The Word of God in My Life

As a little girl my mother took me to church and I was taught Bible stories and the gospel message. I accepted Christ by faith and it was accounted to me as righteousness when I was 12 years old. As a teen and young adult I went to church but didn't grow much spiritually. However, I worked at a department store in town with a Christian lady, Melba Miller, and she would sometimes take me home with her and her husband, Ralph. They had a loving Christian home where the Bible was read and prayers were offered. I knew that this was the kind of home I wanted when I married.

However, when Curtis and I married we didn't go to church. We moved to Colorado, and while we lived there I realized how far I had strayed from the Lord. One morning I fell on my knees and re-dedicated my life to Him. [For the full account of that experience, click HERE] I went to the little church there and began to help in the children's classes. I found that I loved teaching the Bible stories. Also, I became so hungry to grow spiritually. I went to the pastor's wife and asked her if she would help and teach me the Bible. She turned up her nose and said, "No, I don't have time for that." I asked another lady, and she turned me down, too. I was on my own.

We moved back to Friona, Texas, after about a year. We faithfully went to church and sat under very good Bible-teaching pastors. I also discovered good teaching on radio programs like "Back to the Bible Broadcast" with Theodore H. Epp, and "Thru the Bible Radio Network" by Dr. J. Vernon McGee, who took me systematically through the Bible. I learned so much.

But then something happened that changed the way I read the Word. In the 1970s, one day I was burdened for a lady in my Sunday School class. I was kneeling by my bed praying for her, and I was totally immersed in a "fountain of love".  It was coming from the Lord, and it was so much that I couldn't contain it. I had to cry out to the Lord to stop it. It was an experience that filled me up to overflowing with the Holy Spirit. In a few days some trouble came into my life - an attack on me. I was accused of something I didn't do. I didn't understand what was happening! I didn't know where to turn except to the Word. I opened my Bible (and I had never had this happen before) and it opened to Luke 22:31. My eyes fell on "Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you..." My spirit quickened and it seemed that the Lord was saying this directly to ME. Sure enough, the sifting began as the rumor mills ground me down. The Lord allowed this trial so that I would run to Him.

I literally hid in the Word of God. I had never read the Psalms until then, and I began to pray David's prayers as my own prayers. I developed such a appetite for the Word that I could read and pray for hours. My hunger to read the Bible was like having chocolate cake sitting there, and I nibbled on it a piece at a time. I would be doing housework and walk by the Bible and long to open it to see what it said-- to ME!

From that time (1974 or 1975) I have had the sweetest times reading the Bible. The Living Bible came out about then and I devoured it. In the 1980s I discovered Precept Bible Studies by Kay Arthur. She taught me to inductively study and dig into the Word as never before. She encouraged us to get a New American Standard Bible, and I loved it because throughout, the pronouns referring to God or Jesus were capitalized - making it so clear. Now that I've read and understood the Bible, I've gone back to my King James Bible and it is understandable to me.

So I have experienced God's Word in two ways. I've studied and dug into the scripture for its literal, cultural and historical meaning, but my favorite experience in His Word is when I read and the Lord quickens that Word in my spirit and makes it mine. "That's for me!" my spirit says, and I claim it!

Praise God for His glorious Word! Sometimes I think He wrote it just for me!

Psalm 119:97 & 102-103
(New American Standard)

"Oh how I love Your law!

It is my meditation all the day.

......

I have not turned aside from Your ordinances,

For You Yourself have taught me.

How sweet are Your words to my taste!

Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth!"

Next entry - "I Will Never Leave You Nor Forsake You"
To start at the beginning of my journey with the Lord, Click HERE- "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep"

My Prayer Life - Part 7 - "The Lord Provides"

Part 7:

My Daddy was saved about a month before he died, and it was an answer to my prayer from the first day I trusted Jesus when I was 12 years old. I went home and told him I had accepted Jesus as my Savior and I wished he would too. He said he was glad and that he would someday. That day didn't come for about another dozen years.

Me and my Daddy

After his death we moved back to Texas to take over his dairy and be with my mother. We were so  broke by then we didn't know where the next meal was coming from. Our second son was born and we didn't even have a penny to pay the doctor and hospital bill. The Lord knew our needs, though, and the day I was to come home from the hospital, a man came wanting to buy a plow that we wanted to sell. It brought just enough (no more) to pay for our baby. We have laughed many times and said we should have named him "Graham Hoeme" after the name of that plow! But we knew Who sent that man that day.

Graham Hoeme - AKA- Harold Joe

Danny Wayne & Harold Joe

Another time we had a note for $300 coming due the next week at the bank and we didn't know how we were going to pay it. A man, who has helped us in many ways, came out one day and asked Curtis if he could plow some land for him with our equipment. The amount was $300...no more...no less. But we had asked the Lord about this and we were so humbly grateful when He answered.

