Two Feet of Track In the Desert

Two Feet of Track In the Desert

by Reginald (Reg) Goff

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

I have heard ever since I was a child that people referred to as persons who have power. And for a long time I did not see this power, only on special occasions when it was paraded. And I did not see this kind of thing they talked about in between these great acts of so-called power. And therefore I grew up with a hang-up on it. And only in the last few years, in fact the matter is the year that I wrote the book, was the first time that ever began coming to me what power really is. And I give the credit to our son Jim, who is a physicist. And he was working on a doctorate in nuclear physics, which is nobody’s… Anybody is pretty smart that even tries that. Or they’re dumb, I don’t know which. But it’s tough. And I said to Jim one day, I said, “Jim, help me. What is power?” Now, the strange thing, these things are always difficult to the person that doesn’t know. And they’re always so simple to the person that does know. And so he gave me a simple answer. He said, “Power is the rate at which energy is being used up.” Right, Lou? Okay. I have to check with my authorities here. Power is the rate at which energy is being used up.

Now, I have always interchanged the words energy and power. Always up to that time. I used them interchangeably. But not at all. You can store up energy in a storage battery, which is potential power, but it is not power. It’s potential power, but not power. It is not power until it begins to do something. And then it becomes power. When the energy begins to move and to turn the light on, run the motor, heat the heater, then it’s power. But it’s not power while it’s sitting in the storage battery. Now, when I began to realize this, the whole new world of power began to open up to me. And Jim said, “You can always tell whether power, whether it’s great power or little power, by measuring the speed at which it’s being used up. If it’s being used up very fast, then of course it’s powerful. If it’s very slow, then it’s not powerful. It’s weak.” And he began to help me on this. And then I began to go back to my Bible, and I found some strange things in the Bible, which I constantly do. That book, you know, it’s full of these things. But I found that power has some things that God has said about it that we Christians need to learn.

First of all, Jesus speak unto them. And I don’t have to remind you, do I, that we’re talking about the top authority now? Now, Jesus said unto them, “Behold, all power is given unto me in heaven and on earth.” Now, it’s a simple thing to say, if the power all belongs to Jesus or to the Godhead, it never belongs to you. Never. It never belongs to you. Now, that will stop you from getting a big head if you really absorb it. I don’t mean absorb the power. I mean absorb the thought. All power is given to me in heaven and on the earth. Psalmist David said in the Psalm 62, “God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this; that power belongeth unto God.” Now, I’ve had some people come to me and quote Christ in something that sounds like a contradiction to this. For, in Luke 10, after the disciples had been out on a wonderful journey, and they had seen the evidence of God’s power work in the healing and raising of the dead and all these marvelous things, and they came back just walking on air. But Jesus said to them… Now, listen to this carefully. I’m going to put it in my language, if I may. He said, “Don’t get excited because you’ve had a few great experiences.

Rather, get excited because you are connected to the source of the power.” Now, that’s the greatest thing I’m going to say this morning. I’ve got a few more things. But… “Don’t,” He said, “marvel not that you’ve had these experiences, but marvel that your name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life,” or that I am one of the true children of God connected to this enormous power we talk so much about. Now, then He went on and said what people quote me over and over again, so I’m going to do it so you won’t bother doing it to me. He said, “Behold, I give you power.” Now, if you stop there, then you’ve ruined all my argument. But if you read the rest of Scripture, I’m right. Now, because He goes on to say, “Behold, I give you power over all the power of the enemy.” That is not static power for you to dish out. That is the power to use this power over. And when you are overcoming, you have the power. It’s going through you. But you don’t have it. It isn’t yours. It only goes through you. “Behold, I give you power over all the power of the enemy.” Okay, now may I say this morning, and I realize this is bigger than I can live. I don’t make any question about it. I can’t always live what I preach, even if I try. But One greater than I said, “Preach your faith and not your doubts.” When you’re no more, you’re a doubt less. So I just live on it.

