Sorry about the delay on this post. Day job was demanding lately. CAN GOD SET A TABLE IN THE WILDERNESS Sometimes we have to wait years to hear the rest of the story... Remember Paul Harvey? He was the host of a radio program that was a must hear in our house when I was a child. He always had a Rest of the story... I was a new missionary in the field. I had joined up with Lee and Jimmy and James to learn the mission field on the Navajo Reservation and to find my calling. I had at times thought I was called specifically to that reservation, and only later realized I was actually called into ministry as a whole. Lee had a large canvas event tent. It measured sixty by one hundred feet and he had around one thousand folding chairs, an organ and a PA system as well as kerosene heaters for chilly nights and a crew of about six to eight tent boys. We had at least eight boys ranging from fifteen to nineteen on this trip. This was the first time I saw God do something truly amazing and did it in such a way it could not be denied. We hauled all of our equipment along with the tent in a tractor trailer rig powered by a Kenworth Diesel and all crammed and packed into a forty eight foot trailer. In addition we had two camper trailers and a couple other vehicles to move on our revival site. Our destination was a cluster of five hogans about sixty miles off the paved highway west of the Arizona/New Mexico state line. Because of the terrain we literally fought and dug and moved rock to get everything back in that desert wilderness, and we burned far more fuel than we could afford to burn. In fact we were short by a considerable margin what was required just to get back to the highway after our church services/mission effort were completed. I was not aware of the fuel shortage but I was aware of the shortage of air in our tires. We had torn open or blown or scarred thirteen of the fourteen tires on our tractor trailer and we had several tires that were damaged on the vans and pickup trucks we also had on site. I was obvious we were not going anywhere... I was excited about being a missionary and I was believing God could reach Navajos but I did not have any faith that God was going to get us to the highway and up to Wyoming with the whole baggage train for the next series of meetings with the Sioux Indians on reservation land in Wyoming. For the first time in my life I was introduced to a lifestyle that was much like it had been for centuries. I was not prepared! I had indigestion, I often had to run to a latrine we had dug away from camp, and I was weak and tired as well as hot and exhausted and dehydrated. I was totally unprepared for the life I was thrusting myself into! But we really had church! I had never seen anything like this! We were able to hold up to twelve hundred people under the tent during services and we packed it! I could not figure out how in the world we could have so moany people when there was only five hogans in that cluster and there was perhaps a total of twenty five people living in the immediate area. When Navajos come to Christ they throw all the energy they put into the old ways into being a worshiper. They would come from miles away and camp leaving one person behind to watch their sheep and goats. after a few days each family would send the relief person so the one watching the herd could come for part of the festivities. They would cook traditional dishes, which I had a hard time eating. Perhaps because it was completely different than anything I had before. I marveled at the variety of vehicles and at the animals they rode in order to attend. There were old trucks and cars that looked like the paint had been gone for fifty years. There were New vehicles driven by newly wealthy miners and smoke jumpers(forest fire fighters), and there were donkeys and burros, old horses, feisty spirited mustangs, and a few mules. There were so many different methods of transportation that I think every decade back to the 189-s was represented. And we had church! Wow did we ever have church! The Indians living close by would take their sheep or goats out in the morning and turn them out with the dogs to watch them. They would then go to a quiet shaded place and lay down and sleep through the heat of the day. So when they came to our tent revival in the evening they were all rested and fed and ready to rock and roll. Our schedule was the opposite of theirs. I was a little confused as to why we couldnt match sleep times with them but we had our routine and they had theirs. I did start taking a nap for three hours in the afternoon. That helped me a lot. We would start the prayer time for the evening service at around 7:30 to 8:00 PM and the Indians would trickle in in little groups of four or five or more until sundown. They would still be coming in at midnight. Praise and worship music would begin at sundown and usually lasted until midnight to 1:00 AM. We had church! People would be singing and clapping and dancing and moving, so many colors of dress and so many expressions. Old people would be almost as though they were in a trance while some of the younger crowd were moving like they were on a disco dance floor. They din not come for one hour, they came expecting an all night event and we were expected to deliver. Each of us who was an ordained pastor or evangelist had to deliver at least a one hour sermon each night. Once a message was delivered that speaker would sit down and the music would start again for a brief time and then the next speaker would stand up. During this time many of the Navajos were illiterate. So the way they learned scripture was expecting us to deliver as much as possible through our messages. They learned their scriptures by encouraging us to quote as much Bible as we could in our messages. They