Messages spoken at various Camps Farthest Out by Al Houghton.
Al Houghton was a Bible teacher from Southern California who grew up on a Missouri farm and dreamed of becoming an airline pilot. He went through the Navy and accumulated the flying hours he needed, but after becoming a Christian, being baptized in the Holy Spirit and sensing a call to ministry, his plans changed. In April 1977 he taught at the Alberta Camps Farthest Out in Caroline, returning to Alberta for the spring retreat in 1981.
Al grew up working on a farm in Missouri. He knew what it was to put months of work into the ground and then wait to see whether anything came of it. “I grew up on a farm and I’ve worked hard on a farm and I know the work that’s involved and I know how sad it can be when you reach the end of a crop period and the production’s not there.”
But farming was not what he dreamed of doing. From childhood, Al wanted to become an airline pilot. He went through school and the Navy and accumulated the flying hours he needed. Then the direction of his life changed. “I got saved, first of all. That was a real change. And then God baptized me in the Holy Spirit and He called me into the ministry.”
Al was not immediately enthusiastic about that last part. “For nine months, I argued with God about going into ministry.” When he finally surrendered, he discovered that what he had resisted was better than what he had planned. “I found out this has been much more exciting than flying ever could be. Fifty thousand times more exciting.”
Al eventually packed everything he owned into a Pinto and drove about fifteen hundred miles from Missouri to California to study. “I didn’t know anybody in California.” He and a roommate from Texas rented an empty house in Orange County. “There wasn’t a stick of furniture anywhere.”
For four days they searched for beds and a refrigerator without finding what they needed. Al kept holding onto Philippians 4:19: “My God shall supply all your need.” Finally, he gave the problem to God and went home. That afternoon he found an advertisement for a seven-piece bedroom set only a block and a half away. The seller turned out to be a minister of twenty-nine years in Al’s own denomination. His roommate found a bed, and a woman from the school of theology called about a refrigerator.
“By six o’clock that night, after we had given it to the Lord, by six o’clock that night, we had our refrigerator and we had our beds.” Then came the lesson Al had missed. “You have been shouting Philippians 4:19 at me for three and a half days.” He had been claiming the promise that God would supply his needs while overlooking what came immediately before it: “Be anxious for nothing.”
In April 1977 Al traveled to Caroline, Alberta, to speak at the Camps Farthest Out. He had called ahead to ask about the weather and was told it was eighty degrees, so he arrived from Southern California with summer clothes. “We thought for a while we were just going to have to depend on the Holy Spirit to keep us warm.” Al did not want the campers to think that whatever God had given him belonged only to the person standing behind the lectern. “Saints, you’ve got the anointing. Just as much as I do.”
At the time, Al was working on a thesis about faith. Then one night God woke him around two or three in the morning and directed him to Psalm 25. Al became convinced that he was supposed to write about covenant instead. That subject became part of his teaching in Alberta. He taught on God’s covenant with Abraham and on God as the believer’s supply. “You know, it’s God’s desire to prosper His people.”
Faith, as Al taught it, rested on what God had already promised. He compared faith to a title deed. A title settles the question of ownership whether the property happens to be sitting in front of you or not. “Faith takes the Word and says, It’s mine right now.” Al was trying to live that way himself, including in matters of physical healing. “I no longer have headaches. And I used to have a bunch.”
Al returned to Alberta for the CFO spring retreat in 1981. This time one of his central themes was being led together by the Holy Spirit. “We need to be led together by the Holy Spirit.” That was also something he had come to value about CFO. “One of the greatest things I see happening in CFO camps is people coming together in unity.”
He told the campers how he and his wife, Janie, had learned to trust that inward leading when they bought their house. Other people could hardly stand the smell when they walked through it, and the house needed considerable work. Al and Janie bought it anyway. “We had a knowing down on the inside.” Within three months, people had come alongside them to help and the problems had been repaired. Even a practical need they had not been able to arrange for themselves was waiting nearby: a Christian girl two houses away who could babysit.
It was the same lesson Al had been learning since arriving in California with everything he owned packed into a Pinto. He had spent years teaching faith, covenant and the promises of God, but underneath those subjects was something simpler: learning to hear God, trust Him and follow where He led.
*Note:
Many speakers lived before the days of the internet and many had very limited biographical information available. The information in these biographies came mostly from transcripts of their messages, and relies heavily on their own spoken words. Please contact us if you have any corrections.