The Break-dancer at the Bar
The young man was from the Ural mountain area of Russia, and a few years earlier he and some of his Christian friends from other parts of Russia had traveled to attend a Swedish youth conference where I preached about turning on God’s light by taking an initiative of prayer. This guy was in his teens at the time and never assumed that he could be used by God or, even less, that God would need him and his initiative.
After the conference he went back to his town in Ural, determined to take some kind of initiative and see something happen. The challenge was that he was now totally alone. All his Christian friends lived in other cities far away, and there was not even one Christian church in his city. But this guy, nineteen years old at the time, would not let anything stop him.
He began to do prayer walks around town late at night. As he walked around, he saw the youth partying and living far away from God, and he prayed for their salvation. He did this every night.
Then, one evening, he saw another teenager breakdancing outside a bar. He knew the guy was on drugs and funded his addiction through dancing. When he was done performing, the nineteen-year-old walked up to him and shared Jesus with him. Every night he came back, stood there praying until the breakdance guy was done, and then again walked up and told him about Jesus. After many nights of praying and sharing, he finally got to lead the dancer to faith in Christ.
Not long after this, again as a result of prayer, he also saw the power of God break the chains of addiction over this young dancer and totally set him free. The transformed young dancer then brought five of his friends to the nineteen-year-old, all of them involved in drugs, criminality, and prostitution. Soon all of them had accepted Christ, and their lives were transformed by God’s power, forgiveness, and love.
Together, this group of young people put on a breakdance act to share their newfound faith with others. They started dancing in streets and squares, schools, and youth centers. Hundreds of young people watched them dance and heard their testimonies, and many decided to become Christians themselves.
When all this happened, the now twenty-one-year-old guy told me, “We had a bit of a problem because there was no Christian church in the city. So, I started one! I thought, ‘Well, how hard can it be?’ And now, the church is full of people who have been saved by Jesus since.” I could hardly believe my ears.
“And how many is that?” I asked him.
“Six hundred and fifty. And our building can take just a bit more than two hundred, so we’re now doing three services every Sunday and are about to start a fourth!”
In a town in the Ural region of Russia that previously did not even have a Christian church, a full-blown revival had started, launching a nineteen-year-old guy into a twenty-one-year-old pastor of 650 newly saved souls, many of them former drug addicts, criminals, and prostitutes.
Who did all this? God.
Who should get the glory for it? God and God alone.
How could it happen? Because a regular teenage guy decided to cooperate with God and turn on the light so that His creative power could be released and make all things new. That same God is waiting for someone to pray and take the initiative in every part of the world so that His power can start moving.
That is how His will is done, that is how His kingdom will come.
To learn more about Lundqvist’s latest book, Shine Your Light, visit MyCharismaShop.com