A tale of two tales, Part 3: On the edge of the cliff without God

Posted by Admin on May 21, 2014 in "Random" Connections, Testing | Comments Off on A tale of two tales, Part 3: On the edge of the cliff without God

Warning: For my friends with squeamish, delicate, or Puritanical sensibilities, proceed if you wish, but be advised. I will be sharing the events of that summer morning in 1976 as clearly as I can remember after 38 years and will leave very little out.

The night before, Susie, a 16 year-old backslidden Christian who joined our group as a junior counselor, said these words to me: “I’m president of student counsel; I’m popular, and I’m doing just fine on my own. I don’t need God.”

The next morning, at the crack of dawn, a couple of girls bounded up to the sleeping counselors, seeking permission to go on an early morning hike.

“Mmmmphh,” I mumbled. Susie volunteered to go with them, so I told them to be back by breakfast.

Off they went while I drifted back to sleep. That slumber was short-lived, however; what seemed to be mere minutes later, Laura, my co-counselor, and I were awakened to the sound of a cry of terror, a loud crash, and the ensuing shrieks of seventeen teen-aged girls.

We leaped up out of our sleeping bags, expecting to see a huge water or pillow fight and all of the accompanying chaos that fifteen year-old girls can create.

Instead, what we saw sent an icy chill up my spine on that quickly warming July morning.

There, under the cliff near the girls’ strewn sleeping bags, lay Susie on her back, screaming in agony, scratching the air and kicking furiously as if at some unseen demon. Strings of profanities were spewing out of her mouth between cries for help. The girls ran around in horrified pandemonium as Laura and I ran to the site.

“She fell! She fell!” one of the hikers burst out, crying hysterically. “She fell from up there!” I looked to the top of the cliff where she pointed; Susie had fallen the thirty-five foot distance and landed on her back right in the center of an old, abandoned campfire circle, her head just an inch or two from a large stone bordering the old site, her legs and arms also just inches from the other hefty boundary rocks. One thing we didn’t notice right away, however, was that she had landed right on top of a jutting slice of bedrock across the lower part of her back. Susie was out of her mind with panic and kamagra voorgeschreven co-betaling pain.

We corralled the girls and gave the more rationally-behaving ones the job of organizing everyone else in breakfast, clean up, and break down of our site; Susie needed medical attention as soon as we could contact camp, and that meant leaving the river as soon as possible. (Remember, this was 1976, before cell phones.) The girls leapt into action and were absolute champs in gaining an atmosphere of proactive peace and self-control.

I stayed with Susie while Laura had the daunting task of sprinting a mile or so away to the nearest farmhouse to find a phone where she could call camp.

Meanwhile, Susie’s crying and profanities mixed with apologies and pleas for mercy from God. I prayed with her, listening to discern what the Lord would have me to do. She was in shock, so I covered her with a light sleeping bag and spoke calmly to her. “Let me get up!” she started screaming. “I want to get up! I can walk!”

I continued listening—probing in my spirit—to hear what God wanted me to do. I had heard of miracles; I knew the Lord was very capable of pulling one off right now for Susie, and I thought that would be extremely cool.

But instead, I sensed caution; He reminded me of my first aid classes and generic pharmacy viagra the warning not to move a potential back or neck injury victim, risking further damage to the spinal cord. So there I stayed with Susie—who was still alternating between profanity and repentance—as I brushed away the big fuzzy flies that were gathering.

At some point in our wait for help, she needed to relieve herself. What do I do now? I wondered. If her spine moves, it could be worse, but I can’t let her pee all over herself!

I made the decision to give her dignity while attempting to keep her spine as stationary as possible. I unzipped her jeans shorts, and as carefully as I could, I scooted them and her panties below her hips and gently placed a camp frying pan beneath her. Mission accomplished. She was relieved, and I pulled the panties and shorts back up as far as I could to cover her without moving her. That frying pan, however, was pulled out of commission and headed back to camp in the trash.

