THE FIRST DAY OF THE CONFERENCE AND CRUSADE

This morning I woke up to find that my voice was beginning to crack up. I have had a cold for the last few days and was coughing and sputtering a bit with it, but the combination of the cold and the preaching to date managed to affect my throat.

People started gathering for the conference by about 7:00 am in the morning. By the time I was taken to the meeting at 10:30 the church was overflowing with people and they were (of course) in full swing. Bishop Patrick was busy getting arrangements done for the day and the meeting was being run by one of the other pastors. Emmanuel preached for a bit and then the Bishop preached and I was put on at about 11:15 and preached and taught until after 1:30 without stopping. There is a difference between the way preaching and teaching happens here. I can’t say that it is common, but in this movement there is a lot of shouting and the preaching tends to be very emotive. I’m not saying it is not genuine but it certainly pitches into a spot that we would see as the emotions rather than the mind or somewhere else. There is a tendency to view teaching as lacking anointing just because it is less demonstrative. This was one of the reasons why Emmanuel wanted me to come. He wanted to expose the people to teaching where the power would come from the word more than from the presentation.

So I taught about how important it was to live by every word from the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4; Exodus 8:6). At one point I asked how many people did not own a Bible and found that there were some hundreds of people there who didn’t have one of their own. As a group we pledged to return to Australia and raise the money needed to get them Bibles. The session went really well and I was able to connect with people and establish a rapport. The interpreter was a great bloke who was not only skilled but had a personality that made what we were doing fun.

The rest of the team went to a couple of schools and gave presentations there with music and skits and preaching. They returned to the conference and we were there together for most of the time I preached. They did some worship at the end.

The March for Jesus was supposed to happen by 3:00 pm but before that time it started to pour with rain. It was very strong and constant. We began to pray that it would stop and it did. The march went on as planned but a little late and then with the rain the Crusade started late. I came home to rest after the teaching and was really worried about my voice. I spent the time in prayer.

The Bishop came to pick me up and drive me to the Secondary School grounds. The place was not filled but there were many thousands of people there. The program was cut a but short. The worship team from Faith Fellowship Church led the first part of the praise and then our guys did some worship songs. Then it was my time to preach. My voice was cracking and there were moments where I would lose it altogether. But the grace and presence of the Lord was so powerful. He kept on giving me the ability to speak and by the end of my message I was still able to speak strongly. I preached on the healing of Bartimaeus and had talked about him running to Jesus. When I made the altar call I challenged people who didn’t know Christ to run to the alter. And they did. Somewhere between one and two hundred people received Christ. It was a very powerful time. We then prayed for healing and hundreds more came to receive prayer. That was also powerful and God did some amazing things. We will be hearing people give their testimonies in the meeting tomorrow.

The team worked hard, helping the local guys with the follow up stuff and with other prayer. The rain stayed away and the night finished with a great time or praise and worship. People were so filled with joy and knew the power of God’s presence was in the place. It’s a funny thing, but the experience of the presence of God in an open field is different from in a building. I can’t say how or why, but it is. There is something greater about what we had experienced.

The Lord will need to do a job on my voice. This is the beginning of eleven days of Conference and Crusade, then there are two more Sundays of meetings. I am looking forward to everything God will do.

I was so proud of the way the church leaders and the Bishop himself handled the rain and all of the complications it brought. There was a time when I wondered if we were going to be able to even have the meeting, but the Lord prevailed and Patrick and his team were strong and what turned out was a great beginning to the meetings.