Today we used chalk to write on the ground as well as the typical preaching with the PA, handing out tracts and one-on-one conversations.
I think the chalk worked really well. I found the most effective place was at the bottom of the stairs leading into the train station. People coming down the stairs actually stopped, turned around and read the words. People coming up the stairs read them on their way up. I was surprised by how many people actually stop to read chalk messages on the ground. I guess it’s just natural curiosity.
It’s also a valuable evangelism method because after you leave the area, the words still remain.
Has anyone else ever tried this method? What else has worked for you?
Today I was so blessed because a large group of Asian teenage students came along when H was preaching. They stopped and were listening. I went over to them with tracts and little books containing the gospel of John. They were so hungry for the gospel. They clamoured for tracts. When one saw I had little books as well, she cried out “I want a little book!” Well that set off the rest of the group who all also didn’t want to miss out and clamoured for the “little books”. They were so pleased and thanked me profusely.
It is rare to see that kind of hunger here in Australia. Oh God have mercy on us.
The Holy Spirit gave us Judges 7:13, 14 before we went in to preach today:
“And when Gideon was come, behold, there was a man that told a dream unto his fellow, and said, Behold, I dreamed a dream, and, lo, a cake of barley bread tumbled into the host of Midian, and came unto a tent, and smote it that it fell, and overturned it, that the tent lay along. 14And his fellow answered and said, This is nothing else save the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel: for into his hand hath God delivered Midian, and all the host.”
Just as God sent Gideon into battle the enemy with only 300 men, so God today sent 3 women in to the enemy’s territory.
When we first arrived there was a strange feel to the place. I suddenly felt very ill with nerves. My stomach came down with a bad case of butterflies looking at all the people.
The best antidote for fear and nerves I have found is to get on with preaching immediately. If I procrastinate I can lose my nerve and sink into a mire of fear.
The funny thing is that as soon as I begin to preach the fear always leaves immediately. The strange feel to the place also left too.
I want to encourage you that our individual testimony of God’s grace and power in our life is powerful. H was sharing her testimony when a young man walked past. He kept stopping and looking back at her as she spoke about how God had changed her. Eventually he came back and asked me for a tract.
We each have a testimony to share with someone – and that is sufficient to be able to bring the gospel to someone who is lost.
These words from Wesley’s hymn “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” were on my heart all day today:
I was under massive oppression all day today. I felt like crying, like giving up, I felt condemned, useless, hopeless.
And so I almost didn’t go into the city to street-preach tonight.
But when my wonderful husband said “I think “someone” is trying to stop you going in there tonight…” my will-power kicked in. Why should I be trampled down when my Jesus says “Behold I give you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions”?
So in I went.
And boy, I am glad I did.
There is a Jehovah’s Witness Convention on in the city this weekend and those JW’s were everywhere tonight! I know this because they wore purple badges.
Anyhow, there was a real anointing on the preaching tonight. People stopped and listened. Lots of people. Lots of teenagers, lots of Muslims. Lots of conversations were had. Praise God.
The JW’s didn’t stop though. They kept walking in their well-trained, don’t-make-eye-contact way. They wagged their heads at me, particularly when I quoted John 1:14 and proclaimed that Jesus IS God. They didn’t like it when I said that as Jesus hung on the CROSS the people wagged their heads at Him.
Someone else actually paid me $5 as I preached. That’s a first. I am not actually sure whether that’s a good or a bad thing. Anyway I gave the money away because it just felt too weird.
Again someone tried to unplug me as I preached, but I caught the young man and gave him a good scolding as only a mother can do.
By the third time I preached the devil tried to stop me. An angry atheist was sent to my left belting out antagonisms and an unstable person to my right continually tapping me on the shoulder saying “Do you have a minute?…Do you have a minute?”
The last time I went in to preach in the city’s streets was in the battle with the Hares some weeks back. That ended up taking a huge toll on me and I was sick for some time afterwards…
The good news is that they apparently haven’t been back to the area since.