had this great attitude and were truly awed by how Gods Word could speak right to their point of need, regardless of what they had encountered. They had been in spiritualism, ancient Indian beliefs and a faith that could manifest in some scary ways. The reservations is where I encountered my first case of demon possession and it was a huge shock for me. Reading about it in the Bible and actually seeing it manifested are two entirely different things. I never questioned whether Bible descriptions of Jesus ministry were accurate again. With the manifestation of demon possession there was also my first real miracle that could not be explained away by any person and showed me that God could do whatever he chose to do in heaven or earth. The meetings came to an end, I had eaten enough goat meat and mutton stew and some other things that are better left unidentified. I had seen a man crawl across the tent floor in the dirt like a snake and speaking in a fiendish voice that made my hair stand on end and I had watched an associate from Illinois there with us speak but a few words and I saw that Indian stand up and be in his right mind and normal and saw him returned to his parents who were weeping with joy. So much was happening that I cannot write all of it. That three week span of time contained more Bible events and stories lived and manifested before my eyes than I had seen in my entire lifetime before. I was amazed, overwhelmed and emotionally drained. I had delivered a one to two hour sermon every night for three weeks in the very early morning hours, I had studied more than I ever had. The Navajos demanded scripture to back everything. They would often be sitting somewhere during the day watching their herds or tending to their chores and chanting the verses over and over. I realized they were committing the Bible to memory. But we had a big problem! We were taking the tent down and stacking chairs and I was eyeing those flat tires on the vehicles and the empty fuel tanks were really giving me worries. Lee walked over to me and looked at me with a little half smile on his face, and he said, I prayed last night and God said He sent a man to bring us fuel and tires and to take care of us. I looked at him. You prayed... I paused for a short time and then went on. You prayed and God said you are going to be alright??!! I was incredulous! I had thought the heat and dust and lack of water had fried his brain, Lee just shrugged and said You will see soon enough. He pointed. He will be coming over that hill there in a few hours. So we wont load the truck until he is done changing the tires. I just looked at him dumbfounded and stunned. He walked away. This I had to see! In about two hours I heard the noise of a big diesel truck engine echoing off the hills around us and I turned to look. First i saw a cloud of dust rising from behind that hill Lee had pointed at. Then a large black exhaust stack wavered and boobed as it came into view and finally there was this huge oil well tender rig rolling down the slope toward us. The driver was sounding his air horn as he came. I never forget the look on his face as he got out of the truck. A mixture of shock, disbelief, wonder and something else. He was a little emotional and he was unable to speak for a few minutes. Finally he asked me, Are you missionaries and did you just have a tent revival here like they used to back home? Like the old gospel tent revivals back home? I noticed his southern accent and I pointed at the sign painted on the side of the tractor trailer. I nodded and then asked him, Mississippi? Yes, grew up there and I saw this kind of thing when I was a boy. Got saved at one of these tent meetings when I was a little boy of ten.He had tears in his eyes. I cant believe it! I am seeing it with my own eyes and I cant believe it! We put the tires on the trucks. He had jacks and and lifts with a gas powered compressor. He also had grease barrels, Fuel bulk tanks and spare tires for everything. All of the tires new and unused. I was speechless myself! (Not often that happens!) He filled our tanks with fuel, gave us one hundred gallons of diesel fuel in two barrels, and one hundred gallons of gasoline in two barrels and smiled and shook hands and left us there disappearing in a cloud of dust over the same hill he came in on. Lee came out of his camper trailer and said, Load up, we leave in the morning on the same tracks he made coming here. I looked at him and asked, But what did we do for him? He brought thousands of dollars worth of tires , changed our oil on the rig and checked brakes and everything and we didnt give him a thing! God gave him what he wanted. I am still awed by this whole event. If that were the whole story it would be enough. But it wasnt the whole story. That event occurred in 1981 and I went on to be an evangelist on my own. I was church pastor in mission churches, worked as a construction worker, saw my fiancee killed in a drunk driving accident (the second fiancee to die before I could marry, both killed by drunk drivers), built some pretty nice homes for people, lived loved lost and even won a few battles in this life. Fast forward to June 12th, 2010 and I was newly married to Patricia Flannery Waterman and I was nervous, excited fearful and sick from a plastic pipe installation job that I had run for a neighbor just the day before the wedding. I actually passed out at our wedding as the chemicals are very difficult for me to handle and the excitement coupled with a high level of exposure to the solvent cement made me very sick for a few days. We stopped at a restaurant after the wedding that my new bride recommended and with us were Tom House my best man, and Cheri Green who took the photographs of the wedding. As I walked in the door of