Chapters: 1. Why Don't Men Obey God? |
11CONVERSION
I was fifteen years of age, during a revival at the Parker
church, when a saint of God slipped up beside me on one of the
front seats and humbly asked, "Loran, are you saved?"
Self wanted to say, "Yes!" After all, I had been reared in
a Christian home, prayed every day, went to church faithfully,
tried to obey my parents as best I could, and didn't fight or
fuss with my brothers. From the age of twelve on I seldom missed
a prayer meeting, even though I was about the only boy there my
age. I was janitor of the church at the age of thirteen or
fourteen, but janitor or not, prayer meeting was on the program
for me (and you can generally tell who are really serious about
God's work by observing those who faithfully support this service
dedicated to prayer).
But when I told this person that I was saved, I discovered
for the first time in all my life that I had a living heart. My
heart felt as if it literally flipped or turned over when I
answered "Yes". I have to marvel how God convinced me in a
second or two or three (and He tells me now that it was three
seconds) that I was not born again. Now no person informed me
about the marvelous operations of God within the heart and the
body, but the Holy Spirit has instructed me little by little,
over many years, how He reveals within the heart. At that
moment, I was being instructed about the operation of Holy Spirit
conviction within the human heart.
I was deceived about my true condition because I had been
going by what "seemed" right, not by what God said through His
Spirit. I wanted to think that I was a saved boy, but
91 the Holy Spirit convinced me quickly that I wasn't what I thought
myself to be. I don't think I had much conviction ever touch my
heart until this saint obeyed God by asking me about my soul.
God's convincing men of sin will really come to a
congregation when all the followers in that church are faithful
and obedient. Great conviction will fall when the entire body
has paid the price. Occasionally, however, God can bring revival
in spite of opposition and disobedience. We experienced this
when several of the board members at one of the churches we
served rather felt that we couldn't afford to have revival. The
Lord had revealed that we were to proceed, and He sent revival
right over the top of every difficulty.
But usually conviction does not fall severely upon sinners
in a community until those of the church humble themselves,
confess their faults to one another, get everything right with
God, and do exactly what He wants them to do. Conviction upon
the lost will many times be in proportion to the burden which the
church carries, and a burden for the lost cannot be achieved: it
is a gift from God to the broken, obedient heart.
This is the reason we have so little true conviction in a
great number of our churches today. So much secret sin, hidden
iniquity, disobedience, and self-assertion in the lives of
professing Christians grieves the Holy Spirit. Bible doctrines
are still being preached in many congregations, but the power of
God to convince men of sin has been greatly limited.
We cannot convict anyone of sin, for conviction comes not to
the mind, but to the heart; and only the Holy Spirit can convince
a man's heart of sin. We may have the proper theology and the
correct ideas in our churches, but unless we as a people are one
together in Christ Jesus through His love, the Holy Spirit is
grieved; because of this, God seldom sends His convicting power.
Without His divine power moving in their hearts, men will be
totally unaware of the
92 desperate lostness of their souls, just as I had been.
In December 1932 or January 1933, in a conversation unknown
to me at that time, our pastor, Rev. N. E. Smith, came to my
father and said, "Eldon, I have an opportunity to get an
evangelist by the name of Rev. E. R. Lewis. I know that if I
bring it before the board, it will probably not be approved, and
I have only a few days in which to procure him. He has a
cancellation and can come at this time."
My father told Rev. Smith, "Pastor, you invite him, and I
will stand behind you."
So our pastor scheduled Rev. E. R. Lewis for revival in
January. He was called "the word painter," for he could take the
Bible stories and simply bring them alive. There was no one like
him. Even today, though he is over eighty year old, Brother
Lewis has not changed. He still has the fire, the keen mind, and
the same goal he once had. I was amazed when I visited him a few
months ago, for he was able to recall in detail many incidents of
that revival in 1933. His wife is not well, but he never
mentions it. He doesn't even act like she is sick. I would never
have known it if his son had not informed me. Isn't it wonderful
that a man could continue faithfully and not faint--simply be
joyous and overcoming as if everything were normal? Why, most of
us would be lamenting, "I tell you, we are having hard time.
Mother is not very well."
But he didn't say one word about her sickness when I visited with
him a few months ago. Praise the Lord.
In the first month of 1933 the meeting started, but I didn't
come for a few nights because we had basketball practice. Of
course, on Sunday night and prayer meeting I had to be there, but
on other week nights my father would sometimes permit me to be at
school functions. Not many nights went by until he said, "Now,
Son, I think we will go to church tonight. We need to be at the
revival." I wasn't too anxious to attend, for I was under
dreadful, deep (the Holy Ghost says within me "deep") conviction.
