"Faith Promise"
Sermon Transcript for April 10, 2005
By Dr. Phyllis Corbitt
Thank you much. Bless the Lord, oh my soul and all that is within me! Bless His holy name. How blessed we are to be able to be here this morning in this beautiful sanctuary on this gorgeous spring Sunday morning to worship the Lord and just exercise the faith promise. Praise His holy name! It’s exciting! Now you may not have known that the faith promise was in the Bible, but I want you to listen as we read this old, old story about Peter healing the crippled beggar. And the faith promise is right there. I also like to think it’s sort of a Gospel in a nutshell. But I’m going to read it for you even though you know it very well. “One day Peter and John were going up to the Temple at the time of prayer at 3:00 p.m. in the afternoon. Now a man crippled from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful where he was put every day to beg from those going in to the Temple courts. When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Then Peter said, ‘Look on us,’ as if to say, ‘Do we look as if we have money?’ Look on us! So the man gave him his attention expecting to get something from them. Then Peter said, ‘Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk! Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up; and instantly the man’s feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he walked with them into the Temple court, walking and jumping, and praising God. When all the people saw him walking and praising God, they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at the Temple gate called Beautiful and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.”
Now Peter and John were going about their everyday tasks. I don’t think this was a strange occurrence for them. I think it was their nature, their habit to go to the Temple to pray daily. I don’t know that they always went in through the gate, Beautiful, but they probably did most of the time. And we are told that this beggar was carried daily and laid at that gate. And the Bible says that he was somewhere in the 40’s. So this man had been brought there for years. So we know that he was a fixture. Now we don’t know what Peter and John’s attitude had been toward him before. They may have sort of gotten tired of him because he was not a lovely sight. Your beautiful sanctuary here I don’t think you’d like to see a beggar like this beggar. Now remember, we are back in Bible times. No hot baths, no deodorants, no shampoos, no body lotions. I mean straight out body odor. Long, tangled hair and beard; he was a mess! And he wasn’t able to do anything for himself. And back in those days, I see him not even able to sit up right because with no help he would have never had exercises, he would have never had physical therapy, he would have never had all of these new modern machines we are use to. He was helpless. He was left to lie wherever he was put. And they said they had to carry him. He thought all he had to do was just be carried every day to the gate. Because he would get a few sheckles, he could keep body and soul together. He was a mess! Not the type of thing you want to advertise your church with. But he was there!
Now I imagine from time to time, Peter and John did throw him coins. They may have stopped from time to time and talked with him about the weather, about the fishing conditions. I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t care; maybe they didn’t care. But that particular morning, some Scriptures say John fastened his eyes. This one says he looked him straight in the eye. But for some reason or other, he got Peter’s and John’s attention. How? Why? Because of Pentecost! Oh, that’s what makes the difference! If you haven’t had a personal Pentecost this morning, oh let’s open our hearts to the Lord because He told us to tarry, to tarry until we be in due with power more than I. Not to do, not to do but to be! To be what? —Witnesses! And that’s what happened to Peter and John. They had been baptized with the Holy Ghost. The blinds had been taken off their eyes. They saw that man that morning through the eyes of Jesus. Oh, dear ones, if we could but see through the eyes of Jesus as we look at these pictures up here, as we walk through the streets of Franklin, as we walk through the halls of our places of business. Oh, we are told to go to the world and make disciples going into all the world. That means your world, whatever your world is—whether it’s the world of retirement, whether it’s the world of business, whether it’s the world of teaching, or preaching or homemaking. Go into your world and make disciples of all men. Oh, but you can’t unless you see. Without the vision, people perish for there is no vision that people perish. So you are not there yet, four months, and then come into harvest. Lift up your eyes and look. The fields are white already and do harvest. Oh, we have no time to waste. The time is now. What we are going to do we have to do now. Oh, Lord, speak to us this morning and open our eyes.
But Peter and John stopped. And they looked at him for the first time through the eyes of Jesus. Now we heard about Jesus and Zaccheus. Zaccheus, that old, hated tax collector who ran ahead to see Jesus. And you know that as he passed up those people and climbed that tree, a lot of them would just liked to have given him a big sock. But Jesus looked at him and saw a man lost and without Christ. So sociologists would say he needs to be delivered from his hang-ups. He’s just got problems with hang-ups. Psychologists would have said, “Oh, he’s got all sorts of problems. He is so full of hostility.” But Jesus Christ saw a man in need. We rub shoulders with people every day that if we would just as the Lord to let us see them through His eyes, or there would be a minister, there would be a need there for every one of us. Every one of us are missionaries. Oswald Smith, the great missionary statesman said, “Every heart with Christ is a missionary. And every heart without Christ is a mission field.” We don’t have to go to Asia, we don’t have to go to Uganda, we doing have to go to South America. Right here in Franklin, we can be missionaries. Praise the Lord for that!
