Power To Heal

Power To Heal

by Genevieve Parkhurst

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

I love you all this morning and you’re all beautiful. You’re beautiful because you have the radiance of the Spirit of Christ in your faces. And you know that is the deepest and most lasting beauty in the world. You can’t buy it in a drugstore and you can’t rub it on and you can’t take it out of a bottle.

It’s something that shines from the inner consciousness and glows. And it’s a shine that just can’t be counterfeited. The Spirit of the Lord is truly among us this day. This is the day that the Lord has made. And we will rejoice and be glad in it. And in our rejoicing and in our gladness, He surely will be among us and bless us with His presence. I’m glad for the new persons who are here today. Those who have come since yesterday. I’m glad for everyone who has been able to stay over. This is a wonderful camp.

Every great institution is the shadow of some great person. Every great college and university has been established through the dream and the effort of some great individual. Some great educator. The United States of America has felt the impact of a man named McGuffey. And the McGuffey readers had a lot to do with molding the thinking of your fathers and mine, because of the morals that were interwoven in the lessons of those readers.

For Mother’s Day, I received an original edition of the fifth and sixth McGuffey readers from my son in New York City. I don’t know where he found them. They were badly worn and terribly battered and had little marks in them and so on. But they’re very, very priceless to me. An original McGuffey reader. The United States of America has received the impact of some great minds. The thought of Emerson has much to do with the thinking of the people of the United States. Emerson has molded much of our thinking. Thomas Jefferson has molded much of our thinking.

These great minds of yesterday set a pattern. And we have followed that pattern. And we walk in the shadow of these great men. All of our various denominations have been established through the thought of some great man. There was Calvin. And there was Wesley. There was Martin Luther. There were the other great leaders. There was John Knox. And my maternal grandmother was a Knox. And I have some of that Scotch blood in me. And I’m right proud of it.

But every great institution is the shadow of a great man. And we this morning might say that the camps by this Alp are the shadow of a great man. A great personality is the greatest force in the world.

And the greatest personality that ever lived upon the earth was, of course, the personality of Jesus Christ. Who walked upon the earth. And we of the Christian churches have more than a code. We have a code of ethics, yes. But we have something more than a code of ethics.

We have something more than a creed. We have a creed, of course, but we have something more than a creed. We have something more than a group of laws that form our churches. We have a great person at the center of the Christian faith.

And that great person is not one who is deceived. But Jesus the Christ is a living personality at this very moment. Before He went away, He said, “I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world sees me no more, but you shall see me, for I shall be with you and shall be in me.”

“I will not leave you comfortless. I will come unto you.” And that is the most comforting thought that any Christian can hold within his breast, that the very presence of the living, resurrected, invisible Christ will be with him continually and even dwell within him.

So often we think of Jesus as one who lived and died and went away. And perhaps sit us at the right hand of the Father, way off up there in the blue, the ethereal someplace, way up there. I know that our creed said it. But Jesus said, “I will come to you. I will not leave you comfortless.”

And to the surprise of those two men who walked on the way to Emmaus, so disheartened and so discouraged. And they said, “We had hope that He would be the one who would redeem Israel. We had hope.” And then He appeared to them. Walked beside them, talked with them. And they did not recognize Him until He broke the bread and gave thanks. And then they saw that it was…

Our poet has said that “daily with souls that cringe and plot, we Sinais climb and know it not.” Very often we walk beside the Master and we don’t know that He’s at our side. We’re not conscious of His presence.

When He has said, “I will be with you, I will not leave you comfortless.” And the greatest thought to my mind is the thought of the living presence of the glorified Christ. Here, upon His earth. Which he was the Father created in the beginning.

Which He, with the Father, loved so much that He came to give Himself for our redemption. And He’s still on His earth. He hasn’t deserted it. And He will redeem it one of these days. The Christian Church is the shadow of the greatest personality who ever lived.

The shadow of Christ Jesus. And as people went to the shadow of Peter for healing, we turned to this great shadow of Christ Jesus. The shadow of the church. And in its shade we find refreshing and light. The shadow of Christ Jesus. Now, I know that this is the truth that I am telling you.

Because I have seen the physical presence of Christ Jesus. I say it with great humility. I told the women in the cabin where I am staying that I was going to tell my healing experience this morning. And please do pray for me. Because it’s the hardest talk I make.

It has never become commonplace to me. I walk on holy grounds every time I speak of it. And I feel that it is something so very sacred that it’s even hard for me to talk about. But once in a while, down through the pages of history, Christ Jesus manifests Himself in a visible presence.

He appeared to Starr Daily as Starr Daily was in the prison dungeon. Lingering between life and death. Beaten until he could no longer stand. Strung up by the thumbs and then let down and fed bread and water. And when he was at the point of passing out, Jesus appeared to him in physical form. And gave him a great healing and a great regeneration and a complete transformation of his character through the grace of Christ.

