William McDowell's Testimony

tomorrow [Music] i started out talking and i said i have a special place in my heart for college campuses because while i grew up in church all my life and cannot remember a day in which the lord had not found me because my earliest memory of life is three years old telling my grandfather that i was saved but my parents didn't believe me i can't remember anything before that it's the first memory i have in my entire life was saying that i believed in jesus [Music] and my grandfather speaking over my life and saying you're marked for the nations and that's my only memory of his voice because he died when i was three so the only memory i have is that you're called to ministry so my earliest memory in life was that i'm saved my only memory of my grandfather is that you're called to ministry so i don't remember a time before not knowing the lord but even though i grew up with that heritage it was not until college that i had an encounter with the lord that changed my life forever [Music] [Applause] and this is not like a story where i ran from god i hadn't run from him i was in love with him and i thought i knew him but he wanted to reveal himself in a way like i've never known and so i'm at college and i'd heard all my life since i grew up growing up in church i had never experienced what i thought was fun and so i kept hearing about these college parties and so i'm a freshman and parents dropped me off so i hear they had this party and i'm torn because i'm like well i shouldn't go and i'm like well but i'm 18 and i should go and i'm going back and forth i shouldn't go i and i'm like a nerd so it's not like i had really cool people to hang out with or even cool clothes i still don't just i don't i'm not trendy daniel is but i'm not i'm just kidding i'm just kidding um [Music] so i go i decide after warring for a while i'm gonna go so i'm standing outside this building where this party is supposed to be and uh i'm standing in line and this person who i've never met before and no one knows who i am because i didn't go to a college with a bunch of my friends so nobody knows who i am and i don't know anybody so i'm standing in line by myself and this person comes up to me and says what are you doing here i say i'm going to the party so the person like you shouldn't be going to things like this and so i'm like leave me alone i'm going to go [Music] maybe he thinks i'm a nerd or something i don't know i'm not cool enough to get in and there's a line to get in because the place is full and uh but they wouldn't leave me alone kept saying what is someone like you doing at a place like this and i'm like please leave me alone you don't know me they said i'm telling you you need to go home that's what they kept saying you need to go home go home and i made a determination that i wasn't gonna be a nerd that day i was gonna stay i normally would go home but i'm gonna stay in this line and like okay man i'm telling you go home i'm like nah man i'm not going home i'm going to see what it's about if i don't like it i'll go home you should go home pestering me finally i get up to the door and a fire marshal comes and shuts it down says everybody go home [Music] and i went back to my room oh i turned around to the person that had been pestering me for 30 minutes and it disappeared never saw him again and i said god apparently my life doesn't belong to me [Music] the secret of salvation is you did not find him he found you [Applause] and when you gave your life to his lordship the things that you want don't matter as much as what he wants so some of us can find ourselves in a place of constant tension and frustration trying to go against the will of god and you cannot you can run as fast as you want but all you're going to do is run into him you can't run from him you must run to him so i'm in my room and i'm like my dorm room just small and god really really intended on me praying because i had two roommates in that dorm room one of them was a local drug dealer and the other was into wicca [Music] and his girlfriend was studying to become a witch [Music] and they used to have seances and tarot card readings and things from the room whenever i wasn't there so i decided one day i'm gonna take this oil [Music] i'm gonna put it on their bed i'm gonna put it on our door and put it all around and i prayed [Music] and they tried to come into the room and they kept saying there's a spiritual power in here that we cannot get rid of [Applause] [Music] and i learned through trial and tribulation having a roommate who was studying to be a satanist and a wife or a girlfriend at the time who was studying to be a witch that their power was not more powerful than the power of our god [Music] so because i prayed so much in a room they asked to move because they couldn't be there and the lord marked my life not only did they get a chance to move but the president of the university somehow heard about me and invited me to his house and he asked me show me some worship songs on the piano so i didn't know why i was there he said that's what i'm gonna do i'm gonna give you your own room so he gave me my own room my own dorm room and i spent time with the lord in that dorm room and the lord came to my room and visited me for three days and i didn't go to class because i didn't want to leave and come back and he not be there and i didn't eat either and i didn't go anywhere and i didn't talk to anybody because i wanted to host his presence and i didn't want him to leave so he gave me an encounter and marked my life forever now i was in the gospel choir at the university i was telling jessica i love this and we had a really good professor that was over it but then he transitioned to another university and they were gonna cancel it because they didn't have anyone to take it over and so i went to the dean and i said well man i can run it until you find somebody and so they they say well we'll watch you do a rehearsal and if we find it satisfactory we'll let you do it and let it be student run and so i came they came and watched the rehearsal and so they decided to let it be student run and now as an 18 year old freshman our choir was over 100 people and as an 18 year old freshman i'm leading this group but i'm not leading them into songs we're leading them into encounters because the lord had marked my life [Music] and during one semester we saw a revolution happen on our campus because of a choir there was a girl we were ministering and i'm leading a time of worship and she screams and she grabs her head she starts crying and so we start praying she goes out and she's gone for a few days she comes back