That HIll, That Year

Matthew 6:6 KJV

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

As I read this I recollect the year 1987. Only two years earlier I had taken my then pregnant wife to the city of Astoria, Oregon and submitted her and our (by this time two) children to embarrassing deprivations, all in an effort to do what I was clearly not capable of; planting a New Testament Baptist Church.

By almost every measure the attempt was failing.

• The two families that had said they were praying for a church both quit
• We received almost no financial support from churches of like faith
• Work was very scarce and I wasn’t good at job hunting
• The only building we had been able to secure for meetings was an abandoned gas station
• A third couple we had met and grown to love quit our small congregation

Word came to me that a church in town was without a pastor and the numbers of people meeting there had dwindled to very few – perhaps as few as our small congregation. Their doctrine was different than ours and I did not believe it would be appropriate or of the Lord to approach this group and ask them for their building. But I did ask God.

On a sunny spring day I parked myself on a hillside within sight of that building and opened my Bible to Matthew six and focused my prayers on verse six. I told the Lord that I did not believe I could ever tell a soul what I was asking for but that I was asking Him for that building. I drove to that hill and read to God Matthew 6:6 for what I think were months. 

God answered my prayer but not exactly as I expected. He did not give me that building, but he did, in fact, give me a church building. Having never told a soul of my prayer, one morning, as I prayed in my gas station study, the pastor of a different church in town came to pay me a visit. He, it turned out, was about to resign his pastorate. The church was a Baptist church but a part of a denominational organization and that denomination was not willing to aide this small congregation. Would I, they wondered, be willing to take over? God gave us a building and, through a process of course, a larger congregation. In a matter of a few months we had gone from desperation to becoming a thriving church with new members being added regularly and souls coming to know the Lord.

I cannot read Matthew 6:6 without remembering

• That year
• That hill
• That prayer and

That God is absolutely alive and working in my life.