Laura had returned by now; an hour had gone by; and no rescue team had shown up. The couple in the farmhouse allowed Laura to use their phone; she called camp and reached the guy in charge of transportation. She told him, “Susie had a little fall; we think she may be hurt, and we need to have you come get us right away.” You see, our first aid training had focused on keeping calm and in control; harsh, panicked words could escalate the victim’s alarm and make things far worse. But, Susie wasn’t at that farmhouse; she was under the cliff, and Laura’s calm words sent a false signal of “no big deal” to the guys who could help us. They had another cup of coffee and cleaned up a bit of business before they left. I learned a valuable lesson from this: Never sugar-coat the threat to your security or safety if you want action. This applies, incidentally, right now in our nation.

Three hours after her fall, the guys strolled down the quarter-mile path to our site leading from the place where Big Red and the van were parked. The minute he saw Susie and understood the situation, Rod, the guy in charge, began weeping. “I am so sorry!” he took me aside and said. “I thought that it was no big deal! She’s always visiting the infirmary with something or other; I thought this was just more of the same!”

One of the other guys sprinted the quarter-mile path to Big Red and removed the wooden gate from the rear of the old truck, trekking back at top speed with it under his arm. We padded it with sleeping bags, and the guys, Laura and I, and a few strong girls circled Susie, and at the count of three, we lifted her as a unit onto the padded gate. Then we carried her as level as we could down the quarter-mile path to the cargo van. We followed the same synchronized procedure to place her on the floor of the van, carefully securing the padded gate beneath her. Laura assured me that she and the girls would take care of the rest, and I rode in the back of the van with Susie while Rod high-tailed it to the farmhouse to call the sheriff for assistance.

The call was made, and we drove to the black top highway where we were met by two vehicles. One led us, top speed with sirens blaring, and the other followed, lights flashing, to the county hospital.

At this point, Susie was growing a pale shade of green. “I’m gonna be sick,” she croaked. I surveyed the floor of the van for anything to help; nothing. And then I remembered—my bandana! I was wearing a bandana—pirate (or ‘70’s hippie) style—around my head. I pulled it off, cupped it in my hands, and instructed Susie to only turn her head to the side and not to move her back; I would catch the vomit.

She did—over and over again—while I caught every bit of it in that beloved bandana. And miraculously, she neither moved her back nor choked on the vomit.

I was never more relieved to see a place than I was to see that emergency room. Attendants were at the back door of the van, moving Susie with professional expertise onto a waiting gurney. Rod left me at the hospital to return to the campsite to help with packing and transporting the group back to camp. I tied up the bandana and its contents into a soggy bundle and dropped it in the trash receptacle by the entrance of the hospital.

As I waited there alone, I couldn’t help but reflect on the conversation the night before. “I don’t need God,” she had boldly asserted. And now, she needed Him. And He was willing to help her. Instinctively, I knew that God didn’t cause my young friend to fall off of that cliff despite her defiance; however, I believed He had met her at the foot of that precipice—and that He would not fail her or forsake her.

Soon I was startled into the present again when a stern doctor addressed me. “Are you the one who gave care to Susan after the fall?” he demanded.

Uh oh, I squirmed. “Yes, sir,” I whispered.

“Well, let me tell you, young lady—her back was broken in a very precarious place; any pressure or movement one way or the other, and it would have cost your friend her mobility; it would have left her paralyzed. But what you did ensured that her fracture didn’t damage her nerves, and she will be fine and walking around in a brace in two weeks. And after that—she’ll be as good as new.”

In my numbness, all I could do was nod and thank him.

I have no idea how I made it back to camp; the rest of that session is a blur. But when I returned home between third and fourth sessions, my mom came into my room and sat on my bed to talk, oblivious to the ordeal I had just been a part of. And for the first time since Susie’s fall, I cried. I broke down and sobbed and poured out my heart to my mom as she rocked me and held me tight.

