The importance of trusting in the Lord with all one's heart and acknowledging Him in all ways, as He will direct our paths. The passage shares numerous personal anecdotes from his life, illustrating how God has consistently provided for his needs, guided his decisions, and used even seemingly insignificant events for His purposes. The core lesson is that a life of faith and dependence on God leads to joy, peace, and the fulfillment of His will, even when circumstances are challenging. The message encourages listeners to learn from these experiences and to actively trust God in their own lives, knowing that He is faithful and will never fail those who depend on Him.
Restored with Diffio
Audio restored with Diffio. Diffio processed the original archive recording to reduce noise and produce a cleaner listening version; the original stays available.
Speech quality score (model-estimated, SCOREQ): before 2.42 → restored 4.59
Excuse me, my country sedan, my gas guzzler. It's a difficult thing to give a testimony, as I've already mentioned. But in past, many times in the past, it has really helped me to hear of how God has dealt with someone else. And it's very interesting to notice that in order to get the same message to two different people, sometimes the Lord deals in a different way because people have different personalities and different makeups and different likes and different dislikes and different backgrounds, different rarities, different cultures sometimes.
And I could spend all the morning reading Scripture to you But one of them is a verse that has been a great deal to me. I quoted it to you last night. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lead not under thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy path. Now, we put this verse to the test. And I want you to know that it works. There's another verse in Psalm, a hundred and twenty-six goes like this.
The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad. And I'd like to say that anything that the Lord does is great. And anytime a prayer is answered, it's a miracle because it's supernatural. And anytime something happens that God is in, it's great. It's tremendous. And sometimes something may appear to be rather insignificant. But in sight of the Lord, it's very important. Sometimes the little things such as whether or not you take one seat on a plane or a train instead of another.
And I could take all the time this morning just telling you about some of the experiences we've had in our travels. I remember once on my way to Birmingham, this was since Bob was in Florida, and my plane was late getting to Atlanta, and the plane that I got on in Atlanta to go to Birmingham, and that's a very short flight. It had been sitting out in the sun all day long. It must have been ninety-eight degrees in the plane. But did you know as a result of that plane being so excruciating to the heart and also as a result of the fact that a young serviceman on the way to Vietnam's orders had been mixed up, that he was on that plane instead of being in Tampa, Florida with his people the way he wanted to be?
But you know, well, you probably have already guessed what happened. I had the joy of leading to the Lord. He had five days to get from somewhere in Delaware to Camp Polk, Louisiana, and they sent him straight to Camp Polk, and he was really mad. He was fuming. But I had the joy of pointing to the Lord. I want to read you one of my favorite hymns by Fanny Crosby. She just wrote twenty-two hundred of them. All the way my Savior leads me, what have I to ask beside? Can I doubt his tender mercy? Who through life has been my guide? Heavenly peace, divine discomfort, hereby faith in him that dwells, for I know what else befalls me, Jesus, do it.
All things well. All the way my Savior leads me, chairs each winding path I tread, gives me grace for every trial, feeds me with the living bread. Though my weary steps may falter and my soul, the thirst may be, gushing from the rock before me, lower spring of joy. I see, now just remember, she never saw the light of day. All the way my Savior leads me, O the fullness of His love, perfect rest to me is promised in my Father's house above.
When my Spirit clothed immortal, wings its flight to realms of day, this my song through endless ages, Jesus led me all the way. And you know, beloved, one of the amazing, one of the things about trusting in the Lord and living for the Lord is the fact that many times decisions that you make, you will not really be aware of the fact that God is in it. Then after this happens, sometimes two, three, four, five, or six years, you'll see, man, you know the Lord goes really in that. And so I've said that one of the secrets of a happy, joyous life where the Lord is just learning to trust in the Lord.
and to know that God doesn't make any mistake, leave your choices up to Him and trust in Him to give you wisdom and guidance. And remember, God doesn't lead you a second step until you have followed His leading in the first step. I was born in a farm community in Georgia, in Morgan County, Georgia, If you draw a line from Atlanta to Augusta and from Athens to Macon, where the line would cross is about where we were born. We were born about two actual greetings out from Madison, Georgia, a place called Appalachia.