Now, I looked up some other things about power. Philippians 4 and 13: “I have strength for anything. I have strength for anything through Him who gives me the power.” You get it? I have strength for anything through Him who gives me the power. I know it isn’t mine. But God gives it to me. And I love this one in 2 Corinthians 4 and 7, which is the New English translation: “We are no better than pots of earthenware.” Did I hear any amens? “We are no better than pots of earthenware to contain this treasure. And thus it proves that such transcendent power does not come from us, but from God alone.” And then the last one, I think, is the capital. James 5, 16: “Tremendous power is made available when a righteous man prays.”

Tremendous power is made available when a righteous man prays. This is not talking about righteous meaning goody-goody. Not that kind of righteousness at all. For my righteousness, if I have any, comes because Christ has stood before me, before the tribunal of God, and I am standing in the shadow of His righteousness. And any righteousness I have is because I am a Christian, not because I’m a goody-goody. Not because I do good deeds. My righteousness is through Christ and Christ alone. And that’s why I can stand there just as righteous as you, though you may be much better than I am. But I stand on the same righteousness as you do or anybody else. And you do to see with us.

“Tremendous power is made available when a righteous man,” not a goody-goody. I’m emphasizing this morning. Because I see too many people who are running around thinking because they do good deeds, they’re righteous. Oh, no. Oh, no. Righteousness comes through Christ alone. And what He has done for us. All right. Now, when we talk about power being the rate at which this is being used up, I had a problem, which I have lots of problems. I think I’ve been a problem child all my life. Problem husband, too. But we’ll leave that alone.

I said to our son, Jim, “Help me with the problem.” He said, “What?” Well, I said, “You know, in our home we have a candelabra there with three sockets in it.” That used to be the deal, you know, 30 years ago. And I said, “It’s only got one circuit going out to one source. One circuit coming in there. But I can screw in a 10-watt bulb in one socket and I will get 10 watts.” He said, “That’s right.” I said, “If I put in a 50-watt bulb in the next socket, I get 50 watts.” “That’s right.” Now, one time I made a terrible mistake. And I said, “If I put in a 1,000-watt,” and a man in the audience says, “You’ll blow a fuse.”

So I don’t say it anymore. If I put a 10-watt in, I get 10 watts. If I put in a 50, I get a 50-watt. 50 watts a lot. If I put in 100, I get 100 watts in the noise of why. The same source, the same circuit. Now, tell me why. Oh, he said, “That’s easy.” He said, “Listen to this carefully now. The amount of energy going over a circuit at any given time is exactly equal to the load called for.”

And Edison and all the rest of the Sylvania and everybody else has made bulbs that call for 10 watts and they get 10 watts. Not 15, not 25, 10. And if you put above it calls for 50, it gets 50. Do you know I became a shouting Methodist when I saw this? Ha! Man alive! I saw something that really blessed me and has blessed me all my life since. And that is this. I, if I am connected to an adequate source, which God is an adequate source, and Christ is the proper connection of the Holy Spirit, however you want to put it. If I am connected to the proper source, then all I have to do to have ample power… Now, listen to some of you weaklings. Ha! You people are always down. Never have power enough for anything. Can’t get going. Listen. All I have to be sure of is that I’m connected to the adequate source and know enough to ask for what I need. That’s all. And then I heard Paul in the back of my mind saying, “God will not allow you to suffer and you to be tempted beyond what you’re able to bear, but with that temptation will make a way of escape.” Now, may I paraphrase this according to Reg.

If Phillips does it, I can too. “Who will not suffer you to be tempted beyond what you’re able to bear, but with that temptation will provide enough power to win.” That’s exactly what I’m saying. And that is, say amen, Marie. They’re awfully quiet this morning. I pay these people up here to say amen and they forget to do it.

Yes. It’s in the book. I’m the best book salesman you ever know. No wonder it’s gone through five editions. The amount of energy going over a circuit at any given time is exactly equal to the load called for.

