By James Robison
My Call to Preach…
I was a support person on the platform at a Friday night revival when I heard the Lord say to me very clearly, “I’m going to use you to preach My Truth to the world.”
I’ve often said that when the Lord speaks to me, I hear Him louder than if He were speaking out loud. This was the first time I had ever heard Him speak to me like this, but His word to me was loud and clear: “I want you to be an evangelist.”
This was a mind-blowing prospect for an illegitimate child whose father had deserted him before he was ever born; whose mother had given him away by placing an ad in the newspaper; who had grown up feeling overlooked, unloved, totally rejected, and almost invisible. And now God was saying to me, “Son, I see you. I choose you. And I want to use you.”
“God, how?” I asked. “How would I ever make a living as an evangelist?”
“Where is your faith?” the Lord replied.
I said, “It’s all in you.” And I meant it. At that moment, I yielded my life into the Master Potter’s hand; I gave Him the whole lump of clay.
As I sat there on the platform, it truly was a Holy Spirit-infilling moment. It was as if the Spirit of God swept me up and began to shape something in me – I wouldn’t call it self-confidence but God – confidence –and the kind of boldness revealed in the book of Acts. I felt the power of that boldness and a legitimate compassion for others that just seemed to communicate and resonate with people. And it started instantly.
Preaching At Petro – Tex
On the following Monday morning after my call, I went back to my summer job at the Petro-Tex chemical plant in Pasadena. I had been working as a painter’s helper in town, but when a job opened at Petro-Tex, I moved over there because of more money. I worked as a pipe fitter’s assistant on a construction site, helping the men who were assembling all the pipes for a big plant addition. I had been there about three weeks after my high school graduation prior to college when God had called me to preach.
The plant workers ate lunch out in the yard every day, where there were a number of large flatbed trucks parked and as many as a hundred men would gather on them to eat their lunches. To a shy kid, they were a huge crowd.
The conversations I heard during these lunchtimes were obscene and degrading. On top of all the cursing, the primary things these men talked about were all the bars and parties they were going to, all the women they were having sex with, and whatever else they were doing on the weekends. It was just awful, nothing but filth.
So there I was , having just received the call to preach, and I was surrounded by some of the vilest and most depraved talk you could ever hear – and it made me sick. I couldn’t eat my lunch. As I looked around at all these men laughing and talking about how “we went to this party . . . and everyone was getting drunk and carrying on. . . ,” I suddenly felt compelled to jump up onto one of the flatbeds and shout with the authority of a coach or a drill sergeant, “Listen! Listen to me!”
The men all turned and stared in my direction.
“Listen!” I said. “I’m just a boy trying to learn how to be a man, and all I’m hearing from you all is how to think filthy, talk filthy, and live filthy. Men, I wouldn’t talk about a dog the way most of you talk about your wives.”
The minute I said that, hot tears started cutting a course down my cheeks, which were covered in dust from the morning’s work. I reached into the back pocket of my Levi’s, where I had a little Soul Winner’s New Testament. I held it up, with those tears in my eyes, and said, “But God loves you so much. He gave Jesus to die for you and to give you life, to show you how to live and how to love your wife and your family. I just want you to know that if I can help you, I’m a helper. If you will just call me, I will tell you how you can know Jesus.”
With that, I jumped down off the trailer. Without question, within me was a zeal and a fire that only can be described as the work of the Holy Spirit. I knew I had been caught up in a powerful force unlike anything I had ever experienced.
Now, with that many hardened souls standing around, you can imagine the kind of feedback I might have received. But there was none of that – no catcalls, no shouting, and no mockery. Only dead silence and a yard full of men, their mouths crammed with entire halves of sandwiches, staring at me in disbelief.
For the next three weeks, before I left for college, I led men to Christ all over that plant.
I mean, it was nonstop, every day praying with those men. I don’t recall doing one lick of pipe fitting work. Instead, all day long, I would hear shouts of , “Helper! Helper!” and I would climb up onto the steel catwalks of the storage tanks they were working on, and the men would say, “You hit me, son. That’s me. You were right. I don’t love my wife like I should. I don’t even love my kids like I should.” And I would pray with them. I was seventeen years old, and I was catching my first glimpse. Of what it means to live amazed.
Years later, when we held crusades in the greater Houston area, men would come up to me after I had preached and say, ”Five years ago . . . eight years ago . . . ten years ago, you led me to the Lord out there at the chemical plant. We were way up on a catwalk and we got down on our knees.” I met four who were then deacons in their church.
That’s the way my ministry started. And the amazing results never stopped.
I first met James Robison maybe six years ago having never seen or heard of him prior to reading this book, Living Amazed. Actually, I now consider this book as one of the most inspirational recently written books I’ve encountered and am encouraging Christ Followers (CF’s) regardless of age or spiritual maturity to consider reading it. Today I began listening to it again on Audible while exercising on my antique Dyne Aire . . . and am already into Chapter Eight wondering why I ever waited so long to revisit How Divine Encounters Really Will Change Your Life! (Rather, All our lives!)
I personally live by the belief “the ball” is always in our court! Not a popular assumption any longer!
Each morning when I awake, I only have 1 choice to make from 6 options as to how I’ll live out my day and they are 1.) being bad; 2.) being mediocre; 3.) being average; 4.) being good (there’s that word again); 5.) being world-class; and 6.) being Jesus – centered!
Moreover, our culture today pushes us to be either Ego driven or Victim centered! If you’re struggling with either, inhale the freshness of the Proverbs. Read a chapter every day to enhance your personal clarity! Humbleness of heart is the option of choice for CF’s. Be vigilant in all things by being Jesus – centered. Blessing AS YOU GO FORTH>>>> merlin