Teena Myers

Friends were a rich resource of remarkable stories. I met Jeremy in my husband’s children’s church. Jeremy was one of the lively children who, allegedly, never got a Sno-Ball coupon for good behavior. His mother and I became close friends. She often shared news of Jeremy’s spiritual progress as he grew into a young adult.

When he traveled to Vanuatu, an island in the South Pacific, as a missionary, my husband and I sent financial support. I learned we had made a good investment when he shared his story.  

“My parents were godly,” said Jeremy, “so I knew all the Christian stuff, but I just didn’t ‘get it’ for a long time.  To me Jesus was cliché, a fictional character like Superman. Every time your husband gave an altar call, I followed the other kids to the altar. I thought that made me a Christian. But I didn’t know God and gave my parents a lot of trouble.”

I knew Jeremy had been difficult, but his mother never revealed the details Jeremy shared with me. “I never got drunk or took drugs, but I didn’t have a greater morality than my friends. I was being pursued by the Hound of Heaven,” said Jeremy, and then explained that the Hound of Heaven was a reference to Francis Thompson’s poem about God’s relentless pursuit of sinful humanity.

When Jeremy was ten years old, he attended a Christian youth camp. A man asked him if he knew what Jeremiah means. Before he could respond, the man said, “Jeremiah means ‘called of the Lord.’” He is calling you to serve him in a unique way. There are bridges in people’s lives that the enemy has destroyed. The Lord will use you to rebuild those bridges.” Later, an evangelist made a similar statement, but Jeremy was suspicious that the men had conspired to tell him the same thing.

“The doctors told my parents I had Attention Deficit Disorder, but I never believed that. There was evil in me that refused to be controlled. I made my parents miserable, fought with my brother and treated my sisters like enemies. No matter what I did, I couldn’t break my mother’s iron will, and the sight of my dad reading the Bible and praying every morning haunted me. ”

 By the end of Jeremy’s sophomore year of high school, he grew weary of fighting. When his sister invited him to a Christian concert, he accepted hoping they could develop a relationship. Jeremy sat on the back row, arms folded defiantly across his chest, trying to digest the scene before him. Hundreds of kids were praying with an emotion he didn’t understand until the band sang Yahweh by Andy Park. 

 “When the band sang ‘let your goodness pass before us, right before our eyes,’ I felt like I was looking at pieces of a puzzle and recognizing patterns in them, and then the pieces suddenly came together. Someone started preaching after that, but I didn’t pay attention to what he said. I was stunned and wanted to go home and think.”

As Jeremy and his sister were leaving the concert, a man extended his hand to Jeremy and said, “So you’re finally here.”

“What do you mean?” said Jeremy.

“I met you when you were twelve, and the Lord told me that I would mentor you.”

For the next two years, James patiently instructed Jeremy in the practical application of spiritual truths to his life. As they studied the Bible together, Jeremy realized answering an altar call didn’t impart salvation—faith in God did. When Jeremy’s contentious behavior continued, James explained the process of sanctification, easing Jeremy’s frustration.

Jeremy graduated from high school and enrolled in Christ for the Nations Institute (CFNI). He immediately clicked with Jim, his roommate, whose father was the chief operating officer for Reinhard Bonnke’s Christ for All Nations (CFAN) ministry.

“The school required an internship,” said Jeremy. “We could work at the college for the summer or go on a mission trip. We planned a mission trip to Chile. Several of the students on our team failed to raise enough money, and the trip was canceled. That’s when Jim called his dad to see if we could do an internship at CFAN.”

Jeremy arrived at the Florida office of CFAN thinking the internship would be a summer vacation. Jim’s father warned them that he would work them hard. He kept his word. The boys worked a forty-hour week and then spent many evenings doing yard work. Their duties included personal tasks for Rev. Bonnke.

Jeremy met the German evangelist for the first time when he picked him up at the airport. As Jeremy performed a variety of tasks at Bonnke’s home, they developed a relationship and Jeremy asked him about a much-debated topic at school.

“Rev. Bonnke, what do you think about Calvinism?”

“College talk.” Rev. Bonnke pounded his desk as he quoted 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” The intensity of Bonnke’s reply made Jeremy reluctant to argue.

“Jeremy,” said Rev. Bonnke, “what do you feel the Lord is calling you to do?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I just want to see people saved.”

Jeremy saw excitement in Rev. Bonnke’s eyes. “This is the heart of an evangelist. The evangelist preaches the ABCs, the preliminary truths of Christianity, the XYZs for anyone else.”