So there was a vision. They saw him. Peter saw what his need was for the first time. Even that old beggar didn’t know what his need was. He thought it was a few coins. Peter saw that he needed healing. Praise the Lord for that! And Peter had a conviction. What about that? We’ve seen Peter in all sorts of situations. We’ve seen Peter denying that he even knew Christ, faltering, failing. We’ve seen Peter in all sorts of situations. But that morning he had a conviction. Praise God for a conviction! Oh, pray that God gives a conviction. And brothers and sisters, as I travel around, people say, “Oh, Dr. Corbitt, you don’t believe the heathen are lost? Well, God would be an inconsistent God wouldn’t he if he sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross to save us, if it wasn’t necessary? In my book that says, the Bible says, “I am the way the truth and the light. No man comes unto the Father but by me.” That’s our business. That’s what faith promise, that’s what mission is all about—to make Christ known. And Peter had that conviction. Thank God for many people who have had that same conviction! Jim Elliott and the young men that died with him in the bloodstained river in South America said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain back what he cannot lose.” Praise the Lord! And William Borden, that great millionaire graduate of Yale that felt his call to China and on his way died in a hospital in the Middle East, they found a little note in his room. The nurse found a little note after he was dead with just three small statements on it: “No reserve. No regrets. No retreat.” What a testimony! How many of us could lead a testimony like that? Praise the Lord! Conviction, that without Christ man is lost. And He has told us to go make disciples. And lo, I am with you always. He doesn’t ever ask us anything that He isn’t good to go with us and prepare us to do.
But here we see Peter now who had been so fearful and so trembling and so denying. He had the courage. Praise the Lord! He had courage that morning. He saw the need; he knew the answer. And he moved right into it. And he said, “Look on us. Silver and gold have I not.” Now, not a one of us can say that this morning. We may not have much; we may be poor. No one looks poor here this morning. And as far as the rest of the world, compared with the rest of the world we are all rich! The statistics show that if we have some change in our purse and if we have some change just laying around in little cups or little places at home, we are among the eight percent of the most wealthy people in the world. How about that? You didn’t know you were wealthy. It says, “Lay not up for yourself treasures on earth.” All those stocks and bonds, all that property—lay it not up, treasures on earth where moth and rust dost corrupt. And the thieves break through and steal. Lay up treasures in heaven. What about your treasures in heaven dear one? Now I don’t have to ask a one of you about your financial condition right now—tax time, everybody knows! But you know what, we don’t have a tax time, a tax day for our heavenly deposits. But don’t you think just because we don’t have tax reports that we have to make to IRS about our heavenly payment, there is a record kept. Lay not up treasures on earth.
When did you make your last deposit? I like to think of some of the deposits of black gold that I made. I think of a little cannibal boy to the north of us sixty miles from where the hospital was. There were two cannibal tribes and they didn’t come down into our area. They weren’t welcome in our area. They had cannibalized our area in years past. So they weren’t welcome down there. And the Presbyterians, bless their hearts, ministered to the cannibals. Wasn’t that great of them? And so they didn’t come down. But after the war, all those missionaries were driven out and they would come down. They would walk over sixty miles, which was nothing for them to walk. Our hospital carried an area of a hundred thousand square miles. And so they walked many, many hundreds of miles sometimes to get to us. They would walk down to our area. And they really weren’t welcome, but they came. And we kept a special cooking shed for them. Now our cooking sheds were not as advanced as their kitchen in Uganda. Our cooking sheds were just thatch roof huts. And if they had about three rocks they could put them together and put a little cooking pot in the middle of that. That’s all they needed to do their cooking. And as I told last night, everybody that came to the hospital had to bring someone with them. We couldn’t feed all the patients. So if a baby was sick, mother had to come. She had to bring all of the kids. If daddy was sick, mother had to come; all of the kids had to come. So each bed, each pot was just a little hut. There were as many people on the bed as there were under the bed--three or four on the bed, three or four under the bed. There were no complaints. They didn’t have beds at home, why should they have beds in the hospital. But we did have 200 beds and, like I said, census was usually 260 or 270 or more than that.
