Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Foreword: Mike Bickle
Foreword: Lou Engle
Prologue: Staying Small…Believing Big
True humility is the key to staying small in our walk with God. Further, staying small in our own eyes is essential to experiencing God’s manifest presence. We may think big in Jesus when it comes to our faith-expectations of what He can do, but we must stay small in Jesus if we are to see these faith-expectations become a reality.
Part One: The Green Bomb
1 Pardon Me, God
Dick Eastman learns to cherish and remember his experience in the closet of Room 308; not only for the promise of a perfect mate, but for that of a coming ministry, one which would find its focal point in prayer.
2 April Tears
Through April tears, God teaches Dick and Dee Eastman His ability to provide—a lesson that took seven years to comprehend fully.
3 Seeing the Invisible
God, indeed, knows everything! He teaches the author many new lessons about the uniqueness of prayer. But perhaps the greatest lesson of all is that prayer is the great problem solver because prayer touches God, and God can solve any problem.
4 The Whip
Prayer indeed initiates the plans of God, then sustains those plans in the developing stages; and finally brings about the ultimate purpose God has intended for those plans. Prayer starts it, sustains it, and finalizes it. Billy Graham was right—pray, pray, pray!
Part Two: The Baker Hotel
5 The Price
When the author prays for God to use him to start a revival, God uses a physical ailment to teach Dick the importance of paying the price, for “Revival will cost you something.”
6 Remember Benny
These words from a mentally challenged young man became a turning point in Dick’s ministry: “I know I’m not normal. I’m not like all of you. I was born different. I love you all very much. It’s true that I can’t get a job like other boys my age. I can’t even go to a real school like all of you. At my school we just make baskets. But I can love you.” Wiping away tears Benny added, “And I can pray for you. Just remember; if you get discouraged Benny is praying for you. It’s not much, but it’s all I can do. I’ll be praying. Anybody can pray.” Dick says, “I had been humbled by the humility of someone who was radiating the humility of Christ.”
7 The Care Bucket
An imaginary “care bucket,” into which we drop our cares and then hold them up for God to take, ministers to an accountant and proves God’s Word: “Cast your cares upon him for he will not suffer the righteous to be moved.”
Part Three: The Prayer Corps
8 This Is the Year
One pivotal year brings total healing to Dick for his throat condition, brings the spread of the prayer emphasis movement, sees the release of a first book, and brings the news of revival fires burning everywhere. The year was 1971—exactly seven years after God had promised Dick that his ministry would be birthed in seven years.
9 Tabletop Travail
A supernatural experience of deep “tabletop travail” at a YMCA camp leads to incredible victories and blessings in the months and years that followed.
10 We Start Fires
An earlier vision of a godly fire house in each community to start fires of revival is fulfilled as the Prayer Corps officially begins.
11 Call the World to Prayer
The prayer corps progresses and develops. Our mistakes were many, but we had to correct them and go on. Quitting was out of the question no matter how great the obstacles. It was all part of the new lesson, that of persistence and determination.
Part Four: The Purple Pig
12 The Minneapolis Miracle
An unusual wind of conviction settles on hundreds of students in Minneapolis and students emptied their wallets, giving everything they had. It was truly a miracle, a miracle of commitment such as I had never witnessed. Thousands of dollars were given during the next thirty minutes. Dollars, however, were not the only things sacrificed that night. Students began leaving the chapel moments after the Holy Spirit began moving. Within two hours the platform looked like a junk yard—televisions, musical instruments, rock records, radios, sports equipment, photographs, a rifle, plus a mink-trimmed coat, lay everywhere. I had never suggested at anytime that anyone do anything like this. It just suddenly happened. Soon other items lined the platform, including the keys of several automobiles given that night to the college.
13 The Purple Pig
Returning from an overseas trip where God again moved supernaturally, Dick finds his wife in tears and his two-year-old daughter misbehaving badly. Dick responds with an uncalled-for sixty-second verbal correction—he yelled. When he apologizes to his daughter, she hugs him in forgiveness and God whispers in his heart: “Here is the love I promised you.” A few days later he receives a huge stuffed purple pig, sent for his daughter from a teenager in Detroit. “God had seen my need and knew my desires. Not only had He supplied every need, but He also threw in a special love gift besides—the purple pig.”
14 The Green Frog
Dick is given a reminder of the constant price that must be paid if we want to give our all to service Jesus by a green stuffed frog.
15 Timothy Tiger
Dick receives a large stuffed tiger for his daughter. One night while looking in on her, Dick is reminded of the goodness of God. Dena had tucked Timothy Tiger under the covers beside her. At the foot of her bed sat the purple pig and the green frog. The pig spoke of the goodness of God to provide for every need. And the frog reminded him of the price paid for the promises of God. Now, there was Timothy Tiger. He too had a message: God will do it again.
Part Five: The Other Miracles
16 Moses and Me
Through examples in the lives of biblical men and women, Dick reveals four major aspects of divine guidance: 1) God does speak to people today; 2) He speaks from His dwelling place, the heart of His children; 3) It is our right to experience divine guidance; 4) What God instruct us to do, we must carry out.
