Is It the Will of God?
56 minby Tom Walker
Tom Walker questions describing disease and death as God's will, reflecting on the character of the Father we turn to in prayer for healing.
Camp & Year: Washington CFO 1988
The Rev. Tom Walker is a United Methodist minister who served churches in California, including the congregation at Big Bear Lake, and later lived near Phoenix. He came to his first Camps Farthest Out camp in Northern California in 1961, where Frank Laubach and Agnes Sanford were speaking. He became a close friend of Agnes, and her understanding of prayer and the atonement became an important part of his own ministry. Tommy Tyson later crossed the country to perform Tom's wedding, with Agnes Sanford there to bless it.
About Tom Walker
The Rev. Tom Walker is a United Methodist minister who served churches in California, including the congregation at Big Bear Lake, and later lived near Phoenix. He came to his first Camps Farthest Out camp in Northern California in 1961, where Frank Laubach and Agnes Sanford were speaking. He became a close friend of Agnes, and her understanding of prayer and the atonement became an important part of his own ministry. Tommy Tyson later crossed the country to perform Tom’s wedding, with Agnes Sanford there to bless it.
Tom was raised in the South and learned to love Jesus from his mother. “I was highly privileged from the time I could crawl I knew Jesus as divine companion. I attribute it largely to my mother and to Sunday school teachers who knew Jesus as divine companion.”
He studied philosophy at Vanderbilt in Nashville. One day a professor asked why. “He said, why are you taking philosophy? And I thought a moment, didn’t take a very long moment, and I said, to find the truth.” The professor’s sarcastic response stayed with him. “He said, what do you plan to do with it when you find it?” Tom eventually found that truth was not simply something to understand. It was Someone to know.
In 1961 he went to the Northern California CFO, where about four hundred people gathered to hear Frank Laubach and Agnes Sanford. It was his first camp. He and Agnes became close friends. She taught him her understanding of the atonement, and years later Jim Christian praised Tom’s own teaching on the subject. “I have a friend who does a perfectly exquisite talk on the atonement.”
About 1966 Tom was a young Methodist minister living in Whittier, California. That year he was teaching school rather than preaching. Thelma Lee met him when he played the piano for one of her talks at a church in Pasadena. “And this young man had a very sensitive soul. I knew that.”
Tommy Tyson became another close friend. When Tom married, Tommy came all the way across the country to perform the wedding, and Agnes Sanford came as well to give the couple her blessing. “He came all the way from one coast to the other and did our wedding. Agnes was also at our wedding and gave us a blessing.” Tom and his wife had a son. By 1970 Tom was speaking at the Annual CFO in California and continued to speak at camps for many years.
He served as pastor of the United Methodist congregation at Big Bear Lake in the mountains of Southern California. It was a church where people knew how to pray. “There were people in that church that knew how to pray.” On one Christmas Eve Sunday, the congregation prayed for a young man who was about to lose a leg. He kept it.
But ministry also taught Tom how to love people who were difficult to love. In one church, a member worked against him. Tom learned to picture Jesus laying hands on her when he prayed for her. “You want more faith? Pray for more love and watch out when you do because it will happen.”
About 1982 Tom and his wife moved to Gilbert, Arizona, near Phoenix. The following year he spoke at the Washington camp with Eugene Wiesner, his first time speaking there. Wiesner contrasted Tom’s gentle manner with his own. “See, I’m not like Tom. Tom is the most gentle. The most… The most tender. The most sweet.”
In 1984 Tom spoke at the Silver Sierra camp at Shaver Lake. He had once noticed a sign on the podium there with the name of Jesus hidden within it. He returned to Washington later in the decade as well.
Tom’s teaching came back again and again to one idea: faith is relationship. “Truth is not conceptual. Truth is relational.” “It is relationship, not religion. God is not interested in religion. God is very interested in relationship.” And that relationship with Jesus reaches all the way into our relationships with other people. “Your love of Jesus is currently paralyzed at the point of the person you detest the most.”
Tom taught that Christians are God’s royal sons and daughters. “God looks at you through Christ-colored glasses.” “Jesus accepts you moles and all.” “What Jesus wants is to be Jesus as you.” He also taught gratitude as a spiritual discipline. “There is an art of spiritual judo that is available to every Christian sitting here. It is the attitude of gratitude.”
And he kept one of Agnes Sanford’s observations close to his heart: “Agnes used to say in impatience with people who were impatient, yes, I know all things are possible with God, but all things are not yet possible with Agnes.” “That has become a theme song of mine.”
*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.
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by Tom Walker
Tom Walker questions describing disease and death as God's will, reflecting on the character of the Father we turn to in prayer for healing.
Camp & Year: Washington CFO 1988