Messages spoken at various Camps Farthest Out by Steve Diller.
Steve Diller was a minister and teacher of healing prayer who spoke at the Camps Farthest Out in 1956. After seminary he worked in news commentary for NBC on the West Coast before entering the pulpit. He learned about healing prayer from Starr Daily, Frank Laubach, Agnes Sanford, Roland Brown, and Glenn Clark, and that spring and summer he spoke at CFO camps in Arizona and Ohio.
After seminary, Steve worked in broadcasting on the West Coast, doing news commentary for NBC before turning to the ministry. By 1956 he was pastoring a church, was married to Evelyn, and had a young son, Stevie.
His ministry increasingly included prayer for healing, but Steve had to learn that prayer was not something he could master by studying how it worked. He had watched Starr Daily, Frank Laubach, Glenn Clark, Roland Brown, and Agnes Sanford pray. Then the Lord corrected his approach. “Steve, you quit analyzing me and you love me. You love to love me.” That became much of what he taught others: yield to the Holy Spirit, believe, and love the Lord rather than trying to make something happen.
In April 1956 Steve spoke at the Grand Canyon CFO in Arizona with Glenn Clark. He later remembered Grand Canyon and Shrine Mont as “the highest camps that I have ever been privileged to attend.” Glenn recognized something unusual about the week too. “Steve, this camp starts higher than most camps reach at the end of the week.”
But another thing Glenn told him stayed with Steve. Glenn did not want the camps built around his own personality or reputation. “I want these camps to be remembered as Jesus’ camps, not as Glenn Clark’s camps.”
Steve approached his own speaking in much the same spirit. Before going to the platform, he prayed that what he said would come from the Spirit of the Lord. “That’s exactly all the preparation that I make coming up to the platform.” Sometimes people later repeated something he had said and he had no memory of saying it. One listener remembered him saying that J-E-S-U-S stood for “Jesus even saves us sinners.”
In July 1956 Steve taught at the Ohio CFO at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio. Healings had taken place during the week, and he said “they have been considerable under the glory of God.” His emphasis was less on technique than on trust. People were healed, he said, when “they’ve quit trying and started trusting.”
He told of an engineer in St. Louis who led a large church but admitted that he wasn’t sure he believed in Jesus. Steve did not try to argue him into faith. Instead, he suggested an experiment in loving trust. “Just pray for a month.” The man did, and “it changed his life. And it changed the life of a lot of others around there.”
Steve believed Christianity belonged fully in the modern world. With airplanes becoming faster and predictions already being made about reaching the moon, he took Evelyn and Stevie to the St. Louis airport to watch the jets. “Jesus is the Lord of the Jet Age and He is the Lord of healing prayer.”
Healing was already part of Steve’s ministry at home. A woman in his parish had been healed of diabetes. Later she badly burned her hand on a pressure cooker, and a friend ran for the medicine chest. By the time the friend returned, the burn was gone and the woman could not tell which hand had been injured.
Another woman was hospitalized with severe arthritis and was thought to be dying. Her son-in-law asked Steve to visit. Steve prayed with her and told her to place her hands on the places that hurt and bless them in the name of Jesus. Two days later her son-in-law called. “She got out of bed yesterday and ran all around the hospital. Checked out this morning, jumped on a train, went to Nebraska to help a cousin of hers move.”
At camp itself, a woman asked Steve to pray for a growth on her back. He placed his hand on her back and prayed, “I pronounce you healed in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.” “It’s gone!” she cried. Steve quickly moved away and continued giving thanks to God.
At the Ohio camp Steve also told about his friend Dr. George Ritchie. During World War II, Ritchie became desperately ill while serving in the Army. His fever reached 107 degrees, and a doctor pronounced him dead. Ritchie prayed, “Jesus, I dedicate my life to you to be used any way you choose to have it used.”
Hours later a doctor noticed an eyelid move and drove a syringe of adrenaline into his heart. Ritchie returned to life. When he later checked his chart, he found that he had indeed been pronounced dead. A nurse confirmed it: “If we’ve ever had a dead patient in here, you were dead.” Ritchie went on to graduate with high honors from the University of Virginia medical school and practiced medicine in Richmond.
Steve later told Ritchie’s story to a psychiatrist friend. The man’s eyes filled with tears because he too had died on an operating table. He had seen “two tremendous doors. Not pearly colored, but slate gray.” The doors opened onto an overwhelming light and peace. His wife cried out to God, the doors closed, and he returned to his body. He opened his eyes and spoke to the surgeon, who was converted on the spot. For Steve, experiences like these belonged to the same reality he taught about at CFO: Jesus Christ was alive and at work, and Christians could trust him with both life and death.
Steve met Evelyn when he spoke at Second Presbyterian Church in St. Louis. They sat across from each other at dinner that evening. When Steve returned to speak again, they had a date and discovered that each had been praying for God to bring the right person into their life. Their prayer continued into their family. Before Stevie was conceived, they prayed that their child would belong to God, and after his birth they dedicated him to the Lord.
Steve described their marriage in terms that fit the rest of his teaching. “I love the Lord more than I love my wife. My wife loves the Lord much more than she loves me.” Rather than separating them, that first love drew them closer together. “Our marriage keeps getting sweeter and better and more wonderful as the days go by.”
Steve believed thanksgiving itself was part of spiritual health. “Wonder should lead to thanksgiving and thanksgiving leads to health.” That was also how he understood the Camps Farthest Out. What happened at camp was meant to nourish a person long after the week was over. “I get a whole bakery of the spirit at the camp farthest out and sometimes I feed on it.” For Steve Diller, healing prayer was ultimately less about learning a method than learning to trust and love Jesus. The lesson God had given him became the lesson he passed on to others: “You quit analyzing me and you love me.”
*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.