Special Service with Joan #1: Stepping Out in Faith, Tent Revivals and God’s Provision

This special service with Joan is about faith you can act on: hearing the Holy Spirit, stepping out before the money or the connections are there, and watching God open doors. Joan Pierce, a traveling minister who says she has preached for over 40 years, builds faith through a string of true stories, then teaches from Matthew 8 to 10 that God wants people healed and that the harvest is ready now.

Below you will find the full video, a structured summary of the message, the Scripture behind each point (linked to the New King James Version on Bible Gateway), a timestamped outline, and practical steps for walking by faith this week.

Sermon at a Glance

This message was given at NTC Ministries as the first night of a series of special meetings and posted on March 25, 2025. It runs about 65 minutes. Joan opens by saying she is believing for miracles that night and every night after, and she closes with prayer for healing, an invitation to receive Jesus, and prayer for the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

She travels with her husband, Marty, and the two of them live, as she puts it, by faith. Most of the evening is testimony, framed by a short teaching from Matthew’s Gospel on healing and the harvest.

A Storyteller Like Jesus

Joan says she never preaches anything complicated. Years ago someone at a church told her she told too many stories, so the next night she preached without a single one. Afterward the pastor asked what was wrong with her preaching. When she explained, he asked who she thought told more stories than anyone when He preached, and pointed to the parables of Jesus. She laughed and decided she would simply be a storyteller.

Her stories have one purpose: to build faith. She quotes the definition that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1), and that without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6).

She admits that she and Marty were in the middle of another faith decision that very weekend. On the phone, Marty laughed and told her they had never known the future, yet they just do it. That attitude runs through every story she tells in this special service with Joan: they rarely know how, but they have learned to recognize when God has spoken.

She roots this in the life of Jesus. God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil (Acts 10:38). Jesus said He did only what He saw the Father do (John 5:19). When you learn to hear the voice of God, she says, what He will do is mind-blowing.

Five Tent Revivals in Washington

The first story began in her prayer room in Florida. Joan heard the Holy Spirit say she would hold five tent revivals in Washington state, where she had once lived. She chuckled: she lived in Florida, knew no pastors there anymore and had no idea who would host a tent meeting. Still, she and Marty got in their truck and drove about 3,900 miles on faith.

The doors opened one by one. An acquaintance introduced her to a friend, who arranged a meeting. In town she stopped to talk with a street evangelist whose signs she assumed were Catholic. He turned out to be an on-fire Pentecostal who used the look of the signs to get people to stop. When she mentioned a pastor she had preached for 30 years earlier but whose name she had forgotten, he named him and told her the church had moved up the hill. That became tent meeting number one.

A friend then had her preach in Spokane, which became the second, and the third came through total strangers. One host asked to move his meeting to the following summer in Olympia. Another pastor cancelled a week and a half before the event, after flyers, permits and thousands of dollars had already gone into it. Marty told her not to worry, because she had obeyed the word about five.

Now, she says, pastors call her instead of the other way around, and more tent meetings are lined up. She has learned to hear the voice of the third person of the Godhead, and when He tells her to call a pastor she knows only by name, she calls, and the pastor asks how she knew. She describes a vision God gave her: darkness getting darker, brightness getting brighter, and a gray area of people who are only partly committed.

At this point she stopped and called forward anyone to whom God had spoken about doing something that has not happened yet. She prayed for walking-on-the-water faith, for clearer hearing of God’s voice and for healing. She also cautioned that the devil hears what you announce, so it is wise not to tell everyone every step. Even their truck had a failing transmission, she says, but they believed God’s word that it would reach the repair shop in Washington.

Five Books and a $12,000 Step of Faith

Her second faith story came after she finished teaching a school on the supernatural in Florida. Sitting in her rocking chair praying, she heard the Holy Spirit say she would write five children’s books. She protested that she did not know how, “but see the Holy Spirit does.” On the morning of this service, she says, she had just finished the last chapter of book five.

When Marty saw a sample of her book God’s Heroes, he told her it would sell like crazy, and so did the woman helping her. The order would cost $12,000, money she says their shoestring ministry did not have. Marty reminded her that they had done everything by trust, so she placed the order. By the time of this message, she says, the $12,000 was paid off.

