Obedience and Dependence
I remember the first camp meeting I attended where a brother taught with the same inspiration that I had found. I did not recognize it in these words at that point, of course. What he said simply spoke to my heart in the same way as the Word of God had been inspired to my heart. The people of the congregation where I attended did not like him. They considered him arrogant and a meddler. They had nothing good to say about him. According to them, his existence among them was an unfortunate reality, and they would have made him disappear if they could have. There was a younger man in his congregation that they tolerated, for he was a little more pleasing in his intellectualism, and they regarded him as under a pernicious influence and hoped for his deliverance. I was not only warned about the older brother and cautioned about the younger; another brother who had been a boy preacher was held up to me as an ideal. This man was very charismatic and highly regarded among them. He was quite influential and an excellent speaker, but he had done several things that hindered his liberty among the more spiritual in the entire movement of people at that time. This was regarded as a great tragedy and an awful misunderstanding by the people of my local congregation. So great was the skill of this man in speaking and in personal influence that I do not know but I might have been deceived by him, if God had allowed much contact. The power of the spirit within him might well have overwhelmed the influence of the Holy Ghost within me, and I might have become deceived into thinking that the spirit within him was the Holy Ghost. But God has promised us that He will not allow us to be tempted above that which we are able to bear (1 Corinthians 10:13), and God did not permit me that trial.
When it became evident that I was not receiving the warnings about the anointed brothers I first encountered in the camp meetings, I became the object of much talk and criticism. At the same time, the Spirit of God began to show me that where I was did not fit the scriptural pattern that He had been revealing to me little by little. And in accordance with the light shining brighter and brighter, I took a stand on each point of truth and was blessed by God and rejected by those who professed to know Him but denied the power thereof. It was evident even to them that I was continuing to grow and prosper in living for God, but they were throughly frustrated and irritated that the result was distance from them as I grew closer to God. This was the mercy of the Lord to them, but they received it not. To them, I was just going bad. Probably would turn out a fanatic. God kept me from striving with them (2 Timothy 2:24-26). He put a real love in my soul for their spiritual welfare, a love that is there yet. But I also recognized more and more the reality that our paths were different, and I remained true to the light that Jesus had shone upon my pathway.
In all this, my parents offered their personal support, for they believed in the reality and sincerity of my life, but they could not offer their spiritual support, for they simply did not have the same blessing from God. They could have had it if they had paid the price to obtain it, but I think that in the past they were simply stirred to go all the way with God and had not yielded. I now know this was so from their own testimony in later years. As God began to deal with me in ways that were unfamiliar to them, they reacted in the flesh, while still loving me and believing in me.
God began to deal with me about dating. My mother had been popular as a young woman and regarded dating as natural and normal. My father had also. “How would you get to know your future life companion and make an informed decision on who to marry if you did not date?” they wondered. It struck them as odd and ominous that I began to say I would not date, but instead pray until God showed me whom to pursue. It seemed so contrary to all their experience, and my mother later told me that she felt I was losing my mind over religion. I would go in the heat of summer to our little hay storage spot, where I had fixed up a place to pray, and there I followed the practice of praying out loud about this and other things wherein God dealt with me. All of this seemed bizarre to her. They were both afraid I would make a horrible mistake and end up with someone unsuitable for life.
My folks were also full of racial prejudice and cautious about the whole concept of being led by the Spirit of God. The Lord helped me not to make many mistakes in mistaking the voice of His Spirit, but they thought that somethings were mistakes that were not. At one point in high school, I read of a meeting up in another state and felt a strong burden to go. The burden had that special quality that comes only when God is in it, so I asked permission to go. I was still at home and under legal age, and although I had money to buy the bus fare up and back, I felt I should ask permission. They were reluctant to give permission. They soon recognized the depth of my burden, but still questioned the validity of it. They had no idea that people of another race were holding the meeting and neither did I. It made no difference to me, but it would have made quite a difference to them, had they known. Finally they gave their permission, and I went. I was rather surprised to find that the folks there were of another race, but I knew God had led me there and I knew that we were all people before God, so I was not bothered. In the meantime, my uneasy parents found out that racial differences were involved, and they were nearly beside themselves. They wanted me out of there. They did not want me to spend the night there. Much to my embarrassment, they called up and got me out of there, in spite of plans that had been made for the evening. Nor did they feel much better about it after I returned home. I am sure that they regarded it as a mistake. But God greatly blessed my soul.
