I want to challenge you: God has called you! We don’t all have to be preachers, but the fact is that we are saved to live for God.
God has called us into the kingdom, and if you are a born-again, baptised, Spirit-filled believer, God has done that for a reason. God doesn’t save you and call you so that you can sit at ease – we are saved to serve! Not just to have a wonderful life.
We don’t all have to be preachers, but the fact is that we are saved to live for God. He has called us, but we have to ‘make it happen’! I believe in prayer, and I believe in miracles, but miracles happen when God uses men and women to work the miracles! I hear people say all over the world, ‘Oh, it’s not the time for evangelism, and if God wants to save people, He will do it Himself.’ No, God sent His Son into the world to die on the cross to set the world free – but we’ve got to declare it!
I want to emphasise that God called me, I did not choose to serve God. Jesus said in His own words, ‘You did not choose me, I chose you.’ He called us in order that we might serve Him, and I believe that He called every single born-again believer to serve Him. And once you are called into service you will need the Holy Spirit’s fire and power, because you cannot make it on your own!
During those communist years God had given me an incredible power to evangelise. On this particular occasion in Bulgaria, I had travelling with me, in my car, the famous American evangelist, Lester Sumrall. We’d been invited to evangelise in Sofia the capital city, and we had borrowed a church in the city centre for a Saturday night meeting. It was packed and was a great success. Afterwards we took the pastor’s wife for dinner. Naturally, we questioned her, why hadn’t the pastor, her husband, been present in the meeting? She explained that he’d left town for fear of being put in prison for allowing us to come. But he’d left her in charge!
Though a sense of revival was already in the air, Bulgaria was still a very dangerous country for a Christian to live in.
At the end of the meeting some people we didn’t know had come up to us and invited us to speak next morning, Sunday, in a far distant town, Yambol. We were told a car would be waiting for us outside our hotel at 4.00am to take us there. The service was due to start at 10.30am. Brother Sumrall, being older than I, said he wouldn’t get up at that unearthly hour to travel with strangers to an unknown city. I, of course, said, I’ll go! After all, this was my ministry, my vision, and I like danger and adventure! But it would be an eery experience, getting into a strange car in the dark with absolute strangers in a communist country. No wonder Brother Sumrall had refused.
At 4.00am I looked out of the window. Sure enough, the car was waiting. I went down and got in. It was an old Skoda – not like our modern ones – but a model made in communist times, so it broke down more than once on the way; we didn’t arrive at the church in Yambol until well after the service had started. No time even for a cup of tea. The church was packed out, hundreds of people, many standing, and many more standing outside because they couldn’t get in; the only place for me to sit was with the girls in the choir.
As the worship continued, all in the Bulgarian language of course, I could hear an uneducated girl in the choir sitting next to me speaking in tongues – but what I heard was clear beautiful English. She was saying softly, “I love You Jesus, I will never go anywhere without You!” Obviously she didn’t know what she was saying, she knew no English. But I KNEW, the Holy Spirit was present in Power. I can’t remember what my message was after that. All I knew was that the Holy Spirit was falling down upon that crowded building.
After the service I told the pastor, we must take the stadium to evangelise. He said no, of course, as it belonged to the communist party. Eventually I persuaded him, and I insisted he come with me and take me there. Exactly as the pastor had warned, the directors of the stadium absolutely refused to let us have it. They argued, as the pastor said they would, that the stadium belongs to the communist party, and as directors and members of the communist party, they couldn’t rent it to me – or anyone – for evangelism.
They kept refusing to let me have the stadium, and I kept refusing to give in; I believed the Lord wanted the stadium and I, as His representative, must take it. Eventually I prayed, “Lord change these men’s minds!” Suddenly as I prayed, I saw the change in their eyes; they looked at me and said, “No, we can’t rent this stadium to you, but there’s nothing to stop us letting you have it for free!”
I went back to England to organise, and at the agreed time, came back with my helpers and with a wonderful worship group with whom I had been working for some years, ‘Vinesong’.
When everything for the next day was prepared and we had nothing left we could do, we decided we would set up our equipment and sing and worship in the city centre – on the steps leading to the communist party headquarters. As we sang and witnessed about Jesus, the crowd grew until we had almost ten thousand gathered in the city centre. Under communism they had never heard music like ours. When I had finished presenting Christ and as I was making the appeal, Vinesong began to sing ‘I bow the knee to Jesus’. John Watson, the leader of Vinesong, wrote afterwards: “As we sang those words in Bulgarian, to our amazement, everyone knelt, and a stillness settled over the multitudes as we experienced the Presence of the Lord.” Ten thousand on their knees accepting Jesus – even the communist police, who were standing guard on the steps of their headquarters, took off their hats, and the communist flag, which until then had been fluttering bravely in the breeze, hung down limp, as if it too were bowing before the Name of Jesus! What a tremendous start to the crusade.
The impact was so powerful that revival broke out and swept the whole of Bulgaria for the next two years.