Treasure in an Earthen Vessel

Treasure in an Earthen Vessel

by Ruth Carter Stapleton

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

I don’t know how many answers you found this week, but it’s often been said that living in the growth and Christian growth is not a matter of finding answers, but it’s a matter of having attitudes changed. It’s when I get out of myself and out of that realm of being true to where I am in my growth that I can best be obedient and really see the greatest flow.

So it comes down to that point of really being honest, of really being true. When we hit that point of honesty, God can work. You know, we can pray for ourselves, we can ask for, we can draw to.

And we feel sometimes we are blocked and God’s not meeting our needs. He’s not answering our prayers. And it’s because we’re in some superficial level. I’ve had to learn that, you know, maybe I have some high-mighty desires and dreams for my spiritual life. But God says, “Well, where are you right now? What do you need right now today? What do you need in order to get through this moment?” And sometimes these things that I would request from God in order to make me fulfilled at the time are not things that may be spiritual or glorious or sound good. And yet that’s what my heart is crying out for at the time. I know at the very first of this year, in January, I sat down to really project in the future a vision for my life. I remember sometime last year I was with Tommy, it was the end of the season of CFO. And Tommy Tyson said to me, “Well, Ruth, what was the greatest thing that happened to you all summer?” And I thought about that and I had been from one camp to another and I had met all these beautiful people and there was all these answers to prayer. And so I got on this and I said to Tommy, “You know, I can’t single out any one thing.”

I said, “It’s just been…” and instead of saying just a lot of wonderful moments, I said, “It’s been just kind of a vicious circle.” Tommy said, “Well, it shouldn’t be that.” And I looked back and I know lights were touched. I know hearts were opened. I know people turned to Christ. And yet I really didn’t… didn’t… Oh, what do you say? I grew. That was… I know I grew last summer. But somehow I felt that I was kind of floundering. I was trying to be obedient moment by moment. And yet I realized that there is more to it than this. We have to live in the now, moment by moment. But it’s also good to have a vision or a goal or a dream. This is really prayer extending. And so I didn’t want that to happen to me this year. I didn’t want to go through this year, really just drifting from meeting to meeting, place to place, there, back home. And so I sat down in January and I made out a list. And I was going to get honest with God as to what I truly desired. And I would write down one thing and I’d look at it and I would say, “No, that’s not what I really want. That’s what I would like to want.”

And I would scratch that out. I would start again. And I guess it maybe took two, maybe three hours to finally get this list made out. And they were concrete things. They weren’t spiritual desires of being more loving and being more Christ-like. But they were concrete everyday things that I wanted to see happen in my home and in my life. One was to get out that newsletter that many of you received. One was to become a part of a foundation so that I could go out from a foundation. I don’t know if there must have been ten things on that list. I was looking at that list in June, the first part of June. And it was a miracle that all except one thing on that list had already been fulfilled.

That gave me a real sense of stability. I don’t think it was the highest in God’s vision of my life. But God honored what I needed at that time to come and meet the insecurities that I had and that I lived in. And this is the goodness of God. He’s going to take us step by step wherever we are. He can relate to us on our level.

So what we have to do is allow Him to relate to us on our level. Know what our level is. And that’s getting back to that thing of really being true to ourselves. So then, I think it was the 4th of July, after I realized that He had really completed every dream that I had, except the one, I decided to make another list for the rest of the year.

And it was amazing the difference in the two lists. I put down on this new list the deep desires of my heart that go all the way to the center of my being. I wasn’t capable of reaching that in January. Because these other things, these other surface needs had to be met. But now, I was at the place in July that I could really get down and say, “Oh God, with all of my heart and the deepest sincerity of my being, this is what I really desire.” And so I have six things on my list now. And I’ve presented these things to God. It’s a letting go and a releasing. So may I, this summer, and this fall, I can get back into this walking in spirit, living moment by moment with Him. And if I see Tommy in November, and he says, “What’s the greatest thing that happened to you?” I can say six things on one list, and I can say three, four things on the other list. I’ll know. And I can say, “These are the greatest things that happened to me in my life, personally.” And then I can look at it, and I can see all of the people I’ve met, and the lives that I’ve seen changed. And that will be the glory, too.

So maybe some of you need to do this. I mean, as you go home today. Maybe you’ve never really stopped to think, what do you want in life? I know we want God’s perfect will for our life. But that’s understood. We want to be more Christ-like. But in your everyday life, are you really truly happy? He says, “Make your request known.”

