I have mentioned several times that my husband and I will be married 50 yrs.,July 11, 2009.
It makes me almost shiver to this day to think of the trap we could have fallen into If it
had not been for my godly grandmother and her son, my father. I don't know what would
have happened to us.
My husband received the Holy Ghost in 1958 in a Texas city. Verbal Bean was the evang-
elist. I met my husband as our family visited this revival and later after this revival ended
we began to date seriously. Became engaged and about the same time my late father be-
gan the church he founded in our city. The pastor where the revival was held, did not want
to lose my husband as a new convert and started "counseling" him on the side.
One of the things we were praying about was about to be "challenged" by this pastor.
Instead of continuing to pray together about some things, my fiance started telling me, "I
had decided this and that". I said, "Then you feel that is what the Lord would have us do"?
He said, "I didn't say that. I said, "I have decided". I explained I was afraid to marry a man
who was not willing to pray God's Will with me for an answer".
Before the evening was over, he let me know that the pastor where he had received the
Holy Ghost, had instructed him to TELL me that he, as the man, had decided. The pastor was
the one who had decided. HE had also set an appointment with my fiance' for the pastor to
pre-marital counsel us. I did go with him for the appointment, but I had such a heaviness
about it, that I was so distressed by the time I got home that when Dad asked me why we
were so late, I told Dad I was so tired I didn't want to talk about it. Dad knew I was distres-
sed and pressed me about the meeting.
The pastor also wanted the rings my fiance' had bought me. Using some OT scriptures to get
his point across. My fiance' also told me he had already felt led of the Spirit and had told his
mother he believed God wanted us to go to my father's newly founded church.
That has been 50 yrs as this happened a while before we married July 11, 1959.
O, how I thank God for the wisdom and instuction of a godly father and mother. The
prayers of my late grandmother, my late father and mother, was enough to put the
enemy to fllight. These were the ones watching for our souls.
After we married, my husband's cousin who married this pastor's divorced sister who
was the church piano player, would come on Monday morning (he worked where we both
worked), and would tell us, especially me, about the powerful services they had had on
Sunday. Complete with the interperaton that anyone talking about this pastor, someone
in their family was going to die. Being young in the LORD, it was a fearful thing to me.
The fear of man brings a snare (trap). The fear of the LORD is the BEGINNING of wisdom.
Also the beginning of knowledge and understanding. I have learned that GOD IS GOD and
man is NOT!
In my spirit I knew something was wrong but didn't know what. I prayed and
desired God to show me HIS WILL. I desired to do His WIll. At 19 yrs old I was
learning a respectful, revential fear of the LORD. I still do fear the LORD in a
healthy way. But I first learned to respect and reference my earthly father.
Not long after this cousin who kept me "informed" concerning the "awesome" ser-
vices, always with tongues and interpetations, usually the pastor's wife or
sister,
I walked into the office where I worked and picked up a Dallas news-
paper. There was my answer to what was wrong. "Pastor Sets Fire To Church".
This pastor had taken out a policy on this small church and set the "rummage
sale" items stored in the church, on fire after a Sunday night service.
Except
the LORD build the house, they labor in vain that build. While it revealed to
me where the problem lay, I was saddened. This pastor and wife also evange-
lized and came to my hometown when we were little kids. I loved to hear them
sing, so beautifully. How he got out of going in prison, I do not know.
But the organization asked him to sit in a church of their choosing for two
years and he was unwilling to do so. He went east of Dallas and attempted
to do a work but it never seemed to amount to much. He was killed in an
airplane crash with another minister some years later. His wife later backslide
and some of the people went back to UPC churches and have done well.
I just felt to tell this portion of my life as I could have fell into a trap and
been in some of the places some of you have been entrapped. BUT for the
grace and mercy of ALMIGHTY GOD, I could have a different story. But be-
cause of listening to someone who had been further down the road and was
older and wiser than myself, God saved us from a lot of sorrow.
Through the years there were times I did not always understand why my father did
or said some things, BUT I did learn that IF I would trust and obey, later on I could
see the wisdom in it. I knew Dad trusted and obeyed his FATHER. Jesus
only DID and SAID what HIS FATHER told him to do and say.
This is not a preacher or pastor bashing post. It is about the fact that man
is still flesh and bones. He is human.
Falla39
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