“But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place.” 2 Corinthians 2:14
Something else I discovered tonight: a large Muslim contingent has set up two tables in the city’s most popular mall. There they distribute Islamic literature and even preach on microphones to the public.
Of course, they are entitled to do so, just as we are.
I find this disturbing though. Why? Because it is really hard to get Christians out there to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, yet the Muslims are seemingly doing it for Allah.
I suppose that may be because as Christians we are partakers of God’s wondrous grace. We certainly don’t have to street-preach or to share the gospel to be saved. We don’t have to work for salvation at all. No, it is all the work of God. And praise Him for that! However, I do wonder why it is so hard to get Christians out there when we have the greatest love story in the world to share (not to mention the Great Commission Christ gave us and the Holy Spirit to help us).
Christian brothers and sisters – we need to pray that God sends out more labourers into the harvest! We really do. Whilst most of the church is sitting in their comfy chairs watching tv or arguing amongst themselves over doctrinal issues, the devil is working diligently against the gospel of Christ.
I am not trying to put condemnation on anyone. It is hard to get out there. Believe me, I know. I also know that no-one wants to hear this…. But I think it necessary to speak the truth of what I see.
Brothers and sisters we urgently need two things :
intercessors, and
those willing to go. We need those like Isaiah who will say:
The Hare Krishna’s came back as we were preaching. Two weeks ago, as I wrote about here, they came and did their dance to Krishna but left after only a few minutes.
Well last night they came as I began to preach. But this time they stayed.
This time they had an amp with them and sang songs and chanted mantras to Krishna whilst they danced. It was loud.
I kept preaching though. I kept on, like last time:
“Jesus is the Way, the Truth, the LIfe. No one comes to the Father but by Him…” etc
“There is no other Name under heaven by which humankind can be saved than the Name of Jesus…”
On they stayed.
On I kept preaching.
“Jesus is Lord. And at the Name of Jesus every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord to the glory of the Father!”
It went on. Multitudes of people came over to see what was going on. They were fascinated. It was a battle and everyone knew it. Many people video-ed all of it on their phones (if you see it on YouTube, let me know!)
10 minutes – I began calling out the words to “Amazing Grace”.
The Hare Krishnas became frenzied. Faster and faster they got, they worked themselves into an ecstatic frenzy. They reminded me of the prophets of Baal as they cried out to their “god” to answer them on Mount Carmel.
15 minutes…
My voice started hurting, my chest was heaving. I prayed to God that He would sustain me to keep going. I saw why He has prompted me to get fit lately.
I looked into the crowd as I proclaimed that “Jesus is Lord” and there was a gift from God. A young lady with her hands in the air crying out “Amen! Jesus is Lord!”
She became my lifeline. I looked to her as it went on. She encouraged me to keep going.
I didn’t know what else to do. I lifted my hands in the air and shut my eyes and cried out:
“Jesus, I proclaim that You are Lord over this station! You are Lord. I praise the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world! I praise you Lord! Hallelujah to the Lamb!”
The Hare Krishna’s left.
Praise God.
I kept preaching for another minute, then the gift-from-God young lady came over and asked if she could sing. She had never sung by herself in a public street before but the presence of God was so strong.
She sung a beautiful song all about Jesus.
Some people from the crowd hung around to talk to some of the guys.
There was a great battle last night, but there was a great victory for the kingdom of God too!
Needless to say, it has taken me all day today to recover…:)
“Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place.” 2 Corinthians 2:14
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.
It began pretty much the same as usual, but at some point I noticed the Hare Krishna’s dancing their noisy way towards us.
Great
With their colourful clothes, tambourines and dancing they make it all but impossible to preach the gospel. They usually pull up in a wide circle in front of where we are preaching and dance and sing for sometimes 10-15 minutes.
Usually we get pushed to the sidelines amongst all the colourful chaos and the tourists bustling to take photos of them. Standing on the sidelines politely waiting for them to finish their worship ceremony to their false god is absolutely frustrating. It feels like Satan has got one over on us.
