Harriette Onyalla
26 January 2008
Kampala — THERE is no such thing as a hopeless situation with God because God specialises in the impossible. Such is Marilyn Hickey's confidence in the gospel she is coming to share in Uganda from March 7 to 9. Perhaps this faith springs from the lessons learnt as Hickey waited for 10 years to receive the miracle of her only daughter.
That daughter, Sarah Bowling, now co-hosts the TV programme Today with Marilyn and Sarah, which is broadcast across the world and on Lighthouse Television.
According to Pastor Margaret Musungu of Port Bell Road Miracle Centre Church, Hickey will address a three-day conference at Nakivubo Stadium.
Musungu says: "We shall have a series of conferences for leaders, ladies and businesspeople. All the leaders of the body of Christ in the country are going to be involved in organising these events."
Hickey's candidness in telling of a gospel of fresh beginnings, second chances and restoration has led her to meet the world's lowly and lofty as she has travelled to Pakistan, Jordan, Cambodia, Honduras and Israel.
The lesson of waiting on God for a promised child has made Hickey a unique preacher because she learnt the totality of taking God at his word. Hickey teaches insights of God's timing and the part we have to play to receive our miracles even if that part is sometimes just waiting, a thing many Christians dread. Often times, God answers their prayers only to find that they moved on as soon as they prayed.
"Faith is a process and we want answers in 24 hours," Hickey said in an interview with cbn.com. For 19 years, Marilyn prayed for the doors to open for a crusade in Ethiopia. "After a while, I just forgot about it," she says. Then God opened the doors for her to minister to over 40,000 people in 2002.
"Recently Marilyn ministered in Panama for 10 days. A two-night crusade was held at a stadium where people from 500 churches commuted to the crusade and more than 18,000 attended.
"Countless people were healed and almost 12,000 people swarmed the altar to give their lives to Christ and 5,000 people were filled with the Holy Spirit. The crowd was so large that Marilyn wondered whether they had misunderstood, so the call was clarified three times!
"On the second night of the crusade, 12,000 people stood in torrential rains and praised God. Nearly 4,000 received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. At first, Marilyn and the team were disappointed by the downpour. Later, they learned that the rain was an answer to prayer as the city was in the midst of a drought," cbn.com says.
In an article in Outpouring Magazine, Hickey noted that when we are going through tough times, Christians are often encouraged to "just have faith". However, she says that would be good advice if we knew what faith really is.
"To have faith in God, we must believe in and believe for things we cannot see. This can be very difficult when we are surrounded and even overwhelmed by the visible world pressing in from all sides, demanding our attention," she says.
Although she has published hundreds of books and booklets during her 30 years as a preacher, Hickey is more popular for her book, Breaking Generational Curses.
In this very practical book, Hickey helps Christians to deal with the issue of sins and curses, "because God's principles still apply, he has given us the blood as an atonement for these sins and the curses or punishment they would have hitherto resulted in".
In 1954, a year after graduating from the University of Northern Colorado, Marilyn got married to Wallace Hickey who was to usher her into the life of service in the church In 1960, Wallace founded Orchard Road Christian Center that the congregation fondly calls Denver's Happy Church.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 New Vision. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