Others throughout history have seen this holy presence. And for some reason, I have been privileged to see Him. I don’t know why. I always wondered. I hope someday when I get to heaven, He’ll tell me why He let me have this great privilege. Because I certainly was not worthy of it.

It was in 1941 that our son was in his internship after finishing medical school. Immediately after Pearl Harbor, he went into uniform in the Army. And very early in 1942, he came home. And I told him that there was… I noticed a little lump in my right breast. And he said, “Well, Mother, does it hurt?” And I said, “Yes. Yes, it does at times.” But I forgot that periodically I hurt all over. And he said, “Well, that’s good. A cancer doesn’t hurt in its beginning, so it’s probably just an enlarged gland. But I’ll take a look at it before I leave. He shouldn’t let it go. Bye.” But he was called away sooner than expected. And I thought since he said it wasn’t dangerous at all, I just let it go. Because I kind of thought that boy knew it all. You know how we mothers are. We think they’re pretty smart. And since he said that there… since it hurt, there was no danger there. I just let it ride. I let it ride until along in the spring, until June. And then it was so large that I decided, and it didn’t hurt. But I was in the city and decided I should have it looked at. And I did. I didn’t tell my husband what I was going to do.

I never even told him about the lump. But after I got the pronouncement of cancer, I was terrified. And the doctor was very… he was… he was cross and scolded me. He said, “Mrs. Parkhurst, why would a woman of your intelligence let a thing like this get to this size?” Well, I needed reprimanding, I suppose. But my boy had said, since it didn’t hurt, probably wasn’t dangerous. So I let it go. He began talking of x-ray and immediate operation and so on, immediate surgery. I said, “Wait a minute. First thing, I have to get composure. I have to get a hold of myself. That’s the most necessary thing.” I said, “When I get a hold of myself and when I know what I’m going to do, I’ll come back to you.” And I walked out. And I began walking. And I just walked and walked and walked. As I told you about Peer yesterday, I had to do something with my arms and legs. And physically, I had to do something and I walked.

And I began to say, “What on earth have I done that a thing like this would come upon me?” Other people had cancers, but of course I never would. I was a very young woman to consider. The thing is bad. I was just completely floored.

And I walked and walked and finally I looked up at the trees. And I was out in the residential district now. And I began to see the reality of God in His creation. I’ve always loved trees and the forest and the woods.

And as I looked at the trees, I thought of Joyce Kilmer’s poem, That Only God Can Make a Tree. And I began to reach out to the God who made the trees. Somehow I felt so desolate that I had to find God through a tree, I guess. And then as I went on walking, there was a presence by my side. And He was so real that I could feel Him. And I began to talk to Him. And I said, “What’s all this about? Why has this come to me? What am I to do about this? I don’t understand this. What am I to do now?” And I just kept walking and talking into the presence until… The presence kind of took over. And I felt calm again. I relaxed and I released myself and my anxiety. Everything to the presence. Then I began to look for guidance. Somehow I just couldn’t tell George about it. He’s a man of direct action. And he would have said, “Had that thing cut out in the morning or tonight.” He’s a very positive sort of person and an efficient person. And I’m the contemplative, meditative sort. So I didn’t say anything. I felt like it would fall like a great sword between us. I didn’t want that. Well, that night as I prayed for guidance, it seemed to me that I was going to Mount Sequoyah, where I was to be in a school of missions of the Women’s Society of Christian Service for our area, which takes in eight states.

And I went to Mount Sequoyah, Fayetteville, Arkansas. Now this little mountain, that Mount Sequoyah, is a very peculiar formation. It comes up about so high and then it’s just cut off at the top as well. You take a knife and just slice the top off of the little mountain. Up there are the trees and the buildings and the grounds where our Methodist camps are held. I went about my business there, but the Holy Presence was more real to me than the 350 persons who were there. I would get up early in the morning just while it was getting light, and I would walk around the top of that little mountain. It was just a mile around the top. And I’d walk around the mountain with the Presence. And it became so real to me and so close and so personal that I seemed almost lifted out of myself. And I just gave myself to Him. And I quit worrying. I just seemed to be so absolutely released to the Presence that He had taken over.

And as I would walk, I’d say, “Well now, Jesus, I’m a young woman to die, but if You want me to die, that’s all right.” Somehow I see I had a feeling that if this was operated, I just wouldn’t live through it. I wouldn’t live long after, perhaps. I don’t know why. Maybe everybody has that feeling. But I think perhaps they don’t. But I had a conviction that this was it.

And one day, as I was reclining on the bed, leaning back against a couple of pillows, I picked up a new book. It was a book by Frank C. Laubach, and it was called You Are My Friends. I’d never met Frank Laubach, and this is the first book that I had read of his.