The doctor was right; after fourth session I visited Susie, and she was up and about in her back brace, all smiles and energy. The sweet humility was back, too; she had time to think and pray and process, and although she was unsure how quickly she would jump back in to church, she knew—beyond a shadow of  doubt—she needed God.

Tomorrow: Is it unknown or scary? God can turn it

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A tale of two tales, Part 2: You say you don’t need God?

Posted by Admin on May 20, 2014 in "Random" Connections, Testing | Comments Off on A tale of two tales, Part 2: You say you don’t need God?

Return, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am a husband unto you.  Jeremiah 3:14, English Revised Version

A microburst of revival hit the camp where I worked as a counselor during the summer of 1975. For all of the staff and many of the campers, Jesus was front and center—whether you liked it or not. When God moves, no one can box Him in or shut Him out.

I was a leadership counselor that summer, meaning I trained teens in a two-summer program to be counselors. I had also gone through the program as a teen, and now—at the ripe old age of 20—I was training 15 and 16 year olds myself. But I was not the bitter feminist I had been the summer before; I had been born again and was on fire for Jesus. For an up-close glimpse into the revival that happened the summer of ’75, see http://www.firstofallpray.com/?p=1447.

One 15 year old leader-in-training that summer had also recently been saved, and she and I had an instant connection in the Lord. Susie’s face beamed whenever I shared my testimony with the other teens, and I always egged her on to tell her story as well, which she was thrilled to do.

In 1976, I returned to help direct the same leadership program. Susie was back as well for her second year of the training, and I was eager to catch up with her to hear about all of her adventures in God. I figured that once you were saved, you stayed on fire. Was I ever shocked to learn that this was not always the case!

Susie had backslidden over her past year in high school. She was gracious enough but made it clear that she had no interest in talking about the Lord. I was stumped, but I just loved her and treated her like all my other counselors-in-training. And I prayed for her.

After their first session as a group under the tutelage of three other twenty-somethings and me, the teens then launched out into the various areas and programs of the camp as junior counselors (JCs). They were not paid for their first JC experience, but many plugged in to other areas after that to make a whopping $30 or so a session. Susie was one of those who stuck around after her first cabin of kids.

Third session arrived, and the leadership program was devoid of boys for that 10-day period—first time ever. So the two male counselors ditched Laura, my cohort, and me to fill in at other positions for the session. That was fine; we had a great group of seventeen rambunctious girls, full of life and fun, and they didn’t seem to care at all about the missing guys.

Each leadership session went on a three-night camping trip, usually somewhere out on one of Missouri’s scenic rivers. We typically chose remote locations—not the big campgrounds—and taught primitive camping skills and rudimentary camp crafts. And mainly, we just kicked back and enjoyed nature and each other. But with this group of seventeen girls, the camp director felt we needed a third leader to accompany us on the camping trip, so he asked Susie to fill the bill.

Off we went, along with an ecstatic Susie, piled with our gear into a van and the back of Big Red. Big Red was a ramshackle old truck that had been there ever since I was a camper, outfitted with wooden rails surrounding the wooden truck bed, and those rails were the only things separating sleeping bags, equipment, and teen-aged girls from bouncing out onto the winding two-lane highways and gravel roads. Our drivers flew down those country roads, and we sang and laughed and hung on for dear life.

We made it to our spot—a very remote location on the Meramec River. What an amazing site! The girls made camp under a thirty-five foot cliff, and the three counselors set up closer to the river, nestling our ground tarps and sleeping bags on the luxurious comfort of the sandy bar by the stream.

Of course, at night, there was the campfire and s’mores following my favorite camp supper of foil packs with hamburger, potatoes, onions, and cheese baked in glowing embers before we built the fire into a towering flaming giant.

After the last song was sung and the last tale had been told, with the fire dying back to quiet crackling, I shared about the Lord of nature who loved all of us so much that He gave His Son. The girls listened attentively, but I noticed that Susie was looking down, not giving eye contact. After the girls retreated to their sleeping bags, Laura decided to turn in for the night as well, leaving Susie and me to talk.

