The Path That God Prepares
by Surpresa Sithole
I was born in a village very far from the town. The good news is that my village was on His time and His street. I think that most of the time God is more intelligent than we are. He prepares the future of each and every one of us in advance. He prepares your future, even when you are very small -- working 10 or even 20 years in advance. That is what sometimes becomes very difficult to understand. So the Lord prepared my destiny in advance. Even when I was a defender of witchcraft and the witch doctor, God was actively preparing everything in advance. Now I am just walking in the ways He prepared for me a long time ago and I am enjoying the path that He has prepared.
I went to Bible College in South Africa in 1990. I first met Heidi Baker in 1995 when she came to speak in Eastern South Africa. I went up to talk to her after she finished speaking, and we talked for some time. But I did not get involved with her ministry right away.
I joined the full-time ministry in February 1997. I went back home to Mozambique and there was a call for me to go to work at a Mission that had a very big radio station. God had given me a gift for languages, and that is why they wanted me to work with them. I helped them translating books and whatever else they needed. We would start preaching on the radio at five in the morning and people would start calling in for their prayer requests. I liked that but the Lord told me this wasn't my calling and I would need to go back to South Africa.
I asked God how long I would be there and what was I going to do there, but I obeyed. The fruit of obedience brings revival, so I obeyed at that time and went. When I got there I was told there was another event for me and that was to make movies because I knew so many languages. So I helped these people translate many books and things. Then one day I woke up and the Lord told me this was not the right place for me, so I went and told the manager that I was going back to the mission.
The manager wanted to know why I wanted to go back to the mission because the missionaries are all very poor -- they are poorer than everybody. I told him that I would still go and he tried to convince me that they needed my gift of languages. He told me I was needed to translate these books and that I would sit in the office. It was a very good job, but I told him no. I refused his offer and went back to my room and was praying.
Then one day I had a vision and Heidi was standing there in my vision and she was calling to me, "Come, come Surpresa. Come, we need you here. Come. Come." And so, because obedience is the key to survival, the next day I went to Malputo. I didn't know where they were staying so I just drove around, trying to find them. I couldn't find them so I turned back. Then I had the same vision again and Heidi was calling to me again, "Come back, come back. Come here, Surpresa."
I went to one of the pastors who has a contact in Malputo and told him I needed to meet this lady that ministered in that church in South Africa. He told me she was in Malputo, but was having big problems because the government was trying to chase her out of the country. It was a horrible time for them because they had just received a 24-hour notice to leave the country. But I went there and met them. We went to a church, which was one of the churches we borrowed. Actually they opened it for us to bring the kids and stay for a while until we could get a place of our own. I started taking care of the orphan children while Rolland and Heidi were expelled from the country by the government.
Something very strange happened my first night there. It was so strange that I did not tell anyone about what happened. The only person who knew about it was my roommate that night. I was sharing a small trailer with a young Englishman. As I slept, I heard a phone ringing. I woke up rather quickly and thought I'd better answer the phone! But when I got awake, I found out there was no phone next to the bed. I remember thinking, "What was that!" And my friend woke up and said, "What is the matter, are you falling out of bed or what?" I told him "No," and went back to sleep. Five or ten minutes later, the phone started ringing again. I put my head under the pillow and that's how it went all night. The next day I sat down and started analyzing this incident. Then I realized that this phone ringing was about the Lord calling me to this place. Then I just put my mind at rest and I stayed there helping with the children from February 1993 until February 1997.
I started traveling with a group into the bushes in 1998. We went very deep down in places we could only get to by the water. The local pastors told us they would pick us up and we told them, no, we wanted to walk through this water together with them. And we would be walking in that water during the night, at 2:00 o'clock in the morning and in the bush the mosquitos are very bad. I shouldn't tell you that because it might make you frightened of mosquitos.
Anyway, I answered that phone call and have been answering it ever since. I am walking on the path that God has prepared for me. And we have seen a major revival -- a major, major revival!