Through this experience we became convicted about our need to tithe. The Lord had answered so many prayers for us and we were not giving Him anything in return. Oh, true, we put some offering in the plate each Sunday so we could check the "Offering Giving" on our 6 point record system envelope, but we weren't giving systematically. We had quite a struggle with this, because when the Lord starts dealing with your pocketbook, He gets next to your heart! Our pastor was so good in giving us the promises of God and told how many times they had given their last penny....not knowing where groceries would come from the next week....only to find a $10 or $20 bill that someone placed in his hand or pocket. Many told us their blessings of giving the Lord His part, and we became convinced it was the thing to do.

One day we had a Layman's Program at church and Curtis was given a part on the program. It scared us both to death because we were so young in the Lord. What could he say? That speech was another turning point of our lives as he chose the scripture in Joshua 24:15-16, "Choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood or the gods of the Amorites in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."

This scripture was taken literally by my husband that day and is underlined in dark ink in his Bible today. He decided to be the spiritual leader of our home. He began to read the Bible to us each morning at the breakfast table and all four of us would pray. Our boys were about 2 and 5 then. He began to tithe and then bring an offering above. The Lord was good to us and gave us many physical blessings and many spiritual blessings.


Read the next entry in my prayer journey - "The Faith of a Child"

My Prayer Life - Part 2 - "Praying with Mama"

Part 2:

Another prayer experience I had that strengthened my faith was when I was about 14 years old we found that my mother had breast cancer. She was to have surgery immediately. As we waited the day before we took her to the hospital I said, "Mother, would you like for us to pray about this?" You see, even though my mother had taught me to pray as a child I had never heard her pray. I'm sure she did in her times alone, but we didn't have prayer at the table except when my older brother, who was a preacher came (this was a very strained time, too) but this time my mother said, "Oh, yes, let's pray." So down on my knees by her bed, holding to her little hand, I asked God to take care of my mother and if it was His will to heal her completely. Then my mother prayed as tears streamed down our faces. God heard and answered that prayer and I was so grateful that after she had gotten out of the hospital and I was able to go to church, I went forward at the invitation time and told the preacher I had something to say. He stopped the singing and there I gave my testimony of how the Lord had heard and answered my prayer and how thankful I was. I wanted to give Him the praise and glory. Needless to say it was a good spiritual service and I was so blessed.

Read my next entry - "Early Marriage"

My Prayer Life - Part 1 - "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep"

The following is a lengthy account of my most memorable, life-changing prayers, from the 1930s to the 1970s. I will publish it in several parts.

Part 1:

My first recollection of learning to pray was when I was a very small child. When my mother put me to bed she had me kneel and taught me to say, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."
                                                                                     

                                              

Gertie - age 4 - 1928

     

I have mixed emotions about this prayer. It taught me to pray---it placed in my heart and mind the knowledge that we are in God's hands for keeping---but it gave me a disturbed feeling that I carried through my teen years. I was afraid to go to sleep at night without first asking my heavenly Father to watch over me and keep me through the night. 

                     

Gertie - age 5 - about 1929

As I grew older I branched out on this simple prayer and told God many things and asked many things before I closed my eyes in sleep--feeling much relieved and secure after having talked with the Lord. I remember in those "pillow prayers," (as I soon gave up the kneeling by my bed except for special prayers when I felt the Lord so close), I remember praying, asking God to guide me to the right person for my husband. I said, "Lord, help me to know the one you have for me and then help us to have a happy home." That must have been when I was about 15 years old because by the time I was 16 the Lord had answered that prayer. One Sunday morning as I was singing in the choir I noticed this dark, handsome stranger on the back seat. My heart did a little extra beat, but I didn't think too much about it. I kept seeing him there for several Sundays, but I had never mentioned him to anyone. I had not even asked who he was. One night as I was with another boy whom I had been dating a lot, he asked me if I would "go steady" with him. Immediately this stranger came into my mind and I knew if I ever met him and he asked me to go with him I could not refuse, so I told my friend that I was not ready to go steady. "Is there someone else?" he asked. And I truthfully said, "No."

Age 15 - 1939

The next Sunday as I saw him come in dressed in a new tailor made suit, I could wait no longer. I punched the girl next to me and said, "Who is that new boy on the back seat?" She said, "He is my cousin and he wants to meet you." Oh--my heart just sang as we sang that day. After church we bashfully were introduced and that afternoon he asked me to go for a ride with him and some other young people. I knew from the first meeting we both knew that we had found our future, even though it was several years before we became serious enough to make plans. And only then, when the war came in 1941, Dec. 7th, we heard the news on the car radio, and he began to sing "Good-bye Little Darling, I'm Leaving...."

Sure enough, his was the first number drawn for the draft and he was off. My memory is very clear on my prayer life again as I feared now to go to sleep without asking God to keep not only me, but most of all Curtis and Doug, my brother. Only as I prayed and then in my simple faith I left them in God's care for a whole 24 hours and didn't worry.

My dear Curtis - 1942-1945

God answered those prayers and brought back to my parents their son and future son-in-law. We had to wait three whole days before we could be married to live happily ever after.

August 30, 1945

To read a poem I wrote to Curtis before he left for the war click here.
Next entry of my prayer journey - "Praying with Mama"