She told me that her past year in high school was incredible. She had made a whole new set of friends and had become very involved in everything. I asked about her relationship with Jesus, wanting to minister the love and grace of God to her.

“I’m president of student counsel,” she asserted. “I’m popular, and I’m doing just fine on my own. I don’t need God.”

She was flirting with danger. As I argued and pleaded and shared with her out of Scripture that she certainly did need the Lord, that He longed for her to return to Him, she rebuffed every word I said.

I crawled into my sleeping bag, praying quietly for her long into the night.

The next morning, at the crack of dawn, a couple of girls bounded up to the counselors—snoozing away in our sleeping bags—ready to hike.

“Mmmmphh,” I mumbled. Susie volunteered to go with them, so I told them to be back by breakfast.

And what happened next to the girl who “didn’t need God” would be indelibly branded onto my soul—and hers—forever.

Tomorrow: On the edge of the cliff without God.

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A tale of two tales, Part 1: God works all things together for good

Posted by Admin on May 19, 2014 in "Random" Connections, Testing | Comments Off on A tale of two tales, Part 1: God works all things together for good

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28

I am a firm believer that God causes all things to work together for good for those who love Him and who are called according to His purposes. Notice, I did not say that I believe that God causes all things, as some erroneously believe. I do not and cannot accept that about the Lord who died for me. He only does wondrous things (see Psalm 72:18, KJV), and according to the Apostle James, “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow” (James 1:17).

Now this truth in Romans 8 does not mean that you’ll “float by on flowery beds of ease” as one of my favorite Bible teachers used to say. It doesn’t mean that you’ll no longer live in a fallen world; it doesn’t mean that natural law will be forever suspended for you (although God will provide miracles galore for you); it doesn’t mean that you will never suffer consequences due to lapses in judgment or sin; nor does it mean that the devil will never seek to attack you again. It simply means this: As you follow the Lord and love Him with all your heart, your soul, and your strength, you can trust that He will turn everything that comes your way around for your good because you are called according to His purpose. His mercies never fail (see Lamentations 3:22), and He cares for you affectionately and cares about you watchfully (1 Peter 5:7b, AMP).

This Romans 8 truth is where I choose to park my car, to anchor my boat, and to camp out for the rest of my life. Joshua said, “…as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 24:15b), and I choose to say, “As for me, God causes all things [even demonic attacks!] to turn around for my good because I love Him and am called according to His purpose.” Because of our loving Heavenly Father and His precious Son and the mighty Holy Spirit, all things will turn around for our good and will be made into stepping stones for our feet as we embrace our God and His call on our lives!

When you go through trials, it is critical to remind yourself that God absolutely does turn all things around for your good. And like everything else in His kingdom, you access this wonderful privilege that belongs to you by faith—by simply trusting Him to do for you what He has promised in His Word to do.

This week I will be sharing two experiences from my life which clearly illustrate this fact. And although these two stories are completely unrelated, you will be surprised how God tied them together supernaturally to bring blessing and comfort to me when I most needed it.

We live, move, and have our being under the wings and the protective shadow of an awesome God!

Dorothy

Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass. 1 Thessalonians 5:24

But the Lord is faithful, and He will strengthen and protect you from the evil one. 2 Thessalonians 3:3

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My own personal Pentecost

Posted by Admin on May 12, 2014 in My testimony | Comments Off on My own personal Pentecost

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance. Acts 2:4

I plan to continue discussing the shift in prayer direction God gave me in April, but May 10th is a very important anniversary for me in my walk with God. Therefore, I would like to share about it with you before I pick back up on last week’s topic.

It was Saturday night on the 10^th of May, 1975. I had just finished finals and was back in my hometown to prepare for my camp counseling assignment starting in June.

I was visiting a church in town that night with a friend from the college Bible study and her mother. This church had been experiencing power of the “Jesus Move”, and I had heard a tale (confirmed since then by many unrelated witnesses) about a strange phenomenon that had happened there sometime before the evening I attended.