I read some things about the friendship of Jesus, turned page after page, reading a sentence here and a sentence there. And then at the back of the book, I discovered that there were 20 plates of the various photographs of the great paintings of Jesus.

They begin with a child Jesus, Jesus at 12 in the temple, and on up through His life. And when I came to the one of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, as He prayed, “Let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but Thy will be done.” Something struck fire.

And I looked at that picture of the Christ with His face lifted as He bowed at the very last of His life when He knew His time with us. And said, “If it be possible.” And I had been worshiping Him and loving Him and adoring Him as I looked at these pictures. Pouring out my very soul to Him in adoration and in love, in relinquishment and release.

And as I looked at this picture of Jesus in prayer in Gethsemane, I said, “Yes, Jesus, You know. You know what it is to die. But You died for a cause. You died to save a world. And I’m just gonna die.

That’s all right. I’m perfectly released to dying several days ago, if You want me. But oh, do let me share with You in this. Let there come some glory to Your kingdom through my going.” And then something tremendous happens.

In place of that book, there appeared before me the living presence of Christ. Just as real as you are. And He was in exactly the position of this praying Christ in the garden. His chin was lifted and He was in profile. And I held my breath as I looked at Him. Beautiful. Beautiful. And then slowly, very slowly, He turned His head and dropped His chin and looked straight at me with his breath.

And those two eyes held me. And they simply drank me as the sun absorbs the dew. And I looked in those two wonderful eyes of Jesus, the most beautiful eyes, the most indescribable eyes I have ever seen. It seemed to me that the light just went out of me and flowed into Him. Oh, those eyes of Jesus! They were so compassionate, so understanding, so full of love, so full of gentleness and tenderness. And yet so utterly masterful.

So kingly. So the possessor of all creation. And it seemed that as I looked into His eyes, I was just drawn into Him, just like… Like that. And as this happened, there was… The whole room was just filled with glory and there was a sharp stab that just hit me right there. And it ran down like a streak of fire to my waist and out of my arm to the elbow. I suppose that was the length of the roots of the thing. And if they were that long on the outside, it probably went through the ribs into the lungs. I don’t doubt it at all because it lay right against the ribs. It was very deep. But that sharp pain and the electric current that ran down and out, and then it was gone.

I turned my attention to myself when the pain hit me. And when I looked back, the presence was gone. But when I put my hand to my breast, the lump was gone. Just completely, absolutely, utterly gone. There was nothing there.

Just the loose skin of the breast and I just laid those three fingers back in the hole of the breast. Well, I was so weak, I was just stunned. And I got up and took off my blouse and stood before the mirror and looked at that breast, which was just a loose sack of skin almost, it seemed.

And then I sat down. What had happened to me and why? I just couldn’t talk. I went out again and I carried on. But as I walked out, I went from Gethsemane into Pentecost. Because I knew I was walking into a newness of life and into a new life. Because every minute of every day from that hour on belongs to Jesus.

And from that time on, I have felt that I have been bought. My days aren’t mine. And for months, I would wake in the morning of each day and I would say, “Jesus, what shall I, what shall we do with Your day today?

It’s Your day today. It isn’t mine. My own life ended back there that day in July. And You are simply living through me now and I’m all Yours. What shall we do with Your day today?” I went back home. I told my husband and my son and my daughter.

And it was four years before I could tell people. It took eight months of the normal process of bodybuilding for the breast to build back to normal. But it has been perfect ever since. There has been no recurrence of any sort. And physicians who have asked to examine it have done so. And have found no indication that there was ever anything wrong. It is a perfect example of spiritual surgery without an incision.

But as great as the healing was, the greatest thing was to have looked into the eyes of Jesus. And to have seen His living presence. I know He’s alive. And if it glorifies His cause, He could make Himself visible to us this moment. But it probably wouldn’t. Because when Thomas said, “I won’t see unless I believe,” He said, “Come here, Thomas, and feel My hands and My side.” And then He said this significant thing. “Blessed are you who believe because you see, but more blessed are they who believe without seeing.” That’s the great test. So if you believe in Jesus and have not seen Him, you are more blessed than I. So have seen Him.

But I know He’s alive. I know He’s not a dead Christ. I know He’s not an ethereal something or something. I know He is a personality. And He is a living personality. And He is a present personality. And He will walk with you. And He will talk with you. And He will be your companion. If you so desire.

I think I’ll go on and tell you a little more of this healing story. Soon after I returned home, we were living in Alva, Oklahoma, and that’s a college town. My very dear friend, who was a librarian at the college, told me that her doctor had told her that he was taking Parkinson’s disease. You know that’s a disease. The disintegration of the nerves. And it sets in with a little quiver and then it gets worse and worse and worse.