I think by doing this, it will help us to get honest. And to really be true to ourselves. Now, as we move out, in obedience to Christ, I have a scripture I wanted to read. I don’t think I’ll read it. I think I’ll just tell you what it says. I mentioned it once before. But it’s in Corinthians, when Paul talks about the earthenware pot that we are. The clay pot, the earthenware vessel. This is what we are. But within each one of us, within this earthenware pot, there is that treasure. That precious treasure.

Now, if we really and truly realize this, we don’t have to go home and try to save the world. We don’t have to go home and relate to all of our friends every single thing that we learned here this week. We don’t have to go home and begin to just reach out and manifest these gifts in our life to prove to them that God is abundant and supernatural and that we’re the channels.

We just have to let go and go home into our places, be ourselves, and be willing. You know, this is really the greatest word in ministering for the kingdom. To be willing. To not be afraid to step out.

To ask the Father to give you a discernment within your heart for the needs. You know, I remember about two and a half years ago, going out, going out, going out, going out. And one day all of a sudden, it hit me. It really hit my heart. The needs right there in my own neighborhood.

The need for healing right in my own neighborhood. The need for companionship and just love. And so often times, we are really blinded. We get so busy and so mind conscious of what we think God would like for us to do. Organize something or build something or work in a big way here or start a drive here. And then we get down where we are and we can begin to really see lives changed.

You know, I was talking one night about the lack of importance of leaders. I don’t know how you’ve been in your prayer groups. I don’t know if you’ve been bold enough to take the initiative. But I know in my prayer groups, the one thing I’ve tried to do is to kind of withdraw more and more and to see the others reach out more and more. Last week in this camp, you know, every camp is different.

If you’ve been to more than one, you can feel the personality of the camp. I remember I went to Alabama CFO one year and it was the first year that there was a real downpouring of the Spirit and there was real spiritual surgery in that camp because people had to be broken, you know, before they were willing to receive the love of God. They had to have barriers broken down. And everybody cried. I mean, you walked down the hall and everybody looked at you, they burst in tears. The songs, I mean, we sang Joah, but it was in a low key. And this was the tone of the camp all seven days. And everybody kept saying, you know, what’s wrong? You know, are the evil spirits around here? And everybody was looking for something wrong. And yet, this is what God intended for it to be. And the next year, it was just, it was so funny. Gertrude Dekock Keehn was there. It was the last time I’ve ever been on a camp with her. And the very first day, in the prayer group time, the Spirit fell on every prayer group in that camp. And He manifested Himself as joy.

And people were up all night, during the night, walking up and down the hall. Nobody wanted to sleep all week. There wasn’t one serious talk from the pulpit. Nobody had a serious conversation. You’d walk down the hall at four o’clock in the morning, and you’d just double up with laughter when you saw somebody. It was just joy. We’d go into the prayer groups, and we’d start to pray. And every prayer request was with praise and thanksgiving and joy.

But then, the next year, I wasn’t there, but I’m sure it was something different. Well, anyway, I was going to say something about the camp that I went to last week. It was very different from any camp I’ve ever been to. And I know it was what that particular camp needed, and it was completely different from this week. But there was a young girl in that camp. And she, when she was at the age of 11, her mother and father in another country had given her as a sacrifice for devil worship. And she had moved back to the United States, had married a Chinese, and he was a Christian. Well, for 12 years, in this little town, she has practiced this devil worship. And she, there was one CFO goer who was a friend of hers, this woman who had 10 children. And for 12 years, this woman has dedicated her life to this one girl, praying for her every day, loving her, sitting by and watching her go through these practices of devil worship. And periodically, the evil spirits in the girl would tell her to slash herself. And you wouldn’t believe the arms, the scars on her arms, where she had slashed and burned places on them. A beautiful person. But with that deep evil in her eyes.

Well, anyway, finally, after all of these years, this woman got her to consent to come to this camp last week. Well, she came and the camp happened to be right at the cemetery. And so for the first three days, this girl stayed in the cemetery all day long and all night long, just walking around. She wouldn’t let anyone pray for her. No, it was two days, I believe. She wouldn’t have any counseling. She wouldn’t talk to anybody. She wouldn’t go to the meetings. And that woman prayed. She got prayer groups to pray. The whole camp was praying for that girl.