According to what I heard, it happened something like this. At some point in one of the worship services, while the congregation was praising God in song, flames of fires were seen—not inside the building by the congregants, but outside, shooting up from the roof—by individuals in the neighborhood and folks passing by on the highway. Those inside worshipping God were oblivious to the sign from God until their service was invaded by the local fire department after several calls had come in to the station, alerting them to the church fire. I’m imagining that the leadership of that church could have paraphrased Peter in Acts 2:15-19, “This building is not on fire as you suppose, but this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel…I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind…and I will grant wonders in the sky above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke” (emphasis added).

The night I visited was relatively tame in comparison, but first, let me backtrack before I describe what took place that evening.

I had gotten saved at the end of December, ’74, and was water baptized in April. I was sold out to Jesus who had visited me, saved me, and landed me in a fervent, intimate body of young believers. But I lacked something that I desired with all my heart—the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues.

I knew about it because when my Bible study friends worshipped God and communed with Him, I sometimes observed their mouths moving quickly but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Just about all of them did it; it intrigued me, so I asked one of them about it.

“Oh! We’re just praying in the Holy Spirit!” she explained. “We’re speaking in tongues. You can read about it in Acts 2.” That’s all she said, and I went away all the more hungry, on a mission from God to learn about this mysterious baptism of the Holy Spirit and speaking in other tongues.

I read Acts 2 and everything else in the Bible I could find about the subject and kept straining in the meetings to hear what it sounded like. But these young people were “stealth” tongues-talkers; they did it regularly, but no one could hear their heavenly language! To this day, I enjoy praying that way at times when I’m in a crowd—a stealth tongues-talker in the midst of the world!

I lived on the seventh floor of my dorm and often sat on the heating register that was by the window as I looked out on the campus. More times than I can count that semester, I sat in that spot, mirror in hand, and said to the Lord, “Fill me with the Holy Ghost now!” And I would look in the mirror to see if He was moving my mouth at all. Nothing. That only resulted in this: I became even hungrier for the baptism in the Holy Spirit.

And there I was, on May 10, 1975, sitting in this vibrant church next to my friend and her mom, worshipping God, when a very strange thing happened. My tongue started “jumping around” in my mouth and I began to make quiet clicking noises. It didn’t scare me at all; it was soothing, but I thought it was odd.

I leaned over to my friend and whispered, “My tongue is clicking around in my mouth.”

She began punch-slapping me in the arm and whispered enthusiastically, “Oooo! Ooooo! Ooooo! You’ve got the Holy Ghost!”

So this is what it’s all about, I thought and kept on clicking quietly, still rather puzzled by the clicks.

After the meeting, I told my friend’s mom what I had experienced with the clicking, and she repeated her daughter, verbatim, “Oooo! Ooooo! Ooooo! You’ve got the Holy Ghost!” But she added a bit of wisdom to that and said, “Keep practicing. You can speak in tongues whenever you want now as you pray, and as you practice, it’ll sound more like a real language; you’ll grow in it.”

So my personal Pentecost launched me into a new avenue of prayer and communion with God. I practiced whenever I was alone, my language started sounding more real to me—not just clicks—and I grew in it, just like Mrs. Belt said would happen.

But then, five or six years later, as a young teacher, I went to the movies and watched a quirky comedy. It was about an empty Coke bottle falling out of a plane over Botswana, Africa, and landing on the head of a sweet bushman who lived a primitive life there with his tribe. The chaos and comedy and national crisis that unfolded were memorable enough (I love good comedies), but what gripped my gut with holy awe was this: the bushman’s language—clicks made inside his mouth by his tongue “jumping around” in there—was the very language I spoke on May 10^th, 1975, when I was first baptized in the Holy Spirit!

Thirty-nine years later I’m still praying in the Holy Ghost, and I am still deeply grateful for this wonderful gift!