And she lived just across the corner of the block in a little house alone. And I would go over there and talk with her. And I talked with her something about spiritual healing, but I didn’t know anything about it. I just knew it had happened to me. But I didn’t know the first thing in the world about how to go about to help anyone with it. And when Miriam would get distressed in the night, she would ring my telephone and I’d put on a robe and run across the corner and sit with her. And talk with her. And I found that when I put my hands on her, she would grow calm and quiet and go to sleep. And then I would slip back across the street and walk in the backyard underneath the two great apricot trees and pray the Lord to heal Miriam. And then she would cry to me, “Oh, Genevieve, pray that God will heal me.” And I did. I asked God to heal Miriam. But I didn’t know a thing on earth about spiritual healing. It was as if I had seen the great radiance at the top of the mountain and then had suddenly come back to the valley just as ignorant as it could be. All I knew was that there was the radiance and it was true.

But I had no way of knowing how to go about spiritual healing. I did the best I could. All I could do was just pray. But after a while, Miriam’s sister came from Omaha and took her there. And Miriam died. And it nearly killed me. I had failed Miriam. I knew God had the power. But I didn’t know how to use it. And it nearly broke my heart.

Sometimes, dear people, we have to have our hearts broken. I don’t know why it is. But sometimes we have to have something in our lives that just tears us up by the roots. Before the best part of us is discovered. And Miriam’s death did that to me. It just tore me to pieces.

If I had known enough, I know God could have healed Miriam. And I could have been instrumental. But I didn’t know enough. And then I knew that I had to learn. I had to start in and chisel myself a little path up the mountain, step by step, through the rocks and in the dirt, and make these little steps so that I could go up the mountain to the great presence. To the great reality, to the radiance, which I had seen and had known.

I went to a CFO, first one I’d ever gone to. And I met Glenn Clark. And I saw that people were talking with him. It was held in a great church with 99 rooms in it. And Dr. Clark was having conferences in the library. And one day I said to Dr. Clark, “I’d like to talk with you sometime.” And he said, “All right. 3:45.”

And our next meeting was at 4. So at 3:45, I was at the library door and a woman came out all weeping, crying. I knew she’d had a great problem that she’d unloaded on Dr. Clark. And when I went in, I sat down. I said, “I have no problem.” He looked at me as much as he said, “What are you here for then?”

So I sat there and told him, I said, “I have touched something so big I don’t know what to do with it.” And I told him of this healing experience. I was across the table from him and he just reached over and put his hand on my wrist. And he said, “My dear, you’re a natural.” And I said, “I’m a what?”

He said, “You have the gift of healing.” No, I didn’t because Miriam had died. I knew I didn’t. I knew he was mistaken. But then it was 4 o’clock and we had to go. He said, “I want to see you again sometime.” And he got up and went out to the service.

I was rather stunned that I went out and took another walk. I always take a walk when I… So I did another walk that day and I didn’t know just what to do about it. That evening, as we were preparing to go to the evening service, my roommate, Anna Lee McMurray, who was at the camp in Athens, Texas a short time ago, and whom I had not seen since that time, she said, “Oh, my ear is just killing me. I have a mastoid here and this mastoid infection. And the doctors think I’m going to have an operation. And it’s steady now and it is just driving me mad.” For some reason, I don’t know why. I just went up to her and put my hand just like that on her face. Held her for a minute and then I thought, what have I done? And I sat back and I said, “I believe if you’ll pardon me, I won’t go to the service this evening. You go on without me.” She don’t mind. And she said, yes, she didn’t mind. I knew I just had to pray like everything that the Lord would do what I had to have the all destiny to try to do. I had touched that woman for healing and I couldn’t do it and I knew I couldn’t do it.

So I was going to stay home and just pray all during the service that the Lord would take care of it. And I did. She came home and I was very quiet in bed and she slipped in bed very quiet. The next morning when we started the breakfast, she said, “I think I ought to tell you something. In his talk last night or after his talk sometime, Dr. Clark said, if anyone’s interested in spiritual healing, just be dead of these parkers.”

I just looked all around for a rock I could crawl under. And I said, “Oh Lord, what have I gotten into?” And as soon as I went in the dining room door, a woman came to me and she said, “Oh, I have the most terrible condition in my nose. I’ve had two operations in my nose and I want you to pray for it. I’m going to have to have another one.” And I just said, “Lord, I can get myself into this now and You’ve got to get me out.” So I told her to come in this little private room and she sat down and I put my hands on her. I got behind her so she couldn’t see my lips move. And I said, “Now, Lord, this is it. I can’t do a thing on earth. It’s up to You.”

And I put my hands on that woman’s head and nose and the sinus passages and all of that. And then I blessed her and she went out and I just felt her limb as a rag. I didn’t even ask her what her name was and I thought I’ll never know who that woman was. She went on to tell me she was allergic and almost everything on earth. Two or three foods she could eat and that is all. There she was to camp. She has skinniest bones and she just looked terrible. I thought I don’t even know who she is.