But anyway, little Norwase was carried in on the back of his brother. The brother was probably 12 or 13 and little Norwase a couple of years younger. He had been climbing a tree to get a big, rich mango. And they are delicious; there is nothing better than Congolese mango. And he fell and broke a leg. So brother had carried him piggyback all that distance to come to the hospital. Mother had given them a little bit of food, probably some manioc to chew on, and a few little coins thinking the white man would perform a miracle and they would be back in no time. Surgical case, Devon was the surgeon; I didn’t see little Norwase. I had been aware that these two little cannibal boys came, but that was the last I saw them. However one day I was making rounds on the men’s ward with our oldest nurse. All our nurses were men at that time. That was in the 60’s and women didn’t have brains in the Congo in the 60’s. And so all of our men were trained on the station and they had brains. But Solomon was the oldest one and he was…we called him Solomon. His name wasn’t Solomon. And we made rounds and we came back into the treatment room on the men’s side and there was a hideous sight. It looked like a Halloween gag. It was a skeleton with black skin draped over it sitting in a wheelchair there. It looked like death. And I said, “What is this?” And he said, “That’s that little cannibal boy that came in with the broken leg.” That had been weeks before! And here was this child malnourished, dying in a Methodist Hospital because no one cared! You see, as I said, we couldn’t feed our patients. And all we got was a little bulgur wheat from the States. And how many of you all like bulgur wheat? Some of you old ones; yes, there’s enough gray heads here. You probably had some bulgur wheat when you were growing up. The Africans didn’t like bulgur wheat. We got sacks of it. And not until I told them that, “Oh, bulgur wheat will help your health, big strong babies. Oh, then I couldn’t feed them enough. But I only had enough to feed them three times a week. And we had milk, powered milk from the States. They got that about three times a week. But that is all these little boys had been living on. I went back to his bed covered with flies. He was covered with flies. I said, “I have you checked him for diabetes?” That’s the way often we would find the diabetics out in the village was through the flies and the bees that were around them. And he said, “Yes, we checked him and he is diabetic.” But nobody cared enough to tell me about it so that I could come take care of him. But why?--He’s a little cannibal boy; nobody looking out for him. But the men on either side said, “He won’t eat the food. We’ve tried to give him some of our food and he won’t eat it.”
So I made an agreement with the brother to come work for me—cut grass for me. There’s an old car spring sharpened on the end and you know you just cut two or three blades of grass at a time. But mind you, you can do acres like that with that little old tool. So I made an agreement for him, so I would pay him see. And then I would feed the two of them. So I went home and got my babysitter. Our male cooks wouldn’t cook African food. That’s beneath them; that’s women’s work. They cooked European food. So I called my babysitter and I said, “Cook me two of the very best African meals you can cook. Get whatever you need from the village and you take it up and you feed these two boys.” Thursday—cleaned their plates; Friday—cleaned their plates; Saturday I met her with tray untouched. I said, “What’s going on here?” She said, “He doesn’t want this. He wants pineapple juice.” Brrrr, that stirred something down in here that probably shouldn’t have been there. Three days in my program and he’s starting to order his menu! I grabbed my bicycle and I hurried over to the hospital and got my lecture all ready on the way. But I never delivered that lecture because when I got over there I was looking into the face of a dying child. All he knew that that poor little body was craving was something sweet and that was his pineapple juice that he was fortunate enough to have from time to time. He lapsed into unconsciousness. We didn’t have IV fluids; we didn’t have what we needed to bring this child back to life. But oh we prayed and asked the Lord that He would deliver this child that had been neglected, been unloved, been uncared for. He promised He would be with us. He was. And after several days that child awoke, clear, began to mend. That leg began to mend with his treatment; and he got well enough to have his surgery. And after a relatively short period of time, they were ready to go back to their country.
Now do you know, we sent medicine with him, some insulin, some syringes, but you know, the sad part about it was, that after that ran out, that child would have no care. No medicine. I don’t know how long he lived. But this one thing I know, he’s a deposit up there. Whether he’s alive or dead and there is no chance he could still be alive, he’s a deposit up there. Black gold! Praise His name! When did you make your last deposit? It doesn’t have to be black gold. Speak to us this morning, Lord. Give us the courage to do what He tells us to do. Don’t you understand? This is beginning to sound like a faith promise service? Vision, conviction, courage! And Peter said, “Silver and gold have I not, but such as I have give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” Oh dear ones, that’s the message that we have to get out. That’s what this is all about. That’s why we give money to build schools and to build hospitals and to buy medicine and to send teachers. That’s what it is all about--To make the name of Jesus Christ known. It’s in that name, it’s in that name that there is life, that there is hope, that there is peace, that there is joy, that there is an eternal life! Praise His Holy name!