Dorothy

For these men are not drunk, as you suppose… Acts 2:15a

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My validation

Posted by Admin on Apr 28, 2014 in Updates | Comments Off on My validation

I’ll be taking one more week off from the blog. However, I wanted to share something with you first. Last week I picked up a book I wanted to reread. As I finished the third chapter, I thumbed through the rest of it to look at the underlinings and notes I had written inside way back when I originally read it, and I found something I had jotted down in the back inner flap—a personal manifesto, of sorts. Hope it encourages you in your relationship with the Lord, because it is not only true of me; it is true of you, as well. Here it is:

“My validation comes from God Himself. If I never pray another prayer, read another Scripture, sing another song, or share with anyone else, I remain validated only by the Blood. I will never again do any of those things to assert my value; I am valuable because God deems me valuable.

“It is because of my union with God through Christ that I am compelled to pray. It is because of His wonderful love for me that I love His Word. It is because of His complete redemption for me from my sin that I can sing with joy and thankfulness to Him. It is only because His deep calls to my deep that I can reach out to those in darkness and extend the Light to them.

“It is a privilege to pray, to read, to sing, and to share. It is not a burden or a performance. It is not an obligation. It is a compelling from the Spirit of God and is not born of a need to appear spiritual. If I pray, read, write, sing, or share to get acceptance, to maintain appearance, to make a name for myself, or to ease into certain circles, then I am out of line and need to swing some braided cords at my motives (see John 2:15).

“All that I do, I do because I have a vital love relationship between myself and the living God, forged in the blood of Jesus, paid for at a price more costly than I could ever afford. I will walk free because He wills it. I will throw off all shackles because He paid the price for my freedom. I will move by His Spirit because He paid for my right to do so, and I will move by His Spirit because He wants to use me to help release others from bondages, burdens, and boxes imposed on them by devils, sin, religion, and men.

“He whom the Son has freed is free indeed!”

Thank God for this wonderful liberty!

Please check back on Monday, May 5.

Until then,

Dorothy

Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies.  Romans 8:33

So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. John 8:36

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After Easter update

Posted by Admin on Apr 21, 2014 in Updates | Comments Off on After Easter update

Hi!

Hope you had a blessed Easter and were able to spend some time with the Lord, rejoicing in all that He has done.

I will be taking a week (maybe two) off from the blog again. God has given me some prayer direction for the nation, and I want to be able to focus on that for a season and find out if He wants me to share any of it here with you.

I want to encourage you to continue praying for the United States. God is not finished with this nation yet, but is seeking to give each one of us His wisdom about how to pray for the issues concerning America. And if you’re not sure how to pray, then pray in the Spirit! You’ll be praying mysteries (see 1 Corinthians 14:2). I don’t know about you, but a lot of the stuff currently going on in the nation and the world is a huge mystery to me, so praying out mysteries in tongues sounds just about right at this time!

Be encouraged that the truth found in God’s Word about prayer is true all the time, not just when everyone’s prospering and the world is safe. In fact, time and again, the biggest miracles in the Bible (and since!) have been during times of distress, turmoil, and confusion. If that’s so, then what must we be sitting on brink of? Trust God; He is one hundred percent trustworthy. He’ll lead you in your own life and in your prayers for others as well.

And if you want to check out some of my favorite devotionals while I’m away, here they are!

• My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers:   http://utmost.org/
• Streams in the Desert by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman:  http://www.backtothebible.org/index.php/devotions/classics/charles_cowman.html
• God’s Word for Today, Gospel Publishing House (Assemblies of God): http://ag.org/top/devotional/index.cfm
• Eagles’ Wings, published by the Free Presbyterian Church: http://fpcna.org/fpcna_daily.asp
• Jentezen Franklin’s devotional blog: http://www.jentezenfranklin.org/blog/
• Devotional by Smith Wigglesworth: http://annointing.wordpress.com/smith-wigglesworth-devotional/  (This site has listed every page of Wigglesworth’s Devotional. Click the month and then scroll to find the day. Every month is a PDF file.)
• World Challenge, devotions. http://sermons.worldchallenge.org/en/view/devotions This is David Wilkerson’s ministry, now headed up by his son Gary Wilkerson. (If the link takes you to the home page instead of the devotion, then on the menu bar at the top go to “SERMONS” and scroll down to “DEVOTIONS” and link there.)

