MY FIRST MISSIONARY EFFORTS

MY FIRST MISSIONARY EFFORTS TODAY'S SCRIPTURE: “And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs. Amen” (Mark 16:20). DAILY FIRE! The gospel is not Good News to people who do not hear it, and an unpreached gospel is no gospel at all. As a young missionary in Africa, I sometimes preached to five people. Beyond our mission there were 450 million souls in Africa, most of them ignorant of salvation through Jesus Christ.  Yes, they could all be evangelized by the way we were tackling it: but only if they stayed alive for about five thousand years! However, small audiences did not dismay us.  After all, revival could come, and save us a lot of trouble! This hope kept us patient and starry-eyed, for had not our spiritual great-grandfathers banked upon this with unquestioning faith? Later it struck me that the gospel is not Good News to people who do not hear it.  An unpreached gospel is no gospel at all. Another small ray of illumination penetrated my heart: in the New Testament, we never read about God going forth on His own, but that,  “They went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them” (Mark 16:20).  God acted when they acted. So, He was waiting for us and—I could not get away from it; that included me! I set up a Bible correspondence course, and fifty thousand people enrolled. So many! Like a periscope from a submarine, it revealed that I was submerged in an ocean of salvation-hungry humanity.  Additionally, a vision followed me: night after night, I saw the entire African continent washed in the blood of Jesus, country after country.  We had waited for revival, thoroughly and patiently, through a hundred long years of earnest prayer. Surely God must answer now? Seemingly on a wild impulse (which proved to be of God),  I booked a ten thousand-seat stadium for a campaign with a church of forty members…and ten thousand people came!  The first ripe wheat! For the first time, I witnessed thousands running forward to respond to the call of salvation.  God opened my eyes and I actually saw a mighty wave of Holy Spirit power arrive in the stadium, invisible to earthly sight.  A mass baptism in the Holy Spirit, accompanied by many healing miracles, took place. I wept like a boy, and vowed to the Lord that in obedience, I would move across all of Africa to bring the vision to pass.  I reasoned that if God can do that to ten thousand people, He could do it to 450 million. That is the kind of aggressive evangelistic faith I hope to impart to you today. Taken from Daily Fire Devotional: 365 Days in God’s Word by Reinhard Bonnke. Copyright © 2016 by Reinhard Bonnke. Use by permission of Whitaker House. www.whitakerhouse.com

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