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Every morning when we get up we make a fresh commitment to it. We start our day by committing to walk in love all day long and to do anything else Jesus commands us. That’s been our practice for years and it always will be, because we’ve learned from experience that obeying Him keeps us in the plan of God and leads to the exceeding, abundantly beyond all we can ask or think!
On the other hand, ignoring The LORD’s commands leads to just the opposite. It leads to trouble. I found that out the hard way early in my walk with The LORD.
The year was 1963. I’d recently been born again and baptized in the Holy Spirit. I knew I was called to ministry and The LORD had already given me the first step—enroll as a student at Oral Roberts University.
The problem was I didn’t want to do it. In fact, I didn’t even want to think about it. Every time it came to mind, I thought, No! I’m not going back to school. I hated school for years as a kid and I’m not going back!
Hoping to find another path into the plan of God, I watched for other possibilities. Sure enough, I found one. In 1966, while attending some meetings at Hilton Sutton’s church in Houston, he asked me to take charge of his music department. This should work fine, I thought. Brother Sutton is a man of God. I’m sure I can learn just as much from him as I could at ORU.
After accepting the offer, on Halloween night I was driving back from Houston with Gloria and the kids. My plan was to go by way of Arkansas so we could spend the night there with Gloria’s parents and then go home and start preparing to move. But on the highway, just outside of Marshall, Texas, we had a terrible wreck. Another car drove across the highway right in front of us, and we hit with such force that if it hadn’t been for the mercy of God, we all would have been killed.
Gloria, who was sick with the flu, was thrown forward so hard that her head carved a half-moon in the dashboard. Two-month-old John, who’d been lying on a pillow between the two front seats, broke his arm and tore four ribs loose from his backbone. Kellie, who’d been riding in the back seat, was in borderline shock.
When we finally got to the hospital, Gloria and Kellie tried to rest in bed while I sat in a rocking chair, holding John on my chest, trying to rock him to sleep. Every time he’d start to drift off, the pain would wake him and he’d cry. It was a heart-wrenching situation, and as I prayed in the spirit over it, I knew how it had happened and what I had to do.
“LORD, I repent, Sir,” I prayed. “I’m Jonah and the whale got me. But, thanks to Your mercy, he didn’t destroy me. My family and I are alive!”
As I sat there rocking, praising The LORD in other tongues and thanking Him for His goodness, all of a sudden I heard two more people praying in the spirit along with me. I opened my eyes and saw two pajama-clad men standing beside me. One was wearing house slippers, the other was barefoot, and they both put their hands on my shoulders as they prayed.
I found out later that one of them, a born-again, spirit-filled truck driver, had been admitted to the hospital a few days earlier. He, too, had been in a wreck and, though he hadn’t been hurt, for insurance purposes he had to be hospitalized for a few days. Determined to use the time wisely, he shared the gospel with the other fellow, got him saved and they’d been going around the hospital together praying for people. The nurse had ordered them to stop, but that night The LORD woke them up and told them to pray for me anyway.
8 : BVOV