Now, and God is saying, “I will not allow you, my child, to be put under the fires of temptation greater than I have power to give you to win.” And so He has said, “Ask that you shall receive.” And He meant it. But you and I have to know how much to ask for. You know, this brought a wonderful calmness into my life. Well, you think I’m calm or not, but this did bring a calmness into my life. I don’t have to run around all filled with power, you know. All pepped up, you know, praying loud and screaming at God and yelling at Him and getting a big committee and all of them, you know, praying along and using all the words. No. I just run along that little old ridge and I have a temptation and say, “Well, 15 watts will do, Lord,” and He gives it to me. And I get into a bigger temptation and I say, “Lord, it’s 25 this time.” And then a real doozer comes along and says, “Lord, I’ve only had a thousand.” And I get it. You see what I’m saying? When you are connected to God and know you’re connected to God, you have an adequate source, you are connected to it, and you have the right to ask for it and the amount of energy coming to you at a given moment will be exactly what you call for.

How do you know your temptation? That’s up to you. You know how much you can stand; nobody else does. That’s not a facetious answer. I know in certain areas how much I could stand, but you wouldn’t know how much I could stand. You see? You know this is my self. This is your own self. And you’re the one that asks. So it makes it perfect. It’s all said, see? And of course, I don’t think God worries if you ask for a little too much.

Because He’ll give you what you need, not what you maybe, you know, extra enemy. Now, let’s go on. I’ll never get done here this morning. We go on talking here. Now then, the next thing that Jim taught me was power is never resident in the conductor. Now, let me give you a simple illustration, which I thought of this morning, again, while somebody was dripping water. And I was awake and couldn’t get up.

Sure, I dripped my water. Turned my faucet on. But, where’s that boss? He doesn’t mind me ever making fun of this, does he? Where is he? You don’t mind, do you? I was lying in bed, and I looked up at the ceiling, and I saw a new illustration I’d never thought of before. Supposing that you have a wire going across here, and the light is burning, so you know that wire is full of power. It’s being transferred across. But, if I take a pair of snips and snip a piece of that wire off, there’s no power in it.

Is there? Better not be grounded. He’s getting earthy now. You see, the electricity is not resident in the conductor. It only flows through when there’s a job being done. And when that job is done, Jim said to me, it is all used up.

Now, my friends, you may have had a fantastic experience yesterday. But that does not give you power for today. And because you were high yesterday and the power of God was flowing through you, does not mean that you’re kind of a person at all. It simply means that in that situation, God was gracious and wonderful to give through you the power that is necessary for a job He wanted done.

And when we begin to see this, you know something? This will take an awful lot of begging out of your praying when you see this, if you really see it. It will take a lot of begging out of your praying. “Please, God, dear God,” like as if He had to be persuaded and hadn’t given you enough the first time when you asked. Now, but the power is never resident in the conductor. It only passes through. I said to, or we, I thought at the time about a man that I knew who had a fantastic experience with God. I don’t claim these great experiences. I have never had visions of Christ and things. I have felt Him and known Him, of course. But as far as being a visionary of things, that’s not my way of living and thinking. And I think it’s wonderful if you are, that’s great, but it’s just not my way. But this man had a tremendous experience with God. And he became so puffed up about it. They ran around for two weeks among prayer groups in his city saying, “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, you’ll get hurt. I’m full of power. Don’t touch me, don’t touch me.” Man, if he just said that to me, I’d have made a flying tackle and hit him right in the middle.

I would have, whoop! I wouldn’t have been one better scared to get knocked down. He didn’t have any power, all he had was power of ego. That’s all he had left. And you can stuck a pin in that and you can, please. Now, now, God gives us this power to do the work that God needs done to build the kingdom of God.

And God always wants to build the kingdom of God and this will help you in your praying for healing if we can get it into our thinking that God wants that person well. I have a new book that I carry on my book table and I’m doing a little of all the books on healing and largely because of the title. Now, the book is good but I know other books that I think the inside’s better. But the title of this book is worth the price of the book. You know what it is? God Wants You Well, by Blackburn, an Episcopal rector. Just a new book. Now, listen. You can hand that book to anybody with no resentment. You hand the most books on healing and they kind of, it’s a healing book but anybody that’s ill will look at it and God wants you well and they’ll stop and listen to it and read it. It’s a fantastic book from the title itself. When we begin to realize this fact that God wants people well, then we want to become conductors for that person at the moment. And when it’s all over, I have no power left at all. I’m down back to rage which is nothing. Now, I want to say that this power as we give, comes to us upon request from God.