the restaurant with my wife an old man sitting at a table with someone who later turned out to be a friend of mine from the Bi-vocational Baptist conference. There was a younger man sitting with the old man and I could see the old man was agitated and pointing at me. Shortly the young man came over to me and asked if he could have a word with me. I agreed to give them a minute but I wanted to spend time being with my wife so I told him I would be over after we ate. Having finished eating and waiting for the others to decide where or what we were going to do next, I stepped on over to the table where the old man was sitting. My friend Herb Roever excused himself after making small talk for a moment and went to pay the bill for their meal. The old man looked at me and grabbed my hand tightly. Tent revival west of Chinle? I looked hard and long at him. You were the oil field worker! With the tires and fuel and oil and everything! I had chills running down my back! Yes I was, and I got a story for you. He paused and wiped his eyes. His story.... I was sitting in church on Sunday morning at the Baptist church my wife and I attended. Bless her heart shes gone now and Im going to her shortly, got cancer you know! I was sitting there in church and praying and asking God to bless me. I wanted to hear his voice just once like Moses and those other men in the Bible did! Wasnt trying to be uppity you understand. Just wanted to hear God speak to me. Well, I am sitting there and I hear this voice and at first I thought it was the pastor but he wasnt up yet and I realized the choir were still singing. And it wasnt his voice anyway, because it sort of like came from inside me deep in here! He tapped his chest. I heard this voice and it said If I speak to you will you obey? I thought a minute and I said in silent prayer Sure if you are who I think you are! I AM the voice said. Like that, not loud but powerful, like if I was standing up it would have knocked me down, you know? He wiped his eyes again. I picked up my Bible and told my wife that God had just spoken to me. She says, What did He say to do? and I said I am supposed to go load up all my new tires and fill the oil tanks and fuel tanks and go get a gospel revival preacher out of the back side of that desert out there by Chinle. He paused. I realized I didnt hear that but I knew that was what I was supposed to do. It was in my heart of hearts so strong it was like it was breathing through me. and it was so peaceful! He wiped his eyes. My wife said Well you better get going then! I looked at her and she said I know something is going on! I have never felt this way before! Do you have enough money?. I told her I did and I got up and walked out into the church yard and found my truck and drove to the yard. I loaded all the new tires I had to fit big rigs and I loaded some sixteens for pickups. I filled my tanks and stocked the grease and gassed up the air compressor and filled the hydraulics. Then I headed down the road toward Chinle. I suddenly had this horrible thought of driving around in that desert until I ran out of fuel and being lost myself. And then the most peaceful feeling came over me and I heard that voice again. Its okay. I calmed down then and kept driving south. I got to a dirt trail turning off to the west and He said turn here. I paused and put my big six by six in all wheel drive and turned off the highway. I spent a good part of the day driving across that desert. Grinding along at five to ten miles per hour and choking on dust, dodging cactus and rocks and just driving by faith. When I was supposed to turn that voice I felt in my heart would say to turn and I just listened and drove. I pulled up for the night and I leaned my seat back and took a nap. In the morning I woke up right at the crack of dawn and I started out again. I came over that hill and saw you guys and I about cried right there! Man I had been driving for hours and spent Sunday getting ready and starting out, I just kept asking myself what kind of fools would be out here preaching a tent revival and then reminding myself that I had never seen one in New Mexico and I just knew I was a fool too! But there you were! Just like the Good Lord said you would be! What were you about twenty? That must have been a high point for you! My God, that felt so good to know I wasnt crazy! Well there you have it sonny! Thats how a oil well tender truck brought you a load of tires and fuel. And I have never been the same since! I have given more than half my income to the ministry and my wife was right there with me and that never happened that way before. That morning in church she changed. The day before she would have had me committed if I had said God spoke to me. He looked over at my wife. How long has she been in the chair? I told him since she was around seventeen. Oh the poor girl! You are going to have a lot of trouble adjusting to each other. My sister back home is in a chair for 26 years now. and she has had a hard time getting along with people. But she has a good man at her side. He lost a leg in Nam and he is doing alright by her. But if you hang together like you was glued it will be golden when you get to know each other! I will be praying for you. I walked back to the table where our party sat, and I introduced my wife who had come over to visit. I just thought about one thing over and over. God had spoken to that man on Sunday morning and Lee had told me he prayed on Sunday night and the man arrived midmorning Monday. Before Lee had called on God, GOD HAD ALREADY HEARD AND ANSWERED. Our God is an awesome God, He reigns in Heaven and earth....nothing is too hard for Him.
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 15:05:10 +0000
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