A revival is not when you have many numbers of believers, but when you see many people getting hungrier, that is a true revival. When you schedule a conference and people walk three weeks, by foot, to get to the conference, that must be a revival. One day, I almost cried because we drove to this conference and we met a group of ladies. There was one very elderly lady and I found out she had been walking for three and a half weeks with a stick to that conference. Even though we didn't have space in the car, we had to pick her up. We were squeezed like sardines but it was no problem. We reached our destiny and we had the conference and the people who came to the conference swam in the lake like geese because they had been walking so long. They had walked just for three weeks at the conference and then afterwards they would have to walk three weeks to get back. Is this not a revival?
The food they brought only lasted the first week and the second week they didn't have any food to eat on the road. But they were so hungry for God that they just did not care whether or not they had food to eat. Yes, this is a revival -- a deep hunger for God in people's hearts.
Passion for God
Many of us think that revivals are just healings and miracles and resurrections. In one sense, yes, this is revival. But to me, it is more than just that. I have seen so much of those things. I've seen the blind, the beaten down, the crippled, the lepers healed and the dead rise from the dead and all kinds of things. When I went in to do a follow up with those people, I found that 65 to 75 percent had turned their back from the Lord. They are not the people who walk closely with the Lord. They are people who are very far from the Lord and they don't even want to hear about God. Their hearts had become hard and numb and in the end it was like a rock that's been in the sea for a thousand years, but when you find it and break it down it is still dry.
So I have come to the conclusion that revival is something that takes place in the heart. A pure heart that is hungry after God is the miracle I am pursuing in these days. I want to find a pure heart, completely pure from the top to the bottom -- pure minded, and pure of soul. This is the sort of miracle I pursuing.
When Jesus healed the ten lepers, only one came back to thank Him and the other nine turned their backs on Jesus and went away. So, I am pursuing the heart. I'm not saying I'm not still hungry to see the healings. I still pray for the people, I'm still preaching, I'm still doing all kinds of things. I'm still fasting and I'm still seeking His face. I still need to see the people raised from the dead for His glory, not for my glory. I still need to see great miracles taking place because that is His glory.
Our statistics show that about 75% to 80% of the healings are for major impossible healings and they are for nonbelievers. God seems to do most of the miracles either for people who didn't believe in miracles or who didn't believe in God. So I sat down and began to analyze why this was happening.
One day we went to pray for a pastor and he didn't get healed. Then we went and prayed for a person who doesn't believe (doesn't know God) and he gets healed. I didn't understand this, so I asked God why this happened. God told me that the party was not for the people who were already in the house, but for those who were coming to the house. When the prodigal son came back home, his father prepared a big feast for him. But the son who had been with his father daily did not have anything special done for him. And even though the lost son did not have a ring on his finger, he got a new gown, he got new shoes, and a big fatted calf and a ram were slaughtered for him.
If this parable explains how it is now, then I need to make it my job to search for the lost sons and daughters. I need to do this so that the feast will not cease, but it will continue. So this is my task now, to search for the lost son and daughter. And when I bring that lost son and daughter into the house of the Father, the Father will continue His feast. If you sit down in your house with relatives and friends and neighbors and do not search for your lost, the party stops. But as we search for our lost brothers and sisters, churches are being planted daily. That is why you see the number growing up to 6,000 churches, because the feast in His house must not stop.
We must continue the feast, that's why we continuously keep searching and looking to bring them into the house. We are leading people to the Lord and the feast can continue in heaven. And we must keep moving forward, looking for the lost soul, looking for the lost son and daughter. Then the feast will continue at home and we are happy when the feast continues at home. The sick are getting healed because the feast continues at home. That's what is happening!
Be hungry for God. Connect yourself to the Lord, walk together with Him. And in the places where you don't understand, ask Him, "Please give me understanding. How can I go into these places?" Say to Him, "Yes, Lord, let's walk together, but give me understanding. How can I pray in this place? How can I open this door? Please give me understanding."
God sometimes hides Himself from His children so they will begin to look for Him. It's like a game of hide and seek. God is hiding for a purpose, so His children will seek Him more and more everyday.