Not crying and yelling at the top of my voice. Not necessarily a great amount of emotion and I love emotion as much as anybody does. I love the way Marge gets us all emotional and she does a beautiful job at it. I guess that’s why we ask her back, Marge. Over again.

The vine and the branches is the beautiful story of this. You cut the branch off, it dies, no fruit, leaves will fall off, nothing happens. But as long as it’s connected to the vine, the sun may beat upon it, the storm may lash it, and all these things, but the sap will still keep coming up from the vine into the branch and out will come the fruit in the end. This is the story, you see. “I am the vine,” Jesus said, “and ye are the branches, and without me ye can do nothing.”

I think one of the greatest ministers of our age is Dr. Halverson of the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. If you ever get a chance, go hear him. If you want to hear a great sermon, go to hear him. I have traveled and worked with him for years. We worked with him in retreats. He wrote a book and sent me a copy of it. A Mature Christian or Christian Maturity I believe it was called. Now it’s a good book and please buy it for his sake but I can tell you the whole book in one sentence. I don’t want to charge anything for it. When a Christian realizes that he can do nothing of himself, he’s mature. That’s the book. When a Christian realizes that he can do nothing of himself, then he is mature. And I think he’s correct. That’s really correct. Now then. This power belongeth unto God. How does it work? Well, Jim took us down to the laboratory at Case Technological Institute in Cleveland where they were working on some space shots. He was working in cosmic ray at that time and had the wonderful privilege of being one of the first people to ever invent something that really could measure cosmic ray. He took me down and showed me a gondola there that was all full of highly expensive equipment which he said took them six months to get ready and then they found so much out in one shot that it took them two years to analyze it all and they got it back.

Packed with instruments of all kinds. His was a little tiny camera that had been built so that it could shoot highly sensitized plates out into the stratosphere, and then it could be brought back into a lead and enclosed in a lead and kept in that until it was brought down, so it couldn’t be contaminated or changed. And this came back with a stack of these old plates that had been taken out so many indoors and by electronics either from a plane or a high tower. He could follow that and make it send them out to the intervals he wanted to and control it. But they had this already, and they had that little machine, that little camera, that had been tested perfectly. It was new. They had tested the battery. It was six volts. Everything was in perfect shape. And then he went in one day and strapped the battery in, and of course the battery or the camera had to be strapped in a certain place because they had a little hole in the side where these plates had to shoot out, you know, the stratosphere. And I called it a hole. He said, “No, that’s a port.” But anyway, out to this little port, this little end of the camera was stuck. It had to go into one place. So they strapped it all in.

But there wasn’t room for the battery right close to it. And they went across in the other part of the gondola, just a few, not so very long, maybe about two feet or so, and strapped the little battery in across on the other side of it, and wired it across, and went back to the table, the instrument table, and gave it the impulse to go, and it didn’t go. And they did it, and did it, and did it, and did it, and got madder by the minute. They had checked it on the table many times. It was a perfect shape, the battery, the camera, everything, and it wouldn’t work. They took the camera out, tried it on the desk. It worked just beautifully. Put it back in, it wouldn’t work. And then he said he’s taller than I am, and these people are always looking down on you, making us look up at them. You know, I looked up and Jim said, “Dad, a couple of scientists like ours should have had more sense. We should have known what was wrong immediately, instead of wasting a half a day.” He said, “Finally we took our meters, and as we gave it the impulse to do it, we checked the flow of power at the camera.

I found it was only four and a half volts. Not enough to run the camera.” Now the battery was full, six volts. It was losing a volt and a half in the line somewhere. Now get this, folks, real carefully. They had to cut that wire off and went to a 16 gauge wire. Now that’s still a small wire, but it’s a mighty big wire for six volts. And when they wired it across with a heavy wire, lo and behold, your first impulse weighed and worked perfectly. No line loss. Some of you have already gotten the point. They can see it on your faces. How many times has God sent the exact amount of something to solve the problem, and sent it through us. And we have been too small a conductor, and it hasn’t come out long. It has come out force, pressure, and all kinds of things.