and she says we're asking if anyone has a praise report or testimony and she says well i do so what is it she says well we were in the rehearsal when i never told y'all that i had a brain tumor and while we were worshiping i felt something happen in my head and i went to the doctor and they can't find it [Music] [Applause] anymore then we had a drummer i'm i'm saying this for the whole room but i'm saying it's for you right now and it's not looking at y'all we had a drummer who was the charismatic heart of our group because he was just the guy that was always smiling all the time one time he he comes in on crutches i'm like man what happened to you he's like man i was playing basketball and broke my ankle i said why don't you have a cast on it where they're gonna set it and then we're gonna go tomorrow i said well can we pray for you he said well sure if you want it's broken i said i got it god can heal it i had faith because i had an encounter with god and so i read in the scripture and jesus he said this man's daughter has died he said she's not dead she's just asleep but when he got there they had professional mourners so he put them all out and he said daughter wake up and she woke up and peter who was with him later on when dorchester died he found the same thing going on where he found a whole bunch of doubt and unbelief and people crying and so he puts them out and he prays and he raises dorks his daughter from the dead and so i had the kind of faith that said i believe god can heal a broken bone and so i said as a 18 year old freshman leading this student-led group for one semester um if you don't believe that god can do this leave and if you do stay [Music] and so some people did leave and that's okay and we laid hands on this brother's ankle and we prayed for him and then the lord said i've done it so i told him i said hey man you're your ankle's healed he's looking at me like you think so i said yeah man try it out so he says he gets down that's a crutch there's a little weight on it it's a little bit more weight on it a little bit more weight on it then he goes stands on one leg takes his air cast off throws the scratches away and walks home [Applause] the following rehearsal the following rehearsal he brings two x-rays one of a broken bone and the same one of amended bone the doctor said only god could do that [Music] let me fast forward we because i'm seeing miracle signs [Music] the lord began to do things like that in our ministry but the thing was um i don't go around saying like oh i have a healing ministry because it's for his glory not mine and i don't know what he's gonna do when he's gonna do it i just i'm obedient to him so what the lord began to say you're gonna see things that your eyes never thought you'd see so i've seen cancer healed with my eyes i've seen broken bones healed with my eyes and all sorts of other things but the lord said you're going to begin to see things that you've never thought you'd see and i didn't exactly know what that meant and then last year we're in guyana and we're invited to minister by the government and the the president of guyana is not saved but they said we want to have you meet him and so they brought me to the white house there and they said well you know we want you to meet him and so you know we're we meet with the president and the expectation was that we'd give him some sort of word from the lord but i didn't have one so i'm like well i'm not gonna make anything up and i'm not gonna try to conjure something up and so he said well now that you're here at the white house you can ask whatever you want [Music] so i had one opportunity to ask him one thing and i said would you come tonight to our time of worship [Music] because i know that more can happen in the presence of god in a moment than what could happen in a thousand lifetimes of trying to convince somebody of anything so he comes now the scene is crazy because we're in an outdoor park and thousands of people are out there and then the presidential motorcade pulls up now every believer in this nation knows that the president's not saved but every believer in the nation also knows that it's a presidential motorcade so people are going crazy when this man pulls up [Music] and so he sits down and we begin to minister and he stands up politely and then they send word that he wants to say something well how many of you know that no matter who you are when the president says i want to say something the concert stops for a second so this man gets up [Music] and he offers the nation back to god now the significance of this is the previous president for 16 years had banned god from the nation and said that god was not allowed in their country so now we can make decrees uh from our platform and things can happen in the spirit but how many of you know that when the sovereign elected official of a land makes a decree it that's a decree it stands and so with our very eyes one of the greatest miracles that i ever saw was not just a tumor being healed and not just a broken bone being healed but we literally saw an entire nation giving back to god [Applause] but you know what i'm still not satisfied [Music] and so i'm at home [Music] and a friend of mine who's a missionary in china sends me a facebook message in the private message section and they say um the lord's been giving me dreams about you and and this is what i see and this is a very strong trusted prophetic voice i understood there wasn't anyone just making it up and they're like um in the course of your ministry you're gonna see dead people be raised and gave me the exact number of how many that we'd see in our ministry raised from the dead now i could do that whole spiritual physical figurative thing but that's not what the lord was saying and i'm extending and stretching my faith in this moment to tell you this and i i say this publicly because it's not about me or on me or my responsibility to do anything but release my faith the reason why we stopped singing for just a moment to share these things with you is because i don't want you to become comfortable with the way things are the church is the most powerful entity in the entire universe because it is the vehicle by which jesus speaks acts and moves nothing is more powerful than his church and the world cannot change for the better without the church [Music] i could stay there for a while but i won't this is this is what i want to say to you i would prefer that you go back to your apartment your house your dorm and say god give me an encounter the kind that will change me and everyone around me forever the encounter that i had when i was 18 years old is the