It’s forty years since I left the world of publishing and bookselling and set out on my personal faith journey. I’d already been praying for sixteen years into the vision God had given me for the healing and restoration ministry, as I looked at the wreck of a crashed car. In those years of waiting publishing became my way of life, so it was no surprise when the third verse of one of Charles Wesley’s greatest hymns absolutely gripped me, and became my personal dedication for whatever lay ahead of me in 1986.
“My talents, gifts, and graces, Lord,
Into Thy blessed hands receive,
And let me live to preach Thy Word,
And let me to Thy glory live;
My every sacred moment spend
in publishing the sinner’s Friend.”
The last two lines of this verse became my life’s objective. ‘My every sacred moment’ includes the whole of life, to the last breath! Even though seasons change, there is no such thing as retirement in the Kingdom of God. The great commission Jesus gave to His disciples in Matthew 28:19-20 is valid for the whole of church for the whole of time.
Charles Wesley had the gift of being able to condense extraordinary truth into just a few lines of life-impacting words. The first two lines of the hymn became my prayer from Day One of the ministry:
“Give me the faith which can remove
And sink the mountain to a plain.” *
I am so thankful to God for all the times that He has answered that prayer, and in so many amazing ways. The years have passed and the work still goes on. And so it was, that in the busyness of our expanding ministry life, with Gates of Hope International, the fortieth anniversary had completely escaped my mind. But not, I was soon to learn, everyone else’s!
A Surprise Celebration
Fiona and I were looking forward to a quiet Saturday evening with a few friends when, suddenly, the house erupted with celebrations as an impromptu, surprise party came through the door, replete with a mobile banquet and all the accoutrements of a 40th anniversary event!
We were completely blown away by the suddenness of it all. It was a wonderful surprise, and before long the evening echoed with us all recounting memory after memory, in joyful thanksgiving for the many amazing things God had done in those forty years of ‘publishing the sinner’s friend’!
Then, we were given a wonderful book of picture memories and ushered into our lounge. There we were placed in front of the TV, and Fiona and I watched, with tears of joyful thanksgiving, a series of video clips that had been gathered from ministry friends all over the world.
Then God Intervened!
It was as I watched all those clips, with most of them mentioning 40 years, that I sensed the Lord speaking deep into my spirit. In my mind I was ducking in and out of Scripture as I listened to the kind and generous words of people we had walked with in the Kingdom for so long. My mind and spirit were seeing the end of the forty year wilderness pilgrimage of the Children of Israel, as they stood on the banks of the River Jordan, waiting to cross into the Promised Land.
Those forty years, with all its memories of God’s amazing provision, and faith lessons learnt on the journey, were in the past, just as my forty years are for me. For God’s people everything was now focused on entering the Land God had, through Abraham, marked out for them. Their work now was to reclaim it for Him and His people, to be the place where the Messiah would be born and from where a message of salvation and redemption would go out to the whole world.
Back in the 1970s, I wrote the outline of a book that was never published! In it I was crying out to God that the Church of my day would live out the reality of what it meant for a Church that truly believed in Jesus to proclaim the Kingdom of God into what had become a very pagan world. That prayer has never been silenced in my spirit. It is ever with me.
God’s answer to my prayer then was to take me on a forty year journey learning why, for Jesus and the early church, the healing ministry was such a vital part of Christian discipleship. I was soon to realize that without understanding healing, today’s church could never fulfil the vision of Isaiah 61:1-3 – to proclaim the good news, heal the sick, set the captives free and restore the hurting and broken to be ‘oaks of righteousness’, doing the works of the Kingdom of God.
And so it was that as I watched those precious video clips, something else began to fill my spirit. It was as if I was standing on the edge of a different ‘River Jordan’, looking at the ‘Promised Land’ of an end-times Church that was truly living out the reality of what God intended the Church to be. For that is the message which is at the core of what God has birthed in all the ministries which are part of the Gates of Hope International network (GOHI).
The world is changing at lightning speed. But nothing that is happening around us is a surprise to God. Behind the scenes He has been stirring the heart of a remnant of believers who will have the courage to cross this new ‘River Jordan’, and claim the ‘promised land’ for the Kingdom of God, that He has marked out for this generation of committed believers to live in and serve Him.
Trimming My Feathers!
I may be old in physical years, but my heart still beats with the excitement and vision of youth (Isaiah 40:31)! As I put my hope afresh in the Lord, I’m praying for a renewal of strength. And I’m trimming the feathers of my spiritual wings, just wondering what God has in store for those who soar into the spiritual reality of a church which actually believes the fullness of the Gospel, and dares to proclaim and live out that truth in the midst of a tsunami of the enemy’s lies.
Lost sheep will not be found, healed and restored without a shepherd. The great Shepherd of the sheep needs a courageous army of under-shepherds who will do the work for Him, as envisioned by Charles Wesley in the hymn which gripped my soul forty years ago, and which is again challenging the very core of my spiritual being today:
“I would the precious time redeem,
And longer live for this alone;
To spend and to be spent for them
Who have not yet my Savior known.
Enlarge, inflame, and fill my heart
With boundless, fervent love divine,
So shall I all my strength exert,
And love them with a zeal like Thine,
And lead them to Thy open side,
The sheep, for whom the Shepherd died.” *
Through the GOHI Network, God has renewed my vision and opened my eyes afresh to the challenge of the Gospel. Many in the Body of Christ have spurned their invitations to the banquet of truth, reality and purposeful mission that Jesus laid before the church, and made a thousand excuses for not being there (Luke 14:18-20).
But today, Jesus is raising up the under-shepherds to respond to Jesus’s challenge to “go out into the highways and byways and urge them to come in, that my house may be full” (Luke 14:23). “Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind and you will be blessed” said Jesus. (Luke 14:13).
As a result, we are seeing amazing fruit in many parts of the world. God’s army is on the move. The Gospel of the Kingdom is going out. The time is NOW!
© Peter Horrobin, October 2026
- This challenging hymn is one of Charles Wesley’s greatest. Sadly, it’s seldom sung these days, but I included it as number 168 in Mission Praise.
Peter Horrobin is the Founder of Gates of Hope International. To find out more about the ministry and/or support the work in prayer or giving, please go to www.gohi.world
To find out more about Peter and Fiona’s ministry and obtain their books please go to www.peterhorrobin.com
Many thanks again Peter for your encouraging words PTL