One night, they had planned, a group of the leaders had planned to get together to pray for this priest who was coming into camp. That night, as every night before that, there was a group praying for this girl. And at 11 o’clock, she knocked on the door of the cabin where they were praying. And she said, “I’ll come for prayer.” Well, she came in. And so they ran out and they got several of the other leaders because this seemed to be one of the biggest needs in the camp. Well, there was a song leader and the rhythms leader and the two speaking leaders. Well, all of the leaders in camp ended up there at that cottage. Well, the girl went into a rage and finally through physical force, they held her to take the razor blades away. And everybody began… Well, at 2:30, I had to speak the next morning, so I went to bed. And then the other speaker finally, about 3 o’clock, he went to bed. And the guy woke up some of the others and they had a rotating system. Well, at 6 o’clock, finally, when everybody left her, she slashed her wrist and arms again and they had to take her to the hospital. So the whole night was seemingly a failure.

Well, I got up to speak the next morning and I was just exhausted. And so I said to the camp, “The leaders are not going to function today. They’ve been up all night, ministering. And so I’m going to ask that when they come to meal time or if you see one of the leaders walking across the campus, let them be alone today. And probably tonight. And give all the leaders 24 hours.” And I said, “You’re going to have to depend on the Spirit and you’re going to have to, if you see a need, you’re going to have to reach out to each other.”

Well, that night, when the other speaker got up to speak, he stood up and he says, “You know, I’m still too tired to get the message.” He said, “I’ve been resting all day. And I thought I would really have the strength tonight.” But he said, “I don’t get a message in the Spirit.” So he said, “I’m just going to ask some of you just to come up and just take over.” And so one would come up into the pulpit and stand there and she would say, “Well, I remember one particular…” she said, “You know, I went to that meeting that y’all had announced, where you’re going to have a workshop on the Holy Spirit.” She said, “I got there and none of the leaders there were to conduct it.” She said, “There was this woman over there and she was on her knees. And she turned to me and she said, ‘Would you pray for me?’ And the lady said, ‘Well, what’s your request?’ She said, ‘Well, I’d like to receive the infilling of the Holy Spirit.’ And what was so beautiful,” she said, “are you Protestant or Catholic?” The woman said, “I’m Catholic.” She said, “Well, I’m Protestant. Do you mind if I pray?” She said, “I would have before now, but,” she said, “I’m at that point.”

I have just got to have the fullness of the Spirit, even if it’s by the hands of a Protestant. And so the woman shared how she was raised in this narrow background of barriers and condemnation. And she had hated Catholics all of her life. And as God will do, her only daughter, when she met the man of her choice in life, he was a Catholic. She hadn’t been able to have a relationship, an open relationship with her daughter since then, because she couldn’t accept this. It was a total rejection, you know, of all of her training. She comes to this camp. She was very upset when she found out that the other speaker was a Catholic. But anyway, she went through these days, and she said, because the Spirit was so heavy on her that night, she was able to minister to this Catholic. Well, the Catholic, of course, had felt the same way, and there was that union. Then another person got up, and another person. And the stories were bigger and bigger and better of the way God used that whole day just to break everybody loose out of the shells they were in. And He drew the right person to the right one. The teenagers were ministering to each other. They ended up conducting that whole workshop.

They conducted rhythms, they conducted every phase of the whole camp that day. All right, the point is, you see, those of us who were invited here this week, you know, in the role of leaders, it’s really kind of, like I say, a role that we are playing.

No, it’s obedience to the Spirit, because that’s where we are in time. But when you really begin to realize that the same power is available to everybody, as every single person who came to that camp last week, I’m sure every person became a minister of the Spirit of Christ. And so when you go home, if you have that little bit of shyness, if you feel, you know, that you just don’t have the training, you just don’t have the experience, just know, He’s the power, He’s the source, He’s the strength, He’s the healer, He’s the baptizer. It won’t make any difference. I went to the, I know there are a lot of you from the Kentucky camp here. I was there three years ago. And it was the first camp I ever went to, when I took somebody from my Bible class. I took this young girl that, Bella knew in the class, but she’d come into this life of the Spirit. And, when I was there, I mean, when we were there, people would come up to her and say, because she was with me, they automatically put her in the role of her leader too, you know. And they would say, I’m a Jean, would you pray for me? Well, she’d just go in a panic, you know, and she’d say, “Wait a minute, I’ll find Ruth.”

