SID: I am absolutely amazed at the statistics of people that are in hopeless situations, whether it has to do with their employment, whether it has to do with their family, whether it has to do with their health, whether it has to do with just past things that they’ve been stuffed down and it’s just popping up now. It’s a spirit. Dutch, tell me some of those statistics of hopelessness.
DUTCH: You know, I was shocked, too, Sid. I found these things staggering. The divorce rate in the last 30 years has risen 300 percent, two and half million people every year, 50 percent of first time marriages, 60 percent of remarriages. When they try it again, it still doesn’t work. The pressures are overwhelming, a million children a year affected by new divorces. Fatherless homes, this was staggering to me, 63 percent of youth suicides are directly connected to being raised in a fatherless home. Ninety percent of runaway homeless children and 85 percent of youths in prison because they don’t have a father. People are looking for that security and hope. Nineteen million adults have a depressive disorder. It is the leading cause of disability in America, depression. The youth suicide rate has tripled in the last 35 years. It is the third leading, the third leading cause of death among young people in America is suicide. Twenty-five percent of high schoolers seriously consider suicide every year, a fourth of them. Psychiatric admissions account for 25 percent, a fourth, of all hospital admissions, suicide, depression, 25 percent. Even our spiritual leaders are not immune from this. Seventy percent of pastors said they constantly fight depression. Eighty percent of adult children of pastors seek professional help for depression. Fifty percent of pastors said they would leave the ministry if they could, but they don’t know how they would survive.
SID: That is—
DUTCH: Staggering isn’t it?
SID: Everything coming out of your mouth, it shows you how what critical times we’re living in.
DUTCH: It’s amazing.
SID: What does the Bible say about a term called “hope deferred”?
DUTCH: Hope deferred, it say,s makes the heart sick. If you think about what happens with physical heart disease, you lose your energy, you get tired. Eventually you’ll die. You can’t run. That’s what happens when hope deferred sets in. It doesn’t just affect your mind. It affects your body. You know, serious depression they’re now saying is the equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. It takes a toll on your physical heart, but then again, your emotional heart, it affects. You can’t dream. You don’t eat. You don’t run the race of life. You quit looking at the future with hope. You can’t have faith. Hope deferred is the common cold of the soul. You can’t go through life without experiencing setbacks. You’re going to be hit with something: loss of a loved one, a disease, you lose your job, your marriage.
SID: What are stages, briefly, of hope deferred? And I believe you’re going to recognize you’re actually in some of these stages.
DUTCH: Well the first stage is simply discouragement. You know, you just get slammed by this and discouragement sets in. If you don’t deal with that, the next phase you come to is confusion. You just get disoriented. How did this happen? What do I do? What do I latch on to now for hope? And then of course, if that doesn’t stop, unbelief sets in. Now you’re in trouble because your trust is wavering and your connection with the Lord begins to waver. The next step if that isn’t checked is disillusionment. That’s what happened to me in my life. I became disillusioned. I don’t know if I believe in this God. I don’t know what I believe any more. I just don’t know. And then of course, the real killer, bitterness sets in. Once you become bitter, you just, you’re just a target for the enemy. He just begins to steal your health, he steals your joy and in the last phase, and I certain came into this, is simply cynicism. You just don’t believe anything anymore. That’s where I was. People talked to me about God. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t believe this stuff anymore. Completely cynical, hopeless, cynical.
SID: Tell me about how your brother observed a heart surgery. Tell me what he found out.
DUTCH: This is the most amazing story I think I’ve ever heard. He was actually allowed to go into the operating room and stand at the head of the patient, actually three of them. He had a heart surgeon in his congregation and he watched them over the person, take the heart, work on it, and they actually would sometimes disconnect it from the arteries, take it out, work on it and hook the person up to a machine that would do the work of the heart. When they were finished, they would reconnect everything, they had to get the heart beating again. And everything worked fine until the last patient. And he didn’t know exactly what was happening, but he could tell they’re trying to get this heart to beat. And tension, you could feel the tension start to come into the operating room. Finally, he realized they can’t get this heart beating. And in desperation when they exhausted all of their methods, the lead surgeon leaned down to this obviously unconscious person, whispered in her ear and said, “Ma’am, I need your help. We can’t get your heart to beat. Please tell your heart to beat again.”
SID: This is an unconscious person.
DUTCH: Obviously. Can’t hear naturally. Instantly, the heart began boom-boom, boom-boom. And the surgeon, all the people around the table looked up at each other. He looked at them and just kind of went, and they went on with the surgery, and he of course realized, that’s what we have to do with our emotions, with our spiritual heart.
SID: Tell me what God has shown you based on that story and the power of choice.
DUTCH: Oh you know, that’s where it all starts. God said to me, “Listen son, I know it’s not your fault that you are in this condition. You didn’t know. You didn’t know how to deal with this. I’m not angry with you that you turned to these things. But it will be your decision if you remain this way because I’m here to heal you.” And I had to activate my will and say, I’m going to choose to live again. I’m going to choose to dream again. I’m going to choose to not allow this to define me. I’m going to let God define who I am. Alcohol is not who I am. Depression is not who I am. Anger is not who I am. And I made a choice. Now I wasn’t in denial because when we make a choice God’s life, God’s power, God’s energy is activated in us and all He needs is us to make that choice, and His power comes along and gives us the ability to do it. It’s not denial. It’s denying the right of that circumstance to control my life through to believe God can turn things around for me.
SID: It’s the supernatural belief in the supernatural God. It’s not natural. And when we come back, we’re going to talk about the third great awakening, and Dutch has literally seen it, and he’s going to describe what he saw, and it’s starting right now.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth