This spiritual experience occurred during college spring break while I was visiting my missionary cousins in Mexico City. One evening as I attended a church in the outskirts of the city, the Holy Spirit began to speak to my heart, giving me concrete facts about my life and future.
(The Bible tells us in Isaiah 46:10 and John 16:13 that God knows the end from the beginning and will show us things to come.) The Holy Spirit's words were so vivid that I reached for a piece of paper to write down what He was communicating to my spirit.
That night God pulled opened the curtains of the spirit realm and allowed me to see a sneak preview of my future ministry. It took me off guard. This vision of future ministry seemed too grand for a boy my age. Yet the words I was hearing seemed so loud in my heart that I wondered if anyone else could hear them as well.
Before this experience, I'd known God's call was on my life, but I'd never had a distinct vision of how God would use me. But that night the Holy Spirit communicated crystal-clear details to me about my divine call.
I kept writing. If this was really God's voice speaking to me, He was calling me to be a spokesman to the nations. I even heard Him say that my voice would be carried across the sky to the nations of the earth via the airwaves. What did He mean by airwaves?
I wondered if my mind was playing tricks. Was this just a daydream? I folded my piece of paper, inserted it into my Bible, and stored it away in a secret place where no one would find it. I was apprehensive that if anyone ever read what I'd written, they'd laugh at me and dismiss my experience as a childish dream.
As loudly and clearly as I'd heard the message, it still seemed too grandiose for a boy from Sand Springs, Oklahoma. Years later, however, I remembered this experience and realized it was God's voice I had heard speaking to me that night.
That was well over two decades ago. As of this writing, our television program Good News with Rick Renner has a potential viewing audience of nearly 300 million people each week. The Lord has given us the goal to keep expanding until we reach one billion potential weekly viewers! What God told me that night in Mexico City when I was eighteen years old is exactly what has come to pass in my life.
Not long ago I came across that little container I used as a teenager to hide my treasured possessions. As I sifted through the information contained there, I found the original little piece of paper from Mexico City. Scribbled in my teenaged handwriting was the "word" God had given me about being a spokesman to the nations. God had planted His dream in my heart, even at that early age.
Although for a long time I'd assumed that my experience in that Mexican church was just the result of a young teenager's imagination, this word from the Lord described exactly His call on my life. Certainly it wasn't something this boy would have ever dreamed up or thought of by himself!
Excerpt permission granted by Rick Renner Ministries
Rick and Denise met while they were each on an individual quest to wholeheartedly follow God's plan for their lives. Rick was a college student, growing in his teaching ministry. Denise was a talented vocalist. She chose not to pursue a course that held the prospect of performing with the Metropolitan Opera so that she could instead pursue a relationship with Rick and fulfill her heart's desire to enter full-time ministry.