And this just hurt me. It really did. And I went back and I looked at it and I said, boy, how many times? Has God failed to get done what He needed to do? Because I was too small a conductor.

And this really… it really bothered me for weeks after I saw this. Now then. You see, you can have resistance by a thing being just too small. And the other day a high school kid came up to me and said, “I’d like to give you another point for your sermon.” I said, “Great. All I’ve got somebody gave me. Give me another one.” He said, “Well, you know,” he said, “the impurities in that wire can stop the flow of power too.” I said, “Oh. Here I go again.”

Hitting me every side. The impurities in the wire. And it goes off in heat. And it dissipated. And the power never goes through to do the job that should be done. Now when I began to see this, I began to see the power of God in a totally different way than I’d ever done before. And then Jim said, here he took a pair of pliers and struck the wiring in that gondola. It was full of wires. I gasped. And I said, “Jim.” He looked at me funny. I said, “Well, you could break those wires.” Listen to this carefully. He said, “Dad, if those wires can be broken, we want them broken.

Now, down here, where we can fix it, not after six months work in the stratosphere. And six months to wait because the wire gave way.” He said, “We want it broken if it can be broken down here.” And I again reverted that to myself. And I saw for the first time why God many times had to use somebody else when I wanted that job. And I had been put in the testing lab. And I had winced. I had refused. I had broken. And God had to use somebody that didn’t know as much as I did, I thought. It wasn’t near as capable as I was to do that job. And God had to use them. Why? Because they took the testing that God gave them. I think we need to see this. If you and I ever want to be real conductors of the power of God, we are going to have to stand the test so that God knows where… what will happen when God gives us the job. And when that pulse of power goes through us, it’s not dissipated. And it’s not minimized or made smaller. And it goes right through and the job is done. And let me tell you something. If there is one problem, perhaps, between the races that we’ve had, it’s because we Christians, and I’ll say we white Christians, have been this white.

And the power of love which we talked about didn’t come out the other end, the way it ought to do. You know, I have to tell a joke. They say I never should do it. At one of our great Methodist conferences, they had a colored bishop, a black bishop. I guess I don’t like the word colored. Now what do you do? Black bishop? I have a terrible time. We laugh at all my vocabulary. But I had this black bishop who was going to speak one night, and the white bishop was speaking the night before. And when he got up, he said, “We’re very, very happy to have so many of our colored folk here with us tonight.” And he welcomed them very much. Very lovely about it. And the next night, the black bishop came up, and he welcomed everybody and said, “We’d like to welcome especially all you colored folk.”

Now then, let’s just go on or we’ll never get anything done here. I’d like to say something today that I hope you will think about a great deal when we’re gone. I constantly hear it implied, at least, that by my good works, God really has to take notice of me, and He really has to give me things. Certainly an entrance into heaven and all this, because I’ve done this, that, and the other. You know, I’ve noticed as a pastor, it’s amazing how good a person becomes once they’ve died.

You know, you heard the story in the old days about when they used to sit up in the front, the family sat in the front seat. They didn’t, I was a child. And the husband was supposedly up here in the casket, and the pastor was doing what he could do to tell all the great things this man did. And what he was, eulogizing him. Finally, the mother nudged the older boy in the ribs, and she said, “Son, go up and look in that coffin, it ain’t your paw he’s talking about.”

I’m amazed at how good people become when they die. And how God just has to take them in, because of the good things they did on earth. Now let me say something I hope you will never forget. This power cannot be bought.

