It's Supernatural

PAT: And we’re not allowing her to get married till she’s 45 or 50! But anyway. [Laughs] But talk to us for just a second longer before we go to a break that what birthed this book inside of you? What birthed writing about raising burning hearts? Where did that come from?

PATRICIA: Well I have to say honestly it was the Word of the Lord to me. It’s just like He said I want you to write this book. And I’m like I’m still in the process of raising kids! But you know God has really blessed us! The three oldest who are all in ministry. Our son Judah is right now working underneath Lou Engle and his Ecumenical School of Missions.

PAT: Oh!

PATRICIA: Our daughter is at IHOP, International House of Prayer with her husband on staff there. Another daughter is on staff at a House of Prayer in Quebec in Canada. And so what we’ve seen is that they themselves have carried these values of really loving God and so it’s on the heart of the Father that we go back to family, as God designed it! I think you can agree with me.

PAT: Beautiful, yeah!

PATRICIA: That the breakdown of family, is one of the largest contributors to society’s breakdown! And so if we can go back to hey, let’s see the hearts of the fathers turn to the children and see the hearts of the children turn to the fathers! Let’s see the healing that God wants to do right there in the family! Let’s prioritize that! So that’s really what it was birthed out of and certainly birthed out of the heart of our heavenly Father!

PAT: Well you’re watching Something More! [Music] And we’ve got Patricia Bootsma here with us and we’re really excited! Hang on! When she comes back she’s going to tell us how to awaken God in your home!

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PAT: Hey welcome back to Something More! We have Patricia Bootsma here! And she and her husband are pastors there in Toronto at Catch the Fire! God is using them! They’ve raised, I mean six children. Some are still being raised.

PATRICIA: Yes.

PAT: But just mighty warriors for the kingdom! And you know I think that the Lord is using you even on this program because before we go even deeper into it I want to talk about the revelatory gift.

PATRICIA: Yeah.

PAT: How to teach your kids how to hear the voice of God. But talk to the single mom that’s watching out there because – or the single dad that’s out there and, you know, that are walking through tough times in their home. You know the school is sending them reports. Your kid’s got ADD, ADHD. They’ve got all this. I used to say I’ve had ABCDEFG! 

PATRICIA: Hah!

PAT: And talk to the single parent that’s watching right now! I really think the Lord is going to use you right now to speak to that parent that’s just done!

PATRICIA: Yeah, absolutely! You know I’d say first of all there is always hope! That in God there is always hope! And so we have the Father who Isaiah 54 talks about as her husband can come along and help. And I really think it’s important that we as a church to come alongside the single moms in our church. We’re trying to do that. Even pair godly men. I remember this man in our church when I was really getting a lot of healing about father wounds.

Kyle Winkler: Welcome to Something More! I’m Kyle Winkler! My guest today lives one of the most miraculous lives of just about anybody that I know! I mean from encounter to encounter to encounter to the point of him being saved from death! We’ll touch on that in just a little bit. But through it all he has developed an intimacy to talk and hear from God and he’s here today to share with you how you can hear from God yourself right now! So if you’re interested in that then perk your ears up and help me welcome Bruce Van Natta! Bruce, thank you so much for joining me!

Bruce Van Natta: Thanks for having me, Kyle!

KYLE: You’ve got quite the story and as I was even preparing for this interview I mean it is a faith building story!

BRUCE: Yes.

KYLE: From prodigal to full-time ministry. And at the end of that, November 16th, 2006 you’ve moved on from all kinds of experiences and God really getting your attention through a bunch of things.

BRUCE: Yeah, absolutely.

KYLE: But this one experience really changed everything for you! Tell us about that. 

BRUCE: It was a tipping point! Yeah. So as you mentioned 2006 I was a mechanic. I was working on a large Peterbilt logging truck and this semi-truck ended up falling on top of me. I got crushed in half. I ended up one inch thick in here. Two inches thick here. Flat! Five places major arteries severed. Small intestine, spleen, pancreas. Everything in the middle completely crushed! Ended up – 

KYLE: So you have a truck on top of you at that point.

BRUCE: Yeah. A semi-truck fell on top of me. Crushed me into the cement. And I ended up bleeding out at the scene of the accident. The volunteer fire department came and a Christian lady came and prayed me back to life three times at the scene of the accident! I had an out-of-body experience. I got to see the two angels that God sent.

KYLE: You saw two angels. 

BRUCE: Two angels. Yes.

KYLE: God sent to bring you back to life?

BRUCE: To minister to my body.

KYLE: To minister to your body.

BRUCE: The lady prayed me back to life. Three times. God spoke to me in it all. So it was very – I spent the next year in the hospital. So it was a very huge, huge supernatural event! And it was life-changing. I had been called to ministry and had been disobedient. And it was a tipping point to get me into ministry.

KYLE: I know you had mentioned before that you were a prodigal to full-time ministry.

BRUCE: Yeah.

KYLE: So God had been as we said trying to get your attention. I mean what more attention-getting can you get than angels ministering to you?

BRUCE: Yeah.

KYLE: And I know we could talk the whole segment on just that.

BRUCE: Absolutely. 

KYLE: But you’ll be doing an interview with Sid on that where people can find more about your story there. But with an encounter like you had or encounters, many miraculous things over your life one would expect that you would develop an intimacy with God from things like that and you have. You hear and you talk to God and you would say that prayer is key to having an intimate relationship with God. Right?

BRUCE: Absolutely! It’s that communication. That back and forth.

KYLE: And we know that the Bible talks so much about prayer but a couple of things that it says that I think sometimes people wonder how do we do this is it says that we should pray without ceasing.

