Sid Roth

Sid: We want everywhere to have such a passion for Jesus but the truth of the matter is because of the flesh, because of the devil, because what’s being pounded through communication airways most believers are in various degrees of a rut. And enough is enough there’s a job for you to do there’s a destiny on your life. There’s a purpose for your life and I’ve asked my friend Dave Roberson who’s the pastor of Prayer Center Family Tulsa, Oklahoma. And he has a teaching that is called “Removing the Ceiling” and I believe that this is an answer to prayer because most of you know about the rut you’re in I want us to teach you about that to know about the ceilings in your life but you don’t really know about how to bust through.  And I don’t know anyone better than Dave to teach you on this. Dave I was fascinated because at all of the times we’ve known each other and I’ve interviewed you I never knew much about your family background and your mother and father and grandfather. Tell me a bit about that.

Dave: Sid my mother was a periodic alcoholic and she would drink an awful lot. And during those years when oh growing up that I first begin to remember I remember that in the spells when she’d be drunk from say months at a time that sometimes she would bring different men home with her.  And I remember many fathers along the way.

Sid: Is it true I know it is but is it true that most of us evaluate God the Father by our earthly father?

Dave: I’m absolutely sure that’s true Sid because the marks those things put on me I really wasn’t able to unseal them until I found out the difference between real worship and the mortification that went. The will worship even after I was born again “I wish I was different.” And when I finally found out how to remove the feeling it was through mortification.  In other words I found out how to turn to the Holy Ghost loose on the inside and He’s the one that destroyed the hold that the intimidation and the grief and the hopelessness that I feel at times.  Because that not only that father image that I didn’t have but when we moved in with grandpa he took us in and thank God for it but grandpa he didn’t like my father because of what he did to my mother. And so when I would do something that would remind him on my father sometimes he would get so mad that he would scream at me and sometimes he’d kick me so hard that not to hurt you or anything but just to get moving.  That he could tell me to get me the hammer off of the table he’d be on a ladder and I would panic and get so afraid I couldn’t see the hammer even if it was the only tool on the table. He’d yell at me until finally he’d just storm down off the ladder to get a move on kind of kick me and say “What’s the matter with you?  You’re just like old man Roberson you’re no good and you never will be.” And when I go back now I cry a little bit tears of joy I can assure you now and before I get too far in getting the ceiling off in the last years of my mother’s life. One day I was over on the coast I was in Oregon and I was in Oregon Coast within 200 miles of where I live with a friend evangelist Dudley.  Early in the morning God spoke to me “Get back home.” And I ran home drove all the way home that night just in time for my mother to come knocking on the door. She wanted to know everything that I was doing and she was so moved that I was beginning to teach the gospel and that was the last time that I saw her. So I believe that God through our prayers moved on her and saved her in her last days.

Sid: But what was it like when you were told “You’re no good you’re just like your father.” Did you believe that or you just kind of shrugged it off?

Dave: You know what? That even though I didn’t want to believe it it became part of me.  See I became so intimidated afraid I guess especially with authority figures.

Sid: Well you had so many different men living with your mother.

Dave: Yes. I’ve spent some of my time with them when they’d come in and drank a lot and I’d beg them to take me fishing you know to do something you know like a father would do.  But I didn’t have much luck (Laughing) in that area.  But no it and when we moved in with grandpa about the 4^th or 5^th grade then then when I would do things like that then he’d yell at me “You’re no good, you’re just like old man Roberson.”  And by the way he was a PK.

Sid: Hm.

Dave: A preacher’s kid and my grandfather Roberson as I understand a tent evangelist somewhere around Texas. And so he was running PK, preacher’s kid. And so he’d tell me your just like him your no good you’ll never amount to anything. And it carried over with me and Sid the first years I was born again it was in ultra-holiness.  And I thank God for the holiness that’s taught from the inner man that takes the outer man over and causes the person to live in such a holiness that the kind that you do look appealing or modestly. But mostly you tend to do …and kindness in the love walk He has for all of us. Now I believe in modes apparel but I believe in that holiness of that inner-man.

Sid: But what affect did the externally holiness have on you?

Dave: Well this is what I thought to myself. Well here I was raised with one fatherhood and a bunch of fathers who didn’t want me and now I’m afraid not to go to church I’m afraid to dress wrong.  I’m afraid of everything that if I anger this father that he’s going to do something to me put me in a car wreck or bring a disease or do something.  I was literally afraid of Him. So I get born again and thinking well I lost my one father like that and now I get saved and I get another one.  But I can still remember I can still remember when I started to pray in tongues and somehow that praying in tongues which He’s very clear about would edify us and build us up on our most holy faith in God above essential walk and through a walk of faith and power with our Father. Little did I know that building me up above a sense dominated real that that would be part of what He would build me up over in my edification.  If I can remember praying Sid in my whole life is beginning to change and literally praying those mysteries the mysteries of Christ that is you and to you and through you the hope of glory up before the Father. And Him answering those mysteries and having the mystery of Christ in you to begin to come alive it’s trading my mind for His.   In other words I began to take on His mind and began to displace everything that they told me that I was and replace it with a renewed mind in everything that He said that I was. And I could remember that beginning to take place when I went out and begin a revival when I first moved to Tulsa and was preaching with men who I would have paid a $100 just to hold their sweaty old coat in the back room and listen to him talk about God.  And now I was sharing the platform with them. And even at that point with my intimidation I could have preached and raised the dead in that service. And Sid I would go into the backroom where those men were and I would fish. You know I would fish for a compliment because to me they were a father figure. And all I would have to do is to get them to say one thing good message “Brother Roberson that was really some miracles out there.” And if I could get them to say one thing like that then I would be okay the intimidation would leave because I knew that I’d done okay.  But now Sid now since I’ve found a level of love and that peace and every time I make another level of peace I keep thinking that this is as good as it can get.

Sid: The fact that you were born again, the fact that you were born again, the fact that you were Spirit filled did not get rid of those bondages, those chains.

Dave: No.

Sid: And you’re saying that praying in tongues got rid of that?

Dave: Yes it edified and built me up above it by revealing Christ in me.  Now if the freedom was automatically there by merit of the baptism of the Holy Spirit alone then every Christian would be free because He’s no respecter of person. Sid so there must be something that we can do that will activate that process of mortification begin to cause the word that we know to come alive in us and bring us from what we were into what He said that we are. And I found that to be the edification that supernatural language of praying in tongues.

Sid: But I have to ask you this I know of a real seeker sensitive church that’s bursting at the seams near where I live.

Dave: Yes.

Sid: And one of the things that they’ve done is the pastors even Spirit Filled but they’ve agreed that we’re not going to have tongues in our church it’s too controversial.  What would you say to that pastor?

Dave: Having a very large church and very successful church isn’t very hard Sid.  And to me all you have to do is find the level of flesh that people do not want to go beyond and begin to compromise right at that level.  Now I know what I’m talking about Tim my associate he managed Rex Humbard and Rex Humbard was at the top. I don’t mean I should say before Rex Humbard retired and is doing what he’s doing now when he was the biggest ministry in the world it was my associate that managed it.

Sid: Hm.

Dave: And when he came aboard with me we started praying and fasting together and we died together, and we died to the world together to the misuse of money together. Not that we was doing it we were just doing what everybody else said almost.  But we died to things together.  He’s one of the best government gifts in the world and I can be anything I want to be I found out how to do that.

Sid: Boy with all of the handicaps and all of the strikes against you Mishpochah did you hear what Dave Roberson said I want you to be able to say that you have a ceiling over where you are. God wants you to get those rewards at academy rewards night in heaven.