Half a dozen other people came to me and I did the same thing. I just blessed them and said, “Lord, I can’t do this. I’ve been pushed into this. I just put my hands on them and You’ve got to do it.” And at noon, or at dinner that evening, I sat down by this woman whom I had first blessed and she was the most radiant looking thing you ever saw. And she said, “I’ve had the most glorious day. I’ve eaten everything there was to eat and nothing has hurt me at all.”

I said, “Well, thank You, Lord. I guess You did it.” Because I knew I didn’t. And every one of the persons that I touched at that camp were healed permanently. Tremendous. Maybe the Lord let me fail in order to teach me that I couldn’t do it.

For I sure know I can’t. And if I ever put my hands on any of you’d just be mighty sure that I can’t do anything. It is only as the power of Christ Jesus flows through my hands that anything could happen. And I know it so well and I’ve never gotten over knowing it where the power lies. I don’t have any.

And then after I went home, I decided that if I was going to learn this great art, the art of prayer it was for me, everything in the Christian life hinges around the art and the power of prayer. I thought that I must practice it. And then I thought of how much one practiced to play a piano well. The hours and hours one must spend to become an accomplished pianist. And I figured that if I should play well enough to play for a prayer meeting, I’d have to play about three hours day for a while anyway.

And I thought, can I expect to learn the greatest art in the world with any less practice than it would take to learn to play the piano? Absolutely. We expect to be great artists in the art of prayer by doing nothing but reading a few books that somebody’s written and spending two or three minutes saying, “Lord bless me today” or something like that. And off we’re gone. We expect to be great in prayer. So I said, “Lord, I’m going to spend three hours a day in prayer to learn this great art.” And I set myself to do it. Now, if you’ve ever tried to spend three hours at one time in prayer, it’s an arduous task. You can’t do it to start out with. Your mind just goes off on all sorts of tangents and you have to bring it back and you just wrestle and wallow around and you have an awful time. You say, there is the most time. So I began with 15 minutes. I did very well with 15 minutes. My husband was on the district then and I was at home more. I didn’t have the ringing of the telephone which is so constant in the past. So I had a little more time for this meditation. And a little back bedroom was set aside for this devotion, this meditation.

And I’d spend 15 minutes and then I’d go and work some or go out and do what I… make some calls and then I’d spend 15 more minutes. At first I could get an hour a day and then I got it up to two hours, but I never let it be unpleasant. I always kept the joy in it. And when the joy left, I released it to God. But I came to the place where I could go in that little back bedroom and like Dr. Clark’s waffle iron that he tells about, if he hasn’t told you about his waffle iron, he will. But that semi… that reclining position on the bed was my waffle iron. That was the position I was in when I received this great healing. And it’s the way in which I worship best. Just reclining on the bed. It renews something of that great presence to me. So I would recline on the bed and I would read some great books. And I would say, “Now Jesus, illuminate this passage and give me what I need out of it.” You know I learned something about reading.

It’s better to get all there is in one paragraph than to skim through a whole book. Make some great truth your own. Get it down into your subconscious. And let it take root there. I believe that we read too many books and we read them too hurriedly. Perhaps one reason Abraham Lincoln was such a great mind was that he had so few books that he read them over and over and over until he practically memorized them.

We have the habit of skimming through this book and reading all the new books that come out. And we read them hurriedly and we slap the covers together and say, “That’s done. Now I’ve read that. Now grab up this one.” And we skim through it and throw it aside. And nothing takes permanent root within our minds and consciousness. I learned that in that period of time.

Latch onto a few great truths and make them yours. And hold them. And get them so deeply in your subconscious self that nothing will shake them. And that came to me through praying before I would begin to read. “Now Jesus, You give me the truth out of this book.” And I’d find that I wouldn’t be reading hurriedly. I would be going back over a paragraph. And then my mind would go off on a… frog which was stimulated by the paragraph. And I would find that He was opening to me great truths.

And I kept up this until I could go in that bedroom and… lean back on my pillows and just go into His presence. That’s when the beautiful thought came to me of how Jesus prayed when He prayed all night. He just went into the presence of the Spirit of His Father. And I learned something of going into the presence of divine love in prayer. And just abiding in a presence.

And that is so productive. And then I found that as I would read, I had less desire to read and more desire simply to be open to the will of God. I have a very homely illustration of how to do this. Did you ever have an old style suitcase that had gotten limp and worn? And when you opened it up, it just flopped itself out like that?

I just imagine that I’m that kind of an old suitcase and just opened myself up to the Lord. Just flop open like that. And you know, Moses told the children of Israel, if anything got mildewed, to put it out in the sunshine. And if you could imagine an old suitcase without any divisions in it, just two sides, you know. With a little mildew and just throw it out on the grass in the sunshine. It just lays there, flopped open like that. And the sun comes pouring in. And you know, lots of times when I go to my prayer, I just flop myself open and I say, “Oh Lord, I’m all tired out of the mildew. Just pour Your grace on me now. Rejuvenate me.”

