Pastor and president of World Challenge, Gary Wilkerson, paints a brighter and more biblical picture of God’s favor in this opening podcast. Here the discussion ranges from strategies the enemy uses to distract us from God’s goodness all the way to how exactly God wants our lives to show His unearned grace to a hurting, unbelieving world. The following are a couple points he touches upon:

  • Comfort and self-interest as our drug of choice
  • What it means to get the “Holy Ghost miserables”
  • Finding contentment in who God has made us to be

This warm and personal conversation explores the issues God has laid on Gary’s heart for those who are struggling with the idea of God’s favor in their lives. Only an active pursuit of God’s presence and guidance will grant each of his children the peace to stand unmoved in the midst of life’s storms.

About Gary Wilkerson

Gary Wilkerson is the President of World Challenge, an international mission organization that was founded by his father, David Wilkerson. He is also the Founding Pastor of The Springs Church, which he launched in 2009 with a handful of people. He has traveled nationally and internationally at conferences and conducted mission ventures such as church planting, starting orphanages, clinics, feeding programs among the poorest of the poor and the most unreached people of the earth. Gary and his wife Kelly have four children and live in Colorado Springs, CO.

Key Questions for Gary Wilkerson

  • What is World Challenge?
  • Many of the churches you have planted are inner-city churches. Why a heart for a church in the inner city?
  • How can we fulfill our desire to see the church grow and also come close to Christ at the same time?
  • How can we reach the happy pagans? How do you reach someone who doesn't realize their need for God? Do you have to wait for the Holy Spirit to show them their need of a Savior?
  • Isn't God just a crutch? Isn't he just somebody for people who are weak and hurting?
  • Why am I going through this, am I cursed? Why aren't I blessed like others?
  • How do hope and love change us and put such a spark in the human psyche?
  • Do our mistakes come from an incorrect view of ourselves and of God?

Key Quotes from the Show

Hopelessness is borne out of an incorrect view of God and that’s where Satan comes to kill and destroy our view of God being good and for us. God being powerful, being available, being present to us at all times and even being with us in the storm when the storms don’t cease. - Gary Wilkerson

I learned from my father, David Wilkerson, that poverty, gangs, and drugs are opportunities to glorify the name of Jesus Christ. – Gary Wilkerson

Jesus really is the answer for everything. – Gary Wilkerson

To be the spiritual man or woman who draws near to Jesus is going to be a battle. There's going to be Satanic distraction to pull us away from that intimacy with Jesus. – Gary Wilkerson

The Holy Spirit penetrates the walls of self-interest and says, "That's not what your heart was built for. You weren't built for yourself. You were built for others. You were built for God.” – Gary Wilkerson

The spirit is striving against the flesh. What for? So that we might have intimacy with Jesus. So that we can have the victory that Jesus wants us to have. – Gary Wilkerson

There is a deeper joy in Jesus that is not based on circumstances. – Gary Wilkerson

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain… - C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain

Our goal is audacious. It's to bring poverty solutions within reach of every poor community in the world. – Gary Wilkerson

Long- term solutions to poverty change nations. – Gary Wilkerson

The lack of hope causes people to be immobilized, to be lethargic, to lose confidence and energy. You sit back and let life happen to you when you're hopeless. – Gary Wilkerson

Hopelessness has all kinds of talons that destroy our life—despair, depression, discouragement, or manipulation. – Gary Wilkerson

The root of hopelessness is not knowing the nature and character of God. – Gary Wilkerson

Mentioned in the Show