And so Peter said, “I have what I give you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Rise up and walk!” And you know, I think Peter and John could have gone right on in to the Temple believing and that that old lame man could have gotten up. But I like the part of involvement. Peter, it tells us, “but he lifted him by the right hand.” Now any of you who are in medicine know that he didn’t just reach down. For a man who had never moved, that wasn’t even able to sit up, and lift him by his right hand. That’s just a figure of speech. Excuse me if I’m wrong. I see him because you know what a dead weight is like? I see Peter having to really get down there and really hoist. He really had to lift! That took a lot of strength. But as Peter lifted, praise the Lord, healing flooded through that body. Muscles that had never worked, joints that had never worked, vessels that had never been strong were healed. And what happened? He lift up with joy shouting and praising the Lord. And they went together into the Temple. And then what happened? There was great amazement and great rejoicing. Praise the Lord!
In order for a great promise to be a success, there has to be involvement. And that is where you and I come in, and that’s where he is. He has given us the commission to go into all of the world and make disciples. And as you go, preach saying the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And what has He commanded us? Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely have received; freely give. And lo I am with you always. Praise His Holy name!
He sent us out into central Congo, way out in the bush, 200 miles from the nearest railroad and the nearest doctor. Gave us that old hospital with 200 beds and hundreds of patients. We didn’t have to look for the sick. They were there. And it wasn’t someone thinking they were sick or imagining they were sick. I remember shortly after we got there, an old lady kept coming in to Devon for chest pain. And he checked her and checked her and couldn’t find anything. I said to the nurse, “Just tell her to come back when she is having pain. I can’t find anything.” And he said, “But doctor, she’s walked 100 miles to see you.” People don’t walk 100 miles with an imaginary headache. I see imaginary headaches sometimes but they haven’t walked 100 miles.
But everybody had three diseases. They all had malaria, they all had intestinal parasites, large, no boredom with parasites, and they were all anemic of course because of that. But they were a wonderful people to treat. They loved shots if the shot would hurt. And they loved quinine pills, as they would chew them up. And anything that tasted that bad had to be doing something you know. And somewhere they had some B12 and B12 burns a little bit and camphorated oil burned. Somehow they had gotten that, and that’s what they liked shots. But oh the magic was surgery. Oh that was a magical one. I can’t tell you all about that this morning. But cleanse the lepers. Out several kilometers behind the hospital we had a leper colony of 1200 lepers. The most degenerate group of people you can imagine. And you can understand why. They were outcasts. They could never leave that village. They were despicable. They were the nastiest, angriest, most hostile people in the world. They weren’t even kind to people who wanted to treat them like when we would go out there. You had to be really prayed up to go out there because they didn’t want you. And they were nasty with sores running. And thanks to all of you who have torn leper bandages and knitted leper bandages. Susan said she was a leper bandage tearer when she was young. Praise the Lord! We couldn’t have done without them. But they didn’t like it. But you know what? During the course of time that we were there, there was a cure found for leprosy. Praise the Lord! But the big thing that happened in the leper colony was that the Lord came, revival came. And if I could do something really special for all of you this morning, I would just like to scoop you up in a magic carpet and take you out there. Now this wouldn’t be the right time, but take you out there during worship time and drop you down in the center of that leper colony and let you see those people worship. Oh, their faces just light up. They may not have any nose, they may not have any ears, they many not have any fingers, they don’t have any toes, they have gaping sores some of them, but you see now, they can be treated on an ambulatory basis and they are never brought in any more. The only ones that are there now are those who have no homes to go to. Cleanse the lepers!
