David Hathaway

Based on the Book of James, chapter 4, we are encouraged to ask God to supply our needs, but we need to ask with the right motive.

The reason you don't receive is because you don't ask God. You know, it – it's very interesting because in my life, I've always tended to take counsel from God and ask Him. I didn't ask my mother or my father – you may find that strange, but I didn't – and I didn't ask my brother. I'm just thinking at the moment, I can still see myself going into the shop, looking in the shop window, then going in the shop. And I certainly wasn't asking my mother, my father, my brother what I should get. Even in those days, I used to ask the Lord.

It's quite funny, really, when I think back. I'd say, "Lord, just show me which is the best that I should get." And the interesting thing was that whenever I submitted the choice to the Lord, I always seemed to end up with the best. This has been quite significant all my life, that if I'm desiring the best things, yes, God will supply them.

Because, verse 3: "When you ask, you don't receive because you're not asking God, but you don't receive because you ask with the wrong motives." Have you thought about this? There are two reasons why you don't get what you want: one, because you're not asking God; and secondly, because you're asking with the wrong motives – because you want something simply for your own pleasure. We look at things from a spiritual perspective, not just material.

Based on the Book of James, chapter 4, we are encouraged to ask God to supply our needs and not to be jealous of what others have.

There is a battle going on: good against evil. Do we do this, or do we do that? It's a battle that sometimes, in our choosing, in our choice, has to be fought on a regular basis. We have to choose.

James says that part of the battle is because we want something and we can't get it. You covet what somebody else has – and you know, covetousness is forbidden in the Scripture. It says don't covet anything that your neighbour's got, from his wife to his car. Don't covet. But he says here, "Don't kill because you cannot have what you want."

And then he goes on to the spiritual side, because what he's saying is: you quarrel and you fight, but you don't have what you want. And when I was studying this in preparation for speaking, I was quite intrigued and interested with the argument that James is using when he says in verse 3, when you ask, the reason you don't receive is because you don't ask God.

You know, it's very interesting because in my life, I've always tended to take counsel from God and ask Him. I didn't ask my mother or my father – you may find that strange, but I didn't – and I didn't ask my brother.

The cross is identification, not just that we identify with Jesus, but He identifies with us in our humanity. God sent His Son and allowed Him to suffer, to be rejected and despised. The Bible describes Him as a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Jesus was not born in a palace, but in a filthy animal stable. He never owned a house or received a salary or pension. God sent Jesus to reconcile us, to bring us back to Him, and so that we can understand that sometimes suffering leads us back to God.

Today the world is disintegrating into chaos, no peace anywhere, turmoil and unrest. The greatest message I can give you is that you are NOT alone or forgotten. When the angels announced the coming birth of Jesus, they called Him Immanuel, God with us. God is with you. The Son of God, Immanuel, is with you in every circumstance. For so many Jews, their names are recorded at Yad Vashem in memorial of those who suffered. But God wants to write our names in the Book of Life. Everyone whose name is written in that Book will never die, but live forever with Jesus in the Glory of God's Kingdom. 

'How great your love' used by kind permission of Vinesong.

For more information on the Ministry of David Hathaway https://www.eurovision.org.uk 

Based on the Book of James, chapter 4, we are told to submit ourselves to God and not to fight one another.

I've got a heading in my Bible which is, "Submit yourselves to God." And that really is the theme of this: submitting to the Lord – submission.

I don't think we fully understand the importance of submission. So often, if you're in a fight with two men, one does not want to submit to the other, but defeat that person. The most famous fight between God and man was with Jacob when he wrestled with God. And when it came to the morning, that neither side prevailed, and God actually had to touch Jacob's thigh and cripple him.

James starts off in the first verse by saying, "What causes fights and quarrels?" Yes, it's in families, it's in businesses, it's in the church – that's what James is inferring here. What is the origin of fighting and quarreling? And he says – and this is James's reasoning – "Don't they come from desires within you that are fighting?"

A lot of fighting is within ourselves. There is a battle going on: good against evil. Do we do this, or do we do that? We have to choose.

Based on the Book of James, chapter 3, we are urged to speak good, wholesome words which uplift others.

What we sow, we will also reap. I mean, this is a quotation from the Lord Himself: that what we sow, we reap. If you sow discord, then you'll suffer the results. But if you sow peace and love and kindness, then you'll receive the reward of that.

So, coming back to the beginning of this – and I really do feel that only James, the brother of Jesus, could write so strongly, so clearly what he's done here – be careful of your tongue, because what you say will echo what's actually in your heart; then we come into judgment.

We need to pray. And speaking to those who are in leadership, remember the responsibility. James begins with the responsibility that if you are a leader and a teacher, then you have responsibility not [just] for yourself. As an individual person, your responsibility before God is for your own life, but if you're a leader and a teacher, your responsibility before God is for others. Now, that's a big responsibility, and we need to realise the danger. Let's keep our hearts pure, our minds right, and let's not let the devil get in, but let's serve God and speak faithfully only good things.