But, as soon as my
93 father said that I was to be in church, I was on my way.
A few months ago Rev. Lewis reviewed what actually took
place, unknown to me at that time, during the revival:
"Before church started that night," he told me, "your daddy
came up and sat down beside me. `Brother Lewis,' he
confided, `don't look back, but my oldest son, Loran, needs
to be saved. He needs to find Christ. God has called him
and the devil is fighting terribly. Don't look around, but
I just pray that some way God will help you in this revival
to bring him in.'
"I said, `Yes, Sir, we will do the best we can, Brother
Helm.' And when I looked around, if I ever saw a picture of
despair, I saw it painted on your face. You looked like you
didn't have a friend in the world."
When a person is under conviction, he doesn't look too
happy. Many people in the church do not appear too happy because
they do not have the happiness on the inside. When you are saved
and have the joy of Jesus on the inside, it shows on the outside,
because your mind will tell your face.
True happiness, a genuine inner joy, is a result of
obedience; and obedience is never experienced except by humility
and self-denial. If we fail to deny Self, we disobey God. In
order to obey the Lord regularly and consistently, one must
continue to die out to himself and to things. Here is where
true joy is to be found! The secret of living is in dying:
dying out to what we want and what we plan, in order
to do what God wants and what God wills.
As the revival services continued, conviction was apparent
upon me. When we pulled up to the curb of the church Sunday
morning, January 22, 1933, my brother Richard said, "They're
going to get you today."
"What did you say?" I asked.
He replied, I just have a feeling that they are going to get
you today."
"Going to get me!" I remarked impatiently. Richard said
that I didn't respond too cordially. I was under severe
conviction. God was calling and the devil was fighting.
94 That evening after the Epworth League service, I came down
the church steps onto the curb as my mother and father came up
the walk to attend the evening service. I said to my father, "I
am going with the young people to the Rivoli Theater tonight,
Dad."
Without hesitation my father said, "Son, you will sing in
the choir tonight."
Here I was almost seventeen years old, president of my
Junior class in high school, and my friends were getting into
their cars to go to the theater. But I simply turned around,
walked back up all the steps, made my way down the aisle, and
found a seat over on the left side of the choir loft.
I didn't question my father or whimper and whine until he
let me have my way. My dad had never permitted us to have our
own way. When he told me that I would sing in the choir, I
obeyed his order immediately without question or contention. In
a few minutes I looked up and here came my good chum, Thomas B.
He said, "Well, if you're not going to the theater, I'm not going
either." So my not going to the theater brought him back into
the church also.
When the sermon ended, one of the saints came up into the
choir loft to invite me to Jesus. I was hard; I was obstinate; I
was stubborn. "No!" I insisted. But the evangelist, by the help
of the Holy Spirit, led a young man to Jesus while he was praying
with souls. All at once he said, "Now everyone who is a friend
of Howard M., come down and shake his hand."
Why, Howard had been my friend since 1922. I had to go
shake his hand. That brought me out of the choir right down to
the old-fashioned "mourner's bench." It was composed of two
benches, one on either side at the front of the sanctuary.
When I got there to shake his hand, the young people
gathered around me and I couldn't get away. I tried to leave,
but it seemed that I couldn't move at all. It was almost as if I
were nailed to the floor. Folks were pleading with me to
95 give my heart to Jesus. I looked to my left, and there, just a
few feet from my side, was my mother at the altar praying.
After a few minutes in this struggle between dear ones who
were pleading and Satan who was fighting within, I said to
myself, "God, you have been on my trail ever since I was born."
Now why did I say just those words--"God, you have been on my
trail ever since I was born" when I did not even know that my
mother felt the Holy Spirit falling upon us at my birth? It was
the Lord speaking through me.
Still talking to myself I added, "I can see that if I don't
go with You it is going to be dark. But, God, I don't want to be
a fifty percent Christian or even a ninety-nine percent
Christian. I want to be one hundred percent for you, Jesus."
When I said that, I dropped to my knees right there and Tom B.
fell to the altar beside me. He got victory in about nine to ten
minutes; but I continued to pray and plead with God, my head in
the curl of my arm.
