Look at it this way. My prayer crusades ought to be attended by Generals and Colonels, and with some indulgence, by Majors. My prayer crusades are the place where we take the decisions, and plan to take new countries for Christ. Is that the place for young converts?
If a young believer comes there, he is ruined. Last year, I had 382 Daily Dynamic Encounters With God, and had 208 nights of prayer. I have mastered the use of time and can meditate at another time other than 4.00 a.m. The young convert may not meditate and read his Bible after attending the prayer nights faithfully.
The young convert must come to just one all-night prayer meeting a week. He must fast for 3 days. He must not go for forty days. If he does, he enters into conflict zones that he knows nothing about and cannot stand. Soon his back bone is broken, he falls away and backslides. Then we say he had not believed. He had surely believed. The problem is elsewhere.
Think of a young believer in a forty-day prayer crusade – doing what? It will be a time of no Daily Dynamic Encounters With God, or pretended ones.
Crusade? Who goes crusading? In London, when the Ndasis were coming to see me at the airport, they came with the children. But for the prayer walk, only Philip and Ruth came along with me. It is not because someone went to the airport that he should be part of a prayer walk. But that is what we have done.
After twenty years in the Lord, I was still giving God 30% of my income. If now you start to give God 90% plus, make sure you are 40-45 years old in the Lord. Also make sure that you know what to do in a crisis. Make sure you know God enough.
What is your history? Can God open the heavens and provide for you? Do you know him? What about the recruit who borrows the badges of the Field Marshall and puts on? Does it make him one? Let the enemy come and he is in trouble.
It ought to be obvious as to who can do a
- 40-day fast,
- 28-day fast,
- 21-day fast,
- 14-day fast,
- 07-day fast,
The leader must be able to tell who should do how many days. In one of the long fasts, Mrs Songo in Douala told her disciples how many days of fasting they were to do. That is correct. Leadership must be ready to give such instructions.
Let me be honest – when a young convert begins by seven meetings a week, he has been paralysed. If he is married, his marriage is in peril. If he has children, they are exposed. A young convert should come to a teaching meeting and to the worship meeting. To make him attend all the meetings produces a paralysing effect. There are yet very many things in his life to be handled. As Christ separates him from the bondages that be, he will come along. As he grows in the knowledge of the Lord, he will come along. As he puts more and more of Christ, he will come along.
When we started the work, we had one assembly. I went from my job to the meeting. Then we grew up to eight assemblies. We had time to play scrabble and talk African romance. Every morning I had my Daily Dynamic Encounters With God. Once we drove past the Sanaga for a picnic. I drove the children, to school and went with Prisca to the market. There was time for all that.
I just called and stopped the fast of some people in Douala. They are fasting, not from overflow. They are fasting in the flesh. After the fast, the devil may come and pick them up. The person who should do one forty-day fast a year should not do two. He could die after that.