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 11 - "Surprise Blessing"

Part 11:

Our Jimmy came along as a sweet surprise to us and has been nothing but a blessing from the Lord all of his 14 years.

James Ross

His salvation experience came as no surprise to us as he had been asking questions. Talking about the Lord at our house was as common a thing as talking about Grandma or anyone else, so it was a natural thing. He was under conviction awhile before the Burton's left our church and Mildred (pastor's wife) prayed for him a lot. She said, "I just feel like Jimmy is going to accept the Lord just any time." But he was pretty young and I didn't want to press him.

Not long after the Burton's moved and Brother Ivaloy Bishop was our interim pastor, Jimmy went forward to accept Christ. Brother Bishop came out that afternoon to talk with him and ask him questions. He answered everything in a very satisfactory way. We praised the Lord that our last child had been born in the kingdom of God and praised His Name for such an abundant life He had given us. How could He love us so much?


Read the next entry in my prayer journey - "Letting Go"

My Prayer Life - Part 10 - "It's a Girl!"

Part 10:

Well now, let me back up, I've gotten ahead of myself as I tell my prayer experiences. When Danny and Joe were  small, we were busy helping take care of my mom, whose cancer had returned after 10 years or so. I had suddenly gotten sick, and found out one of my ovaries was hemorrhaging and I would have to have emergency surgery to have it removed. I remember telling Dr. Spring not to take everything, because I wasn't through having my family. He winked and said, "Okay, I'll leave the "girl" side!"

My mother died on Joe's 5th birthday. Our days of caring for her were over and about a year later, another prayer was answered and our little girl was born. We had not asked the Lord for a little girl especially, but you know the Lord says, "You shall have life and have it more abundantly." The Lord had blessed our life with two fine boys, who were 9 and 6, so what could be more abundant than giving us a daughter?

When I came out of the delivery room back into my room, Curtis came in just beaming. We felt we should thank the Lord right then and there, so we held hands and prayed with tears of joy streaming down our faces, and we gave her to the Lord that very first hour of her life.

Carolyn Kay

I had such a closeness with the Lord as I went home and rocked my baby and sang "prayers" to the Lord for her lullabies. I prayed selfishly one prayer--that I would be the one to bring her to the Lord in salvation experience.

That prayer was answered about nine years later. One night in a revival meeting she was sitting with Debbie and Mildred Burton, and I was on the other side of the church. I could not find her as I searched the church with my eyes. I felt the Holy Spirit so strong that night and I knew He must be dealing with Carolyn. I said, "Oh Lord, please don't let her go forward until I've had a chance to talk to her. You know I've asked You to let me be the one to lead her."

The invitation time closed and we went home. Curtis had some kind of meeting that night and didn't come home with us. As I went in to tuck Carolyn in for the night, I leaned down to kiss her, and she put her arms around my neck and said, "Oh, Mama, I know I'm a sinner 'cause I've told stories and done so many things I shouldn't." I said, "That's wonderful!" She had a surprised look on her face because she thought I would be mad that she had told lies and done things she shouldn't. I continued, "You've already completed the first step to being saved --- you've realized you're a sinner and have admitted it. Now Jesus says if we believe in Him and confess our sins He will forgive us. So if you want to, you can just kneel down by your bed and ask Him to forgive you and to come into your heart." She jumped out of bed and knelt, and prayed the sweetest prayer I've ever heard -- asking God to forgive her and asking Jesus to come in. Then she jumped up and threw her arms around my neck and said, "Oh, Mama, I feel so much better! I feel like a load has been lifted off me!"

We went in to tell her big brothers and they rejoiced and we waited up to tell Daddy. It was one of the sweetest family times we ever had as the boys recalled when Carolyn was born and how excited they were when they got up on Sunday morning to have Daddy call and say they had a new baby sister.

She's always been our "Sunday child." She's always liked to go to church. She has felt the Lord dealing with her many times since she has become a teenager. She is 16 now and sings, "He Touched Me" and you know He has as it makes cold chills every time she sings it.


Read the next entry in my prayer journey - "Surprise Blessing"

My Prayer Life - Part 8 - "The Faith of a Child"

Part 8:

Seeing Danny and Joe saved within a few years gave answer to more prayers. Danny was six years old when he began to question us about how to accept the Lord. I explained as easily as I could, not thinking he was old enough to make the decision. One service not too long after, Bro. C.M. Fields was offering the invitation at the end of the service, and down to the front Danny went as big as you please. We were so afraid he didn't understand what he was doing, and we prayed with him and talked after we got home from church. We told him we'd like for him to wait about being baptized for a year, and if he still felt he had truly accepted Christ at the end of that year, he could be baptized. On the day the year was up he told us one Sunday morning, "My year is up and I still know I'm saved and I want to be baptized." So, joyously we let him. "Except ye become as little children," Jesus said. It is so simple and they are so easy to believe.

One night in a revival meeting the preacher preached a sermon on "hell". I could see that Harold Joe was taking it all in. When the invitation was given and our heads were bowed I could not help but lift mine to look at Joe. He was slipping out into the isle and down to the front to accept Christ as his Savior. I had prayed many times since that time that if Joe went forward that night for "fire insurance" and didn't experience real salvation, that the Lord would let him know and let me know.

Read the answer to that prayer in the next post - "A Son Goes to War"

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"