Bonnke’s dedication to his calling amazed Jeremy. One day, Bonnke said to Jeremy, “I’ve been preaching the gospel for fifty years. People talk to me about retirement. Never! I will preach as long as the Lord gives me breath, and after, bury me under the pulpit.”

Jeremy watched a video of one of Bonnke’s crusades in Africa. To Jeremy, a million people chanting “Bonnke, Bonnke, Bonnke,” sounded like an earthquake. The next time he spoke to Rev. Bonnke he asked, “How do you protect yourself against pride?”

Rev. Bonnke looked at Jeremy as though he had never thought about it. “Pride? What are you talking about? I’ve never cared about their criticism. Why should I care about their praise? Men chanting my name is like Israel praying to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Africans were not chanting for me but for the God of Bonnke.”

Jeremy looked at me and said, “He is the most humble man I’ve ever met. Everything he spoke was with thunder. One day we were in his car, and he pounded on the dash as he said, ‘Faith is not merely subscribing to correct doctrines. The just shall live by their faith. Faith is doing.’”

Jeremy returned to college transformed by the summer he had spent with a Christian legend. A month before graduation, Jeremy, Mike, the assistant mission director for CFNI, and Nathan, a friend of Jeremy’s, drove to a nearby lake to hit golf balls. They were talking about their future plans when Mike said, “Jeremy, I forgot to tell you a hurricane devastated the island of Vanuatu. The college is building a Bible school on the island. Would you like to go with us?”

Bonnke’s statement “Faith is doing” thundered in Jeremy’s thoughts. Without hesitation, he said, “I’m in.”

“Dude,” said Nathan. “Don’t you think you should pray about that?”

Jeremy looked at Nathan and spoke with the confidence of Rev. Bonnke. “No, I don’t need to pray about it. I know. Let’s go.”

Jeremy traveled to Vanuatu, a collection of eighty-three islands, with Mike and twelve student interns. “Everything was exciting,” said Jeremy. “We landed in Port Vila and then traveled into the bush country to preach the gospel. The people spoke English, French and Pidgin, but most of the time we communicated in English.

After the students returned to America, Mike and I went to the village of Kitow on the island of Tanna to build the Bible school.” Other mission groups from America soon joined them to help with the construction. Together they put a roof on the church and helped construct six buildings for the Bible school.

Once a month, people came from all over the island to attend a five-day Bible course. When Mike and Jeremy learned about a village that didn’t have anyone attending the Bible school, they sent a message to its chief requesting permission to preach the gospel. The chief sent word that they couldn’t come. Mike and Jeremy felt they should go, so they sent another message. The chief replied that they would be killed if they came to the village.

“Mike was ready to be a martyr, but I wasn’t so sure,” said Jeremy. “The chief and his son didn’t want us there, but some of the villagers did, so we decided to go.”

Mike and Jeremy made plans to travel to the village on Tuesday but awoke to a terrible storm. They left the following day with a team of seven people. The storm had made the trail to the village slippery. They constantly stopped to help one another as they slipped in the mud. Four hours later, they entered the village exhausted and covered in mud. When the curious villagers gathered around the missionaries, they preached the gospel to them. To their amazement, everyone in the village accepted Christ.

The next day, the team traveled to a neighboring village, which had already received word of the missionaries’ success. “Do you know why the entire village received you?” the village chief asked.

“What do you mean?” said Jeremy.

“A hundred years ago, a missionary came to convert the village, but they killed him. As he lay dying, he prophesied, “When the cane is run out and you are no longer able to build your homes, two white American missionaries will teach you how to build eternal homes, and your culture will be changed.” That is why the chief and his son threatened to kill you if you preached the gospel in their village, but they died in the storm the day before you arrived. The villagers believed they had offended your God and that is why they received your message.”

Jeremy looked at me and laughed. “That’s when I knew it wasn’t our great preaching that converted the village. The hurricane that destroyed the islands and brought Mike and me to Vanuatu had destroyed most of the cane the people used to build their homes. God had used us to fulfill the missionary’s prophecy.”

“Adown titanic glooms of chasmed fears, from those strong feet that followed, followed after. But with unhurrying chase, and unperturbed pace…” Francis Thompson wrote about God’s relentless pursuit of humanity in Jeremy’s favorite poem Hound of Heaven. Whether it takes ten years or one hundred years, God’s strong feet follow until his word bears fruit in our lives.