To yield yourself to the love and the presence and the power of His holy radiance. And let the light of His love just draw out from you all of the exhaustion and the weariness and the exasperation and everything else that takes the life out of you. And find that renewal in the light which is His life.

And that was part of this part of prayer. It wasn’t saying words. It was coming into His presence. It was opening myself. It was releasing myself to the inflow of His divine love. And the invigorating power of His renewal. And then there was the inspiration through reading and especially through reading the scriptures. It’s marvelous how His Spirit will talk to us when we read the scriptures. So many times we read about the Bible more than we read the Bible. One day my brother was reading the Bible and he’d been studying his commentary and presently looked up and laughed and he said, “It’s amazing the light that the Holy Scriptures throws on these commentaries.”

And so that’s true. If you want to go to the source, to the very center of things, go to the Holy Scriptures. Don’t read what people have said about the scriptures. Read the Word of God. Slowly. Meditatively. Contemplatively. Prayerfully. And let the Spirit bring you its great truth.

These hours were very, very profitable to me because I learned many things. And during these hours of learning to be accomplished in some degree in the art of prayer, the Spirit told me some things that I never read anywhere and I never heard anybody say them. And those things have blessed people more than any other things that I have to give. And then I recall that He said, “I have many things to show you, to teach you, but I can’t tell you now. You can’t bear them. But when the Holy Spirit is come, He will teach you all things. And bear witness of me.” And let me say right here.

See, Paul tells us that not every spirit is of God, that we are to search the Spirit and be careful what Spirit we allow to take possession of us. But Jesus said, “The Holy Spirit, the true Holy Spirit, will bear witness of me.”

And unless there is bearing witness to Christ, the Spirit just gives us the Holy Spirit. Be sure that the love of Christ Jesus comes flooding into you whenever you feel possessed of a Spirit. And the compassion and the gentleness and the love and the yearning for the world, those are the tests of the Holy Spirit.

I have seen some people who were possessed of what they said was the Holy Spirit, and they didn’t act a bit like Jesus did. And I became a little bit dubious. Because unless we act more like Jesus, we’re not benefited by any sort of Spirit. But the Holy Spirit of God is the same Spirit which was manifested through Christ Jesus when He was on the earth, only in an invisible form. And it is Jesus. And that Spirit will manifest Jesus. That’s just a side. I’ll just drop it to you if it is.

But this beautiful Spirit which does teach us truths, when we are receptive and yearning and are ready to receive them, has the wisdom of the infinite back of it. Thank you. And when we are able to receive such truths and to use them to His glory, sometimes He imparts to us these great truths. And then after I had gone through this period of discipline for a number of months, of this praying three hours a day, disciplining myself. Dear people, discipline is a part of life. None of us like discipline. We don’t like it when we’re 2, and we don’t like it when we’re 6, and we don’t like it when we’re 10, and we rebel against it when we’re 15. And when we are grown up, we will not discipline ourselves. But there is no advancement in the Christian life without discipline. We just must discipline ourselves. And hold ourselves to a certain course. That’s one problem with growing up physically, there’s nobody to discipline us. And we need it. We need to hold ourselves to the thing which we know is right, and make ourselves do the thing which brings about our development and the glory of the Kingdom of God. We can’t be lax and loose and helter-skelter about the Kingdom. We must be disciplined.

And we must learn to walk softly and carefully. And listen for these guidance. So I learned some discipline in these hours. Some discipline I had not suspected. But there came into this little back bedroom such a holy presence that when you walked into it you felt it. It was just a little room.

But it was so fraught with love and with power that it was just glorious. And my husband’s mother was ill. She was then in her 80s. And we had taken her to the hospital. And from the hospital we brought her to this little room. Put her to bed. And she said, “Debbie, there’s something strange in this room.” She had brought one of her amaryllis plants with her over there. And she said, “I smell a fragrance all the time. I smell a fragrance and it smells like… plattics.” She said, “That amaryllis isn’t fragrant. Why is it in this room?”

And I said, “Mother, I guess I’ll have to tell you. I have prayed in this room so much that there is actually a fragrance that you can smell with your physical nose.” Do you know that’s possible? I think it’s very rare. But for six months I had prayed in there three hours a day.

Until that room was so hallowed and so sanctified that there actually was a fragrance in there. I could sense it, but I thought maybe it was just with my spiritual sensation that I could smell the lilacs and the apple blossoms. But when Mother said, “Debbie, what is it in here that smells so fragrant? I smell lilacs and that amaryllis plant has no fragrance.” And I knew that other people could sense it then. So I told her. And then one day she lay there on the bed, see, and I sat beside her. She whispered, “Debbie, I’m done.”