17 I See Jesus
Indeed, this is the age of the unusual and we should expect it to be filled with miracles. Scripture certainly promises an increase of the supernatural in mankind’s final hour and visions are definitely a part of this powerful move of His Spirit. They must not be taken lightly or shrugged off as “merely emotional.” Quite often this is the very means God uses to place a burden on the heart of a prayer warrior.
18 Manifestations
Every major revival movement in modern and biblical history has testified to outward manifestations of inward spiritual experiences. This chapter recounts manifestations occurring through the ministry of Every House for Christ.
19 Romancing the Word
Dick shares principles for “romancing the Word”—cultivating a passion for God’s Word.
20 The Title Deed
From the very beginning new lessons had to be learned concerning faith. Faith was no longer just a biblical doctrine; it had become a way of life. Dick shares his encounters with faith, which included: confident faith, desperate faith, crazy faith, unconscious faith, and relaxed faith.
21 The Victory Board
It was indeed the victory board that kept the prayer ministry going with joy and intensity. These daily victories made it clear to these young intercessors that prayer truly works.
22 A Bug On the Mountain
A harrowing drive down a mountain in a car with a screeching engine problem teaches Dick that Satan’s hassles, though very real, will fail when God is in control.
23 Back to Back
The challenge is clearly before us. The task of global evangelism will be accomplished. But we need each other. Every Christ-honoring Christian ministry is necessary. The gap cannot be left unattended. And we must work together. Alone, we will be defeated. It is in standing back to back that we will conquer.
Part Six: Beyond the Pig
24 A Vision of Jericho
In my vision I saw a picture of Jericho as a significant symbol for several reasons. For one, Jericho represented all the tribes of Israel coming together in unity toward a commonly agreed-upon focus. The tribes had been wandering in the wilderness for forty years, murmuring and complaining all the while. But then, at Jericho, they had come together in what essentially was a worship strategy. The end result was the falling of the walls of Jericho. This reminded me that when Christ’s body unites, walls fall. It was a phrase that stuck in my mind and was to become our motto for the eventual center: “Where Christ’s Body Unites, Walls Fall.”
25 Agents of the Invisible
A divine encounter with two angels assures Dick that God clearly had a glorious future for him in the very ministry that Satan wanted him out of.
26 Seeds of Passion
From that moment on I realized that when those of us who are pastors, evangelists, or teachers spend much time with the Lord in preparation for ministry, our words do indeed become seeds. They are seeds that, if watered by God’s Spirit, can produce glorious fruit in which there will be even more seeds to produce even greater fruit. And most often these seeds are seeds for a hunger for God and a passion for the lost.
27 A Song of Conception
As Wes was beginning to sing the passion and desire of his heart, something came over me. When Wes finished his song, I began to sing a spontaneous song of my love for the presence of the Lord. I began to weep with a passion I hadn’t felt for many months, perhaps years. I was absolutely consumed with the presence of the Lord. Surely this was something akin to the manifest presence of God. It seemed as if I was lifted into a heavenly sphere where I experienced God’s presence in ways that I had not experienced before. It wasn’t that I had never sung spontaneously in His presence before, but I had certainly never set aside an entire day to do it. Now I was being transported into His presence as if to conceive something within me that could not have been conceived.
28 Pray Through the Window
That morning, God gave us the name for the campaign—Pray Through the Window. The goal of mobilizing at least a million praying Christians in October 1993 was agreed upon as reasonable. Our ministry also agreed to design a reproducible thirty-one-day prayer guide listing the sixty-one nations of the region, along with related information to help intercessors pray more specifically. It was suggested that our various ministries also consider mobilizing churches and mission agencies to sponsor prayer journeys into the 10/40 Window.
29 A Date with Destiny
As the board listened to what Cindy had felt and all the confirmations that accompanied her spiritual discernment, the board voted unanimously to move ahead with completing the unfinished area of our facility. In the interim days before the board met and made their decision, God had shown me and others of our staff that the newly developed area was to include a Watchman Training Center where people could come for both sustained worship and intercession as well as training in intercessory worship. Additionally, we were to construct a unique Wall of Prayer in the area, patterned after the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. It would house numerous individual prayer grottos for those who would come for longer periods of personal intercession.
30 An Accelerating Harvest
The author shares the amazing harvest EMC has seen since the beginning of the ministry.
31 A Mount Everest Miracle
This chapter recounts the miraculous results from the nearly impossible mountain trek a team took to reach one unreached village with the gospel story of Christ.
32 The Pig On Tour
Brian Kim receives a vision for expanding Dick’s earlier vision of a 24/7 prayer movement, and plans a “Purple Pig Tour” for 2010.
33 A Call to the Wall
Dick receives a vision for a Prayer Wall that he was to build at his ministry headquarters that would provide people an opportunity to pray at the wall in much the same way Jews have prayed at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem for hundreds of years.
Epilogue
Dick shares his ongoing vision for evangelizing the world.
Appendix A: The Spirit of Sacrifice
Appendix B: God’s Unusual Power