Raise the dead! Someone yelled, wait a minute Dr. Corbitt, raise the dead, that’s a little bit far. Well, I’d love to have time to tell you the story about a woman who came to the hospital as good as dead. She’d had a bike accident way out on the other side of the river. And where she crossed, where they brought her across on the dug out canoe we know was between 60 and 70 miles from the hospital. We don’t know how far they had come in the inside of that part of the country. But they had found them. People in the village had heard a baby crying in the morning. They checked there babies; they were all there. The women went on to the gardens as they always did. The men went to the powwow hut as they always did. And did all day what men do in the powwow huts in Africa—spit and chew and get drunk and spin yarns and look at their goats and brag. You know, men in America don’t do this. But that’s what they do in the powwow huts in Africa while the women are out digging the gardens. They walk about two or three miles to the gardens kids dragging on their skirts, babies on their back. But they had come back that night and the baby was crying. The women looked until they found it. The boy had been in a deep state of unconsciousness all that day. They made a hassock to carry on between the shoulders. Brought her down to the river. Got her dressed. When she came to us she was dead for practical purposes. You know, if she would have come here to the United States to the E.R. room they would have said there is no use doing anything. But we had gotten equipment from a Catholic hospital the day before. Brain surgery. You know my husband was the surgeon. And you know sometimes when a surgeon gets the scent of blood you don’t stop them. He said we are going to operate on her. She will be our first real surgical patient. I said, Devon you are crazy. If you go in on this head, she’ll die and nobody else will ever let you touch their heads. But we went to surgery—the two of us. I assisted him. He removed a big clot from each side of her skull. And do you know that even before we took her off the table there were little twitches in her fingers and toes. That was improvement. Days went by; weeks went by. You couldn’t tell whether she was understanding anything. We saw slow progress. The Bible women were coming every day, the African chaplains were coming every day and praying and reading with her. Finally she could try to talk, we knew, in response to asking questions. We discharged her to her daddy. We put the baby on formula; he was doing fine when we discharged her. A year later a knock came to my door. When I went to the door this beautiful countenance was looking up at me. And they have great powers of observation. She looked up and she knew right away that I didn’t recognize her. And she said, “You don’t know me do you.” And I said, “Oh, I’m so sorry but I don’t.” And she just turned around and pointed to those two holes on the back of her head. And then with tears streaming down her cheeks she told of the joy that had come to her heart when she was in the hospital, couldn’t tell us, couldn’t share with us. Oh, treasures in heaven. Praise God!
But he told us to go. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. As we told the story of Jesus and we saw them delivered from their sins and the bonds of fear and the release from the spirits. And oh the freedom that they got--that was casting out the demons! Freely you have received, freely given. That’s our theme this weekend. To whom much is given, much is required. He told us He would go with us. Well, I proved Him to be true. Six weeks after I had gotten there they had given me three months to learn the language, get use to..(I had two babies).to get use to this way of life. My cook couldn’t read. He was a polygamist and lived a half a mile a way in a village with not a drop of running water, not a single sanitary facility and every morning he was coming in putting his hands in my biscuit dough. You think I didn’t have a full-time job? I thought so. I about drove him crazy! And I studied the language and getting me use to the…you know, flour that was full of weevils, ants crawling over everything. A lot of missionaries here know that when you go to the cupboard after flour the flour sack will probably meet you on the way out it had so many weevils in it. But you know, we didn’t know. And dignitaries would come and eat our pies and our biscuits and our bread and think they were good. They didn’t know they were eating weevils and getting all that good protein. We had an oil refrigerator and a wood cook stove. I had never made mayonnaise in my life. I had never cooked bread in my life. I had to have this man. But it was hard getting use to this man. I had to draw him pictures for my recipes because he couldn’t read. So I drew pictures of the can or the margarine and a picture of the milk and the flour sack and painted the flour just like it looked in the sugar. He was a wonderful cook. I can’t take the credit. He had been trained by the Belgians, of course. But he trained American by my good recipes and me of course. But anyway, six weeks into it a missionary appeared. And some of you here probably know Morris Persons. Morris Persons was the Senior Missionary in the Congo field. A great missionary; just died a couple of years ago. Took ill, depressed, out of his gourd. And they brought him to our house, about 600 miles, to our house—the psychiatric ward. All night we’d be up with him. Oh, he was so depressed; it was just hopeless. And of course we didn’t have all the SSRI’s that we have now and all the wonderful drugs we have now to snap him out of it. It was tough. He’d get a little relief; get some sleep. But Devon had to go operate. I got to stay home; I could get some rest. That wasn’t too bad. A week of it went on. Look, I didn’t come here to treat crazy missionaries; I came here to treat sick Africans. I’m taking him to the city and giving him to a psychiatrist. Well, that’s what he did.