In due time, I came of age and left home to labor in a work of faith in another state. At that point, I had a fairly complete discernment of conditions in the congregation of my parents and had left it in spirit. The place where I went to labor had its problems, too. It was much more spiritual than where I had been raised, but there were problems of long standing.
A brother related his experiences with some of these long-standing problems. He had tried to deal with some problems, and it had backfired on him. He had a dream. In his dream, he was driving his shiny, new car down a long, straight road. Suddenly there was a stump in the road, right in the middle, and he rammed it. It bent his bumper. He got out to look over the damage. Then he awoke. The Lord began talking to his heart. “This car is your ministry,” the Lord said, “and it is new. You have run into some problems in people that were here long before you started living for me. Now you have a choice. You can reason that this stump should not be in the middle of this road, and you can ram this stump over and over to remove it. At the end of your effort, the stump will still be here, and your ministry will be a total wreck. Or you can pull around this stump and continue down the road and outdistance those folks.” The brother said that it was not a hard choice to make. In all honesty, I must add that the brother found it difficult to avoid the tendency to ram the stumps whenever they appeared, and consequently his work for the Lord was marred more than was good. Still, I doubt not that he would have rammed them more if God had not dealt with him in this way.
There were a number of brethren among the people of other congregations who walked with God. Most of them had been all out for God for many years, and they have a seasoning and spirituality of real depth. They received me with joy, and I felt a perfect liberty among them. It has been one of the great privileges of my life to know and labor with such brethren. Perhaps I can illustrate the relationship I had with them by mentioning one experience.
I was talking with one of these brethren. I appreciated him so much, and was starting to get my eyes on him instead of God. I told him, “Brother C——, if you ever see anything in my life that you feel needs correction, please tell me.” I shudder now at how unguarded I was, and how much trouble I could have gotten into with some people in speaking this way. A lot of people would have taken advantage of my youth and inexperience to load me up with a lot of stuff. But I was talking to a true child of God. I will never forget how he looked at me ‑‑ a combination of love and pity. “Bless your heart, Brother M——,” he replied, “I think if I see something, I’ll go and tell Jesus, and let Him tell you.”
There was a great deal of spiritual courtesy and respect in this attitude, as well as a complete and utter dependency upon the Head of the body.
These brethren taught me much more by what they were than what they said. What they said was consistent with what they were. What a privilege to know some of the Lord’s ministers!
As I look back on the events of those years, I understand that the condition of the entire body of these people was very much as the condition of the seven congregations in Asia as described in the first three chapters of Revelations. Some congregations were spiritual and victorious with a good unity and much blessing and power with God, while others were beset with hindrances. A few, such as the one from which I had come, had a name that they lived but were dead in the eyes of God. Their candlestick had been removed. At one time, I would have had difficulty telling you just which ones were which, for my vision was blurred and I saw these things “as trees walking,” (Mark 8:24) but God had something more for me than that.
A brother admonished me that I needed more discernment. I had not realized that my tendency to think well of all others, irregardless of their real spiritual condition, was nothing more than fleshly wisdom and philosophy. The brother was right, and I was stirred to pray for discernment. The Bible is a book of sober (realistic) thinking, and Jesus did not go around thinking naively of others, nor did His ministers who were taught of the Holy Ghost. I wanted to do the work of God acceptably in His eyes. Although I was all the Lord’s, there was much that I needed before I was equipped and established to work the works of God.