Well, she was running around all day looking for Ruth, looking for Ruth. And everybody kept drawing her out. And finally, she said she just got so frustrated, and she never could find me. I never was available, and she could see the needs just falling up. So she said she just began to, in the same way that she had seen me do, you know, just reach out and say, “In the name of Jesus.” And she said, “Ruth, I can’t believe what happened. He used me.” She was so overjoyed with this. But she came back and she was a great… She said, “Listen, we’ve been sitting in this class all this time, listening, learning. We know all the principles up here.” She said, “And it works. We have the same power, Ruth has, you know.” As Jesus said, there was another Betty Cook, another woman in my Bible class, and she went to the beauty shop one day. And oh, yes, she’d been witnessing, you know. Sometimes it’s easy just to talk, especially if you like to talk. And she’d been telling Bertha, her beautician, about Christ, you know. And Bertha had become a Christian in the infilling of the Holy Spirit and so forth. And one day Bertha had Betty’s hair all soaked up, all the way.

And Bertha stopped and she said, “Betty, I can’t stand it another second. You have got to pray for me right now to be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Betty said, ba-ba-ba, you know. And as she said, her first thought was, well, where is Ruth? But she said she couldn’t go get Ruth with a hair soaked up, and Bertha was ready at that moment. So they switched chairs, and Bertha sat in the beautician’s chair, and Betty, with her soaked up hair, laid her hands. And she said, “Jesus, I’m stepping out of faith. Come to Bertha as her baptizer.” Betty was full of one. When the joy poured in, and the woman began just to praise the Lord in tongues. Betty’s out in her own ministry now. She goes every Thursday to the convalescent homes. She plays the piano, sings, witnesses, and then prays. Well, you see, this is what we go home to. Not a square box ministry. I hear people say, you know, I don’t know what my ministry is. Pray that the Spirit will reveal through prophecy what my ministry is. Well, maybe some of us will know for sure, my ministry is this, or my ministry is that.

But if you don’t know for sure, just know that your ministry is to be obedient to the Spirit. I know sometimes He uses me to teach. I thought for a long time my ministry was teaching. And then I found out one night when I was supposed to teach in my home. It was a mixed group of men and women. And I began to open my mouth and there was no power. I knew it. And I found out that in groups like that, I don’t have the ministry of teaching. If there is a man there that God anoints, it’s the man that was best to teach. I find many times when I’m in a group with women, I do have the anointing and the power to teach. But it’s not always the same. So we have to be flexible and pliable and let go and see what is our ministry here today in this group.

Maybe it’s in the home, maybe it’s in a circle somewhere else. And we have to remember too that we don’t have to have any experience. If you just came into the life of the Spirit this week, if you are absolutely brand new, one day, two days old, three days old, this is really the beautiful beginning. And you’ll find later on when you are real old in the Spirit, you’ll find out that you had more power in your life after this week for the next few weeks than you’ll ever have. Because, see, you can be more trusting and more childlike right now.

This daughter, Patty, when she was 13, she went to a Nicky Cruz crusade and she received, accepted Christ and was filled with the Spirit. Nicky Cruz took her to the minister’s house and he sat up with her until one o’clock. That’s that little story in that book, Power Through Release. That’s Patty. But anyway, at 13, she received the Holy Spirit and strayed away.

She strayed real far away. And she missed that opportunity of really having power in her life. Now, I just urge you right now that you begin to move out right now while you’re real new in the Spirit, so you can begin to see the wonders that God will work through you, whatever. Okay. But anyway, just this past year, Nicky Cruz was back in Fayetteville again. And Patty, she’s one child, one person, of all the people that I know in this world that is the most true to herself. You know, this is not always a beautiful sight to see.

But she’s true to herself. And there is a sense of honesty between her and anyone else in her relationships. And I know as a parent, sometimes I’m shocked. And because I do know her honesty and her activities, I stay on my knees more about her than anyone else. But anyway, when Nicky Cruz was coming some months ago, in her rebellious state, she asked, were we going to the crusade? And when she found out we weren’t, she said, “Alright, well then,” she wanted to go.

Of all the people in the world, all the Christians, he was the only Christian she’s ever been able to relate to. To Patty, Nicky Cruz is the manifestation of Jesus Christ. So she went to that crusade that night, and she came in at 12 o’clock. And she walked in the back door, and she was saying, “Praise the Lord! Hallelujah!” Well, I just came out of that bed like a bullet, because I never dreamed I would ever hear this child. And you know, I have thanked God for her. I’ve thanked God for the honesty. Well, for four years. But anyway, she began to tell me what had happened, and sure enough, as she sat there and listened to him, she was released of all of the bondage, and all of the spirits that had her bound. And she was brought back to herself and her sinner in Christ, and she was in love with Jesus again. And she went to a chaplain at the end of the meeting, after they had prayed for her, and she said, “You know, I want even more.” She said, “I know I’ve been filled with the Spirit once. But,” she said, “if there’s anything more.”

