Sid Roth welcomes Steven Brooks

Sid:  My guest red hot is understatement for him, Steven Brooks, he’s been a guest before, he just has come out with a brand new book, it’s called “The Sacred Anointing.”  And this book was birthed from many visitations from the Lord.  And Steven I did not know this about you, I’ve known you for several years now, but I did not know your background.  I’m looking at my notes now, and it says that you understood the religion of Christianity because every time the doors were open you’d be in there.  But you were not born again, however when you were a young man you had an experience with the Holy Spirit, you were baptized in the Holy Spirit and you started speaking in Supernatural Languages; but you didn’t have much of the word inside of you.  And you had an all out attack that really should have destroyed you, tell me about that.

Steven:  You’re right Sid, that attack was something that I can look back in my mind and although it was over twenty years ago it seems like it was yesterday.  And of course the victory that came out of that is sweet, but it didn’t happen overnight, the victory that is.  The attack was very difficult for me, it was something I didn’t understand because I grew up in church all of my life and I eventually, although I grew up in church I was never saved.  I was very religious, I knew right from wrong, I knew the value of morals and telling the truth and not lying and things along that line, but it wasn’t until later in life when I was a Senior in High School that I fully gave my heart to the Lord, got saved, water baptized and then just a few years later, after that in college where I received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, began to speak with other tongues for the first time in my life and began to endeavor to live for the Lord and walk with the Lord.  But Sid, you know all of my life growing up I even still remember the pastor of the church, he was the preacher that would preach every message every Sunday and Wednesday night.  And we were very dedicated as far as going to church, we may have fallen asleep in church because of the boredom but we were always there.  But either Sunday morning, Sunday night,  or Wednesday night but the pastor’s name was Rich,  R I C H, but I have to tell you Sid he was one of the poorest pastors that I have ever met in my life, bless his heart.  And the church made sure they kept him poor and he would just preach from the pulpit that it’s God’s will for you to be poor and you’re not supposed to have any of this old worlds goods and said that money was evil, money was bad.  And so for years, and years that teaching went into my ears, went down into my spirit and even though eventually I was saved, and even though eventually I was filled with the Spirit I still had all of those bad seeds planted in the soil of my heart.  And so when I began to really want to begin to serve the Lord, and really want to follow Him and move forward in life that’s when the enemy brought an attack against me just to try and take me out before I could ever in a sense even get started.  And I lived in a small house with a friend of mine and I had a job, didn’t pay very much, but it was an okay job and I remember I went to work one day and I was in my mid twenties when this happened Sid, but I went to work one day and they said, “Steven were sorry we have to lay you off were cutting back and you haven’t been with us as long as some of the other workers so you’ll have to be the first one to go.”  And I even pleaded my case, I said “I haven’t been here as long, but I’m actually working harder than some of the other workers.”  They said, “We understand, but we still have to let you go.” And so I got laid off and I came home that day and told my friend I just got laid off from work but I kept going out looking for jobs and of course this was the day before cell phones, there were no cell phones, there weren’t even pagers back then.  So I would try to apply for a job and so forth but eventually what happened is I couldn’t find any work and things began to get worse, so I began to fall behind on my bills, I fell behind on the telephone bill there at the house so the telephone got cut off and then eventually I fell behind on the rent.  And so what I did is I told my roommate, “I know that your Dad own this home and I’m sharing the rent with you splitting it half way down the middle and I don’t want to get any further behind on the rent.  I’m already two months behind so I’m just going to move out and I’ll pay you the rent back as soon as I get the money.”  And he said, “Well, where are you going to stay at, where will you live at?”  I said, “You know I’m not sure, but for right now I’ll just live in my car and I’ll keep trying to find a job and I’ll just pay you back.”  He said, “Okay.”  And so the whole time this was going on Sid, I thought that perhaps this was God’s will for me, that maybe God was reducing me down, maybe God wanted me to be poor, maybe God wanted me to suffer.  And I thought I was being religious, I didn’t realize I was being ignorant and I had been mistaught all of my life, for years all I ever heard was that money was evil.  But people would misquote that scripture; “It actually says the love of money is the root of all evil.”  It doesn’t say that money is evil; it just says the love of it.  That’s where the problem lies at so there is nothing wrong with money, just neutral.  We can just use it for good or bad, but I did not know those things, I loved the Lord, but I had absolutely no foundation of the word of God in my life as far as the word of God that will produce victory.  Now I had a foundation for salvation, I even had a foundation in the word for the Baptist in the Holy Spirit, but beyond that it was just I just had hardly anything to go on that would produce any type of victory in my life.  So Sid my situation got worse and…

Sid:  Well, you left the house, where were you going, I mean you had a car.