SID: I am going to take this wonderful opportunity to ask a couple of questions to John Bevere that I’ve really wanted to hear from him the answers. John, you said something when I interviewed you on television. You said there was a season in your life where you were praying in the Holy Spirit two hours every day. But then you made a switch and tell me what the switch was and the results that happened.

JOHN: The switch was, I kept— if I’m, if I’m remembering, I’m going back to our radio interview. I was praying everyday “God use me.” Use me to win multitudes to Jesus, use me to cast out demons, use me to heal the sick people, use me to restore people’s lives, restore marriages. And I was praying this way for years. And one day the Holy Spirit spoke to me and He said, “Your prayers are off.” And I said, “What!” He said, “Your prayer are off target.” And I said I’m asking you to use me win multitudes to Jesus, to heal people, to heal marriages, to heal bodies. How can they be off? And He said this to me, He said, “Judas cast our devils, Judas healed the sick, Judas preached repentance, Judas led people to me,” because when He sent the 12 out He sent the 12 out. He said, “Judas left everything he had to follow me.” He said, “Judas is in hell.”

SID: Uh!!

JOHN: When He said that to me, I literally started trembling inside. I said, ‘then what should I be praying?” And then He said to me, “What Paul prayed: that I might know Him.” And so those who know their God will be strong and do exploits. So He said, “You can use me.” He said, “I don’t use people. I transform them into the image of My son.”

AUDIENCE: Mmmm, huh!

JOHN: I mean can you just see me coming into my— or my wife coming in to me and saying, “John, use me to make babies for you! (pleading) I want to make babies, Ohhh— I want to make babies. Give me babies or I’m going to die!

SID: Ha!

AUDIENCE: (LAUGHTER)

JOHN: Okay, so what would I look at my wife and say? Oh my gosh, who did I marry! Okay? (Sid and audience laugh) But we’re intimate and out of our intimacy came four really great boys. And He said, “I want you intimate with me.” So my whole prayer started changing. “God, I want to know You intimately. I want to know You intimately. I want to know You like You know me.” Well you know what’s interesting? This was back in 1984-85. And in this time period when I started changing my prayer, I started getting free. I was bound to pornography and here I was in the ministry.

And I asked Lester Sumrall to pray for me. I opened up to him, I said, “I’m bound, will you pray for me?” He prayed a very strong prayer and nothing happened. Nine months later I’m on a four day fast, and May the 6st, 1985 I get completely delivered from pornography. Okay? So I’m walking in my freedom a couple a years and I said to God, I said, “I don’t get it.” I mean I humbled myself. I asked one of the strongest men of God I know on the planet to get me delivered, and I don’t get delivered. And then nine months later I’m on this fast and I get delivered.

And the Lord showed me that what I was praying, I was praying that “God use me, God use me” and I was afraid that pornography was going to keep me to the preaching ministry I know I was called to. He said, “But then you changed your prayers and you said I want to know you, I want to know you intimately. And He said, “You had sorrow, but your sorrow was worldly when you opened up with Dr. Sumrall.” He said, ‘nine months later your sorrow was godly because your heart was breaking because you knew your sin was breaking My heart.” So if you look at the difference you can see it in two kings. Saul says, “I’ve sinned, I’ve sinned.”

But he’s embarrassed, so he says ‘now honor me by worshipping with me in front of my elders.” You’ve embarrassed me in front of my elders. David, when he gets nailed, falls on his face and said “I have sinned and against You only I have sinned.” He couldn’t care less what his elders thought. So that’s the difference between worldly sorrow and godly sorrow. Godly sorrow the focus is on Him, worldly sorrow the focus is on what’s going to happen to me. And when we pray that we can know Him intimately, that we can please Him the best a man or woman can please Him, now it’s all about this relationship over everything else and that’s what pleases the heart of God. See Psalm 89, verse 7 says: “God is to be greatly feared in the assembly of the saints, and to be held in reverence by all those who surround him.”

So you’ll never find the presence God in an atmosphere where He’s not held in the utmost of respect. I remember when I learned this experientially. Back in 1996, I was asked to speak in Brazil, the nation of Brazil. There were thousands of people at this conference, it was a national conference. I’m the Friday night speaker. They drive me to the auditorium. There’s cars parked everywhere. And as I come into the auditorium I can hear the worship coming from the inside of the building. Because in their big auditoriums down there, if they have a ceiling on it, there’s like a six foot gap between the upper wall and the ceiling, and it’s for air ventilation but you can hear what’s going on inside. So they walk me in, they put me on the platform. There’s not a seat open anywhere.

Thousands of Brazilians, right? So there’s no presence of God. There’s no presence of God in the whole auditorium. Now when I say this Sid, as we know there are 2 types of the presence of God. There is the “omnipresence” of God. That is where David said “where can I go from your presence? If I go to the highest mountain you’re there, if I make my bed in the lowest valley you’re there.” That’s the presence of God that says “I’ll never leave you nor forsake you.” That’s the omnipresence of God. The other presence of God the Bible speaks about is the “manifest presence” of God. “Manifest” is to bring from the unseen into the realm of the seen, the unheard into the realm of the heard, the unknown into the realm of the known. It’s when God reveals Himself to our senses. Okay?

That is a very real experience in Christianity. Jesus said, “I will manifest Myself to you,” right? So that presence was totally void in that— and I’m sitting there going ‘this is a believer’s conference.” Place is packed, best worship leaders in the nation, why is there no presence!? So I asked the Lord, I said, “God, why is there no presence?” And all of a sudden God open up my eyes and I’m looking at the people. And they’re standing there with their hands in their pocket looking around like this, they got their arms crossed looking down like this, they’re whispering to one another, they’re fumbling through their purses, and they’re walking in and out of this auditorium getting concession stand stuff, okay—

SID: It’s like going to a football game!