‘Fresh Wind Fresh Fire’ is a excellent book by Jim Cymbala. Jim shares his experience as a young pastor in a struggling church. It’s the story of the birth of the Brooklyn Bible Tabernacle, in New York.
The secret to the success of their church happened when ordinary people chose to meet during the week to pray and call out for God’s presence and intervention in their lives and the lives of the people around them.
The book is filled with stories of how God transformed the lives of people caught in a lifestyle of drugs, alcohol, and more. For example, a transvestite was set free from drugs and his homosexual past. Later, he fell in love with a Christian woman and they married.
Of the many stories, I didn’t know that Charles Finney had a prayer warrior, Daniel Nash, that went ahead to each city Charles was going to preach in. Daniel gathered people of prayer to intercede for souls to come to Christ. It reminded me of Billy Graham’s Crusades. They gather churches together to have them pray and to equip people to help at the events.
This book is filled with Scriptures and personal stories from the church. The emphasis is encouraging people to go deeper into prayer and shows what a difference it makes to have a praying and active church. The apostle Paul exhorted us to pray without ceasing, and this book backs it up with Scriptures and the lots of stories of changed lives.
At our church, there was always an open mike at our Thanksgiving services. One year, my friend Ed Hale shared an amazing story. Ed was a policeman then and told us that a highway patrolman had quite an unusual experience.