Be in a position of seeking, because the Bible says, "Seek My face, seek My face. If you seek My face I will heal your land." He is always telling us to seek His face and He will provide for us, seek His face and He will walk with us. Seek His face He will give us understanding and wisdom. If we seek His face, He will be with us forever. If we seek His face, He will hug us. And it goes on and on. Never cease seeking the face of the Lord because we've already seen whatever we needed. We needed to see miracles and we saw miracles, so that means we have already seen the face of the Lord, but we never stop seeking His face. We grow as deep as we can.
It is okay to also seek God for other things, especially for things that equip you to bring lost sons and daughters to the Father's house. It is good to ask God for more. You must use what you have before He can increase it. You come to God and ask Him to fill you and impart into you. But you don't go use it. Instead you come back the next day and ask God for more. And He gives you more. But you don't go and use that either. Instead you go back and ask God for more. And why should God keep giving you more when you don't even use what He has already given you?
Start using it! Look to continue the feast. Use what God has already given you to bring the prodigals into the house. If you run into limitations as you do that, this is the time to ask God for the "more" that you need. The way to get more is to use what God has already put in you, then it will begin to grow.
But remember that the true fruit of revival is a hunger and a passion for the Lord. Pursue Him. Seek Him. Look for Him and cry out to Him. Enjoy His presence, but continue to seek Him fervently. At times that involves fasting as well as prayer. Don't be afraid to fast as you seek Him.
I enjoy Him so much. Sometimes in Africa we fast and we never fast when there is no food in the house. We fast when we have just come from the store and bought groceries, when there is food in the house. When we see there is no food in the house, we search for food, we work for food. We will go to the bush to get wood and take it to the town and sell it so we can buy food. So we never fast when there is no food in the house, but when there is a lot of food in the house, then we fast.
I am encouraging you here in America that this is really a time to seek the Lord with fasting because you already have food.
Hunger For God
When you stand before the Lord and say, "Lord, I need your power," you should be aware that a big temptation is going to come to test the power. If you ask one day, "Lord I need wisdom," then something is going to come along to test that wisdom. That happened to King Solomon. God met him and he asked God for wisdom. A few days later, two ladies came who were fighting over one son to test the wisdom of Solomon. He was thrust into a situation that required him to use that very wisdom He had asked God for. And that is a general principal.
When you ask God for something, you will be tried in that area. If you ask God for money today, tomorrow you will find a lot of poor people in your path. If you ask for the gift of healing, people will come to you at inopportune times wanting to be healed. In Africa, people frequently come at midnight knocking at the door. You need to understand that if you ask for healing, you may not have time to sleep because people will want you to minister healing to them.
So, whatever you ask from God, you have to deal with extra. Whatever you ask, you have to count with extra. You should understand the cost and be willing to embrace it before you ask, because God just might give you what you ask of Him.
I would like to talk about Jesus Himself, about His blood. What does this blood really mean to us?
I began to dwell on it, thinking about the light and thinking about reality. I found out that the world that we are living in is not too real. I found out that the world that we are going to one day is the real world. In the real world, the street is paved with gold, which never wears down or wears out. Things last in the real world. Our world is temporal. For instance, in our world, the road is paved by tar or asphalt. It wears out. After some number of days, it will need to be renewed. When we drive on it, we find a crack. And that means that it is not too real.
God is taking us to the real place. As we march forth to that real place, we need to sink in His blood. Look at Matthew 5:6: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled."
If you want God to fill your life with all manner of blessings, you have to hunger and thirst for Him. This is the introduction for you. If you want His gifts and His power and His anointing, then hunger for him. If you want God to come and anoint your life as never before, be hungry for Him. This is not my opinion -- this is what Jesus told the people that came to hear Him when He was on the mountain.
Jesus felt that it was important for His followers to hunger and thirst for righteousness. One day a young man came to Him and called Him "Righteous Lord." He said, "Don't call me righteous Lord. The only one righteous is My Father in heaven." He was saying that we need to be thirsty for Him. We need to be hungry for Him.
I was born in a small village in Mozambique that was very far from towns and cities. In fact, it is 30 kilometers from the village where I was born to the nearest town. Most of the time, if we wanted to go into town from the village, we walked there. I had never ridden in a car until I was 15 years old. One day the Lord invited me to leave my family and my home to go follow Him. Do you know how I did that? I walked! Walking was the way I knew to get from one place to another. We did not have cars in the tiny village where I grew up.