It cannot be bought. It is a gift of God. It cannot be bought. A good story of this in the scripture is, if you go into the Acts, you’ll find there was a man called Simon the sorcerer. Simon had been making his living making people think something wasn’t what wasn’t. However you want to say it. He was a sorcerer, a magician. Now he had become a Christian. And for you ministers that are here, if you don’t agree with what I’m saying, I wish you’d check me afterward. But it seems to me that Simon was a real Christian. Because there are three words used about Simon, which I would class as a Christian. First, he was converted. That’s a good start, isn’t it? Second, he believed. That’s a good addition. And was baptized. That’s a good addition. Now I think that’s a Christian. Wouldn’t you? Someone that believed and was converted and baptized. I don’t know what else you want.

So he was a Christian. But you know, Simon had a background that deviled him for a while, unlike lots of us do, with our subconscious mind. And when Simon saw the disciples laying hands on Peter, and them receiving great gifts of God, Simon came up to Peter and said, “Peter, how much does this cost?” That’s what he said. Read your Bible. How much does it cost to get this gift? He wanted to do it too. He wanted to get with it. Peter was a little rough. Peter never would have lasted in any Methodist church 30 days.

Peter turned on this Christian, this good Christian, and said to him, “I perceive you’re in the gall of bitterness.” How long would your people stay in your church if you told the best deacons in the morning, Sunday morning, that they were in the gall of bitterness? They’d have a meeting right away. Right after the meeting was over. So I think he was a Christian, but he didn’t savor the things of God. He still was running back in the subconscious mind on the idea that you can buy your way, you can get it by manipulating, you can do these things. And Peter said, “I see you’re in the gall of bitterness, and repent of this, lest something terrible befall you.” You cannot buy it. And you and I are going to have to realize the fact that it’s our trust in the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and in His atoning grace on the cross, is the only reason that I have any right to any of this at all. But there it is. And that’s it. Now, I want to make a conclusion by saying these things. First, one lone person can be a fantastic conductor of power. One lone person.

I wonder sometimes why it is that we try so often to get so many… Now, I believe in numbers, which we’ll be talking of later in the week. There is a place for numbers and the reason. But I, for the first 30 years or 25 years in my ministry, I literally thought that the more people you get prayed, the more after God was going to do something. I don’t now at all. But I did. Call everybody, call prayer, call across the nation, everybody. You’re nobody praying. In other words, if you’ve got enough praying, God had to do something. That’s in the back of your mind, or don’t tell me it isn’t. But it’s not right. It’s incorrect. One person can be a fantastic power. Let me give you an illustration. Two young men and their wives came to our church. And they joined our church and they had tremendous experience with God. They were Christians when they came, but they came in with tremendous new experiences. And they got the idea they wanted to go out and make all the money they could make in four or five years, and then come back and start an orphanage because they had a special love for little children. So since their wives were competent secretaries and both of them were geological engineers, petroleum engineers, they go into a foreign country and get fabulous pay, all four of them.

And since they were not going to spend the money in riotous living, they could stash it away and bank it up, and they could soon make a killing to come home and do something. That was a wonderful idea. They went away to Saudi Arabia. They’d been gone about two years. And now you see in this letter one of the most cherished possessions I have in my files out of my ministry. Dan Edwards said, Dear Reg, I’m sorry we haven’t written this off and we haven’t even honored to use your apologies, you know, like men do because we don’t seem to like to write a letter somehow. And anyway, he said, but I had to write and tell you what happened yesterday. He said, we’re in the middle of the desert. We’re in a compound. Now, every vehicle that leaves this compound, we know what it is, the size of it, how much gasoline it has, or petrol as they call it there. We know who’s in it. We know how much water they have, how much food they have. We know how long they can live in the desert. And every vehicle that’s kept track of on a huge wall, on a big blackboard on the wall, two men had gone out in a Jeep and the desert had swallowed them up.

