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During this ordeal, the religious issue came between me and
my wife---almost separated us. She determined to obey God and live
God's way---I objected. Finally, I set out to try to prove to her
by the Bible itself that this type of life wasn't necessary to be
a Christian. For six months of intensive study night and day, I
wrestled with the question, was forced to see the truth that she
was right and I was wrong, and found myself face to face with the
life-and-death decision of whether I would surrender my will to the
will of God, or reject what I had found to be the TRUTH. God had
softened me by repeated defeats to a point where I had lost all
self-confidence, felt my life was worth nothing to me any longer,
and I was then willing to make the decision for GOD, and present my
life to Him as a living sacrifice, telling Him it was worthless,
but if He could use it and make anything out of it, He could have
it.
This experience changed everything! Life began to take on
new hope, and intense interest. The BIBLE began to open to my
understanding, like entering into the richest gold, diamond or ruby
mine in the world, in glorious splendor. As I began for the first
time in my life to UNDERSTAND it, I became enthralled with it, and
studied it night and day, very much of the time on my knees in
reverence, in excited and eager joy, finding for the first time the
REAL RICHES!
After three and a half years of eagerly absorbing the divine
inspiration and true understanding, God literally plunged me into
His work as His minister. This was the last profession on earth I
had wanted to enter. I did not, even then, seek entrance into the
ministry---I was literally PUT IN by circumstances of God's making.
I had been thru a gruelling experience---had known utter defeat,
humiliation, hunger, suffering. God had rebuked and chastened me
in many ways, burned out former egotism and replaced it with faith
in God. God must humble those He can use.
And so. as I wrote to some of you a year ago, as the Apostle
Paul said to those at Galatia: I certify to you, that the GOSPEL
which is preached of me is not after man, for I neither received it
of man, neither was I taught it but BY THE REVELATION OF JESUS
CHRIST. ...When it pleased God, who...called me by His Grace, to
reveal His Son in me that I might preach Him to the world,
immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood (men), neither
went I to any sect or denomination or human theologian, but I went
directly to the WORD of God, on my knees, to be taught, corrected,
reproved, and instructed in God's righteousness and Truth. (Compare
Gal. 1:11-18).
Have you ever noticed, in the Bible, that when God starts
anything thru His called HUMAN servants, it must always begin as
the very least---the very smallest---and, like the grain of mustard
seed, GROW large and great thru God's power?
This present world-wide program, now reaching the millions
and changing thousands of precious lives, started out the very
smallest activity. It started with nightly meetings in a little
one-room country school house, eight miles west of Eugene, Oregon.
There was no money for handbills or advertising. I borrowed the