The Wonder of God at Work

After being challenged to be willing for missionary service (see our previous post - "To Go or Not to Go"), I completed my studies for Youth Leadership at the Y.M.C.A. College in Sydney.

It was because I had witnessed God's miraculous hand at work in the lives of young people in New Zealand that I felt led of the Lord to study for Youth Leadership at the Y.M.C.A. As a teenager in the Methodist Church I was reaching out for the "living edge" with God. I had read how Moses had asked God to show him His glory (Exodus 33:18) and as I was sitting in the pew of the Bryndwr Methodist Church in Christchurch one Sunday I asked the Lord "Would you show me your glory, Lord?" In the midst of a packed church, a white cloud of the glorious presence of the Lord descended upon me. No one else would have seen it but I was overcome by the purity and light of the glory of God. So much so that, after just a few seconds, I had to ask the Lord to take it away because it was more than I could bear.

Because of this experience I started to reach out to the unchurched young people in the 14 to 16 age group in our district. I got permission from the minister, Mr Larsen, to clear out an old Sunday School room which was full of junk. This I transformed into a Club House with a record player, young people's library with all my football books, and antlers on the wall. I formed a Club and gathered a hundred young people from the district. In my naivity I organised teams of the young people to camp out for three days and nights to buy tickets for the Rugby football game between New Zealand and South Africa. We then sold all these tickets on the "open market" for a big profit :-) and then bought special jumpers with a big Boys' Club badge on the front. This gave them the sense of belonging. It was not long after this I organised a camp on a farm. I remember having to preach my first message and, feeling so inadequate, I climbed up into an empty water tower to seek the Lord for what I should share. Maybe I thought I was feeling closer to God there :-) This was a totally new experience for me. The only thing I could think of to speak about was "The Ten Talents" (Matthew 25:14-30). I delivered this message to the young people and I thought to myself "What an abject failure I am at this business. I will never preach again!"

I went out, walking in the paddocks of the farm, commiserating with myself - having a real old "pity party". Then, at one of the gates, I came upon three of the young people. They immediately said, "That message was tremendous!" I was so surprised. But talking more with them I ended up leading them to Jesus. Then, because it started raining, we went inside and continued to talk about the Lord. One of the other leaders came into the room and these three young people told him they had come to the Lord. He said, "We've been talking to the others in the main room and we haven't gone far enough with them." So we all went over to the main room. The three young people shared with the others what had happened to them. All that night, one by one, 114 of them came to the Lord.

How wonderful! My life was changed. My priorities were reset. I found it easy to give up my Rugby career which had been going so well. My goal to get into the New Zealand All-Black team had not been far away. But now, seeing God move so miraculously in the lives of these young people prompted me to go to the Y.M.C.A. Leadership Training College in Sydney. I was now walking on the living edge of God's purpose for my life.

Apart from the studies and the wonderful fellowship I had with the students at the Y.M.C.A. College, I was required to do field work in the inner city, depressed areas, of Sydney - Redfern, Surrey Hills and Waterloo. This was a great experience of reaching out to these underprivileged kids.

It was during the last year at the Y.M.C.A. College I was asked by Christian Television Association to appear on two weekly television programs. It was here I met Bunty, who was producing one and appearing in the other.

I then returned to Auckland, New Zealand, to take up the position of Executive Director of the Y.M.C.A. on the North Shore in Devonport. It was a wonderful year which saw the membership double and many young people come to know the Lord. This produced an amazing phenomenum where these new converts, by their own initiative, went out and witnessed to their friends and then brought them in to see me. Together we then led them to the Lord. There is nothing like the miracle of new birth! To see lives transformed by God's amazing grace.

After a year, however, I began to be stirred by the Lord again in relation to the mission field. The condition I gave to the Lord was that if He was leading me out He would bring in a replacement who was fully committed to Jesus. This he did and I was released to go. I then went, with my younger brother, Terry, to a 3-month Bible School run by Rob Wheeler in Tauranga. Here we were to learn more of the moving of the Holy Spirit and many of the keys that have opened the Scriptures to us. We also learnt what it meant to live by faith and rejoice in periods of deprivation.

It was not long before Terry and I ran out of money. We cashed in loads of old beer bottles left under the house by a previous tennant, but that soon was gone. Because the Bible School ran in the evenings, we would go down each day to the city employment office to apply for work, but had no success. The opposite to the natural reaction would come upon us. We would come out laughing. We would laugh and laugh - "No money - no jobs!" We were hungry but we remembered that each Sunday we were swamped with invitations for beautiful roast dinners. We thought, we just have to fast it out until Sunday. Guess what! That Sunday - no invitations! We walked home laughing and laughing - "No roast dinner!" Arriving home, still laughing, there was a knock on the door. Jim, a good friend, had arrived with a plate of cream cakes. "We thought you might like these", he said, and left. We put the cream cakes on the table and starting to laugh. "We don't want cream cakes" we laughed at one another, "We don't want cream cakes, we want a steak!" We were learning to laugh the laugh of faith at deprivation - situations we would face many times on the mission fields of Asia.

The School and the local Fellowship met on the first floor of a shopfront building. It was here that we saw great outpourings of the Holy Spirit. Many people "drunk" in the Spirit as on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-21). Sometimes it was hard to get some of them home quietly to houses of unsaved loved ones. They just wanted to continue to praise the Lord. One day a whole service was taken over by the Lord in worship. The only instrument in the room was a small pedal organ which was played by an elderly brother in the Lord. After over two hours of worship we walked down into the street outside. People came up to us and said "What a wonderful orchestra you've got!" They had heard trumpets and violins and a beautiful choir. Obviously the angels had been joining in worship with us.

What we experienced there in Tauranga was the beginning of what we were about to experience of a wonderful visitation of God in the South Island of New Zealand, which we will share about in a future post.