Sid Roth welcomes Leif Hetland

SID:  Hello, Sid Roth, your investigative reporter here with Leif Hetland. Leif, you had a very, very special encounter with God that revolutionized your life.  What do you call that, you label it something?   

LEIF:  Well, I call it a baptism of love experience, and it comes… 

SID:  Wait a second.  Now you’re a minister, you’ve seen miracles.  How could this be different from all the wonderful things that went before? 

LEIF:  Well, I think you almost have to ask my wife that question.  Because with all the experience I had before, because I came from a background, I say, rebellious person into all the drugs and everything else, had a glorious salvation and then suddenly after Jesus healed me, delivered me, set me free.  Now I’m out there on the field working for Him, traveling the world, doing all these great things for Him, hoping that God the Father, that He’s going to be pleased with me.  Not realizing that there was all this love deficit within me, that I was just trying to do all these things to please God.    

SID:  Wait a minute now.  You came from a good family, you were not out in the streets; you weren’t homeless.   Your parents loved you.  How did you have love deficits? 

LEIF:  Well, I do believe that often what we do is with some of the emptiness of the heart.  And for me, I was about nine years old when I recognized that there was something in my heart that had a Father hunger, something that I had seen as actually a disease that is all over America and around the world, I wanted to be just accepted by my father, I wanted him to love me and that he was going to be pleased with me.  I wanted him to say I love you, I’m proud of you, and I’m pleased with you and now I’m in the ministry as a pastor, later on as an evangelist, traveling the world, sharing about Jesus and all these incredible things.  And all the time I just wanted to have that recognition that there was somebody that says, “Son.”  And it was actually that nine-year-old boy, not the preacher that was preaching hard messages, traveling around the world, but that little boy who needed to hear, “I love you, I am proud of you, you are my beloved son, Leif whom I love and with whom I am well pleased.”  And that changed every aspect of my life, because instead of being the president of an organization, being a businessman, being a pastor, my identity of what I am doing for God, suddenly I got a new identity.  And it kind of scared somebody because I was sitting on first class over to Europe, and the president of a large corporation, he asked me “What do you do for a living?” after some chit-chat.  And I said, “Well, I’m a lover.”  And he looked at me strange.    

SID:  Well, I can imagine. 

LEIF:  Yeah, he wanted to change seats.  He was looking around and he said, ‘No, I think you are a foreigner, you do not understand.  What kind of work do you do?”  It’s like read my lips.  And he talked a little bit loud.  And I said that’s exactly what I do.  I receive love and I give love.  And then I shared with him for the next eight hours, I was going to Pakistan at that moment, and he said, “Why are you going to Pakistan?”  And I said to do what I am and that is to give love.  And he couldn’t understand that, but he had tears in his eyes by the time that we landed in Amsterdam, and before I was changing the flight to just see this corporate accept it, being touched by the Fathers love there on the airplane. 

SID:  So you are saying to me that you don’t have to do anything to have that fulfillment you needed with your father, that you can just love people, and love God.  You don’t have to pray fifteen hours a day, you don’t have to read your Bible twenty hours a day, you don’t have to witness to fifty people, is that what you’re telling me? 

LEIF: Well, I know this sounds very radical, but that was what I was set free from. I call it the performance treadmill of arteries.  Because I had all these lists, when I was praying, I felt I should witness.  When I would witness, when was the last time you were home with your wife and your four children?  When I was home with my wife and my children, when was the last time you went to the nations?  When I was in the nations, when were you home?  I could never do enough.  And I just was trying harder, and the more I tried, the worse it looked.  So somehow I felt that I was not a good enough father, not good enough husband; I didn’t witness enough, I didn’t see enough souls.  If you saw twenty thousand people in a meeting, next time you wanted to see thirty thousand in a meeting.  And this continuous strive to continue to try to get something that is a gift that you can only receive.  I was trying to achieve what you only can receive.  I was trying instead of trusting.    

SID:  Well let me ask you something.  When you were trying, were you accomplishing more than what you do now by just, as you call it, being a lover? 

LEIF:  Well, I can be honest to say no.  I have seen more in the last three years than probably seventeen years combined together.  Because the wonderful thing of resting and receiving, there is something that says, ask of Me and I will give you, this is something that God said to me.  So when, it is a gift, you can only receive a gift.  So I am asked again, how can I receive, say Pakistan, how can I receive Cuba, or how can I receive this person? 

SID:  Pakistan?  Wait a second.  You don’t know what’s going on there.  That is not a place that is seeker friendly for Christians.    

LEIF:  No, but it is… 

SID:  They are proselytizing. 

LEIF:  I heard that.  But when the love of God took hold of me I realized also that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He loves the Jews and the Muslims and the rest of us sinners.  So when I saw that, the wonderful people of Pakistan behind the veil, how much Jesus loved those people, there was something in my heart that urged me and encouraged me to go in there, to be able to present the love and the life and the healing of Jesus.  The same healing that had changed my life, the same love that had changed my life, because I knew that love is the language that the blind eyes can see and the deaf ears can hear.  And even in Pakistan where they speak Urdu, they understand the language of love.    

SID:  Now you actually went to the heads of some governments that were Muslim.  Tell me about one. 

LEIF:  Well, I have been in quite a few of them and they… 

SID:  Pick one. 

LEIF:  I can pick one.  One of them is the top Muslim leader in Pakistan, the head of the biggest masque in Pakistan, he has been in my home is Columbus, Georgia when I was living there, and staying in my… 

SID:  Wait a minute.  You are a Christian that is not ashamed of Jesus.  How could he be your friend? 

LEIF:  He is a friend because I see that Jesus Christ himself was a friend, He was a wonderful friend with any sinner.  And I believe that this wonderful… 

SID:  No, I know you could be a friend of his, but how could he be a friend of yours? 

LEIF:  Well, I think again, the people they don’t care what you know, how much you know, but how much you care.  And as a result of a relationship, first that I got to have with his father before he died, later on eating dinner together, visiting his home, coming to the masque, which was the biggest masque in the world, now it is the second biggest masque, the King’s Masque where all the kings and presidents… 

SID:  Has he seen miracles connected with you? 

LEIF:  Yes, he has.  And every time I visit at home even in the name of Jesus Christ, I am praying a blessing over him, his house and his family.    

SID:  Listen to this.  He literally has moved in words of knowledge with Muslim leaders that are astounded by these miracles.  Don’t go away, we’ll be right back.