Steven:  Right.

Sid:  Did you have any money?

Steven:  I had four dollars, that’s all I had, I had a car that wasn’t running very good, and so I made a stop by a church, that I had attended and I just laid out my heart to the pastor, I told him I said listen, “I lost my job, and I want to get work and I’m looking for a job, I have not been able to find anything and things are getting more difficult.”  And he leaned back in his chair and he said, “Brother Steven, I believe what you are going through is a Job experience.”  And of course I read the book of Job in the Bible, I said, “I don’t want to go through that, I said how come I have to go through this?”  I said, “Is this something you have to go through?”  He said, “Oh no, I’ve never gone through it before, but this is your own special calling.”  Ha-ha.  And so I basically got some wrong information and I basically thought it was the Lord.  I was even told that it was the Lord causing all of these bad difficult things to happen to me so in a sense I just began to cooperate with it.  What happened as things began to get even worse and so I didn’t have any where to go.  You know when I received the baptism in the Holy Spirit Sid, I came out of a denominational church that did not believe in that, and my whole family, when I got filled with the Spirit; my whole family thought I had lost my mind.  They actually even told me “Son, will get you the best psychologist that money can afford.” I said, “What do I need him for, why do I need a psychologist?”  They said, “You’ve lost your mind, you believe in that speaking in tongues and so anyhow there was a break in the relationship at that point and I knew even though I was in desperate need for help I could not really go back to my family.  Now the Lord has since restored that relationship, I have a wonderful relationship with my parents today, but at that time I could not go back because my family would put pressure on me to denounce this Holy Spirit type thing.  They did not believe or understand the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and Tongues and modern day miracles and things like that, so I could not go to that direction for help.  So what I did Sid was I just started driving out of town and I didn’t have many belongings so what few things I had I had in my car and I drove about twelve miles outside of town, and before I actually got outside of town, I drove back behind the grocery store and I found a big cardboard box, like the size like something like a refrigerator must have been in and it just seemed like in my head something said I’m probably going to need that box.  And I don’t have anywhere else to stay, so I took that big box, folded it down, smashed it down, put it in the trunk of my car and then drove out of town and got about twelve miles outside of town and found a place where I pulled off the side of the road and drove through some real tall grass about four or five feet tall and came to just an abandon area.  There were no houses out here or anything it was like an abandon park is what it looked like.  Although there was no play ground equipment or anything like that but it was just a rundown area, no houses around it or anything like that.  But there was a creek that ran through like a little valley and there was even a rail road track with some bridges that was passing over on a bridge and it was kind of a scenic looking little place and I thought I would just stay here while I try to find a job and get back on my feet.  And so I took that cardboard box out of the car, set it up and laid my little blanket inside the cardboard box and my pillow and I laid my Bible in there and I thought well this will only probably last for a few days, but I didn’t know that it was going to turn into months and months.

Sid:  But do you know what was so wonderful is that you got an unexpected check in your post office box for $400 and it’s hard for me to believe the integrity; you’re living out in a box in the woods and you give that $400 towards your back rent, really?

Steven:  Sid, I just knew that it was the right thing to do I always wanted to honor the word of God and so I got that taken care of and then I just kept moving forward.

Sid:  But listen to this, his situation then gets worse, winter comes along, it’s cold, didn’t it occur to you that you could have probably had an inexpensive hotel for several weeks for that amount of money?  Didn’t you regret giving it to him? 

Steven:  Well, I did think about that in the natural Sid, but you know I wanted God to get me out of this mess so I wanted to make sure that my conscious was right with God and there was nothing holding back any type of blessing or miracle.

Sid:  Well, you know I can see Mishpochah why God has honored Steven’s faith with so many visitations and experiences with angels.