And I wasn’t frightened. I just said, “Release yourself to Mother, sit to God, Mother, while I pray for you.” And with all the ease and the confidence with which I went into my prayer time, I just lifted her to the Father. She was cold. She was just as white as could be. Her fingernails looked blue. And as I sat there lifting her to God, I saw her put her hands to her face. And I looked at her and her face was just as pink and flushed and rosy. And she drew a long breath and she said, “Oh.”

And then she told me of the experience. She said, “Right around her heart it got warm. And then the warmth got bigger and got bigger until her whole body seemed to be warm. And then the warmth went out into her arms and into her legs. And so she was just tingling. And the warmth was so hot in her cheeks that she put her hands up.” And then when I looked at her, she got up that afternoon, went out to dinner with us that evening. And she had a renewal of life, which was marvelous. People have said, “Well, what has happened to me? Just talk to her. She’s a saint. She’s a saint of God that has ever walked the earth.” Everybody would renew her and loved her. People would come to her home to pray. And that summer she said, “I feel as though I had been renewed. I feel like I did 15 years ago.” And she has had a resurgence of life. God did it. And I knew that I couldn’t.

From that time on, God has blessed many people through my hands. But it has only been God. It was not I. It is never I. I know that. But I do know His power. And I know His living presence.

Now, I think I’ll tell you one other little thing about this experience. I didn’t tell you it until a couple of years ago. And I think it’s good for all of us. And it’s good for every woman, especially. You know how we women are. We get cleaning spells. And we have to clean the whole house. And wash all the woodwork. And get all the curtains down and up again the same day. Did you ever do anything like that?

I’m that sort of person too. And you get into a frenzy of cleaning. And you just can’t stop. Because you make the circle. So one day I had had a frenzy of cleaning. And I had cleaned the whole house, you know. And then I looked the kitchen over and decided the woodwork needs scrubbing. So I’d wash the kitchen woodwork as a final gesture. And I just felt so clean. Oh, I was just so clean. And I was so exhausted that I could scarcely walk to bed.

Along in the night I woke and there was a throb down in this breast. That’s where the lump had been. And it just throbbed like a little heart that was beating and hurt. It just felt like a little injured bird or something like that. That’s the thing that I caught. And I thought, oh my goodness, is this coming back? What’s the matter here? So I began to pray about it.

And I began to search myself. And very often as I had been in these periods of prayer and meditation, the voice had spoken to me until I can recognize the Holy Voice very quickly. And this voice said to me, “I didn’t heal you to wash the kitchen woodwork.”

And I got through more discipline. And I realized that the life that God has loaned to me through these years is not to be expended in useless physical labor. Now I do all my work except I have a cleaning woman one half day a week. And I do all of it. But I’m telling you, sometimes I just let my house go to show it to the boss.

A house can get to the place where it’s semester and you’re displayed now. It just really can. If you try to keep all of the corners polished all the time and everything so slick that Mrs. Positiveness can come in and not see a thing wrong. But sometimes I just let mine go.

Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom.” And I have learned that I must seek first the kingdom. And then my house is going to be taken care of. Can I tell them about my house? I have a few minutes. I think that will make a good ending here. This comes in the line of relinquishment. I hope I can talk to you on the art of releasing in prayer. We all need that. But this is something in relinquishment.

We knew that we were going to move to Woodward, Oklahoma, the first day of June. The last day of May, something of that sort. And we had a house there. We had built it while George was on the district there at Woodward. It wasn’t a very big house. But we didn’t seem to be able to buy anything that suited us better for the half, twice the money we’d put into this one. So we decided we’d just move into this house when we moved over. But it was rented. And the tenants were, frankly, they were not immaculate. And we knew there had to be a lot of work on the house before we could move into it. And we were so busy with the pastoral charge. A Sunday school that ran 550 average all the time. And all of the organizations of the church, and so on and so on. And I had a camp at Ardmore the last week in April. I had one at Athens, Texas the first week in May. And then we had our annual conference. And then we had to move immediately. And I had two days between that move and this camp. I didn’t know how I was going to get it done. And I began to think about what I was going to do to how.

And since I’ve painted all my life, I’m very susceptible to colors. Colors do things for me. Some colors can disturb me and some colors can give me rest. And I wanted the colors of my house just right because I know I’m going to live in it the rest of my life. But I had fussed around and thought about that house and what I was going to do with it. Until finally I came to the place and I said, “Now Lord, I’m trying to do Your work and I’m going to turn that house over to You. You just got to take care of that house. I can’t do it.” So after wrestling all night like Jacob did with the angel, I finally turned the thing loose. And I found out that most of us wrestle all night with the thing before we can finally give it up to the Lord. I don’t know why we do. We know that it’s best to give to in the first place. But we just have to go through that process of wearing ourselves out before we can turn loose of it. There’s nothing in us. But after Jacob got through wrestling with it, I finally gave the house to the Lord. And I said, “Now Lord, this is a strange thing, but I’m just going to turn this house over to You.”

