Pocket Bible

It all started with a pocket Bible.

I discovered that the Salvation Army Bookstore, which used to be next to the Eaton Center in Toronto, sold small, complete Bibles for about $20.00. I started buying them and always keeping one in my hip pocket, reading it every chance I got.

In those days, I travelled on foot or by local transit as I could not afford a car. This gave me a lot of time to read the Bible as I waited for the next bus or subway car and as I rode on the system. I read and re-read my pocket Bible so much that it was held together with layer upon layer of Scotch tape at the spine and beginning and last pages.

When a Bible finally fell apart, I would spend another precious $20 to replace it. I started carrying several Bibles, as the Lord would lead me to give one to a person going through an especially difficult time. Many times, I would give one to a new believer or to someone I had recently healed.

I was working with a Canadian charity, asking for donations with a group of teenagers and twenty-somethings. We went door-to-door in different neighborhoods, raising money to ship food and other necessities overseas.

After a while, I began reading the Bible between houses and praying for the people I was about to meet, asking God to meet their needs and to open their hearts to be generous. If I found a home with a garbage pail filled to the top with empty beer and whiskey bottles, for instance, I would pray that God would work in the lives of the people in that house who were addicted to alcohol.

People would ask me to pray for them, and on one occasion a girl was healed from a heavy bout of influenza in fifteen seconds, by a prayerful conversation carried out through a screen door. I just asked the Lord what to say to her, and He was quite specific.

The young woman and I got into talking about what she hated about church. Then the Lord said, “Now ask her about her relationship with Me.” I listened to her much more positive reply, and as she spoke, her croaky voice got more and more musical until she suddenly said, “Okay, well, I feel a lot better now, thank you,” and closed the door!

I had read 1 Corinthians chapter 13 in the King James translation, where instead of the word “Love” you find the word “charity.” I took the chapter to heart, reasoning that it was not natural for a person to give a stranger their money, unless God had first softened their heart and made them open to giving.

I prayed under my breath every day until dark. A typical donation would be less than a dollar. Once I got a huge jar of pennies that a little girl had been keeping for just such an occasion as our knock on her door.

One night, as the shift was ending, the Lord did something else unusual. He said to me, “The next door that you knock on, say your spiel, then stop talking. Wait until the person in the house says to you, ‘How much are you asking for?’ I will then give you an exact amount. Say the amount. Just wait and don’t look surprised at the amount that I tell you to ask for.”

So, the next house I walked up to, I knocked on the door and gave them our standard talk. The lady of the house invited me inside to sit down. I thanked her and sat at their kitchen table. Taking out her checkbook, she asked without looking at me, “How much are you asking for?”

And the Lord said, “Two hundred,” so I said, “Two hundred dollars, please.” She put her pen up to her checkbook and wrote out a check for that exact amount.

You must understand that the goal of each canvasser was to bring in at least $80 each day. Many never kept up with that quota on a regular basis. A single donation in the hundreds was rare.

I thanked her as she gave me the check and put the check in my waist pouch. I was over the moon! God had done the impossible! But He started doing it every single night. $200, $300.

Finally, one of the managers (they were all devout Buddhists) asked what I was doing that gave me such results. I knew he would be angry if I told him the complete truth, so I said that I just gave my standard spiel.

This lasted for a few weeks, until they asked me to train a young man who was about to lose his job because he couldn’t make the $80 minimum. He was averaging thirty to forty dollars a night. I knew his job was on the line, and I also knew I was taking a risk, but I decided to tell him the truth.

Let’s call him Joe.

“Joe,” I said, “I’m going to tell you the truth. Now people aren’t going to believe you when you tell them what I’m going to say, but here it is. It’s not natural for people to give their money to a total stranger. Only God can make them want to do that.

What I do before I knock on the door, I ask God to soften their hearts and make them open to generosity. Then I wait until God tells me how much to ask for, and I ask for it. That’s it. Then they hand over that amount, and I thank them and leave the house.”

Two days later, Joe came in with $500 in his hands. They asked him what he did, and he told them exactly what we were both doing. They couldn’t believe it.

I could hear the heated discussion with the boss from the next room. “No,” Joe said quite adamantly, “only God can change their heart!”

Now Buddhism is an atheistic faith, meaning that there is no God in Buddhism. So, they were quite upset that two people were trusting God to bring in this small fortune every night. They threatened to fire me if I didn’t stop.

One night Joe brought in $800.00. The managers were losing their minds. Here was proof of the existence of a working God, right in their midst.

I kept on doing it for as long as I was working for them, and God blessed my efforts and Joe’s.