SID: It’s hard to imagine, Leif, the way you were. You were a quiet Baptist Norwegian. I asked you a question the other day. I said, “You’ve had so many supernatural experiences. What is the most supernatural experience you ever had?” You didn’t blink an eye and you said, “When I was immersed in the love of God.” Tell me about it.
LEIF: Yes. It was a baptism of love, is what I call it, when the liquid love went into the deepest cracks of my life and the perfect love of God just took away the fear in my life. I’ve always been motivated, but I was motivated out of fear. It was something I had to do. I started then to receive his love then become love and now give love. So when I went, even as I started to travel into the Middle East and different places, I realized I have authority over what I love. I genuinely love these people, but the very love connected me to people, and then at the next moment God started to surprise with signs, wonders and miracles that gave such an openness that if I didn’t have the love and I came in fear, it’s like a dog that comes along. He can kind of smell if you are afraid. This was kind of how I operated before because there was a root fear in my life, and as a result of the reaction I got even from some of the Muslim community, that now when I had a perfect love and I started to love them with a perfect love, that perfect love started to change the atmosphere and take away fear. So it was not just that I was changed, the atmosphere around me started to change.
SID: Would you be reaching so many Muslims in so many hot spots in the world if God hadn’t shown him? And I love the way he says this. He now has the heart of a lamb, the heart of God’s love and the authority of the lion, and that proper mix causes him to become a giant slayer.
LEIF: For a long time, I tried to learn to be a lion. I went out there and I tried to roar, but it didn’t come from the lamb’s heart. So when the very lamb’s heart, and Jesus is both the lamb and the lion, and when I recognized that’s what the love did, when I got that lamb’s heart and I started to see people the way he was seeing them, feeling what he was feeling, then I started to say what he was saying, and when I roared, people started to gather instead of scatter because it came from the lamb’s heart. Suddenly you started to see there was authority in it. The atmosphere is changing because the authority came from love. And God is love, and when that love comes in place, because he loves these people, he wants them free, he wants them healed, and he wants them delivered, and that’s when that giant slayer comes in. Who is this giant that is trying to come against these people? Who is this giant that has crippled people with fear and in bondage? And that’s when that comes from the lamb’s nature because it recognizes that and feels that. Then the authority, you’re sending that on the inside, it is time to roar. It’s time to make a difference. It’s time speak to the giant instead of about the giant.
SID: And I hear you talking about, obviously you’re taking the story of David and Goliath, and applying it. How did God show you to put this together? I know you told me you were speaking for a school of students of the Spirit and they started to ask you how you could go to such dark places where it’s so life-threatening, lead a million Muslims to know the Messiah. And you started teaching on David and Goliath.
LEIF: I realized that what these people were looking for was just an encounter. Like what was the one encounter, and that is very important. But then as they looked at one of my videos, these students started to say, okay, we are interested now because we’re all facing giants. We all need a breakthrough in our life. So we are interested in how did you do it? And I didn’t even realize it was just the wisdom. As I started to say, the first thing I did, and it was kind of humorous. And I started to describe, I showed up and they all laughed. But then as we were walking in our life is [the fact] that you are not showing up. If I hadn’t taken the airline ticket, gone over there when there was a crisis, and faced that giant, I would have never saw the giant. But then we started out practically speaking in their life, if that was finances or addiction, pornography, things that they were struggling with, what are some of those areas you didn’t show up [to face the giant]. And then I went into the second, what is the next battle that you are fighting that you show up for the right battle. So I kind of just started, practically speaking. But then I started to hear it was the most life-transformational teaching they had heard. And I thought a lot of my kind of petty messages where they had encountered, they laid on the floor, had the fire had encountered, that was going to be the most transformational. Now they say, when you, instead of us watching you being giant slayers, when you showed us how to be a giant slayer and dealing with the giants in our lives, in our family, in our community, that’s what changed us. And now we have the tools on a daily basis so that we can wake up and face our giants, not just face them, but also to kill the giants. And that was my joy. When I started to hear the stories of other giant slayers and their giants coming down, and the testimonies that was being released, it encouraged me to write and say I want more people to experience this.
SID: You know, when you say, I want to look at people the way Jesus looks at people, I believe you. I believe you’re doing that. But you had a bit of a problem with this autistic kid who was drawing attention to himself, I mean, not intentionally. It’s a sad situation and you’re trying to give a talk in a large congregation. What happened?
LEIF: We had just been in Bangkok for two days and through the whole teaching and worship there was this yelling and screaming all throughout the event. And to be honest with you, it felt like the dove was leaving and pigeons was coming in. I started to sense this irritation.
SID: And you felt things dropping on you. No.
