Years ago, God called me to a season of repentance. When I started, I felt pretty good about myself. I didn’t think I needed to do much repenting. God broke my pride and self-reliance. After a week in the presence of a high and holy God, I cried out to Him in repentance.
One of the things I asked God was for the courage to tell the truth—not just about others, but about me. When we present an image of ourselves to the world, most of the time we carefully craft it so that we look good. We only tell the successes and triumphs and victories. The depression, discouragement, defeats, and mistakes get left out. We tell a self-inspired narrative, SIN, rather than the truth. God said to me, “Don’t you dare tell the story and leave out the pain and the failures.”
At the end of that week of repentance, the Spirit of God said, “I want you to go to Congo and hold a meeting. I want you to rent a large building and invite 10,000 pastors to come.” I made the arrangements and flew to the Congo with my two daughters. When I arrived, I heard that there was a prayer meeting going on about our services. I wasn’t tired, so I thought I would go down and join them that night.
When I walked in to where the meeting was being held, there were thousands of people there. I planned to walk down to the front to thank them for praying, but then I heard what the leader was saying. The speaker was a witch doctor. He told the people to bring stones to the meeting to kill me while I spoke. He had a voodoo doll up there and was sticking needles in it. I decided I wasn’t going to thank them for praying!
The first night of the meeting, I looked out and saw that man and many other witch doctors. I realized they had brought stones with them to throw at me. They held up their voodoo dolls and stuck pins in them. I stopped the service and told the people to look at those witch doctors. I said to them, “Call on your gods and their power, and we’ll see what they can do.” They stood up and started chanting and waving the voodoo dolls. Nothing happened.
After a few minutes, I said, “Now I’m calling on my God.” I declared the Mighty Name, and those witch doctors all hit the ground. Tens of thousands of people watched in amazement as they screamed in torment. They tore off their fetishes and made a pile that they set on fire. It was a move of God like nothing I had ever seen before. The president of the country invited me to go on the national news program run by the government. We trained 10,000 pastors. There was a mighty work.
It didn’t come out of great faith. It’s didn’t come out of amazing spiritual gifts. It came out of broken repentance. True repentance looks beyond forgiveness to deliverance. True repentance produces a clean heart and a right spirit. The power of the Holy Spirit moves through a heart that has repented. The power of the Holy Spirit moves through a church that has repented. The power of the Holy Spirit moves through a nation that has repented.