Of course, if you want, you can also scroll back and check the archives right here at www.FirstOfAllPray.com.

Check back here at the website on Monday, April 28. I’ll either give an update or be back to blogging full time. In the meantime, enjoy pressing on in God!

Dorothy

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The Apologetic Altar Call

Posted by Admin on Apr 2, 2014 in Revival | Comments Off on The Apologetic Altar Call

Easter is drawing near. Every year on that morning, millions attend churches throughout the country. For many, this is a biannual event—a Christmas and Easter pilgrimage, of sorts—to the place of worship of the most religious member of the family. Some go kicking and screaming; some go with extra hairspray, an overly expensive new outfit, and pinching shoes that may never be worn again; others go relieved to still have some sort of connection with the Man Upstairs; and still many others go merely out of habit.

However, strip away the chocolate bunnies and the colorfully wrapped eggs (Hey! Here’s my basket—just dump them in there), and take a closer look at the Man who died on the cross and three days later rose from the grave, and you’ve got Easter—or more correctly, the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

My pastor prays extensively the month before Easter for souls to flood into the church—and from there into the kingdom of Heaven as they grasp who Jesus really is and receive Him as their Lord.

This year he has been praying not only for those who will attend our church—not even just for the ones who will attend other life-giving churches, as he calls them—but also for those who will attend churches that have strayed from the central truth of the recognition of sin and the need for a life-changing, saving relationship with Jesus. He has been praying for God to touch all of those churches and to supernaturally open the door for invitations and altar calls to be given—and for droves of souls to respond and be saved.

You may scratch your head and think, Pipe dream. Ain’t gonna happen. Well, sit right back and read the tale of the Apologetic Altar Call.

In the early ‘80s, I was working in a rural elementary school just outside of the metropolitan area where I live. I taught with a godly woman named Arlene, who was one of my early mentors. She and I would eat lunch together every day and pray for the students and other staff members.

Connie was the music teacher. She was Bohemian in lifestyle—she embraced a New Age philosophy and was married to a Muslim from Afghanistan. The Methodist church in the town needed an organist, so they asked Connie if she would be available.

Connie loved music; she loved to sing and play the piano, so she accepted the position and became a fixture every Sunday morning at the Methodist church near the school. Her New Age leanings didn’t bother anyone at the church; and their doctrine didn’t challenge her worldview, so they all made music together every Sunday morning in a tolerance-soaked, symbiotic relationship.

One Sunday morning as Connie sat behind the organ, the minister of that little Methodist church got up sheepishly behind the pulpit, cleared his throat, and apologized to the congregation for what he was about to do.

He said, “I am so sorry—I feel very uncomfortable right now—but I can’t shake this feeling that’s gripping me. I know we don’t do this here—I don’t like to make folks uncomfortable—but I’ve got to ask something very unusual for this church.”

Connie had stopped playing the organ, and you could have heard a pin drop.

He continued, “Well, here goes. If anyone wants to come to the front to get a closer relationship with Jesus—please step out and come forward.”

Crickets.

And then, after a long, horribly awkward, tension-wrapped silence, Connie, gripped with conviction of her need for Christ, got up from behind the organ and came to the front and knelt. She was the only one that morning who heeded the call, but as she bowed before the altar, the apologetic Methodist minister prayed for her, and she was gloriously saved.

And who do you think she told? You’ve got that right—Arlene and me, who had been praying for her all along!

So is my pastor dreaming when he prays for churches that don’t even preach the saving gospel to offer invitations to receive Jesus Christ in their services?

Just ask Connie.

May the kingdom of Heaven swell to overflowing this season with new souls—from every corner and walk of life!

Dorothy

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