It's so little that the first time Dottie went on her bus to visit my parents, she went all the way to Madison because she didn't know if she was supposed to tell the man to let her off out in the middle of the country. But anyway, my father was a rural letter carrier, my mother and father. had trusted Christ when they were in their teens, when an evangelist by the name of Dunaway came to their little Methodist church and preached. They'd never had any teaching or instruction in their life, so naturally they had not grown a great deal spiritually. And they did not really grow as Christians until after I was saved and had gone to the Bible College and began to get good, sound, evangelical, fundamental literature into the home. And they began to subscribe to Mooney Monthly and Sunday school times.
and magazines and periodicals of that nature. I've joined the church when I was seven years of age, but I can honestly say that I never really heard a clear presentation of the gospel until I was eighteen years of age. I think perhaps a man came to the high school where I went in Madison, Georgia and preached the gospel once because after I was saved I realized that what he was preaching must have been maybe the gospel, but it didn't do much to me. And when I was in high school I got a hold of ten dollars as a result of working in a grocery store and I bought a trumpet and I learned to play the trumpet and I began, I got a little group together and we began to pray.
in different places to make money. It dances and things like that. And my mother never knew of this, of course, because she'd have tarded and followed me if she'd have known it. And so when I went away to the University of Georgia, I commuted, by the way. Money was still kind of tight and hard to get. It was after the Depression. And I went away to the University of Georgia and commuted in a car and took people with me because they'd have to pay for the gas, you know. But while at the University of Georgia, My past came across that of a very wonderful man that I've already mentioned two times this week with a name of William Hazel Reiton. He was born in Bedford, England. And he was a big, tall, handsome man, and he was teaching philosophy at the University of Georgia.
And I became interested in him because he was from overseas, and I've always been interested in anybody that was from another country. He had a wonderful, beautiful, British accent, which I liked. And he was just a very striking man. And he became interested in me because he realized that I was very religious and very active in a Methodist church, but I didn't know the Lord. And through a combination of circumstances, he and I became good friends. At that time, I hadn't had any courses under him, really. I just met him through some other students. And to make a long story short, the sixteenth day of June, five o'clock in afternoon, Eastern Standard Time, nineteen hundred and thirty-eight, he led me to the Lord Jesus Christ.
And he told me what it really meant to know the Lord, what it meant to be saved, and that I'd never have a real peace and joy and happiness in my life unless I knew Jesus Christ in a personal way. And so that changed my plans, and instead I wanted to uh... major in music as i had until then uh... i changed my major at least in my sophomore year and began to take all the courses i could in philosophy now he was a philosopher professor in a secular university but uh... he had a bunch of courses in there that were really about the christian message the philosophy of the christian religion i remember was one of the a fabulous course that we had well uh...
Antarvasti hadn't gotten started then in the South, but it was kind of out in the headwinds on the way, coming into the United States. A man by the name of Dr. Howard A. Kelly, a doctor in Baltimore, was the man who underwrote Antarvasti in the United States, the first year they operated in this country. And my senior year at the University of Georgia, we started a little group known as the Georgia Seven, that Dr. Wright then, of course, headed up. And we used to go to some people's homes to have this meeting and they were from Michigan and their name were Barbara's and they had been in the assembly in Muskegon, Michigan. They were from Spring Lake, Michigan and these people put into my hands some evangelical, fundamental Bible-based books about what it really meant to know and love and live for the Lord Jesus Christ.
And those books had such a tremendous impression and impact upon my life that that's one of the reasons we have a Christian bookstore in Columbia right now is because I know what the right kind of books, along with the Bible, can do in the life of a young Christian. And I can never adequately express what these Christians who I never saw that many times the impression and the influence they had upon my life as a young Christian, because you see, Dr. Wrighton was away a lot speaking, and he didn't get to spend a lot of time with me. Now, there were two young men at the University of Georgia that had grown up in assemblies of Christians who meet the way we do now.
But they were busy. One of them was active in the Presbyterian Church, and one of them was active in the Big Baptist Church, and they said, oh, that's it. We go to some place called Brotherhood, but you never heard of it, so that's it. And... I've forgiven the brethren of these brothers for not telling me more about meeting in the name of the Lord Jesus, but the Lord knew what he was doing. I perhaps wasn't ready for it then. But I must say this, from the time that I first came to know the Lord Jesus Christ, the oneness of the body of Christ and the fact that sectarianism, so far as I'm concerned, is of the devil. was really impressed upon my mind, and the fact that we are all one in Christ, and the thing that's important is, do I know Jesus Christ?