Something I’ve learnt: if you give Satan an inch – he will take a mile.
We are in a spiritual battle and being on the city streets you cannot forget it.
So tonight as they approached I grabbed the microphone and began preaching. As they came up to us I kept going. They waved to me, I waved back. I was polite, but not polite enough to stop. I preached:
“Jesus said ‘I AM the Way, the Truth and the Life, no man comes to the Father but by Me”.
They kept going. I kept going: “There is no other name under heaven by which man can be saved, than the Name of Jesus!” Sometimes I just called out “Jesus! Jesus!” over their noise.
They stayed for maybe two minutes then gave up and left.
But then it happened…
As I was preaching, I began weeping.
Yes, weeping. In front of lots of people. It was weird. I couldn’t stop it. I felt God’s heart breaking for these lost sinners. I felt Him yearning for them to come home. It wasn’t me being emotional or sad – it was Him calling to them through me. I wept as I preached to them His heart.
But then I stopped preaching because I began to think. That can be a problem whilst preaching. The anointing lifts off when you start to really think, especially if you wonder what people are thinking of you. Now I kind of wish I kept going because that’s never happened to me before and I think I probably stopped it before God was done. Sorry Lord.
Important point: I believe God wants to raise up preachers who are broken for the sins of the people.
You see, there are preachers who preach the cold, hard truth of the gospel. They want the authority that gives them, but they don’t take any responsibility for the people.
Then there are preachers who in response to the above have taken out most of the truth of the gospel and replaced it with psychology or self-help or something else human. They want to take responsibility for the people, yet they have no God-given authority to do so.
God is raising up those who will “speak the truth in love”. We can get rid of neither love nor truth, and that is what so many have done.
God gives authority to those who will take responsibility. And being willing to take responsibility for others brings authority.
We need to speak the whole truth of the gospel – yes, including sin, the law, hell and judgment. BUT we need to speak the truth from a heart that has been broken for the people’s sins. We have no right to be preaching to people about whom we couldn’t care less. That is not God’s heart. That has never been His way. Think of Moses, Samuel, Jesus, Paul… We need to be willing to take responsibility for them by standing in the gap and interceding.
Preaching and intercessory prayer go hand-in-hand
Just as:
Authority and responsibility go hand-in-hand
May our mighty God bless you!
“If sinners be dammed, at least let them leap to Hell over our bodies. If they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees. Let no one GO there UNWARNED and UNPRAYED for.” Charles Spurgeon
“If Jesus had preached the same message that ministers preach today, He would never have been crucified.” (Leonard Ravenhill)
“What are you doing?”
“WHAT are you doing?”
The man was standing on my right hand side, and he was very, very close. Yesterday morning I was preaching in the city. It had been a great morning, with very little resistance to the gospel. In fact, astonishingly, people had been quite open to it. As soon as I’d started preaching some individuals had immediately come over to talk to the others and ask for tracts (I’ve never seen that before!). But then this man: he couldn’t have been standing more than a foot away from me. It made me uncomfortable.
“What are you doing?” he said to me again.
“I will talk to you when I’m finished,” I said, momentarily pausing from preaching. I could see that he wasn’t about to go anywhere soon.
I turned my back to him slightly and kept going, trying to ignore him.
I usually get nervous when I go to the streets, but I’ve never been afraid. There is a difference.
Something the Lord has caused me to see is that when I am sent somewhere by the Holy Spirit, then I am going in the authority of Jesus Christ. I am going in His Name. It is like an ambassador being sent from the US to another country. He goes with the authority of the US and with the strength of the US behind him. When we go out from Jesus’ presence into the world we go as His ambassador. We go under His authority and we have the whole of Heaven behind us, supporting us, cheering us on.
“…and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places,far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him, who fills all in all.”
JESUS IS LORD!
There is nothing to fear when we walk with the King of kings, the Lord of Lords.
