‘… as I was working in banquet management, I felt the hunger to speak for the Lord. I was a new Christian, and wherever I spoke things would happen. People would ask if I had ever considered that God had gifted me in the role of evangelism. It was natural to me, whether I was behind the pulpit or speaking with someone one-on-one. So I started taking part-time courses at a theological seminary in Toronto.
The more time I spent studying, the more I became restless in the hotel industry. This was especially true because liquor plays such an important role in the catering life. I had never even held a glass of it. Even before I was a believer, I had some disciplines that I kept, and for me personally, avoiding alcohol was certainly one of them. And when I saw the effect drinking had on some people, I thought, Is this what my life is going to be reduced to—dealing with something that I don’t even want to be responsible for on the other side of the counter? As I wrestled with that reality, the burden to preach grew greater and greater.
Indeed, as God would have it, preaching opportunities came from hither and yon. So with this struggle in my heart, I informed my parents that I was going to give up my career in business. It would have been a very good career, for I was working for a major worldwide hotel chain. But I felt God’s increasing call on my life—the pressure in the soul, as it were—to proclaim and to preach the gospel, although I didn’t know what shape this call would take.’
Ravi Zacharias, The Fingerprints on Your Soul, 15 Dec. 2003
Graham Kerr, celebrity TV chef of the 1970s. Before his conversion to Christ, he was previously known for crude jokes, cooking with alcohol and constantly guzzling it too. But then in 1975 he became a New Creation, and what a difference!