And if I know Jesus Christ and love Him, well then every man and woman and boy and girl who knows and loves Jesus Christ is my brother and sister and the Lord, regardless of how they meet or where they meet. I didn't mean to get to preaching, but I really feel on that. I'll tell you. All right. Now, I'd hope to go back to the University of Georgia after graduating and work among students. And Dr. Howard A. Kelly, who I had met through Dr. Wrighton, had said, all right, you go back there and you set up kind of a Christian boy's fraternity. And they were going to finance, we're going to buy a house or lease it or something and get furniture.
And two or three of us are going to live in this house together and bring in unconverted fellows and try to lead them to the Lord and get them into the Word and so forth and so on. But the Lord had other plans. Dr. Wrighton left the University of Georgia for a year or two. And I didn't care anything about going back, working on my master's degree under an unsaved man. So Dr. Wright and Dr. Kelly both said, well, Shockler, why don't you go to Columbia Bible College Graduate School in Columbia, South Carolina, and I'll give you the same amount of money that I was going to give you to go to the University of Georgia to go over to Columbia Bible College. Back in those years, you could go there a whole year for four hundred and fifty dollars.
It's a joke now. But anyway, I went over there. and who he supposed my roommate was. You see, the Lord's all going ahead. My roommate was a young man who had been to Wheaton College, who had graduated to Wheaton College, who'd gotten a major in Bible by the name of Guy H. Mealy. And Guy H. Mealy had met with a group of Christians in Wheaton College in the Lane Hall. And he told me about this wonderful fellowship they had, remembering the Lord, meeting in the name of the Lord. And he put me in touch with some of those writers Students of the Word and who'd written books and told me about this book and this book and this book and you ought to have this and this and this.
And this had a tremendous impression upon my life. And I learned to appreciate even further now the fact that what we do, we do in the name of Christ and Christ alone. And the word Christian began to mean a great deal to me. Well, I wish I could really give it all, but anyway, at Columbia Bible College, I got in touch with some people by the name. of Southern Methodists. And these were evangelical, fundamental Methodists that had not gone into the union with the liberals in nineteen thirty-nine, and they were kind of independent, and they wanted me to supply some churches for them. Well, I had a Methodist background, so that was kind of a natural. And so I started going every other week down to a little town called Batesbury, Gleesville, to preach.
And all during my time at CBC, I was in touch with the Intervaster Christian Fellowship and see Stacey Woods about the possibility after a year at the Bible College of working with Christian students, or rather students in universities. And so, in June of nineteen forty-two, I was appointed to the staff of the Intervaster Christian Fellowship effective the first of September. Now, during this time, we had something called World War II to come along. And I was not ordained, and so I was subject to the draft. So in order for me to stay within Avosti, I had to hold on to these two little churches in Batesbury, Gleesville. So I really had a fun time.
Gas was rationed, buses and cars couldn't go up forty miles an hour, and I had a real small area. I had the Carolinas and Tennessee and Alabama and Georgia and Florida. And so every two weeks I come back to Bakesboro to Leasville and preach. And then, but in the ensuing time, I'd be out working with college students at Duke and Georgia Tech and Georgia, University of South Carolina, University of Alabama, Stetson, University of Florida, and Florida State, and what have you. And I was just thinking today as I was writing these notes rather last night, how in the world did I do it? I don't know, except God gave me the energy and the help that I needed. And... So I was appointed to the staff of Intervastic, and I went to a first time I'd ever been north, well, except to New York, to a football game once when I was in the band.
I forgot to tell you that while at the University of Georgia, I was able to work my way through by playing a French horn in the symphony orchestra, which I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed. And I learned to appreciate good music, which I am very glad I did. So we went to a place called Guelph, Ontario. It's a place of conference grounds up there. And all these different people are going to work with Annabasca. We're up there. And here we were at Guelph, you know, and C. Stacey Woods is there, and so-and-so is here, and Paul back with us here, and so-and-so. That's about twenty of us in all. And on Monday they said, we'll remember the Lord tomorrow morning at nine o'clock. We met in a little dining room, I think, or a little parlor-like.
