Sid Roth

SID: My guest is Ryan Bruss, and it’s kind of a reversal for him because he’s one of our producers, and he’s usually analyzing what’s going on and giving direction rather than being in that chair. But he wrote a book that I am really, really excited about. Carrying the Presence, the presence of God. But you have an approach that is very, very different. But for starters, what do you mean by carrying the presence?

RYAN: Well, Jesus said “Pray this way. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” So whatever is going on in heaven, Jesus says bring it to earth. Bring it here. And because Jesus lives inside us, we carry the kingdom wherever we go, whether we’re at home, our job, work, right in this studio, we’re carriers of the presence. And right now, Sid, the Lord has been speaking to me all day, right now is a time for ordinary people with ordinary lives, doing extraordinary things for God. I mean, now is the time. Two-thirds of God’s name is go, so we might as well just do it. We might as well just go and preach the gospel, heal the sick, cleanse the leper, and cast out devils.

SID: Tell me a bit about the supernatural early on.

RYAN: Well, I was born again 40 years ago. I know I don’t look that old, Sid, but I was born again 40 years ago, and my dad died of cancer when I was 12. And right after he died, my mom looked at us three kids, looked up to heaven, said “You know what, I’m not going to do this by myself. You guys are going to get filled with the Holy Ghost.” And so that night we all got full of the Holy Ghost. He stays—

SID: All of you?

RYAN: All three of us, just like that.

SID: Did you speak in tongues?

RYAN: All speaking tongues. Yeah, we went … I’m telling you, I can remember like it was yesterday. We were laying on our bed, my brother in his and me in my bed. We were just speaking in tongues all night at just 12 years old, 10 years old. And so we didn’t have a lot of money growing up at all, because my father died. The cancer just ate through our finances, and we literally had to lay our hands on appliances and believe for them to work. We had to … True story, we had to pray over the food that it would multiply in our home. In fact, my mom said, I remember it, again, like it was yesterday. We sat on the front of our house, me, my brother and sister, and my mom, saying “You’re going to pray, we’re all going to pray in the Spirit until groceries pull up in our driveway.”.

So we sat there, she said “Close your eyes,” probably because she didn’t know what to expect. But we closed our eyes and I had one eye open as I was praying, [speaking tongues], you know, and sure enough, Sid, a car pulls up in our driveway and brought us a whole car load of groceries.

SID: I don’t know about you, Brian, but seeing that direct, amazing answer to prayer was more important than the groceries. I don’t know. You might have said the groceries.

RYAN: Well, the groceries, that filled our stomach, that was the good part. But I grew up in a house with the supernatural, because you know my mom personally, she’s a seer. And so we couldn’t get away with anything.

SID: What does seer mean?

RYAN: A seer is somebody that has her eyes opened to the spirit realm. But I grew up with my mom seeing angels with us. I could tell you hundreds of stories of the glory angels, because that’s just how we grew up.

SID: As a young man you were a dreamer, and God started speaking to you in dreams.

RYAN: I didn’t have anybody. Because I grew up without a father, didn’t have anybody to mentor me. So the Holy Spirit took over, and he would mentor me on what to do about this, what to do about that. And as a teenager, I had a dream where all these dirt clods were coming down a conveyor belt, and my job was to break them open and get to the center. And in the center I saw a diamond, and the Lord said “That’s part of your ministry, is to help people see their value and worth before me.”

SID: You say we have answers to everyone’s need inside of us. Does everyone have answers to everyone’s need, or just you?

RYAN: Well, I have some good answers. But if you are born again, you carry God with you. And the big revelation that the Lord is trying to speak to me about, Sid, is that you have to … Everybody, if you call yourself a Christian, you have to begin to understand that you carry the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit with you. So everywhere you go, things are going to start happening. God is going to move. Bring the kingdom into your finances and bring the kingdom into your spouse’s life. Bring the kingdom to your kids or any area of your life.

SID: Now, in 1996 you went to Pensacola, Florida. Tell me what that experience brought to you, besides a wife.

RYAN: It did bring me, that was good. And later on, kids. But the beautiful thing about the Brownsville Revival is, because I thought it was already, this is 1996 I went there, I thought I was already on fire for God until I went to a revival. And then you know where you’re at with God. And it totally changed my life. As you know, I ended up working for Steve Hill, but it totally changed my life. See, revival wrecks you. I’m a pastor of our church now. I get frustrated when I don’t see and feel what I felt in revival. We don’t go to the past, but if it’s not at least that, I need something else. I need the glory, I need more of God, because I know what is available.

SID: But you went out in the streets there with … But then you didn’t just go out in the streets witnessing, how many people did you have with you on the street?

RYAN: On the weekends we had sometimes 275 people that would hit the streets and evangelize. It was awesome. And one of the greatest testimonies that came out of that is, there was a man by the name of Chacho. He was going into a bar, and our group of students just said “Hey, can we talk to you?” Anybody can say that, “Hey, can we just talk to you for a minute?” He goes “Okay, I’ll talk to you.” Well, this was over 20 years ago, and to make a long story short, he gets down on his knees, prays a prayer of salvation. When he stood up, he was set free from every addiction in his life. I mean, he was so saved, as we said back in the revival. He was so saved that 20 years later now, I’m talking about right now, I speak at his pastors’ conferences and do missions trips, because he’s planted orphanages and churches all over Mexico. Just because we met him going out of a bar.