He said, now you’ll be fine. You’re a missionary now. I knew so many things; I hadn’t learned two weeks, six weeks into the life of Africa. And he took off. I saw the car go off. I’ll never forget it; he was gone. But he said, “Thursday morning I’ll be home Sunday night. Don’t bother the hospital; if they need you they’ll call you.” Well, why would they call me? I hadn’t been over there except the day I arrived to be welcomed. So Sunday night came but the doctor didn’t. Monday morning came but the doctor didn’t. And I thought, “Oh, my, surely there’s something.” I mean the Lord called me to Africa. Surely there is something I need to be doing over there. I called and told French, our Danish nurse, as I told the people last night. She had a Danish accent. It was hard to understand her sometimes in English, harder in French. But we went over and we made rounds. I’d ask her, she’d ask the nurse, she’d ask the patient. I know we treated a lot of things that didn’t happen that morning but we had a wonderful time and I think they felt we were there because we loved them. Noon came and it was time to separate so I told the nurses that I was going home for lunch and if they needed me to call me. Went to lunch; before lunch was over the knock came on the door. And one of the R.N.’s—we had two black R.N.’s—said come quickly, we have a woman who has to have a Cesarean section. A cesarean section, that could mean surgery, I don’t do surgery. See, I’ve never done a Cesarean section. When we were Juniors in medical school, Devon my husband said to me, “Now I’m going to do surgery, you do what ever you want to.” So I tried to round out all the other things and became a general practitioner. And I had never done surgery. I had seen a cesarean section. But for those of you who know anything about teaching hospitals, the students are the furthest things in the corner. You’re lucky if you can see the table at all. And I had all the good O.B. courses. I’d had the prolapsed arms and the prolapsed legs and the triplets and this and that and the other. And being the only girl, the fellows felt jealous and they said, “This isn’t fair, we’re going to take your section.” And they took my section so I’d never done one.
Oh, surely there’s something else we can do. So I went over and I checked her. Oh, she did need a section. You know the Congolese pelvis is the smallest pelvis in the world and many, many baby’s die. The mortality rate is terrible just because of the size of the pelvis. And so this little lady, there was no way for her to deliver the baby. She had been told to come in at the first twinge and she sat for over 24 hours a half a mile from the hospital because of fear. She needed a section. I said, “Oh, Lord, what do I do?” He told me, Jeremiah 33:3 came. That came a lot of times as a missionary. You start doing mission work and you’ll find how many times Jeremiah 33 comes. Because I know that’s what promised. “Call upon me and I’ll show you great and mighty things.” Well, I called upon Him. I said, “Lord, this is your chance to act. Deliver her by 5:00 p.m. This was about 1:00 p.m. now see. And I gave him all afternoon to deliver. But here, and I wondered just like Peter saying, “Rise up and walk”. I wonder if I had really believed and really trusted if He might not have delivered her. But you know what, I went in the office and got out my OB-GYN book and started reading how to do a cesarean section. Oh, Lord, it scared me to death. I’d close the book and I’d go out on the ward to see what was going on. Five o’clock came; there was no choice. I had no choice; I had to operate. I told them plainly, “I do not know how to do this. You have to pray.” I couldn’t communicate with my assistant. I didn’t know the names of the instruments. We didn’t have an anesthesiologist. We had a nurse with a can of ether. We didn’t have any IV fluids. We didn’t have any blood. We had a need. We had a baby that needed to be released from this abdomen to save its life and mother’s life.
And dear ones, as I picked up that knife it was a new feeling. It’s like my hand went through the abdominal wall. I’d never felt it before. But He was true to His words. And I can tell you this morning that just as real as my left hand is on my right hand this morning that great physician was there and His hand was there. We got a beautiful little baby boy in record time and a mother that came through beautifully. And my husband…. Oh, I didn’t tell you about the timing or the breakup at noon. When I was telling the nurse goodbye I had gotten a telegram. He was always so dear to keep me informed. This was before the war, before the Belgians had left so we still had telegraph service over at the Post. And the telegram said, “Gone to the States.” Uh-huh. So that’s why I knew the doctor wouldn’t be coming in. The load was on me. He was gone. I hand counted that it shouldn’t take him very long. Take it home and drop in on the Board of Global Ministries in New York and be right straight back. But he was gone three weeks. During those three weeks, we went back into that operating room 13 times to do things I wasn’t prepared to do. But I can tell you that we didn’t go back into that operating room with a live baby that we didn’t come out with a live baby! And praise the Lord!
Oh, I feel myself like Paul said under universal obligation. I was something for all men, not for what they have done to me but for what God, through Christ Jesus, has done for me. I owe it to all men to make it known that He lives, that He loves, that He saves, that He keeps, that He heals, and that He is coming again. Oh, dear ones, what an opportunity we have. May He give us the vision of a need. May He give us the courage and the conviction to move into the need and the courage to move into it and the strength and the willingness to get involved. And then the excitement comes. Praise His name forever!
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