I was born into the family of a witch doctor. At home, we didn't know about God, we only knew about witchcraft. I went to school in my village with the other boys until I was 15 years old. At that time, an audible voice came to me as I lay on my sleeping mat. It said, "Surpresa, move from your home. If you don't move, you die." I was shocked by the voice and did not know how to react to it. So I resisted the voice.
It came to me a second time and said, "Surpresa, you are not hearing Me. Move from your home." The second time the voice was so powerful that it shook the place where I was sleeping on the mat. I woke up and I took my schoolbooks and went to the house of my friend Gafari. I told him what happened that night. My friend Gafari said, "I will go with you wherever you go." He didn't say good-bye to his parents and I didn't say good-bye to my parents. So we started to walk from that place toward the North. We walked for over two weeks.
I won't tell you what we ate on the road, I will just say that it was not satisfying or filling. Life was very different in a rural African village than what you know here in the West. We slept along the roadside and there was no place to freshen up or to take a bath.
We finally arrived at the border and we ran into a man named Lucas. Lucas invited us to his house and he gave us water to drink, and he let us take a shower. Then he gave us food to eat and a place to sleep. I want to tell you, he gave us a good welcome. (One day you will welcome angels.) So we stayed in his house. He treated us nicely.
The next day he invited us to come and talk to him. Gafari and I sat down in front of him. Lucas started explaining about Jesus, a living king, a righteous holy of holies. He explained all about Jesus to us. As He talked about Jesus, I felt that my life was already in pieces near to Hell. I started crying. Lucas told me that there is a way. It was almost too easy to be a valid way -- all I needed to do was to confess with my mouth and believe in my heart and I can be saved completely. I decided that was an easy thing for me to do, so I did it. I gave to Him my life, my mind, everything. I handed everything over to His life. He said, "Thank you."
So, I looked to my friend, Gafari, and I asked him what he wanted to do. He said, "Oh, me too. I need this salvation. I don't have any assurance in the Moslem religion, what God is going to do for us." And then he also was led to the Lord.
After I gave myself to God, the Lord took me -- every part of me. Any time I slept, I dreamed of being in heaven. This was not an occasional thing, it happened constantly. I would dream of heaven at night when I slept and if I napped during the day, I dreamed of Heaven. This went on every day for three and a half years. If I slept during the day, the dream came: heaven. When I sleep at night, it came: I was in heaven. This happened all the time. One day I had a dream and people took me to the hospital because they thought I was sick. While I was having a vision, all my friends said, "Let's take him to the hospital."
It increased and I started dreaming while I was still awake. I would be walking along and suddenly I would find myself in a dream of Heaven. So I started to ask people about that: "What does this mean?" And the people said, "If you are dreaming awake, then this is a vision." I said, "Oh, praise God."
The fact is that I simply could not get enough of God once I committed my life to Him. The more I saw of Him, the more wonderful He was and the hungrier I became for Him. And that is the way it is supposed to be. We are to have a true hunger and passion for God.
Living In His Power
When I gave my life to Jesus, I tried to contact my home. I found out that my mother, my sister, and my father had died the week that I left home. I tell you the truth, from the day I left home until today, I never have gone back to my village. I have not put my foot in that village. I am still pursuing His will. I am still pursuing His task. And I won't go back unless that voice comes to me a second time and tells me, "Surpresa, now is the time, go back and put your foot in your village." Then I will go back.
In Africa, families are very close to each other. So it should be extremely difficult for me to have lost my family like that. But God spoke to me from His word to encourage me. He quickened Mark 3:34-35 to me. It says, "Then Jesus looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, 'Here are My mother and My brothers! Whoever does God's will is My brother and sister and mother.'"
I have come to the conclusion that my mother, my sister and my brother are those who hear the word of God and practice it. So I don't worry and I don't care. Wherever I go, I find brothers; I find everybody. God is so good. He quickened that scripture to me to encourage me in my situation. When I read that verse, it encouraged my life. So I hope that this can encourage you too. So from there, the journey continues.
