Sid: I’m going to tell you something if you have anything wrong with your spine or your back you listen to this show all five days and you’re going to get an amazing miracle; you’re going to be healed. My guest Ricardo Sanchez he’s won Dove Awards, he’s nominated for the Grammy Award, but through life experience and through intimacy with God developed a way that the limits in your life are about ready to be unshackled to come off of you. I want you to get know Ricardo just a little bit Ricardo your age 5 and your already playing music and singing in your family band; what did you do?
Ricardo: (Laughing) Well, hello Sid and to your audience as well, it’s truly an honor to be here. Yes, I was 5 years old and what I tell people is that ever since I can remember remembering there was always music in my family. And obviously with a name like Ricardo Sanchez I grew up in a Latin home and my father loved music so there was constant Mariachi music, Latin style of music being played throughout my home and my father his desire was to be a Latin singer. The only problem was he didn’t have a great voice to do that, but he taught his children how to sing, there are six of us total I’m the youngest of six. Three of us grabbed a hold of this passion and began singing at the age of 5 for different church groups around Phoenix, Arizona and such.
Sid: And you became a musician with…most people are familiar with Israel Houghton, and he actually mentored you. One day God speaks to you to walk away from the wonderful ministry you have and do a CD, but you were a little nervous over it. Why?
Ricardo: Well I tell you it’s always embarrassing… well I should put it this way it takes faith to step out and do something that you’ve never done before to actually walk on metaphorically speaking walk on water that things you have never seen before. It takes courage, it takes something that you can’t learn from a textbook or in a class and here I was. You know I was at the age of 30 at the time and God tells me to go out and begin to invest $20,000 into a CD. There are millions of CD’s made every year, and what would be you know so different about my CD? But I just felt that there’s something inside my spirit to get out there and I heard God say “Write songs and put them in the hands of worship leaders, write songs where my spirit would flourish, write songs where churches would begin to see the supernatural with a prophetic flow where I can move and speak genuinely to My people.”
Sid: Now but according to my notes God spoke to you when you were really struggling with doing this and He said something very profound, what did He say?
Ricardo: Well, I’ll tell you one of the things that I had seen Sid is that so many people are getting glory, so many people’s names are on CD’s. And there was even an encounter with just name her Sister Sandpaper in our church who told people that Ricardo is just out for money, he’s going to you know keep all of this money and blah, blah. And so I went before the Lord and what I see now is false humility. And I said “God I don’t want my name on this record, I don’t want my name on these songs, this is not about me.” And in the midst of worship to Him and in the midst of prayer this morning, that specific morning, I heard the voice of God speak to me Sid and He said “Ricardo, what makes you think any of this has to do with you; this has nothing to do with your glory, this has to do with My glory; this has to do with My Word.” And I realized that in that moment that my songs, my sermons no prophetic word has ever helped anybody. What has helped people is the anointing in the song, it’s the anointing in the sermon, it’s the anointing in the prophetic word the utterance. It was in that moment that my faith just caught on fire and it leaped and I began to write songs and that’s really where it began.
Sid: Ricardo you know some people are really proficient in seeing things in the Spirit, I’m proficient in feeling things in the Spirit. And I feel an awesome presence of God over your life; now that just doesn’t come automatically, what’s your worship like? Personal worship I mean.
Ricardo: Sid our personal worship life is a lot like our public worship life, there is really no difference, every time I go before God it’s different and every service that we worship it’s different because God is forever moving. So whether it be that I’m walking through something economically, physically, or spiritually I always enter my office there’s either a guitar, a keyboard or a piano near me and I will pick up right before I open up the word I’ll pick up my guitar, or go to the keyboard and I’ll begin to play. And a lot of it is feeling the environment but also understanding intellectually with my natural mind where I am, what my family’s walking through, what I’ve experienced on Sunday morning with the word, scripture I’m memorizing, I’m studying. And I’ll just begin to play and play a melody, melodies will come and then I’ll just open up mouth a lot like Mike Maiden who has introduced me to the prophetic songs. I’ll just begin to open my mouth and sing prayers to God, and that’s where my worship starts. And then I might go into a chorus that I might know, a hymn that I might know, but then I’ll just allow room and space for God to speak to me and to move me to my next place throughout the day.
Sid: Now what I’m seeing is there is a unique presence of God when you worship Him in a public arena that affects people. I mean literally we’ll talk about it later this week the deaf can hear, the blind can see.
Ricardo: Yes.
Sid: The lame can walk but there’s something else that’s something that everyone here can relate to that’s listening to us and people have one or more areas in their life that are hopeless. You have a song on the album “It’s Not Over,” and that’s the name of the song “It’s Not Over.” What does that mean to you?
Ricardo: Oh, my family and I walked through an experience with our son that we’ll get into in a minute, but it was a moment where I desperately needed Heaven to move, I needed God to move. I had this simple revelation that when the presence of God the Bible says “He inhabits the praises of His people.” And so when the presence of God, the promise of His presence comes in our praise and in our worship and what I saw was not just Jesus coming but in the Spirit what I saw was His entire Kingdom comes with Him. It’s not just God and His grace it’s God and His mercy and His power and His forgiveness and His blessing and His anointing; His entire Kingdom comes with Him. And so in the midst of this season that Jeannette and I were walking through and our family I needed Heaven to come down; I needed a miracle. I needed the supernatural to be tapped into and activated in my season and in my moment. This song just kind of flowed from that incidence it kind of flowed into our season into our circumstance and begin this balm this healing…
Sid: But the anointing on this song is going to flow into your circumstance, into your problem right now because I proclaim on behalf of Almighty God it is not over.
Ricardo worshiping: “It is Not Over.”
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth