I am reminded of an experience I had with God when I was an eighteen-year-old boy. What He told me during that experience was so huge and fantastic, I wondered at the time, Could this really be God speaking to me? Could He really use me in such a big way? Is this really the voice of God—or just a daydream?
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.
Rick and Denise's friendship has led to lifelong love and a powerful partnership in building the Kingdom of God. After a decade of ministry, first as pastor and then as itinerant ministers, Rick and Denise Renner embarked on an adventure of a lifetime. In January 1991, the Renners and their sons Paul, Philip, and Joel left behind all they knew to relocate their family to serve the region that only weeks earlier had become the former Soviet Union.
Rick and Denise remember kneeling together as a family and kissing the ground when they arrived at the airport in Latvia on that cold January day. At that moment, they all committed their lives to the will of God and to the people of their new homeland. The following year, Rick moved forward to launch and establish the first of its kind, and eventually the largest, a Christian television network in that region of the world.
Over the years, Rick and Denise pioneered three churches, a Bible school, and a ministerial association that serves thousands of Russian-speaking pastors throughout the former USSR as well as parts of the Middle East. As Rick began training and mentoring leaders in the early days, Denise also developed a women's ministry that is actively involved in changing the lives of women and their families today. Specifically, they minister to the needs of orphans, women prisoners, the homeless, and drug-and-alcohol addicts.
Rick, Denise, and their children began as a small circle of five, willing to go beyond their comfort zone to reach the uttermost parts of the world. Today that circle includes their sons' wives, six grandchildren, and a large ministry staff that helps the Renners extend their reach as they exalt Jesus Christ as the Hope of all nations.