Back to that man standing close to me: as I spoke with him it became obvious there was a proud, religious spirit manifesting. (…”You don’t know the Bible….You don’t know Jesus….I know Jesus…I know Him better than anyone, better than He knows Himself…“) – and, yes, he actually said that.
The Holy Spirit was grieved by this and He had me take authority over the situation. I had no choice but to tell him politely but firmly that his heart was not right, that he was wasting my time and that I was ending the conversation with him. I walked away. As Christians we are to show love to people but zero tolerance to Satan.
“I am well assured that I did far more good to my Lincolnshire parishioners by preaching three days on my father‟s tomb than I did by preaching three years in his pulpit.” John Wesley
“I believe I never was more acceptable to my Master than when I was standing to teach those hearers in the open fields…I now preach to ten times more people than I would if I had been confined to the churches.” George Whitfield
We were there to street-preach before the concert began and set up the PA system. With wave upon wave of people coming across the street toward us and hundreds more pouring out from the train station behind us, it was crazy busy. There were so many people that at one point I could hardly move.
It was too good an opportunity to pass up. I preached.
“Nobody cares!” someone screamed at me.
Who cares if nobody cares? I certainly don’t. My Lord Jesus told me to “Go”. I kept preaching. I preached for as long as I could, until my voice started cracking and I had to stop for its sake.
Street-preaching – why? (I ask myself this when I’m feeling tired or lazy)
Because thousands of people, both old and young heard the gospel of Jesus Christ last night who perhaps wouldn’t have otherwise.
What if those people never once in their life ever stepped inside a Church?What if they never heard the gospel before they died?
I set up the PA system and started preaching before I lost my nerve. Within seconds a demon-possessed man manifested and screamed an obscenity at me so bad that I cannot repeat it. Even though I’m regularly verbally abused on the street, I have never been called anything like that before.
I was momentarily stunned.
Not so much stunned at the man actually, but more that God had let that happen to me just as I had begun to preach. He knew how weak I’d been this morning. He knew I’d needed extra help. I mean, I had asked Him for a special blessing today!
I recovered and kept preaching anyway.
After that incident, the time the two other ladies and I spent there was wonderful. I really loved it. God put two special young guys in my path who, underneath their bravado, were hungry for the truth. We had amazing conversations. I was asked by both of them (separately) :
“With so many religions out there, and so many gods, how do you know which one is the truth?”
How would you answer that?
It’s when I’m out there that I see that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is so very important. We absolutely need Him when we are out there. Without Him, we literally can do nothing. But with Him we can do all things. It is our real relationship with the LIVING God that counts when we are in the firing-line. Religious platitudes, clichés and one-liners do NOT work. Sinners see right through all that rubbish.
But…if you’ve been with Jesus…well, they can see that too.
Here’s what I learnt today:
I wanted God to make my way easy, I wanted Him to pave the way for me, after all, as I told Him, I was going out there for Him.
But He didn’t do that. He doesn’t always give us what we want, but He does give us what we need. He lets us see the truth of the sinfulness of man; He lets us have confrontations with demons. And in doing so He lets us see ourselves too.
In essence, He lets us see reality.
Why? Because that is where He is – in the midst of the dirty, the sinful, the demon-possessed, that is where He is working.
And that’s where He calls us to go with Him.
“ “I will make the place of my feet glorious”—among the poor, the devil-possessed, the mean, the decrepit, the selfish, the sinful, the misunderstood—that is where Jesus went, and that is exactly where he will take you if you are his disciple”. (Oswald Chambers)
He won’t drop rose petals on our path for us, He won’t pamper us and cater to our self-pity, our comfort, nor our convenience. He lets us be confronted, shocked and disgusted. And then He says:
Hosea 6:5: "Therefore have I hewed them by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth: and thy judgments are as the light that goeth forth."
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Today we used chalk to write on the ground as well as the typical preaching with the PA, handing out tracts and one-on-one conversations.
It’s also a valuable evangelism method because after you leave the area, the words still remain.
Grace and Truth 