Then she did something she warned the online audience would seem strange: she asked everyone to look at her smile. At eight years old she was bullied and stoned by other children, losing teeth and living with a chipped tooth all through high school. The deeper hurt, she says, was in her heart, from the names and the exclusion. She also grew up without a father’s love, and God had to become her heavenly Father.

The woman helping with the books urged her to put her testimony into one for young children, without details they could not understand. That book addresses bullying and teaches five- and six-year-olds simple spiritual warfare, such as putting on the whole armor and telling a lying voice to go. Joan reports that a boy recently told his Sunday school teacher about a voice urging him every day to hurt people, and she says the book helps children open up about such things. Her takeaway: trust the Lord, lean not on your own understanding (Proverbs 3:5), and let God use you.

God Wants You Healed: Matthew 8 and 9

Asking the Holy Spirit to get her out of the way, Joan turns to Matthew 8 to show that God wants people healed and does not put sickness on them. A leper said, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean,” and Jesus touched him and said, “I am willing; be cleansed” (Matthew 8:1–3).

The centurion asked Jesus only to speak a word, because he understood authority, and Jesus marveled at his faith (Matthew 8:5–10). Joan draws out that the servant was not present. You can stand in for someone elsewhere, even in China, because Jesus said to ask and you will receive (Matthew 7:7) and that whatever you ask in prayer believing, you will have (Mark 11:24).

The woman with the flow of blood said to herself that if she could only touch His garment she would be made well, and Jesus told her, “Be of good cheer, daughter; your faith has made you well” (Matthew 9:20–22). Joan says God is asking the church to press in the same way. She shares a mother’s report that her eight-year-old son, who had never spoken, began talking after Marty kept placing him back in the prayer lines at a tent meeting. She later interviewed the boy on her television program, where he refused to give back the microphone.

She points to the paralyzed man let down through the roof, when Jesus asked whether it is easier to forgive sins or to tell the man to get up and walk (Mark 2:1–12). Her answer: it is the same cross and the same Jesus, so receiving a miracle is as easy as receiving salvation. Christ became a curse so that we could be blessed (Galatians 3:13).

Many healings, she says, she only hears about months later. In Pennsylvania she prayed for a man with a bad back without knowing he was a doctor. The pastor later called to say the doctor had seen notable miracles and wanted to host a tent meeting, because so many people there were sick. God’s power, she says, opens doors without effort when you seek first His kingdom (Matthew 6:33).

The Harvest Is Plentiful

Joan believes this is a harvest season. People who are not saved, she says, sense that something is not right; they are afraid, and the fruit is so ripe it falls into your hands. Praying with strangers in an airport the day before, she found them thanking her for taking the time. She believes there are sovereign seasons of revival when what used to be a struggle becomes easy, because it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me (Galatians 2:20).

In Matthew 9:35–38, Jesus went through the cities teaching, preaching and healing, was moved with compassion for people scattered like sheep without a shepherd, and said the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. All you need to do, Joan says, is jump into the harvest and start doing what God told you. Talk to people and love them. You do not even need a tract; you are the living epistle (2 Corinthians 3:2–3).

If someone tells you off, wish them a blessed day, tell them Jesus loves them and move on to the next one. She no longer believes you must talk to twenty people to lead one to the Lord; time is short, and you might find all six people you speak to ready to pray.

In Matthew 10:6–9, Jesus sent His disciples to preach that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, heal the sick, cleanse lepers, raise the dead and cast out demons: freely you have received, freely give. They were to take no gold, silver or copper, which Joan reads as a promise that God will supply.

She tells how the truck’s transmission failed just after they set up a tent on school property that had to be cleared. She called a fellow tent evangelist to borrow his truck, but he had just come home from the hospital with dangerously high blood pressure. Marty went over and prayed with an intensity Joan says she had never seen. Fifteen minutes later the man called to say his blood pressure was normal and he was on his way with his trailer.

Signs and wonders are not the message, though. Share the love of Jesus, she says, that God so loved the world (John 3:16), and the rest falls into place. Jesus promised that if He is lifted up, He will draw people to Himself (John 12:32).

Faith Stories From This Special Service With Joan

Joan’s last point is that when God can trust you, He will send people to you. On a camping trip, a man appeared above the river where she and Marty were washing up. He had driven back roads from Boise looking for something he could not name, and a voice told him the people on the rock had his answer. He spent the day with them, was saved and was filled with the Holy Spirit.