And they had done everything in the world and they could not find any trace of these men at all. They called the army in and they crisscrossed the whole part of that country in a pattern with airplanes. Couldn’t see a thing. The time went by and it got closer and closer to the time they knew these men would perish in the desert. And Dan said, I came back in from my pattern, my search with my driver. And when I went in and I grabbed a cup of coffee and a sandwich and I sat down at the table to eat it while the vehicle was being refueled. He said, the place was bedlam, the tension was terrible, people were getting angry at each other, and the intercoms barking back across the airplanes and everything else, and everything was just in an awful uproar. He said, right in the middle of all that something seemed to say to me, “Dan Edwards, why haven’t you prayed?” Now Dan was a good Christian, but he hadn’t just taken time to pray. He said, I put my head down, on my hands, right in the midst of that, and I didn’t care who saw it. And he said, I said, “Oh God, these men are going to die. Help us to find them, please.”

He said, I rolled to my table, grabbed my sandwich, left my coffee, went out the back door, and my Jeep and driver were just driving up. I jumped in and said, drive in the desert. Didn’t take a pattern, didn’t ask where to go, just drove in the desert. Said we’d gone several miles, when suddenly in front of us was about two feet of track. That’s all. In the desert sand, just two feet. Said we jumped out, got down our hands and knees, examined it. We knew that by the size of the tire, we knew by the traction which was going, where it was going a certain direction, and it was the same kind of vehicle these men were in. No proof it was, but it could be. So then he said, we started. And he said, then we’d pick up another foot, just a little piece, and the sands would cover. Another piece, another piece. And he said, we drove and drove across that desert, and came to a wall. And there were the two men, almost dead. Another few hours and they would have gone. Under a lip of a cliff. And they’d even pulled their Jeep up under it. Out of the sun. That was why the airplanes, nobody could spot it. And the tracks were blown over and covered.

Now he said, when we started out from that place, he said, we’d roll this street as though there was a reel in the front of our Jeep just pulling us directly right to that place. And he said, nobody will ever tell me, I don’t care what they think, but nobody will ever tell me, but God didn’t answer my simple prayer. One person. To find those men and save their lives. So one person can be a fantastic power to do the will of God. Groups can be tremendous. Peter, in jail. Possibility. Death to mortal. Who knows. That’s common in those days. And a little group went into our house. Scared, panicky. Barred the doors. Put blinds on, everything else quiet, and went to pray. And before they’d got praying, all good, Peter was knocking at the gate. And you know the story. This could be multiplied thousands of times, not only in the Bible. But this could be multiplied thousands of times. Where two or three little groups, realizing the presence of Jesus, can become tremendous power channels. And tremendous channels for God to do what He wants to do. A church can become a fantastic power. Our little church stuck away in the hills of Wyoming, in an old town of less than 5,000 people.

And a lovely girl was back at Mayo’s for an operation which they thought might take her life. She had been going back to Mayo’s for four years. They’d been cutting away more and more of her face with cancer. Until now she had only one eye. No cheekbone on one side. Part of her jaw was gone. All covered a big black patch. But the brave soul kept on working, kept it going. Now she was back at Mayo’s. And they had… the cancer had gone into the palate and into the spine at the back of the throat. This was it. And they sent word to the church and said, “Margaret is back there. She’s one of our girls. Will you pray for her?” We had never in our lives… never… had we ever prayed publicly for somebody’s physical healing like that in a Sunday service.

I felt led as we led this morning… that morning I said, “Anyone who wishes to come to church tonight, we will have special prayers for Margaret.” I got the shock of my ministry. When I walked to the side door on the platform, thinking that her personal friends would be there, and some of the good praying people would be there. But that’d be it. To see the church filled and the overflow full. And I couldn’t believe what I saw. Because we knew nothing about healing in those days. Nothing. Oh, we all said we believed it, you know, yeah. Just like everybody else does. But anyway, I didn’t know what to do. I said, “I don’t know what to do. I never went to healing service. I never read a healing service or anything else. I don’t even want to stay up in the platform. I don’t even want you to.” So I came right down and stood right in the aisle with the people. And suddenly into my mind came the idea of the Old Testament, how they took things and held them up, and waved them before the Order of God, and I said, “Let’s all stand. And let’s take Margaret as though she were an old child. And let’s hold her up in the presence of God.”

