The first time I street-preached it wasn’t on the street.

It was in my prayer closet – my daughter’s bedroom.

A hairbrush was my microphone, the Lord Jesus my audience.

Just me and Him.

I wept and pleaded for sinners to turn to God, to flee from the wrath that is to come. I preached my heart out, to Him.

Then I fell on my face and wept and wept. I was under the anointing and I knew He was pleased.

 

Mind you, it took a long time to get me to even this point. First there was the call to preach years before, then sometime later He commissioned me with Isaiah 40.

Both of these occurred when I was alone with Him in my prayer closet.

The commissioning was terrifying. I was so scared that I was shaking and ran out to my husband crying “God has just commissioned me! But I don’t know what for!”  I was almost too scared to ever return to the prayer closet again. Both times I knew He was calling me to something but I did not have a clear picture of what it was.

He had asked me “Will you feed the multitudes?” and I had said yes, but at the time I didn’t understand what that meant.

Then came the dreams and “visions”. One dream was of me standing on a box in the CBD of the city and preaching God’s coming judgment, warning people in suits to flee from the wrath that is to come.

Another dream was of hell. It so terrified me that in my dream I awoke and ran to my front door crying out “I have to warn people not to go there!”

There was the “vision” of me preaching during the day in the city with a certain huge guy standing next to me, almost as a bodyguard. (This was fulfilled last year).

Then I actually began going out to the street, Friday nights into the city. I didn’t preach for probably a year though. I spoke with people, prayed with them, handed out tracts. The pastor I went with kept encouraging me to preach but I’d say “No, no, I couldn’t”.

Meanwhile Jesus was training me in my prayer closet. He was having me preach to Him. Sometime around this time I discovered two other occurrences of God’s similar training methods:

• One was in Angus Buchan’s biography. This book details how God also first taught him to preach in his prayer closet, the cornfield. He would stand in the back of his truck and preach to the corn stalks.

 

• The other occurrence was David Wilkerson. Before he went to the streets of New York God had him walk the fields around his home and pray and prophesy to the trees.

 

My first night of street-preaching, actually on the street, eventually arrived. I can’t remember why this particular night I said “Yes” when the pastor asked me to preach, but I did.

I got up there, terrified, microphone in one hand, Bible in the other. I deliberately held the open Bible two inches from my face as I read it so nobody could see me and I couldn’t see them. I read out John 3:16. Someone said “Amen” as they walked past me, then I turned the microphone off.

That was it.

That was all I could manage at the time. But I have been trained since, and I am still being trained.

And it was the Lord who trained me.

He trained me in the school of the prayer closet. He trained me by the Holy Spirit, through tears and through prayer. He taught me that when I preach I am to preach to Him. Even on the streets. Even surrounded by crowds. It is Him I am preaching to, it is Him.

I felt to write this today. It is the season of Pentecost and I feel it is for someone in particular to read, so I pray that this will bless, encourage and inspire whoever it is for.

In Jesus’s wonderful Name, Amen.