Published by There is nothing I like writing about more than my liberal minded son and Eastern North Carolina preachers. One is moved by the wind of self and the other by the wind of the Holy Ghost, and both are unpredictiable.
Now I haven’t been able to get my son to go to a church service in two years. Then suddenly several weeks ago while visiting with me for a week before taking off to China to teach 6th graders English, he decided to go to a revival. It was a week of preaching that a 16 year old evangelist named Tyler was debuting at from Kinston, North Carolina. That little preacher, weighing in at no more than 110 pounds, squarely pointed his skinny finger at the congregation in his sermon entitled ‘The Boat People and The Water Walkers’ and said, “All you boat people out there, don’t you keep sitting in the boat on your lukewarm bench trying to tell the water walkers how to walk on water.” He laughs looking us grown ups straight in the eye and adds, “And when they start to sink you want to say, I told you it wouldn’t work.” Then he starts shouting, “Get out of the boat,” his underdeveloped long legs striding across the altar like he’s walking on water. A grown preacher in Eastern North Carolina wouldn’t get by with preaching like that. For some reason it was comical coming from a teeenager. A grown preacher wouldn’t be asked back preaching in such an accusing tone and coming up in the church trying to tell folks how to be a Christian.
Now my son didn’t go to that revival of his own volition. You see money motivates him. So I paid him to video the revival with a new video camera he had just purchased to take with him on his China venture, on my credit card of course. It was worth it to get him to hear the word for a week. It worked because he was very concerned about his soul by Friday night after Tyler preached on the rapture of the church and life under the mark of the beast. On the way home that night he looked at me with his usual serious look, with not even a pinch of humor in him, and said, “When I got saved at age 11 at that church camp you sent me to, does that still count.?” Like that somehow was going to make up for his carnal living. Well, I said cautiously, “seems like you might have some repentance to do since then.” You know I started to pray right there in my car and show him how repentance and a contrite heart works with the Lord. People were passing expressway looking over at me like they had never seen a woman pray in a car before. That’s better than being a wailing Mother when their children don’t get raptured by Jesus at the sound of that trumpet.
Now folks, that’s how the devil works. If he can’t get you he’ll go after your child. While there’s breath in my body and I have a tongue to speak my inheritance from the word I will cast the lies from the devil down about my child. He finally got back some truth that his liberal education at UNC had stripped away that I had spent 18 years instilling in him. Never stop speaking the word over your children no matter how bad they’ve been, because that spoken word over them WILL take form.
The real trouble started after I found out on an email that my son had been colaborating about his soul with a Professor of Divinity for the last six months that had the nick name, God and that other word dam that goes with it, that unspeakable word that I can’t even say. Have you ever! I won’t say which university, but it is a top rank university here in North Carolina. Not once in his emails did he ever attempt to show my son the way to salvation. I emailed him and said, “You need to get yourself to an altar and get saved and stop misleading our children with your worldly theology.” He never answered me. There is no wonder in that! And that poor little Tyler doesn’t even have a degree, yet he speaks more biblical truth than that Rhodes bible scholar.
Now I met a preacher a couple of weeks ago in a tobacco rural part of Eastern North Carolina, population 800. Pastor Larry is in his forties but has only been preaching for 3 years but he has a vision I like. It was a fifth Sunday singing night. I still can’t figure out why churches are going to only preaching twice a month and canceling church for singings, functions and other programs, go figure! We’ve just about lost the purpose of worship and the reading of the word. Restoration and the regeneration in the blood is a second thought in churches today if thought of at all.
Anyway, the church was packed that night. The preacher had invited singers from all different church denominations and cultures. I have never seen such joy in the midst of a mixed congregation lifting their voices in praise and worship. It was like taking a big shot of Georgia Mountain brandy. It burns all the way down but oh when it settles in you the warmth goes from your toes to your head and suddenly you find yourself in another dimension. There’s no drug or alcohol that can give you a high like praising the Almighty God and coming together with a bunch of Holiness and Baptists under the same roof and in one spirit.
Now you’ve never worshiped until you’ve worshiped with African-American women. One lady in a Pentecostal singing group was singing, “Look What The Lord Has Done”. When she got to the part that goes, “He healed my body, he healed my mind,” all of a sudden her arms got to going in a sharp rotating movement. I looked over at my husband and went, “Oops, that little lady is fixing to go somewhere honey.” Now my husband doesn’t get too excited about things, except football, but I looked down and he was tapping his foot in rhythm with the keyboard. Now that’s what I call caught up in the spirit. That’s is truly a church where everybody is somebody.
There was this little older man there that day that stood up and testified. Oh, I love those testifying services because they create transparency, and worship in truth and spirit. He said his life had been a mess. His first wife had left him with three small children to raise. His second wife committed suicide. He said, he wanted to come back to the only hope left, the church. Now that ought to wake Christians up and realize it’s time to return to righteousness and justice and put our differences aside and get prepared for the lost and dying world. It’s going to be like what King David did when he brought back the covenant and called for a return unto the Lord and gathered all the people to worship in the presence of the Lord without the veil.
Maybe what we need in our towns and communities is a good old fashioned Jericho Walk to pull down the walls and take our churches and lost family back from the devil.
And to think, my son that has never witnessed to a single soul is in a part of China where Asians have to learn about Jesus in secret. Lord have mercy on the Godless nations. I fell on my knees prostate before the Lord like Moses did with the disobedient Israelites; “Lord have mercy on my son, I know one day he WILL do something great for you.”
I know I should have sent that boy to a Christian college!