I went to Malawi where they speak Jejewa. Suddenly, I was speaking Jejewa the very day I arrived in Malawi. I never had studied it. I didn't know it, but I began speaking it fluently. I said, "Wow, God, what is this?" He said, "It is for you to speak to communicate with the people." So I was so very happy speaking Jejewa with the people. I was speaking before I started reading the Bible. I spoke about what I was seeing in heaven, what my experience was in heaven, and I told the people about Jesus. And the first day, 80 people came to the Lord.
My journey continues. After I finished my task in Malawi, the Lord said, "You have to go back to Mozambique, but not to your village. Go to your sister in Beyra." That was a very hard part of my life. I left my dear friend Gafari and I said good-bye to the church.
My friends all told me, "No, the war is so very hard in Mozambique. Don't go there. The war is very strong. You are going to die, and maybe they will draft you into the army." The people gave me a lot of stories and excuses not to go. I said, "No. If the Lord says I have to go, then I have to go."
When I arrived at the border, they said that there is no traffic going to Beyda City. "You have to be here until an escort comes to escort all the traffic to Beyda City." I stayed at the border for three days before the escort came. It was twenty trucks fully loaded with the army. In addition to that, there were a lot of civilian trucks. That convoy had many trucks. So we all jumped into the truck, and we started a journey from the border to Beyda City.
About forty miles (or 60 Kilometers) into the journey, the truck I was in hit a land mine. BOOM went the land mine, and the top of the truck was completely blown off the truck. It caught on fire. A few of us were thrown from the truck in the explosion. From my perspective, what I saw was the hand of a "man" coming reaching down from the air. That hand picked me up from the truck and put me right on the road. The majority of the people where not thrown from the truck and they burned to death in that fire.
The truck following behind us slammed on their brakes and screeched to a stop, only inches from where I was sitting in the road. They came very close to hitting me or running me over. But by God's grace, they stopped just in the nick of time.
The whole escort stopped and we picked up the dead bodies and piled them into the truck that was behind us in the convoy. Those of us who survived because had been thrown from the truck also went to the truck that was behind us. But the commander said, "This truck is overloaded. Some people must come out." I came out and along with two other guys. That truck we came out of drove about 600 meters and then it hit another land mine. The dead bodies died twice. But by God's grace, I was not killed by the land mines.
After that experience, I started hearing voices of people in my life crying my name. "Surpresa, Surpresa!" I started crying because it hurt so much. I missed these people and I felt lonely. The Lord promised to wipe away my tears.
I arrived in Tete, where they speak a different language. The good news is that as soon as I arrived, the Lord immediately gave me that language and I started communicating with the people. So from the day I gave my life to Jesus up to this very day, I speak 14 languages. I can't explain how I do that because it is a supernatural gift. The words and understanding came from the heart of the Father to my mind. How did it happen? As soon as I got to a certain place, I started to pick up that language.
How did the English come to my mouth? It came in 1990, when I decided to go to the Bible school in South Africa. The Bible school was in English. So when I arrived there, suddenly I was speaking in English! That is why I am able to communicate with you today. God is good.
Sink yourself in His blood. This time that we are living in is a good time to live. At times life can be difficult, but this is still a good time to be alive. Some people blame this time. People blame a lot of things. But I want to tell you that this time is the way it is by God's purpose. The time we are in gives us opportunities to overcome. That is a good thing. Jesus said in Revelation 2:17, "To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it."
There is less to overcome in Africa. But here in the West, as you ask for much, there is more to overcome. Are you with me? In Africa, we just overcome the witch doctors, and witchcraft. But here you have to overcome a lot of things. You have a lot of distractions.
You asked for it, and then you have to overcome it. If you ask for a television, you have to overcome the television. If you ask for the internet, you have to overcome the internet. If you ask for a computer, you have to overcome the computer. You have so much because you ask so much. Then you have to overcome it. Each detail that you have, you need to overcome each detail. So if you can't overcome these things by yourself, just sink yourself in His blood. Let Him overcome them for you.