And we had a little black book that I'd never seen, and somebody got up, and Stacey would have said, now, chocolate, you want to share something, the Lord's giving you, and so forth, and so on, you can. And I can remember to this day what Paul Beckwith got up and shared. He spoke on the eighty-fourth Psalm, and he spoke about real worship. And we sang these wonderful hymns, about the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I don't recall at any moment the ceiling was going to open up and we was going to be raptured. I've never seen anything like this in my life. This was fabulous. And when it was over, I went to Stacey Woods and I said, man, Brother Stacey, I've never been in a meeting like that in my life.
Man, that's tremendous. He said, Lord Shockley, there are groups like that meeting all over the world. Yeah, he said, in fact, there's a guy down in Augusta, Georgia, just came out of the Presbyterian Church, and he started a little group in Augusta, Georgia like that. His name is Virgil Hollanderworth. Y'all look him up sometime. Oh, I will. And I got back down to South Carolina, and pretty soon in a couple of months, my itinerary took me through Augusta. Actually, I was with Paul Beckwith then, and he'd known Virgil in previous visits. to see Mr. Crowell with Homer Hammond Tree in Augusta. And so they said, let's go see Virgil.
So we did. And Virgil took us out to the place where they were tearing down the petitions in an old house on Crockett Avenue off a Walton Way. And that was going to be Bethany Chapel. And Virgil said, Brother Shockley, the first time you're free on a Sunday and not preaching in your church or somewhere else, said, you come here and remember the Lord with us. What'd you say? Remember the Lord with us. and you can preach the gospel at night. Well, the first fifth Sunday that rolled around after that, I was there. And I can tell you to this day, the first hymn they used, O Christ, what burdens bowed thy head, my Lord was laid on thee. And you know, I was on Augusta a few weeks ago to the Workers' Conference, and I saw the man that gave that hymn out.
And I remembered it. I said, man, this is it. This is it. I just, I never saw anything like it in my life. Oh, what worship, what devotion. Well, but the Lord had other plans and I went ahead and finished my year with Anavasti and the war was really getting down to business and a lot of guys were trying to get into, were going into the service and so forth. I was interested in going to the service as a chaplain, but I wasn't old enough, so I couldn't do anything for another year. I had to wait until nineteen forty-four. And in nineteen forty-four, I continued with my churches in the Batesboro, Belizeville area. While I was there, I met the lady that I'm going to meet in a few moments, and she was just a teenager in high school, you know, and I was a pastor, you know, so I'd already been to college in the to graduate school, you know, and I had all my ideals this high, you know, where she ought to be at least a college graduate and be able to play the piano and be able to do this and be able to do this, you know, all this.
Because when I come back off of my travels with Inner Voster, that was Miss Whitman there, you know, see, and we found out we could sing pretty well together, you know, our voices harmonized. And the first thing, you know, I was like a man on a banana peel and falling backwards on one foot. And I'm going to tell you this, it's kind of funny, but it's a truth. I said to her, see, I was her pastor, you know, see. I said, you know, Miss Whitman, I'm afraid I'm falling in love with you. She said, well, you know, Mr. Pugh, I'm afraid I'm falling in love with you too. Don't y'all tell I told you that. Now, I know some of you will, so you'll do it anyway.
Well, so I met all the requirements to go into the arm as a chaplain. And they didn't need me. And I ought to resign my pastorate in South Carolina because I thought I was going any day. In fact, the man in Atlanta told me, I said, Mr. Pew, it's hard to get uniforms. If you can find a uniform that'll fit you, you better buy one. So I bought one. that a lady had, her son had been killed in a B-twenty-six crash, and he was exactly my size, and I bought a six hundred dollar uniform for a hundred and fifty dollars. That's a scotch in me, you know, and later I was able to sell it for a hundred and eighty dollars, so no problem.
But anyway, they didn't call me, and I went to Memphis, Tennessee to become the pastor of the first Southern Memphis Church in Memphis, Tennessee. They'd been without a pastor a number of months, and I just happened to know some of the people there. And in Memphis, Tennessee, I read in the mood of monthly in January after going there in October of a ministry known as Youth for Christ. And I got the next train to Chicago because they said if you come to Founders Week Conference in Chicago, you can meet Billy Graham and Tara Johnson and Bob Cook and Dick Harvey and all these fellows that have started Youth for Christ in all these cities and they'll tell you about it. So I went to Chicago and that was where I first heard Like a River Glorious. It's the first song they sang.
