You may not know about the second most important experience I’ve had with the Lord.
There isn’t space to write the whole story here, so I’ll give it to you in a nutshell. On January 31, 2002 the Lord powerfully spoke to me through Psalm 78:41. He said I was limiting what He could do with me because of my small thinking. That word from the Lord changed my life and ministry.
At that time our broadcasts covered approximately 30 percent of the U.S. with the Gospel Truth program. We averaged 2,000 incoming calls per month and had 31 employees with a budget of about $210,000 per month. Contrast that with the nearly 26,000 phone calls we received in October 2008, 200 employees, and the monthly budget of nearly $1.5 million that it takes to run the U.S. and U.K. ministries today.
The latest Nielsen ratings list the Gospel Truth broadcast as the fourth most watched daily Christian television program in the nation. Praise the Lord! That’s quite an accomplishment in such a short time. At the rate we were growing before I took the limits off God, it would have taken nearly 30 years to reach the level of coverage that produced those results. We still have a long way to go to reach saturation, but praise the Lord, we are well on our way.
We’ve done our best to keep you informed of what the Lord’s been doing since taking the limits off, but there’s been so much, it’s been hard. One of the great things I haven’t talked about much is the explosion of ministry outside of the United States. We have nearly ten times as many viewers of our Gospel Truth television program around the world as we have here in the States. There are now 2.2 billion people all over the world who have access to our program. Praise the Lord!
Our U.K. ministry, under the leadership of Will Graham, has now translated my books into seventeen foreign languages (check out our European website for details at http://www.awme.net). Just a few weeks ago, I spoke through an interpreter to a woman in Russia who has been totally transformed reading Spirit, Soul & Body. It really touched me to realize that without the translation of that book into her language, this woman would still be struggling in her relationship with God. Now she is joyfully growing in the Lord as never before.
I was so impressed with our Charis Bible College graduates who are now running our Bible school in St. Petersburg, Russia. The students there are just as excited about the Lord as our students here, if not more so. The maturity that God’s Word has caused in their lives was so evident. We have twelve nationalities represented in that one college alone. They will graduate and go back to their home countries and take the life-changing, true Gospel with them. One graduate is already making a tremendous impact in the Congo.
In Amsterdam, I ministered to some of the hungriest people for the Lord that I’ve ever seen. They were soaking up the Word. We saw many miracles happen. I prayed with one woman about a young boy who was dying in a hospital. I laid hands on her and used her as a prayer cloth (Acts 19:11-12). When she got to the hospital, the doctors had totally reversed their diagnosis and said he was okay. They were baffled.
In Buxton, England, we watched a woman come out of her wheelchair and walk in a way that she hadn’t been able to since MS put her there. And the change that we saw in hundreds of ministers at that Ministers’ Conference was awesome! God’s Word is POWERFUL! It is changing people all over the world.
In the first few weeks of February 2009, I have dedicated the Gospel Truth television broadcasts to an update on what the Lord is doing through this ministry in Uganda. Don’t miss these programs. You will see how we literally have the opportunity to change an entire nation.
There is much more to say about all the opportunities the Lord is giving us that are impacting people’s lives worldwide. There just isn’t room here. But the doors are so wide open that we have opened offices in six countries this last year: Canada, Uganda, Belize, Holland, Hungary, and Germany—with more on the way. In the next few months we are also opening CBC extension schools in India and Hungary, and in January 2010 we are starting one in Uganda.
All of this has happened and all of these miracles began when I changed the way I thought about myself and what the Lord could do through me. I stopped limiting Him. What a miracle! But there is more.
The Lord has been speaking to me in the last few months. It’s time to grow again. We can’t fulfill all that He has for this ministry unless I remove more of the limits I’ve placed on Him through my thinking. So I’ve been humbling myself before the Lord and looking for ways I can think bigger.
By the time you read this, I will have just completed a special series of meetings in Phoenix, Arizona, at the Biltmore Resort. It was there, at the beginning of this New Year, that the Lord wanted me to re-teach Taking the Limits Off God (the new series will be called Don’t Limit God) and share with the people what He has been showing me about the future.
We have recorded the meetings in both CD and DVD format. I would really love for you to get a copy of that seminar. What the Lord is leading me to do is bigger than Jamie and me. We can’t do it by ourselves; it’s going to have to be a cooperative venture with thousands of you involved.
One of the important things the Lord is speaking to me about is huge. Most of you know that we have recently been broadcasting the Gospel Truth once a week on the Trinity Broadcasting Network at 10:30 a.m., Pacific Time. Those at TBN love our weekly program and tell us we are near the top of the list for a daily program. It may take a while to clear a spot, but it will be upon us before we know it.
This will increase our television budget over $300,000 per month. We now know by experience that this will also double our calls and more than double our workload. We need a $500,000 per month increase just to accommodate this one project.
I know that these large numbers overwhelm most of us. And this is all coming at a time when many of us are drawing back because of fear about our economy. But this is the time the Lord is dealing with me, and He is not limited to our economy. He has promised to supply our needs according to His riches in glory, by Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:19), not by the U.S. economy.
This is the time. We have come to the kingdom for such a time as this (Esth. 4:14). You and I are not here on the earth at this time by mistake. Our world needs to hear this nearly-too-good-to-be-true news now.
It’s going to take all of us to make that happen, and we need your help. I’m believing there will be 1,000 people who will join with Jamie and me by giving $1,000. Then we need another 5,000 people to give $100 per month to meet the immediate need of a daily program on TBN.
Seventy percent of the people who have made a partnership pledge to this ministry faithfully meet their pledge. If the other 30 percent would make their best effort to fulfill their pledges, we would have an additional $80,000 per month. What a blessing that would be!
Of course, ability varies from person to person, and everyone may not be able to give large amounts. But if just 20 percent of you gave an extra $30 per month, we could cover the cost of the daily TBN program. That’s half of what many people spend at Starbucks each month.
I wish you could go with me and see for yourself what the Lord is doing through this ministry and hear what people are saying around the world. In Russia, for example, I met a man living near Moscow who says he has been transformed through this message. He gave me example after example of how God has spoken to him through the television broadcasts.
He also told me that he asked the Lord why I hadn’t been on television earlier, that he could have used these truths years before. He said the Lord told him I wasn’t listening. I don’t know if that’s the way it is or not. But I do know I’m hearing Him now, and I’m ready to act.
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