself, you family and your nation.
Tags: It’s Supernatural, Sid Roth