And Will H. Houghton stood up there and said, Let's sing number so and so. And Al Smith got up and led, like a river glorious. Well, I've never seen two thousand Christians together at once in my life. And they all had big Bibles, you know, and they were standing up there with the joy of the Lord on their face. And I sang like a river, and that's as far as I could go. I filled up the right here. And since that day, that's been my favorite hymn. But anyway, we came back to Memphis and got in touch with a man there and we started Youth for Christ. And through the Minister of Youth for Christ, we had the joy of many people coming to the Lord as well as in our church. But the important thing about Memphis was the other man that God put across my path.
And his name was John J. McGeehy. I was at a Christian businessmen's luncheon one day, and this young missionary from China had gotten up and said, you know, we're back from China, my wife, and several kids, and we're having difficulty finding an apartment, a place to live. And I wish you'd pray that the Lord would provide us with an apartment. I'll make a long story short. The Holy Spirit is okay. Shockley, you and Dottie are living in the parsonage there above the church. There's an attic up there that's got plenty of rooms in it for an apartment, even has a bath up there and everything. Well, you can do something about this. And so we got in touch with the stewards of the church and they said, yes, if he'll build his own fire escape and so forth and meet the fire regulations, John McGee and his family can live there.
Now, they can't pay us any rent. because they have to pay taxes, so they can just give us some money occasionally as the Lord lays it on their heart to put in the offering. So that's where we work that. And between John J. McGeehy's trips to Philadelphia and Chicago and St. Louis and Myanmar and other places, he and I spent a lot of time in the book. And what the Lord hadn't done through Virgil Hollingsworth and the Barbers, he did through John J. McGeehy. And he painted me kind of a black picture. He said, Shockley, now these people that are meeting the name of the Lord alone, he says, they are flesh, you know, they are flesh, you know, they are human.
And there are a lot of things in there that some of them are very, very exclusive, and some of them are very, very clannish, and some of them are very secular, and some of them are very proud. They think they are the only people, you know, that are even Christians. And he painted a real black picture. He says, but sharply, I don't think you'll find a group anywhere that are trying any harder just to follow the pattern laid down in Scripture for worship and for service. And he was right. And so I realized that I wasn't anymore a Southern Methodist and I was a Canary. And so we resigned the pastor and then Memphis, effective the fifteenth of September, nineteen hundred and forty-six, and moved back to Batesburg, where my wife was from, and forty-six, forty-seven, and forty-eight.
I spent a lot of time visiting various assemblies, especially speaking to young people and youth rallies, and speaking to youth for Christ rallies all over the United States and Canada, parts of Mexico, British West Indies, and I could take another hour to tell you about the trip that he arranged for us to go to Europe. In nineteen forty-eight, that's where I met Brother Bob Willie in Bristol, England. I will say this, that I figured out how much money it would take. I didn't tell anybody how much it would take, and the Lord sent in every penny that we needed. In fact, I had lunch with a dear brother from an assembly whose man heaven and New York on one occasion before we went overseas. He said, Brother, how much will it take? And I said, well, I hadn't told anybody, but about fourteen hundred dollars, I was going to be gone three months.
Couldn't do it for now, of course, like that. I said, well, how much do you have? Oh, five hundred dollars. Well, Brother Hugh, you must be a man of mighty great faith. I said, no, I'm not a man of great faith. I'm a man of a little faith, but I have it on a great God. And I remember the night that Bill Kelly put me on board the Queen Mary in New York Harbor, I still needed fifteen dollars of amount that I figured that I needed. He said, oh, by the way, Shockley, here's a letter that came for you three days ago, and I forgot to give it to you. It was from Seattle, Washington, and it had a check in it for fifteen dollars. Now, beloved brothers and sisters, I could go on and on and on, and it's been like that all along the way.
That's why I read this hymn. time and time again the Lord has supplied our needs. Led me to do things, and I don't know why he led me to do them, but I'd do them, and then I'd see later why. Before I left to go to Europe, I was getting some tracts and leaflets to give away and evangelism in France and in Switzerland and in other places. Now, if I was going to France and Switzerland and Belgium and Holland and England, why would I need any tracts in Spanish? Well, I didn't know. But a man gave me a bundle of them, and I put them in my briefcase, or maybe in my trumpet case, which is sitting right there, same case, same trumpet. And I got into Harlem, and I got to Harlem the day before they were going to crown Queen Juliana.
