Messages by Glenn Clark

Glenn Clark founded the Camps Farthest Out in 1930 when he was forty-nine years old. He was an English professor, writer, and athletics coach who never trained for the ministry and never intended to become a minister. His work grew out of his own search for God and his conviction that prayer should become a practical part of everyday life. Long before the Camps began, a nerve specialist had told Clark that he would never again be able to do more than a third of a man’s work. Instead, he eventually found himself preaching, teaching, writing, and traveling extensively.

His approach to prayer was simple. Using the story of Elisha and the borrowed ax head in 2 Kings 6, he taught people to find where something had been lost, find the point where it could be recovered, and then completely surrender the matter to God.

“A Third of a Man’s Work”

About thirty years before telling the story, Clark had asked one of the leading nerve specialists in the Northwest why he was functioning at only about one-third of his capacity. The doctor’s answer was discouraging. “You’ll be all right if you’ll content yourself with your limitations and plan never to do more than undertake more than a third of a man’s work the rest of your life.” Clark had also suffered from a frightening heart palpitation for about ten years. He eventually went to California with a manuscript he said was his reason for the trip. His real purpose was different.

“I took him out to California to finish a textbook on the short story. That was my excuse. My real reason was to find God.” Alone in a cabin, Clark surrendered his life and his work to God. “Then I said, see here, Lord. I’m your man. I’m completely yours. From now on, Glenn Clark doesn’t belong to himself. He belongs to you totally and completely.” He described the arrangement this way: “And I said, you be my senior partner, Lord. You look after the results and I’ll just look after the intentions.” When he came down from Estes Park, something had changed.

“When I came down from Estes Park, my palpitation stopped. That was 30 years ago and has never come back.” The limitation the specialist had predicted disappeared as well. “I was doing full-time preaching and full-time teaching and full-time writing. I was doing three men’s work instead of a third of a man’s work.”

The Book He Didn’t Plan to Write

Clark wanted to be a writer and spent years trying to get published. “I spent twelve years, summers, writing an article for The Atlantic Monthly, put all the knowledge of grammar and rhetoric I knew into it, sent it to The Atlantic and they sent it back.” The writing that eventually brought him recognition came from a much simpler question. A boy asked Clark how he prayed. His answer became The Soul’s Sincere Desire, the book Clark considered his primary work. For years, he referred to it as the one book he had written. “I’ve written a book, one book, The Soul’s Sincere Desire. I hope to write another one.”

How the Camps Farthest Out Began

Clark dated the beginning of the Camps Farthest Out to a change in his own spiritual life. Over the years, he had become interested in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But eventually he came to believe that the fruits of the Spirit were more important than the spectacular gifts. Speaking about tongues, he recalled Paul’s words: “Then I remembered the words of Paul. I would rather speak five words with my mind than ten thousand in tongues.” Clark then described a change in his focus.

“Then I looked straight into the face of Jesus, a face that had looked with compassion upon the multitude, and I was suddenly lifted from the level of the gifts to the level of the fruits.” He continued: “It is after I subordinated these lower gifts to the higher gifts, yes, after I ceased looking at the gifts at all, and gave all my attention to living with the fruits, especially the fruits of love, faith, humility, and self-control, that all the permanent things in my life began. Then it was that the camps farthest out were born.”

The Camps were never intended to be a monument to Glenn Clark. He repeatedly directed people away from himself and toward Jesus. “Stop looking to me, but just look at Christ.” When someone asked what would happen to the work after he died, Clark answered simply: “What’s going to happen to you, Glenn Clark, of your work, when you die? I said, It’ll go on.”

“Where Did You Lose It?”

Clark’s approach to prayer was practical and easy to remember. He based much of it on the story in 2 Kings 6, when Elisha recovered the borrowed ax head that had fallen into the water. “There are two laws of prayer that Elisha used. One of them was, he asked, where did you lose it?” Clark believed that finding where something had been lost could help reveal where to begin praying. The second part was finding the right point of contact. He described the borrowed ax head as a picture of finding the right lever:

“He took a stick that he could take hold of. And he could toss it out exactly where it was lost. And the axe head came swimming up.” Clark also emphasized complete surrender. “One of the most powerful things is when you just relinquish utterly and don’t even ask to get well.” He saw Jesus as the ultimate example of surrender. “The greatest relinquisher of all was Jesus.”

Prayer for Healing

Clark prayed for physical healing but was careful not to take credit for it. “I won’t let anybody travel 3,000 miles to have me pray for them because I’ve never cured anybody.” He put it another way: “God has done some healing through me. But it’s all borrowed.” And even more simply: “And I’m no miracle worker.” Clark also taught that physical healing could involve the healing of memories and hidden fears. He once described his prayer for a young woman in Greenville, South Carolina, who had been unable to keep food down for four years.

He asked her where she had lost her health. She remembered a fear that had been spoken at her wedding twelve years earlier. After dealing with that fear, she gained thirty-five pounds. The experience eventually led Clark to write How to Find Health Through Prayer. He sometimes described his prayer for healing in an unusual but memorable way: “I said, let’s ask the Lord to send his celestial vacuum cleaner wagon down here.” He used the image to describe God going into the hidden places of the subconscious and bringing out fears, frustrations, resentments, and other things that had been buried for years.

“Then let another set come into your subconscious and go down the corridors of the past, opening hidden doors even way back in your childhood, and draw out all the frustrations and all the hidden fears and all the little forgotten resentments.” Clark was teaching what would later become known as healing of the memories long before that phrase became common.

A “Matrix for Money”

Clark also believed in trusting God for financial needs. On one occasion, he needed $200 to support his family. He had met a woman whom he believed had a particular gift for praying for financial provision. His proposal was simple: “I need $200 to support my family this year. You pray for $200 to come to me and I’ll pray for beautiful ideas to come to you.” Clark called the arrangement “a matrix for money.” At a banquet in Chicago, a mill owner handed him a sealed envelope. Clark did not open it until later, when he was in an upper berth on a train. Inside was exactly $200.

His Books and His Friends

In addition to The Soul’s Sincere Desire and How to Find Health Through Prayer, Clark wrote A Man’s Reach, The Way of Love, Windows of Heaven, Come Follow Me, Be Thou Made Whole, The Man Who Talks With the Flowers, and Silver Sandals. He also edited the quarterly magazine Clear Horizons. He worked closely with many of the people who became part of the Camps Farthest Out, including Starr Daily, Glenn Harding, Frank Laubach, and Louise Eggleston.

His writing also dealt with the Christian understanding of the blood of Jesus. In the booklet he was working on near the end of his life, he wrote that when the heart turns to the sacrificial blood of Jesus, “that moment we are swept into the presence of the living but invisible Jesus, the personal Savior walking at our side.”

The Last Eleven Days

Glenn Clark died in a hospital in St. Paul in August 1956. Marcia Brown was with him during his final eleven days. Even near the end of his life, Clark was still working. He was dictating the final pages of a book only days before he died. Roland Brown spoke at Clark’s memorial service. One camper summarized what Clark had meant to him: “I didn’t find Jesus through Glen Clark. But I think through Glen Clark and his camp farthest out, Jesus found me.” There was also a simple moment near the end of Clark’s life that expressed something of the man himself. A nurse asked if there was anything she could do for him.

“Glenn looked at her and smiled and he said, Yes, just one thing. Just love me.” That simple request fits the emphasis Clark had given his life to: love, faith, humility, surrender, and a life centered on Jesus.