And about two weeks ago, George was called to Enid to hold a funeral. And that’s halfway from Blackwell to Woodward. So he said, “Let’s drive on over to Woodward after the funeral. The funeral was at 10 o’clock in the morning. And take a look at the house.” So I grabbed up a sofa cushion and took one of my paintings off of the wall. Put them in the car. And after the funeral, we went over to Woodward. Oh, the house was filthy. I was just distressed when I looked at it. And I saw all that had to be done. The walls had to be painted. The woodwork had to be gone over. And we had to buy carpet for it, select the color. And besides that, it had to be all cleaned. And then we had to build a lot of bookcases, or what bookcases the room would stand in the living room. And build some more cabinets in the kitchen. I thought, “How in the world can we get this all done?” Then I said, “Now, Lord, this is Your house. I gave it to You. I’m not going to take it back anymore. I’m just kind of…” So we set out and we found a cleaning woman. She said, “Yes, I can come right over.”

I said, “That’s fine. You go over and go to work in the closet. That’s a good place to begin.” And then we found… Went down to the mill where this artist in woodwork works. And he said, “Well, yes, I can make your bookcases and your kitchen cabinets. I can begin right now. I have nothing pressing.” Isn’t that unusual? Usually, I’ll tell you, “Three weeks from Monday, I think maybe I can begin on it.” “Yes, yes, yes, I think I can get them all done by the time you’re ready for it.” So we found a painter. And he said, “Yes, I can begin painting this afternoon if you want me.” I forget to go that way. So we took the painter and we went down to the hardware store and we began to pick out paint. And I just shut my eyes and I said, “Now, Lord, You select Your paint. You know what I’m going to be able to live with.”

And we selected the paint for the wall. And then the woodwork had been blonded. You know, you rub some paint in and then you rub it off. Let the grain show through. I wanted the same effect, but I wanted a little different color, a little darker color. Didn’t know whether we could do it or not. So I put on old clothes and I took a paint can and I tried the job. And I thought it could be done. So I did half of it myself and showed the painter how to finish it. And then we picked out our carpet and we left. With that woodwork to be finished this special way. And the walls all to be painted. And the cabinets to be built in the kitchen painted inside and out. A pale blue on the inside and white on the outside. And the bookcases to be finished like the woodwork. And the bookcases to be made and the cabinets to be made and all of it put together. The carpet had to be ordered. Put down. We thought we’d get away from conference on Thursday night, but no, we had to stay till Friday, until everything was over. We had intended to move on Friday, so we got home late Friday night, and the van was there at 6 o’clock Saturday morning, loaded us in.

We beat the van over there by two hours, and when I walked in that room, the carpet was all down, the woodwork and the bookcases were painted beautifully, and the walls were a delightful color, and the kitchen was just beautiful, and the cabinets were there, and everything was so clean. I just stood in the middle of that room, and I said, “Thank You, God. How could it all have happened?” I could have worked six weeks, and I couldn’t have done, got all this put together. And then the painter came by, and he said, “Do you like it?” I said, “I love it. I think you’ve done a wonderful job.” He said, “The fellows who laid the carpet have just been out two hours. If we had moved Friday, we’d have gotten there before they got the carpet down, and that would have been a mess. Because we couldn’t have held that van with our furniture in it, and we’d have to load it out in the yard while the carpet…” You see, the whole thing works together for good when we love the Lord. Everything dovetails. Everything was right. So they just carried the furniture in, and they set it right where I wanted it, and there it is. That was Saturday night. They got it all in at 20 minutes of 12, and I hurried to get the sheets on so we’d get to bed before it’s Saturday.

And we did. And then Tuesday morning at 6:15, I left for… here. 7:15. 7:16. Well, I got to the stake in the 6:15, Preston. Anyway. But the Lord takes care of even the little things, the material things. Someone asked, should you ask for things? There is nothing in life that’s too small to share with God. Just nothing. If it’s to the glory of His kingdom, if you can use your time for His good, then you can share whatever you’re doing with Him. And I believe He blesses us. That is such a simple little thing. Just taking over the color combinations in my house and getting everything in there and ready. We were just able to put books in the bookcase. George began putting books in the bookcase while the movers were carrying the stuff upstairs. It’s a wonderful thing to release ourselves to the love of an infinite God who loves us more than we can ever imagine or think. A wonderful thing. He is alive, Christ Jesus. He is not a dead Christ. He is a living presence. And His love and compassion is so great. It’s as great for you as it ever was for me. I’m nothing special. I never was very good. And I don’t know to this day why He stooped down to do for me the wonderful thing that He did.

But I bless Him and I love Him for it forever. Shall I just mention our prayer room? We have a nice prayer room right up the hill at the little cabin. Go up there today. If you want to get apart, have a moment for meditation, find the little prayer room and use it.