And you couldn't find a place to stay in the man that I was going to stay with him and call to Copenhagen. And my judge is not good at all. And so I went to American Express and told him to give me a flight to London if they could. I'd go to London a day earlier. and went out to the plane when founder of the KLM plane was ready about sundown to fly over to London. And who do you think was on that plane? The Spanish Olympic soccer team. And I had the joy of giving every one of them a track in their own language about the person of Jesus Christ. We had some wonderful times in England.
preaching the gospel the first time I ever heard this song, and can it be, was in a place called, is it Leicester? Leicester, England. One of these big round churches, you know, kind of long and over with a balcony all the way around. I've never heard that song, and those people can sing over there. We sing good here, but not like that, over there. Wonderful, marvelous experience. We had some great experiences on board, ship, going and coming. And we got back to New York and I bought a ticket to Columbia, South Carolina and paid my travel agent a little money that I owed him. When I got off the plane in Columbia, I had fifty cents in my pocket. So the Lord is faithful.
And we stayed in Batesburg until spring of nineteen hundred and forty-nine when we went into Columbia, South Carolina. because the Lord had laid upon our heart the ministry among young people in the ministry of youth for Christ. And we were in Columbia there, beginning the ministry of youth for Christ, and we were working in the local assembly, of course, Bethany Chapel. I remember one night when Gil was in the car to go to the meeting. So I took a knife. and went to Gil's piggy bank, and I got enough money out of the bank to buy enough gifts to take Donna to her meeting, and Gil to a friend's house who's going to keep him, and I went to my meeting.
Then we came back. And by the time we got back about nine, fifteen, and nine, thirty, Clyde Dennis called us. And Clyde and Murrow were in town. They'd been in Jacksonville, and they were on their way to Toledo to the CBMC. This would have been in fifty-one because Dean Pickton says he was saved at that convention. So that's nineteen fifty-one. They were on their way to the leader to the CBMC convention, and they said, we just felt like we wanted to come by and have some fellowship with you. Come down and have some fellowship with us. We had such a motel. We said, well, we're putting Gil to bed. If you don't mind, why don't y'all come on by and visit us? So they did.
They got there about twenty of ten and stayed about two hours, and we had some wonderful fellowship. Well, naturally, we didn't mention anything about the fellowship. condition that we were in financially and say a word about it, just talking about the Lord. And after they left, Dottie went into the bathroom. And she let out a yelp. I thought maybe there was a rattlesnake in the tub or something. I said, what is it? She said, come in, sweetheart. And she went in there and right behind the spigots on the sink was a brand new crisp twenty dollar bill. Well, now, twenty dollars in nineteen fifty-one was like fifty dollars in nineteen seventy-seven.
And with that twenty dollars, we were able to buy a tank of gas and enough groceries to last us until the Lord sent some money in from somewhere else. I told Clyde and mural that before Clyde. went to be with the Lord and he said, yeah, we remember that, but the Lord just spoke to our hearts and Mural came to me and said, Clyde, you know, I think maybe we ought to leave a little of the Lord's money here before we leave. And so Mural said she had to go to the bathroom and that's when she left the twenty dollars there. Well, I've been going along here and hadn't even, if I'd been using my notes, I wouldn't have gotten this far, so I'm glad I didn't use my notes.
All right. Now, I forgot to mention that we've had some unusual experiences sometimes about speaking responsibility. I'm sure that all of the Lord's servants have this happen from time to time. I remember once, I'll go back to I'd gone to the Innovosity Missionary Convention in Toronto, and I'd come back to New York to spend about five, six days with Jack Wordson. And he and I had visited the Brookdale Baptist Church on a Sunday night because we wanted to hear his friend and my friend Glenn Wagner speak. But when we came up from the meeting downstairs, we couldn't get a seat.
There wasn't a seat anywhere. There was not a seat. He said, well, let's go down to Bloomfield and hear Russell Jones tonight. That was a good friend of his. So we rode down to Bloomfield and they were having a song service and Russell Jones got up and saw Jack Wordson back there. He said, well, it's time for the message now. I like my friend Jack Wordson to come up and speak. Oh, you know what's going to happen already. Well, I tell you, Brother Russell, I'm real tired and I've got a young friend with me here from South Carolina. and I'd like for him to speak. Shockly, you go up and speak. Well, that's what I call laying hands suddenly on anyone, and that's what they did.
