Immediately after that amazing evening when Jesus met with me and called me to serve Him, aged 15, everything changed.
Coming up for 16, I was now in the Fifth Form in Selhurst Grammar School, Croydon; it was to be my last year before I left school. For some reason they had separated my twin brother and myself, so it was just me in that particular class. I remember that year very clearly; for our weekly religious lesson, we had a master who was what one might call a ‘modernist’. He denied that the miracles in the Bible happened; he didn’t even believe in the miracle of Creation but leaned to Darwin’s theory of evolution. This upset and annoyed me very much, because I had been brought up to believe in God as Creator of Heaven and Earth and to accept the Bible totally – with all the miracles.
Week after week I challenged him on the Authority and Divine Inspiration of the Bible. One of my favourite texts was, ‘All Scripture is given by inspiration from God.’ Every week I would counter him with Scripture, and if I didn’t know the answer I would go home and ask my father, who could always find the correct verses to help me. The boys in my class seemed to enjoy this, as we were the only class in school that never followed the curriculum; the whole Scripture lesson consisted of my arguments with the teacher. At the end of just one term, he came to me and suggested that we start Bible study and prayer in the school. I’m sure that he had accepted Christ, as every lesson I always brought in a clear call to salvation. Later I also found that two boys in the class went on to become preachers of the Gospel.
'Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know,' (Jeremiah 33.3, NKJV).
God is challenging us to believe for greater miracles - to do the greater works that Jesus promised! Is your faith strong enough? Is mine? Will the wind of the Holy Spirit blowing on the sails of my little boat push me further into the greatness of God? Like Columbus setting out into a vast and unknown ocean – I want to go where no one had ever gone before. I want the Holy Spirit to fill the sails of my tiny boat and take me into a spiritual world unknown and unexplored!
Today it’s time that we began to rise up and recognise the power and authority that we have in Jesus’ Name. Power to preach a life-changing Gospel, power to bring healing miracles in order that He might receive the glory, and so that we as ‘ordinary’ people might have something dynamic to demonstrate in our lives! When Jesus healed the paralytic man (Matthew 9.6) He said, ‘So that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth... rise up and walk!’ Today we must become men and women of action to continue the demonstration begun by Jesus, so that non-believers will desire to have what we have!