Nobody prayed audibly. We just held her up. And I said, “Amen.” And we went home. And the next morning we received a call from Mayo saying, “They brought Margaret to the operating table and took her back. They won’t tell us anything.” Her father. He said, “We’ll call you as soon as we know.” Four o’clock that afternoon we received the word. The reason they couldn’t tell us anything was because when the doctor already started putting Margaret partly under the anesthetic, and when he took her mouth and opened it to take a last look in before he would take the instruments and start to cut, knowing full well that they might take her life right there. And he said that himself. And suddenly as they looked down her throat, what they had been watching for two weeks was not there. Praise God. And they took 18 pieces out of her throat and sent them down to the laboratory and that’s when they sent her back to the room and could not say anything because they didn’t believe it. They wouldn’t believe it. And they wouldn’t tell their father. They said, “We don’t know. It came back up, no cancer.” They wouldn’t believe it. And they sent it to an independent laboratory outside of Mayo. That’s when the long wait came before in the afternoon.

And the word came back, no cancer. And Margaret was home at work on Wednesday of that week. Well, I’m saying here a church who knows something in the dynamic of God and knows how to love and become love channels. For that’s what it is we’re talking about. We’re talking about power, but there’s only one power in the kingdom of God and that is love. There’s no other. This is it. God does everything out of love. He does everything for love. He does it because He loves us. And all you can go on down the road. Now quickly, nations can become tremendous conductors of power for God. I well remember the British Empire back in the days when they said the sun never set on the British flag. And when they were sending out their vessels all over the world and colonizing Middle Islands and parts of the nations wherever they were. And everywhere they went, the missionaries went with them and they established missions. And England became the greatest nation in the world. And then England began to be more concerned about the dollars they could make in those places than the missionaries they were sending. And England started down. And today England would sink, not theater, but would sink literally into nothing if the American dollar were pulled out from under her today.

Her pound would have no value at all. She is nothing in the animals of the world. I can say that because I was a British subject all my life until I became an American citizen. Now, then that was tossed to us. And America became the greatest nation in the world. And God gave us the world and power of the whole world, literally. We were the controlling power of the world. Less than 50 years ago. And where are we today?

Where are we today? If we could have given all what we have given to the world out of love, the world would have beat everybody down that was trying to hurt us. But we gave it with strings. We gave it ifs and buts. If you’ll do this. And today we’re not in very good shape as you know.

Let me speak of the Methodist Church. I can’t speak of it because I am a Methodist minister. The year that I was born, 1907, now you know how old I am. The year I was born, 1905, what am I talking about?

I suddenly realized I better not start lying up here. In that year, listen, there were more missionaries in the Methodist Church around the world in that year than there is today. That’s right. And one of our larger denominations, not the Methodist, in the last two and a half years has closed up a hundred preaching places between Denver, Colorado, and St. Paul, Minnesota. A hundred churches have closed in one denomination. And what I’m saying to you today is this. If you believe what I’m saying today, it’s about time we begin to pray for our nation. And to learn to pray with power for our president.

And I’m going to tell you how to pray for him before the week’s over, I hope. Because I don’t think it helps much to pray for the president. I really don’t. What’s the use in praying for the president if his advisor is giving the wrong information?

I think we do broader praying than we’ve ever known before. And we better learn this. I call it situational praying. And I’ll be talking about that before the week is done. Now, what I’m saying here is, to each one of us today, and let me just reiterate and quit. Power belongeth unto God. It never belongs to us. Power is the rate at which energy is being used up. And the amount of power is always equal to the load called for. It is never resident in the conductor itself. It only passes through. We must have clean connections or part of the power is dissipated. We must get rid of the impurities in our life. Because that too can dissipate the power.

Persons, churches, small groups, nations, all of them have the glorious opportunity of being tremendous power for God, power channels for God. And remember what we said in James. Tremendous power is made available when a righteous man prays. Our Father, ours would not explain all the things we’d like to talk about this morning. But help us somehow to get out of the fuzziness of prayer and power. And come back to the facts, the scientific facts of power and life. And begin to live and to walk like children of God. Knowing that there is the power that for every situation we have. If we can only be connected to that power and be clean channels for that power to work through. This we ask in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.