But you know, the Lord gave me a message, and we had some people to trust the Lord. I had the same thing to happen in Oklahoma City one time. I'd been invited to hold a youth crusade in a tent, and it was sponsored by the young people. It was in a big Bible church. This was back in forty-five. And man, the pastor of the church, he's now traveling for Moody. He's on the extension staff. His name is Will Stewart. I saw him when I was at the last Moody Founders Week conference. And so I'd say, oh, well, Brother Stewart will be ministering on Sunday morning, and I'll get me a new message. I'm just looking forward to that. And I was really looking forward to hearing Will Stewart on Sunday morning, because we're going to meet in the church, and I've been preaching in the tent. And so they had the song service, they had the announcements, they had the offering, and I was getting my notes ready, paper to read and take notes, and he says, Now, Brother Shockless, you will bring the message which the Lord has laid upon his heart.
Well, needless to say, you have to depend upon the Lord, and if you hadn't been in the Word and hadn't been studying, well, you wouldn't have anything to give. But once again, the Lord worked. In a wonderful way. And we saw some people come to the Lord Jesus. You know, one of the amazing things about serving the Lord is in the flesh, it's actually impossible to really know sometimes when you are communicating with people. And the Lord knows just when to give you a word of encouragement.
And sometimes it'll be years before you know that the time when you thought you did very lousy and communicated, you'll know that God used you right then. You see, the wonderful thing about it is, you see, when we are at our lowest ebb and we say, I don't have anything to give, then the Lord gives it through us. because we're dependent upon Him. Now let me give you an example. A few weeks ago, Gray Wilson was in Columbia for a crusade and a large evangelical on the ball Evangelistic Baptist Church, and I've known Gray since forty-one. And so I took him to lunch, and I went to hear him minister on this particular night, and after the service was over, I went up to meet his song leader, who I'd seen in action many times but never met.
young man by the name of Steve Musto that used to lead the singing for Percy Crawford. And Steve said, Brother Shockley, am I glad to see you? I've been wanting to meet you for years. Why? He said, well, you don't know this. He said that when I was a young man, I just had trusted Christ and I was really I really wasn't too sure of my salvation and my relationship to the Lord. And I was really concerned about it. He said, you came to Brooklyn Youth Jubilee one night in Brooklyn, New York and spoke when the Anderson brothers were the directors of this ministry.
And you brought a gospel message that was simple and plain and clear and down to earth. And that night I really got it settled. I came to an assurance of my salvation. that night. And then about six or seven or eight months later, you came back. And even though you had been asked to give a gospel message, you said when you got in the pulpit that God had laid upon your heart that there was someone there that needed to hear about the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And you said you changed your message and you brought a message on the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And what it meant to surrender your heart and your life and your will and everything to the Lord. And he says, God used that message that night to call me into his service.
And the Lord used that word of encouragement in my own heart and in my own life. And I'd like to suggest to you, brothers and sisters, when you have an opportunity to speak some well, if it's not but five people or ten people, and even though you may feel like you struck out, just you remember, God's word will never return. under him void. The Lord led us in nineteen hundred and sixty-two to open a Christian bookstore in Columbia.
We didn't have any money, we didn't have any experience, but we trusted in the Lord. And the Lord blessed us, and we've seen God use this ministry in a wonderful way. Some of the salesmen who call on us tell us that we have the finest inventory of evangelical, Bible-based books they have ever seen. And numbers and numbers of people have told us in a very appreciative way of how they appreciate what God has done through what we call Columbia Christian supply. And I'd like to say that even though I've mentioned about how God has supplied our needs many, many times, and I would say this, that if somebody would walk up to me and say, I'd like to put you on salary at fifteen thousand dollars a year or check every week or every month, I'd say nothing doing.
I'll tell you, it's just a wonderful thrill to trust the Lord to meet your needs. And you know the amazing thing about it is the Lord's I almost said, seems to know. That's irony. The Lord always knows when your needs great, and he knows when it's small. And sometimes it's five times greater some months than it is the next month. And he knows just how to take care of it. I've seen the Lord send money right down to the penny. Many, many times. Many times. I was telling some of the Christians last night, about two weeks ago, the gas tank on my forehead gave out. And, well, I just took it for granted. You could have it fixed, you know.