Another morning a man named Dennis was asleep on the next picnic table. Over coffee and breakfast he explained that he had promised his dying father he would get rich, worked several jobs, and lost his wife because he was never home. He had ridden from Los Angeles through San Francisco and Sacramento looking for something. He received Jesus, waited for hours the next morning to be filled with the Holy Spirit, testified in church and rode home to rebuild his family.

Here are the faith stories she tells, side by side:

Jesus sends us out as sheep among wolves (Matthew 10:16), and whoever loves father or mother more than Him is not worthy of Him (Matthew 10:37–38). Joan gave up a corporation with 400 employees to preach, and people thought she was crazy. About to turn 82, she says, she is still preaching, with “energy like a 20-year-old,” because God told her she would preach until the day He takes her home. His hand is not shortened that it cannot save (Isaiah 59:1).

Walking by Faith This Week

Joan’s message is simple: hear God, then move. These steps come directly from her stories and teaching:

• Write down what God has said. Name the thing He has spoken to you about that has not happened yet, and ask Him for the next step.
• Move before you see how. Like the drive to Washington, obey the part you know and trust God with the connections and the money.
• Guard your plans. Do not announce every move; let God direct your path and tell doubt to be quiet.
• Pray for someone who is not there. Like the centurion, stand in faith for a friend or relative wherever they are.
• Talk to six people. Share your testimony and Jesus’ love, bless the ones who refuse, and move on.
• Make room for interruptions. The seekers she met came during a vacation; time given to people can become someone’s salvation.

Timestamped Outline

• 0:00 Believing for miracles; “you tell too many stories”
• 1:01 Faith is the substance of things hoped for
• 2:10 Five tent revivals in Washington
• 4:34 The street evangelist and the first tent
• 5:56 A cancelled meeting and God’s faithfulness
• 10:28 Altar call for unfulfilled callings
• 15:20 The devil hears your plans
• 18:00 Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit
• 19:16 Five children’s books
• 20:35 The $12,000 order
• 22:01 Her testimony of being bullied
• 27:00 Matthew 8: God wants you healed
• 28:05 The centurion’s faith
• 29:54 The woman who touched His garment
• 32:11 The boy on the TV show
• 35:22 Which is easier? The same cross
• 36:46 The doctor in Pennsylvania
• 38:03 The fruit is ripe
• 40:46 Matthew 9:35: the harvest is plentiful
• 43:01 Matthew 10: freely you have received
• 45:14 The borrowed truck and a healing
• 47:33 The man from Boise
• 50:51 Dennis on the picnic table
• 56:13 Sold out: preaching until 100
• 58:39 Prayer for healing and salvation

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Marty?

Marty is Joan’s husband and partner in ministry. In her stories he is the steady voice of faith: he tells her they have never known the future yet do it anyway, encourages her to place the $12,000 book order, and keeps children in the prayer lines because, she says, he has a heart for kids. She describes his prayer for the fellow evangelist as the most intense she has ever seen.

Does she say everyone must fall down when prayed for?

No. During the closing ministry time Joan tells people more than once that they do not have to go down. She asks for someone to stand behind each person and offers a chair to sit in. One woman, she reports, simply received healing while sitting in the service, saying the pain she came in with all through her leg was gone.

How should we respond when someone rejects the gospel?

Joan says not to worry about it. If someone chews her out and says they do not want to hear what she has to say, she tells them it is okay, wishes them a blessed day, tells them Jesus loves them and walks off. She compares it to plowing, where you sometimes hit a dirt clod; you simply go on to the next person and plant a seed.

Scripture References

All passages open in the New King James Version on Bible Gateway:

• Hebrews 11:1 and Hebrews 11:6 — faith and pleasing God
• Acts 10:38 — Jesus anointed with the Holy Spirit
• Matthew 8:1–3 — “I am willing”
• Matthew 8:5–10 — the centurion’s faith
• Matthew 9:20–22 — the woman who touched His garment
• Mark 2:1–12 — the paralyzed man through the roof
• Matthew 9:35–38 — the harvest is plentiful
• Matthew 10:6–9 — freely you have received

How this summary was made: written with AI assistance from the message’s own transcript and checked against the Scriptures listed above.

Watch More Messages

If these stories stirred your faith, there are hundreds more messages from NTC Ministries waiting for you. Browse the full sermon archive and keep stepping out wherever God leads you.