When I was finally released from prison, everyone urged me to move on. They asked where I would go next, and when I told them I was going back behind the Iron Curtain, they did everything they could to stop me. Friends, colleagues, everyone I knew said: “Forget the past. Forget the suffering and imprisonment. Start a new life.”

I couldn't do that.

During my sentence, I was held in two different facilities – first in a city prison and later in a forced-labour camp. Before my release, which God brought about miraculously just as He had spoken to me, the men I had witnessed to pleaded with me. They said, “David, you’re the only person from the West who has lived with us and truly understands our conditions. When you get out, please don't forget us.”

Their cry stayed with me. I had to go back.

Returning was not easy. I found myself praying continually over the promise in Joel 2.28: “I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh.” I asked, “Lord, how can this happen behind the Iron Curtain?” The Lord gave me a clear vision. That's why I started this message by saying, “Without a vision, the people die.” I had a vision.

To watch the YouTube version https://youtu.be/AZPQu90HVuY 

For more information on the Ministry of David Hathaway https://www.eurovision.org.uk 

Based on the Book of James, chapter 3, we are urged to live a life of goodness so that only good deeds will pour forth.

It's easy to talk the talk, but not so easy to walk the walk. If you talk it, live it. Don't talk something and live differently.

Now, that comes basically from the Scripture. Because he says, he who's wise and understanding, show what you mean by what you say and what you do, and don't let your actions contradict your words, or your words contradict your actions.

And he says in verse 14, if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, don't boast about it or deny the truth. Such wisdom doesn't come down from heaven, and you have to understand the difference between what comes from heaven and what is earthly, unspiritual, and comes from the devil. For in verse 16, where you have envy and selfish ambitions, there you find disorder and every evil practice.

But in verse 17, the wisdom that comes from heaven is pure, peace-loving, submissive, full of mercy, good fruit, impartial, sincere, and peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.

Proverbs 29.18 delivers an uncompromising truth: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

Throughout Scripture, prophets, priests, and apostles were defined by one common thread: they were propelled by divine vision. Vision is not wishful thinking, nor is it a personal ambition dressed up in religious vocabulary. It is the steady, quiet conviction of hearing the voice behind you say: “This is the way, walk in it” (Isaiah 30.21).

When you possess God-given vision, it provides the endurance needed to press on when circumstances look impossible.

The Collision of Calling and Timing

In 1961, when the modern nation of Israel was just 13 years old, word spread of a global Pentecost conference hosted in Jerusalem. At that point, I was an evangelist planting churches across the UK. I had never been to Israel and had no natural desire to visit.

Yet the Holy Spirit began stirring a deeper hunger. I realised that for the first time in nearly two millennia, believers would gather in the Upper Room on the Day of Pentecost to pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Driven by clear divine timing, I went.

That single, obedient step changed everything. That journey unlocked the door behind the Iron Curtain, beginning decades of clandestine Bible smuggling, public evangelism, and church planting in the most restricted corners of the earth.

Almost all of my ministry contemporaries in post-WWII Britain chose to move to the United States, where ministry resources and funding were plentiful. Leaving for America seemed logical, comfortable, and practical. But it was not God's assignment for me. Divine vision demands that you go where you are sent, not where the path is easiest.

To watch the YouTube version https://youtu.be/VxUcFSsG2ak 

For more information on the Ministry of David Hathaway https://www.eurovision.org.uk 

Based on the Book of James, chapter 3, we are cautioned to be careful about the words we use. Jesus said, "Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks."

We should be consistent in what we say. And in verse 11, he sums it up very, very carefully: "Can fresh water and dirty water – salt water – come from the same spring?" It can't. And he also says, "Can a fig tree bear half figs and half olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring bring fresh water."

Now, why is he saying that? Because the trouble is that what comes out of your mouth is what's in your heart. Yeah, what comes out of your mouth is what's in your heart. And if you're speaking evil things, it's an indication of something wrong in your heart and wrong in your spirit.

Then in verse 13, he continues very strongly by saying, "Who is wise and understanding? If you think that you're wise and you've got understanding, show it by the life you live, by deeds." It's got to be more than words in your life. It's so easy to speak and say this, this, this, and this, but it's not so easy to do it. It's easy to talk the talk, but not so easy to walk the walk.

Based on the Book of James, chapter 3, we are cautioned to be careful about the words we use – make sure they uplift and not lead to destruction.

We need to realise the importance of what we say. Then, of course, in verse 9, he goes on: "With the tongue we praise the Lord, and with it we curse man, who has been made in God's image. Out of the same person's mouth can come both blessing and cursing."

Now, it's true. Somebody can come up to you and, if they want to flatter you, they can speak really nice things: "Oh, you're wonderful," and so on, and "I like you," and so on. And yet, they can turn behind your back and to somebody else say the exact opposite. What people say to your face is not what they say behind your back.

I mean, they can be so pleasant to your face. I mean, I've had people who come up to me and make promises of what they're going to do this and – and when they go away, they do the exact opposite. They lie.

The whole thing is that what James is saying is: this all comes down to the tongue. So, yes, with that same tongue – and in verse 10, "Out of the same mouth can come praise, blessing, and cursing. Brothers, this should never be." We should be consistent in what we say.