LEIF: That’s kind of how it felt. But then it was almost like, he says, Leif, when you’re looking at that boy and looking at the mother, I want you to see him the way that I see him, and I want you to think about him the way I think. So in the middle of my own irritation that still small voice whispered. And in the next moment we were going to pray and all these people came forward. He said, “I felt the Holy Spirit say, I want you just to sit down.” And I sat down, and I started to feel this mother taking the boy home at night. For all these years the boy has not been able to talk through the mother, the boy looking into the mother’s face and then in the next moment, he started to hit her. So this thing, I just captured and I started to feel, first of all, what Papa God feels, what happened to this girl and to this boy. But in the next moment I started to feel this boy and the frustration not being able to communicate and horrific things. And as I sat there, the boy started to fight himself through the mom’s arms. This is front of everybody. And he started to crawl up on my lap and he put his legs around me.
SID: You know what, I happen to believe that that love you were feeling went out of you like an arrow right into him.
LEIF: I believe the same thing. And what happened even when you watched the boy, because when I just got both the video and the picture, but when the boy first starts, he first screams and hits, but then he starts to change. He starts to look me in the face. This is in front of everybody in the room. And he starts to touch me, and he starts to look and he stares. And that night, as I was saying, he sat for an hour and 40 minutes. So it’s not just for a short minute. But the whole countenance of the boy changed. The whole nature of him changed and then his face changed, and you could see it on his face. And then later on, that’s when the mom came back that night, and it’s hard for me not to cry. But the mom came back and says, “My boy started to talk.” So the boy that night started to talk to his mom for the first time, looking her into the eyes, and she had an encounter with a boy that had just had an encounter with Jesus and with the very love of Jesus. So I just started to say, Leif, sometimes you are like a lion and you want to speak authority to this. Sometimes you need to be just like a lamb and the power of the lamb of being able to lay down and love, just started to feel what feel and sense what I sense. There is power in the lamb and there is power in the blood of the lamb. And I want you to learn sometimes like when to be a lamb and when to be a lion, and that’s so much a key to be a giant slayer. It’s just understanding the very rhythm of Heaven, because if not sometimes when we roar, if it doesn’t come from the lamb’s nature, the very compassion and the very love that God has for those people that has been hurt, wounded and been destroyed by the giant, then you do not have the authority to be a giant slayer.
SID: But do you know how easy, going back to that boy, or how 99.9 of the teachers or evangelists in America would have said, lady, will you take your son out of this auditorium, please, and smile, instead. That’s not what Jesus would have done. That child would have been able to start talking. And because you saw him the way Jesus saw him, he got healed. Okay, now you talked about picking the right battle. How do we know what is the right battle?
LEIF: I think it’s very important for us to know what we are called to do. First of all, we need to know who we are, the identity. And the second also is what are you called to do? Like for myself, I have some people that are asking me all these different questions, what’s going on in the Middle East or what do you believe about this and that? I sometimes stay away from those topics because it is outside my area of assignment. As soon as I start to move in that direction I move away from my anointing.
SID: And you know what, it’s like with me. There are many things I can do, but I have chosen my whole walk to be a specialist in what God himself has called me to do and I know, Leif, I would have never accomplished what I have had I tried to have done everything.
LEIF: And it is, if you are looking at you, Sid, everybody, what is your special sauce? What are you called to do? And we know that you are sharing the supernatural story who Jesus is and the Jews, and believers all over, Jesus is being glorified because you are staying in your lane. That’s what I am also doing in my life and I’m trying to help other people as who are you and what are you called to do. What is your destiny? Because often the very giant where the serpent has bitten you is where you have the greatest authority. So the giant often stands between your identity and your destiny. And the key is to get back into the identity. This is who you are. This is how I see you. But to do that you need to know who God is to you. And then when you see him, you see yourself, and then you look at the giant and now you can speak to the giant instead of about the giant, because you have the clarity of the authority that comes from the identity. This is who I am, this is what God has called me to do and I am one with him. I’m in covenant with a covenant-keeping God, and this giant is not the problem. It is actually a promise from me when I stay within my lane and I don’t get distracted.
SID: There is another thing you talk about. If you want to become a giant slayer, hang around giant slayers.
LEIF: I think this is another thing that has become so important for me to recognize. Even like last night I had dinner with some of your guests that are very prophetic, and I started to sense something prophetic going on among one of your guests that dreams at nighttime. Now I saw the dream during last night this hanging around the giant slayers. When I’m around Heidi Baker, I was just in Mozambique, it was just the lamb’s nature in me is just becoming so aware and I want to go lower. I did want to go deeper and just seeing people from a different perspective. So when I want to be a lamb I’m hanging around Heidi Baker. If I want to go in my healing anointing I’m hanging around giant slayers like Randy Clark that has faced the giant in the sense of sickness and disease over and over again. So the different people around my life is all giving me an upgrade. I’m going to be myself, but even as I’m honoring the different giftings that is around me that is around me and other giant slayers, I’m also realizing what I honor. I also have access to it.
SID: You know what, I think a lot of people want to be able to walk in that delicate balance between a lamb and a lion, between love and authority. And I believe that they can hang around you by just sitting under your teaching. That’s the same thing. That’s what’s going on right now. So when we come back I’m going to have Leif pray for you for the lamb and the lion anointing. Be right back.
