Biography
Suzette Hattingh is a South African Christian leader who has served as a prayer coordinator and an intercessor for some of the great evangelistic crusades of recent decades. She was born in the middle of the twentieth century, in South Africa, in an Afrikaans-speaking family. She grew up in a country in the grip of apartheid and was raised in the Dutch Reformed tradition. As a young woman, she came to a personal faith in Christ. She was drawn to the Pentecostal movement and received the baptism in the Holy Spirit. She felt a call to a life of prayer.
In the 1970s, she met the German evangelist Reinhard Bonnke, who was holding crusades in southern Africa. She joined his team and became his prayer coordinator. She was a young woman with a gift for intercession. She organized teams of intercessors who prayed before and during the crusades. She trained local churches to pray. She said that she believed that crusades are won in prayer, before they are held. For many years, she worked with Bonnke's ministry, Christ for All Nations, and she took part in the large crusades in Africa and elsewhere. She was a leader in the training of prayer teams.
She also served as a prayer partner to other ministries. She worked with Billy Graham and a number of other evangelists. She was in demand as a teacher on prayer and intercession. She has traveled widely and has taught in many countries. She is the author of a number of books, including Prayer That Wins and The Challenge of Prayer. Her teaching stressed the importance of intercession for the lost and the power of faith in prayer. She said that believers should pray with persistence and with expectation. She wrote that intercession is a work that goes before the preaching of the gospel.
She is a living woman, and the record of her life is limited. The details here, including her dates and the history of her work, should be checked against fuller sources. What can be said with confidence is that she is among the best known intercessors of her generation and that she has been a key figure behind the scenes of some of the greatest crusades in Africa. She has said that the real work of evangelism takes place in the secret place of prayer.
Her life shows the importance of those who work in the background. The evangelists who stand on the platform depend on those who pray. A woman of prayer from South Africa has helped to prepare the way for millions to hear the gospel.