It's Supernatural

Sid:  My guest, Chad Dedmon is a young man that God has had His hand on for his whole life, he tried to get away from the call, he tried to get away for being a Pastor’s son, but he couldn’t do it.  And in fact when he was fifteen he had a very unhealthy relationship with a girl and at seventeen he broke up and then he went out to a revival meeting because he was forced to in Pensacola, Florida, the Brownsville Assembly of God and he literally laughed for two day.  Get’s back to his High School and a couple hundred students become radical; many most of them get saved and became radical for Jesus.  So out of curiosity did you find a new girl friend, Chad?

Chad:  Ha ha, no I didn’t actually, when I came back from Florida Jesus asked me “Chad, will you not date any girl for a year and will you date Me?”  And I simply said, “Yes.”  But I took that seriously, I said, “Okay.  Well we’re go to go and we’re to have date night every week.”  So and I would talk to Jesus out loud because I would expect Him to talk back.”  And I thought to myself, Jesus is real and He’s just as real as anyone as I’m talking to you and so I would talk out loud and I would take him out to restaurants and I would order two…

Sid:  Weren’t you concerned about what people would think?  I mean, you know what people do with people like that; they put them in an institution?

Chad:    Yes, yeah I just knew that Jesus is real, he was tangible and I just took seriously what He said, He said, “Date Me for a year.”  So I’m like, what do you do with dates?  You take them out to dinner, you talk to them, you get to know them; you take walks and so I would walk on the beach and it was before blue tooth and I would talk out loud and people would give me a weird look.

Sid:  Now I know that you hear God’s voice, but I would have to assume that most of what’s you did was a one way conversation.

Chad:  Yes, it was probably about 80% one way, but I would hear His voice time in and time in and I would order two meals when I went to a restaurant.  And people would say, “Well, it’s only you, when’s your other member of your party going to be here?”  And I’d say, “Well, He’s already here and He’s in His seat right beside me,” and they would look at me very strangely, but I was like I’m taking Jesus out on dates.

Sid:  And many times, not many times, I think most every evening you would start weeping in your bedroom because the presence of God would be so precious to you; tell me about that.

Chad:  Yeah, it was back when there was cassette tapes and I got one cassette tape from Brownsville and I would just play that and just weep and cry out to God and you know, I would be crying and my Dad would come in and say, “Hey it’s time to mow the lawn.”  And he would just find me on the floor and just a mess just weeping and crying and saying “God I love you, Jesus I love you.”  And he would say to himself, “Well I think I’ll go mow the lawn because this is way better you know then him mowing the lawn, I don’t want to disturb him.”  So it was an incredible season of just desperation of hunger, I mean I’d go on fasts and I would just be seeking God and really feasting on God’s presence.  I really believe that when people fast, when they give up something they should be feasting on God’s presence, they’re not just saying no to something, but their saying yes to Him.

Sid:  And now your Father says, “One of the major catalysts for having an encounter with God is hunger for God,” and what you’re describing is you had a great, great hunger for God.  What advice would you give someone that’s listening to us right now that loves God, but just doesn’t have that hunger, how do they get that hunger?

Chad:  Well, we were all created to be hungry for God; we were all created to encounter God supernaturally.  It says, “Taste and see that God is good.”  When Moses encountered God, God said, “Hey, I am going to show you My goodness, I’m going to reveal my goodness.”  See Moses has an encounter, supernaturally with the King of Glory and it had to do with God’s goodness.  And so it says “Taste and see that He is good” and so we are called to feast; it’s almost like an all you can eat buffet bar.  You get to have as much as you want of God, you get to eat as much as you want of God.  And so it’s really our decision, there is something in us that comes alive and says “God, I want you no matter what it looks like, no matter what the cost, I want a supernatural God that reveals Himself.”  And so that’s the advice I would give is just to begin to cultivate that hunger, begin to surround yourself with hungry people, I mean that’s one of the things…

Sid:  I think that’s a big key, if you surround yourself with lukewarm Christians, guess what you become, lukewarm.

Chad:   It is, it is key I mean that was probably one of the things that changed my life being at the Bethel School of Ministry, that I was surrounded by people that were hungry.  And so we would pray until 5:00 in the morning, that’s what I did in High School.  I would get people around me and we would pray through the night and we were just hungry, we would go out into the streets, we would climb into dumpsters; because we were hungry to see Jesus be supernatural.

Sid:  Now there was one night you were in a dorm room in Brownsville and someone prayed for you, what happened?

Chad:  Yeah, I was in a men’s prayer meeting and I had a bunch of people praying for me, but no one was in front of me.  I closed my eyes and I felt like someone punched me right in the stomach and I went flying about a good seven feet and I began to shake so hard my friend said that I was like a fish out of water being electrocuted.  And I shook so hard my shoes went flying off, my shirt came off and I would shake from one end of the room to the other on the floor and I was having this supernatural encounter with God where I could hear people praying, but it was like background noise.  I was aware of this reality, but it was another reality coming in, breaking in and I began to see this cloud with like this electricity and you can’t really even put it into words, but I got taken into Heaven.  I got taken up in the Spirit and I saw the throne room where I saw the Father sitting on the throne and he leaned towards me and as he got closer to me I saw waves of God’s love.  It just kept on getting deeper and deeper, this revelation of His love and He opened up His mouth and He began to speak, but I didn’t hear anything in my audible, I didn’t hear anything with my ears, but I felt the love of God when He opened up His mouth I could feel what he’s saying in my bones.  It was like electricity going through my body and it was the deepest revelation of the love of the Father that I’ve ever had.

Sid:  Now, you’re doing what the Bible says you’re supposed to do, and that is provoke the Jewish people to jealousy, but I’m already a believer.  But I think that anyone that had experienced the full love of God pouring into them it’s got to be a major life changing event in your life.

Chad:   Yeah, it propelled me into you know the fruit and the miraculous and the supernatural was this Baptism of the Fathers love.  It lasted seventeen hours, but it became a lifestyle.

Sid:  But I understand that people had to carry you around because you couldn’t function.

Chad:  I could not function and actually they tried to get me out of it to try to make curfew and so I was coming out of it and I realized, wait a second I’ve been praying eighteen months to encounter the Father’s love and so I began to thank God. I began to go into thanksgiving and thanksgiving always increases the presence of God.  It always prepares the way for breakthrough and so I began to thank Him and suddenly I went right into the throne room and from that point on I woke up on someone’s floor about fifteen hours later and I was apparently screaming I love Jesus this whole time.  Woke up the whole dorm room, the men’s dorms and woman’s dorms and they began to see what God was doing with me and it became contagious where they began to go into this all night prayer where they started encountering God supernaturally.

Sid:  Now that is normal, how would you like to be normal?  Well, one thing would make you normal is if you had the same Dad that Chad had, Kevin Dedmon.  How about if Kevin mentors you?