And so the mechanic took it off and took it across the street to a welding shop. And he called me up and said, I'm sorry, Mr. Hughes said, that gas tank can't be fixed. They fix one hole and put pressure on it and another one comes. Just rust it out. And there's not one in Columbia. It'd be five days before we can get one. Well, I said, by the way, while the car is there, you better check and see about the brakes. And sure enough, he said, they're gone. I went down to get the bill, two hundred and one dollars and six cents. That very day I had received a letter from an assembly in the state of Pennsylvania where I have never been in my life.
I don't even know where it is. for a hundred dollars, the day before that the Lord sent a hundred dollars in unexpectedly from somewhere else. As for God, His way is perfect. And once again, I think if there's any lesson that a young Christian needs to learn, and if you have the opportunity to counsel with a young Christian and to encourage a young Christian encourage a young Christian to trust in the Lord and to believe that he'll do what he said he will do.
Now, you can read it in books, that's good. You can read it in the Bible, and that's good. But you know the way you and I learned the best some of these things is to experience them in our hearts and in our lives. It's a wonderful thing to put the Lord to the test and to just believe the Lord. Just trust in the Lord. And when you get up in the morning, say, now, Lord, now I usually do so and so, but if you want me to do it differently today, you just lead me as to how I should do it.
Let me give you one other short illustration. We were on our way, Dottie and I, about a year and seven, eight, ten months ago to Asheville one day. And in the summer, hot weather, and we were going to leave around nine-thirty in the morning because we needed to be in Asheville in the afternoon. And now I never have believed in traveling with a lot of money. Two reasons for it. One, I never had it. Other reason is, I think people are stealing from you, you know, and something will happen. If you don't have much money, they don't have much to steal, see.
But a credit card will help occasionally, and sometimes a checkbook. But I've traveled all over America many times with fifteen, twenty dollars in my pocket. Because I know the Lord will supply me and meet our needs. Well, on this particular day, when I got up, I felt impressed to go downtown and get the mail. and i wasn't looking for any money because i had fifteen dollars and that's all i ever had you know there's a rule to travel with so i went downtown and in the mail was a check from interest magazine for a hundred dollars from two people i knew casually but not well fifty here and fifty here and it came together isn't that interesting so i went to the bank and i had it cashed and i put a hundred dollars in the pocket.
I felt like getting drinks to come go with me, but I didn't. Well, you know what? On the way up that mountain, praise the Lord, that interstate's finished now, Brother Bob, on the way. When you go into Asheville, it's finished all the way. Don't have to go around the mountains anymore. Just go over them. We were going up Saluda Mountain, and I had what to call a vapor lock on the car. due to a little bitty old filter that cost seven dollars and fifty cents, but we didn't know what it was, and it cost all. And I was rushing and hitting my starter real hard, trying to get the car started, because the people are sitting on the horns behind me, and I broke my starter. Now to make a long story short, four hours and a half later, Everything was all fixed, and we went to the garage, and the man gave me the bill.
It was ninety-five dollars. So, isn't the Lord good? Isn't He wonderful? He knows all of our needs, and He will supply them according to! Get that, will you? I'm going to ask Brother Bob what the Greek says there. I hadn't studied that. Never thought of it like that. according to his, not ours, praise the Lord, his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Now we've had to hit the high spots, but I tell you, the Lord has never failed us.
We failed him many times, but he never wants us. has failed us. Shall we pray? Father God, whether it be wisdom or encouragement or strength or discernment or funds or insight or grace or patience or love We thank thee that you are always sufficient. Never once have you let us down.
We pray that you teach us to forget the things that are unimportant and that were bitter and that were hard, but to remember all the way that you've let us and to continue to lead us day by day. And we pray that we may all experience your love and your grace that we've been thinking about this morning. We do thank you that you know what is best for us. And even though some of the things that we've desired and sometimes prayed for and longed for and yearned for many times, we never received, but we found out later that you knew what was best for us.
We pray that this may be true. at Park of the Palms. In the coming weeks and months that are ahead, we thank you by faith right now. We claim the victory through our Lord Jesus that you're going to work out the problems here. You're going to give wisdom and you're going to do this and do that and you're going to do what is best. And that you're going to continue the ministry which you started here. We know, Father, you don't start things and then stop them. You're going to do something. You're going to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us. To him be the glory in Christ Jesus.