Some years ago I was invited to speak in a parish in the north of England. I didn’t really know the priest, but I had met him once before. He was a lovely man and very open to the charisms although he wasn’t formally associated with the movement side of the Charismatic Renewal. Tom Gorman, one of my friends from the community, who often accompanied me on ministry trips as an intercessor and prayer partner agreed to come with me.

People have different ways of preparing for talks and ministry. I usually pray and fast for a couple of days before I go anywhere. During this time I will browse the scriptures and see if anything strikes me and if God has a word. In this way I will perhaps get about 15 or so points that at the time seem disconnected but emerge as a theme. In the end, when I actually get to the venue, however, I often say something completely different, and the bible study has been more about preparing me to minister rather than preparing a message for the people whom I am speaking to.

God communicates to me the needs

Thus I often don’t know what to preach about, until I am actually there and God communicates to me the needs that are in the congregation that He wants me to address. Because of this, although I do of course, cover some of the same themes – like repentance or salvation – I don’t have prepared talks as such, and always ask God for something new, so the message is fresh. But it is up to God. Just recently, I was prayed over before going out to give a talk, and the person said, the Lord says “I want you to use old meat for this conference.” I had been going through a bit of a tough time spiritually and in other ways at the time and I was worried that I didn’t feel I had anything new to say and I only had “old meat” but here the Lord was telling me it was ok to use this. I am not the greatest speaker, but I know that God does use me to minister to his people, and for me that’s the most important thing, not that I give a great talk but that people would in some way experience the touch of God. As St Paul says in the First Letter to the Corinthians “My message and my proclamation were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of spirit and power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.” (1 Cor 2.5). Paul obviously must have used the gifts of the Spirit – prophecy, healing, deliverance - in his preaching which touched the people, and that is what I want.

Main preparation is prayer and fasting

That’s why the main preparation for this kind of ministry is your own walk with God and prayer and fasting, rather than formal study. Even so it is nice to feel that you have something to say before you turn up. This was not to be this particular time, however. I did my usual routine of prayer and fasting, but absolutely nothing came – no scripture, no suitable themes. Initially it didn’t worry me too much, as Tom and I had a long journey up to the parish and almost a whole day there, as we weren’t ministering until the evening. God can give you a message in a moment and I just expected one to come at some point.

But it didn’t. We arrived at the parish and I spent the whole day praying and walking and expecting God to give me some idea of what He wanted me to speak about. But still nothing! The evening came and as I sat in the church listening to the worship, I started feeling a bit hot and bothered because I still hadn’t received anything from the Lord and I knew I would have to get up and preach soon, but my mind was blank. I can still remember the moment the parish priest invited me to come forward. I found myself standing facing the congregation, still not knowing what to say. All I could think of was to tell them that my shoes were dirty. I explained that this was because my father had been a real disciplinarian, always insisting on me having shiny shoes. Thus as I grew older, having dirty shoes was a reaction to my upbringing and a way of asserting myself.

Communal whistling unleashed the power of the Holy Spirit

I shared this with the congregation in a conversational manner asking them if they had this kind of stuff in their lives too, and explaining how these kinds of issues from the past can keep us in bondage whereas the Lord wants us to come into freedom. I sometimes whistle in worship, and I felt led to suggest to them that they might like to whistle with me. God bless them. They might have had a few reservations about this, but they all joined in. It was incredible, this communal whistling seeming to loosen the people up in an amazing way. This led to me preaching about Jesus and the cross. As the evening went on people starting falling over in the Holy Spirit all over the place, resting in the Spirit seated in the benches or falling over in the aisles as they walked to the front to be prayed with. There were three sisters there whom I talked to in the hall afterwards, and they all ended on the floor in the church on top of each other, such was the power of God. I must say it was the most powerful anointing I have ever experienced in England. One old lady came up to me afterwards and told me that she had been suffering from depression for 10 years but that evening she had been totally set free. It was amazing.

How far would I go in trusting him?

For me the whole experience was God testing me, and seeing how far I would go in trusting him, and being prepared to be foolish for him. It was as though he wanted to see if I would have the faith and courage to walk the plank as it were, in trust that He would show up and give people what they needed in that moment. I know this kind of preaching isn’t for everyone but God has called me to it. My prayer is always that I would be alive and a channel in the moment. I don’t want to look for success or getting it right, and sometimes I don’t, but that I would be a channel for the needs of the people.

I want revival and for people to be touched by God. Revival is a mystery. We know God has worked in this way in the past, so there is no reason why He can’t do the same today, if we pray and are open. Secular Britain is a difficult atmosphere to work in, but nothing is too difficult for God and I want to be around to see it – in the Catholic Church too.

Roy Hendy, who founded the House of the Open Door Community is an international preacher and speaker.