catalyst for me standing in front of you now i didn't do anything to be here i want you to hear me i'm not the greatest singer i'm not the greatest songwriter i'm not the greatest anything because power in the kingdom is not based on ability but availability [Music] [Applause] i never said i never said i'm gonna write songs and we're gonna do something big i never said that a matter of fact i said the opposite because i had the privilege of of being a worship pastor at a church with some great people jessica rivera was one of them and i see so much in her that i said god i will invest my life into raising up people like that and seeing them released i don't have to be the one true story i said god i'm really okay with being here at this place and seeing other people go because i felt like this what good is it for you to go and do anything if the people that god has called you to serve aren't growing what do i have to say to anyone in the nations of the earth if the people that god has given me themselves aren't growing that means i'm failing so i was really okay with making sure that these people were discipled enough to have a relationship with god and go and change the world and i was really okay with that until the lord said i want you to take up the pen as a writer because i have something i want you to say then he went on to say when you speak what i'm speaking i'll make a way for my message he never told me that i'll make a way for you he said i'll make a way for my message which means that my responsibility is as a messenger and the moment that i'm not doing that anymore he has the right to find someone else who will [Applause] all i want to be is a messenger for him i really don't care about the chart positions it's been cool but that's not what i was after people ask me you know when you wrote this song did you think it was gonna do this and i'm like i had no idea i had i literally had no idea when and then when i say i had no idea i mean like i really like the song that most people you name this night after um i wasn't even gonna record it and the only reason why we recorded it was not because it was on our song list it was because i wanted to honor what god was doing in a moment and we were making a declaration about how god has caused us called us to change the world and there was only one reasonable response to that and so in a spontaneous moment an unplanned unrehearsed moment we just said i give myself away so you can use me and everyone is like well wow and i'm like i didn't know but god wants to do so much more greater because i'm not peaking what i mean by that is there's nowhere else to go in the industry for me what i mean by that is we released the last cd and it was number one that's not what i and the point is there's no number higher than one [Music] so what else am i supposed to do run after idolized trophies called grammys so i feel better [Music] so i said look what i've accomplished [Music] who cares [Music] if it happens praise god not me but i'm not satisfied with hearing about miracles signs and wonders happening around the world and we're seeing them with our own eyes but not seeing them in the land that i live in god has a heart for america just like he does the rest of the world he has a heart for america he has a heart for knoxville he has a heart for ut and he wants to use us to change the world and i'm not satisfied with reading about stuff that i know is available but we're not experiencing i'm not satisfied hearing about stuff that i know is available but we're not experiencing i'm not satisfied with that and so just like i had an encounter when i was 18 years old i'm still saying i'm not satisfied i'm not satisfied i know there's more i know there's more i know there's more i know there's more i know there's more and i'm not gonna stop until i see more until i see more until i see more until i see you do more through me i'm not satisfied where i've been though i've cried out before still i want more i wanna go deeper i wanna go further i wanna go higher than i've ever been be flat for me please does anybody feel like i feel tonight um i'm gonna ask you to lead something i'm gonna ask you to lead something and we're gonna sing a song of surrender [Music] and i want you to come down here and lead what surrender looks like would you do that could you come all of you [Applause] [Music] one more thing that marked me and daniel my brother yesterday in montgomery alabama we went to the church where martin luther king was pastor and we stood behind the pulpit where he preached [Music] and we read about this stuff and i was so blown away by the fact that this man was 24 years old when he started pastoring that church 25 years old when he helped leave the bus boycott 26 when they bombed his house a world changer i believe god wants to do something with the generation that surrenders to him [Music] god's not through with our nation but it has nothing to do with politicians they're going to mess it up this is a strategic opportunity for the church [Music] the reason why i'm not going to get political on you but the reason why we have a no choice election is because there's an opportunity for the church [Music] the world can't change without the church the city can't change without you this university cannot change without you [Music] everything i give [Music] come on if you mean that in this room with you singing i surrendered come on would you lift your hands let's demonstrate surrender let's demonstrate surrender everything again oh god it all belongs to you withholding nothing [Music] withholding nothing the generation that means this will change [Music] everything i give to you [Music] lord everything i give oh god [Music] i give myself away [Music] i give myself away so you can use me i give myself away i belong to you i give myself away so if you want that kind of encounter just tell them as you worship say i give god wants to give it to you god wants to give it to you and encounter like you've never known i give myself away so you you can use me oh god i keep myself away here i am lord here i am lord i give myself away so you can use me oh god lord i surrendered [Music] [Music] withholding nothing [Music] [Music] nothing i cannot jump away [Music] [Applause] myself oh oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] holding nothing went [Music] nothing [Music]

Channel: Worship In the House

Views: 750,971

Keywords: William McDowell's Testimony, Wiliam, McDowell testimony, William worship song, Worship songs, Testimonies, Testimony, McDowell

Id: xk71lo_v1R4

Length: 33min 40sec (2020 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 14 2021