And she went to school the next day. And she was sitting there in a class. And Pat has always been kind of a leader. Not always leading in the right way, but a leader. And she was in this class, and it was one of these dumb-dumb classes that they call them a Crip Corps. All the football players go to this class. You know, it’s an easy C for a dumb person, and an easy A for a halfway smart person. So all the football players were in the ground. All the gang, they had this tremendous gang in Fayetteville. Well, the gang was in that group. Patty was in that group. Something like marriage counseling or something. I don’t know the name of it. But anyway, as they sat there, the boys began to laugh about what they had done at the Nicky Cruz crusade, the night before. Oh, they thought it was the biggest joke. And about 50 of these kids in this gang had gone there with all kinds of noise makers. And they would wait until Nicky got to the end of a sentence. And if you’ve ever heard him, you know, he speaks in this broken English, you can hardly understand it anyway. But just as he would get to the end of every sentence, they would let out with the noise.

And so there was no way that any person in this great big auditorium, which holds about 3,000 and was filled, no one could hear the end of any of the sentences. And people who had worked so hard on it were just believing over it, you know. And you know, that was one of the great manifestations to me, that it’s not by words. And it’s not by… Well, it’s just by the Spirit. And it’s not by the Spirit. Because the results of that crusade were fantastic. Jesus Christ, the Spirit of Christ, moved through there, and lights were changed, and they had more people coming to the altar than they had workers to minister. Well, anyway, these boys began to talk about Nicky Cruz and make fun. And something began to stir within Patty, and she told me later, she says, “You know, if they were talking about Jesus Christ Himself, I couldn’t have gotten as angry. But,” she said, “when they were talking and laughing and making fun of Nicky,” she said, “I stood up in front of that class. And,” she said, “I said to them, ‘Shut up right now. You don’t even know what you did, and you don’t even know what he is.’” She said, “I gave the testimony that I knew Nicky to have, because she had heard it back when she was 13.”

She didn’t hear it that night. But she gave this testimony, and she said, she looked back in the back, all these football players were weeping. And then she saw Jimmy. Now, Jimmy was the leader of the gang. The tallest boy, the most beautiful boy, the most prominent family in town. His parents are the most spiritual. And Jimmy was the leader of the gang. She said, “When I saw him crying,” she said, “I sat down fast.” But anyway, Sunday morning, the telephone rang. And it was Jimmy. And he said, “Patty, I want to ask you something.”

“It was for real what you said Friday in class, wasn’t it?” She said, “Jimmy, it really was for real.” He said, “If anybody in this whole school had said that, it wouldn’t have made a dent in me. I wouldn’t have even listened. But,” he said, “I knew if you said it had to be real.” And he said, “Patty, can you help me?” She said, “Yeah, I’ll be glad to.” She said, “I’ll pick you up in a few minutes.” So she came flying to me. She said, “Mother, what must I do?” I said, “Honey, just go and take a Bible with you too.” So she said, “Well, where is my Bible?” She hadn’t seen it for about three years. So we found the Bible. And she says, “Well, where is something in it? What does it say?” And I said, “Well, let’s just open it.” And we opened it and took, just touched one verse. And she read it and she said, “This is all I need.” So Patty went out that Sunday morning with the Bible with one verse and picked Jimmy up and they went out for a Sunday morning brunch. And she came in at one o’clock and she walked in the door and for the second time in her life I heard her say, “Praise the Lord, Mama.”

“Hallelujah, Jimmy’s saved.” She said, “But it cost me six bucks. He ordered a steak.” All right, that’s the power of a new Christian. And that’s the power of honesty. You know, when we are at that place and that level of really true honesty, you’re not going to draw everybody to you. Because that honesty within you is going to repel some people. And they’re going to reject you because they can’t take it. But there is going to be someone else at that level that they can take. And God’s going to provide the right person for everybody because He’s going to draw all people unto Himself. And so, if you can’t witness to everybody, okay, they’re not in your basket.

I think probably that might have been what Jesus meant when He told the disciples, when you knock on the door and they reject you, you know, don’t worry, just shake the dust off your feet. I don’t think He meant, well, just let them go to hell if they won’t listen. He didn’t mean that. He’s going to send somebody else to knock on that door. So we don’t have to really be frustrated. So just draw into yourself in that center of your being. Keep your eyes on Jesus. Be willing to obey. Be true to what you are.

Cliff, you have a last word you’d like to say? Thank you.