I thought myself to be the worst of sinners, even though I
had never had as much as a puff of tobacco in my mouth. Most
boys, when they are little, will go behind the barn or into the
field, get some corn silk, roll it, and smoke it. But I never
did. My father and mother had said to me, "I trust you will
never do that. If you will not smoke, we will make you a present
the day you are twenty-one." Because of their admonition, each
time I was tempted by the fellows, my mother's face would come up
before me. I would resist the temptation and go home. Not a
swallow of liquor had been down my throat either. But when I
knelt at the altar that night, I was aware that I had come so far
short in pleasing Jesus. I had grieved Him so much. I was such
a terrible sinner.
Then Jesus began to speak to me. "I am calling you," He
said. "You are Mine. You are going to be my servant."
"I can't do it," I told Him.
He said, "Yes, you can. I am calling you to preach the Gospel."
96 "No," I replied. "I am not able."
"You are Mine," God continued to deal with me. For the
longest time I cried out. It was so black. "You are going to
preach," He kept telling me gently.
"Lord, I can't preach," I insisted. (Now whenever a person
wants to preach, I rather doubt if God has called him. Nearly
every man of God I have known has tried to get out of preaching.
He has told God that he is unable to do it. If a man feels
himself totally incapable of this high assignment, I believe God
will be able to work with him. I wanted to be a lawyer, but God
was calling me to preach the Gospel.)
My mother tells me that the power of Satan was so very great
around the altar that it seemed as if one could cut it with a knife.
The enemy was there in terrible power trying to keep me back in the
Kingdom of Darkness. I suppose that the devil fought me at my
conversion as severely as any man I have seen or heard about in this
age, because I believe Satan knew that if I started for Jesus, I
didn't want to be half-way in this business. I wanted to be one
hundred percent for God. Satan didn't want me to get started
because he knew of all my appointments in the coming years with
dear ones from coast to coast and in a few nations.
(When I would be with the clerk of the little village of
Parker, Indiana, in 1951, I would share with him my walk with
Jesus and answers to prayer in different parts of the nation. He
would be blessed and thrilled over how God was directing me. One
day as I shared with him, he lifted his hand across that big desk
to make a statement, and I received the witness of the Holy
Spirit to the truth of his words before he could even speak them:
"What would have happened," he said, "if Loran Helm hadn't come
down this lonely trail?")
That January night, Satan knew of the determination of my
heart to do God's will. He knew why God had called me as a
little boy, and he was fighting with ferocious power to keep me
from getting started on this marvelous adventure with Jesus.
97 God continued lovingly to call me, but all I could repeat
over and over was, "I can't preach--I can't preach."
Suddenly a beautiful light appeared right above me. I was
amazed! I don't know how to describe it to you, for it was the
light of the Kingdom of God. (Now don't you look for any light.
What you anticipate and work out for your own conversion seldom
happens. Simply take what God gives you and be glad for it.
Every person's experience will be different, because God treats
us as individuals.)
As soon as I saw this marvelous light, my sins fell away,
all the darkness was gone, and a great load lifted out of me.
God reached over His index finger, dipped it in the sacred blood
of Jesus, and wrote my name down in the Lamb's Book of Life. Praise
the Lord! On a page white and fair He wrote my unworthy name.
When He gave me a new heart and a new life I suddenly
experienced a love and peace that I never knew existed. Jesus,
through the power of God, by the work of the Holy Spirit, performed
divine surgery on me: He grafted me into His side, and the Light and
the Life and the Love of God began to flow through the veins and
arteries of my soul. I wanted everyone saved right away.
I had heard my father and other pastors preach on the joy of
the Lord, the peace of Jesus, since I was a little boy three years
of age; but I didn't know a bit more of what they were talking about
than if they had read a paragraph in the Hebrew language. I had
studied the Bible, prayed daily, and attended church faithfully, but
I didn't know about the divine joy that flows through the great heart
of Jesus until I was brought from sin's terrible darkness into
Christ's glorious light.
Oh, I know that I was only beginning, that I was just on the
fringe of His great love; but God made a new person of me that
January night. I was unworthy of this new life. I was so
undeserving. It was a gift from God through Jesus Christ. I
wasn't expecting the miraculous, but when you walk with God, it
will be a supernatural walk. The holy
98 Word of God verifies the fact that the way of Christianity is
supernatural.
To try to have Christianity without the supernatural is like
trying to have apples without orchards, homes without dwellings,
factories without machinery. To try to have Christianity without
the miraculous is like trying to have human life without
breathing, water without wells or springs, and light without
electricity. Christianity began in simplicity with a
supernatural birth, and continues to live in the miraculous
through childlike faith.
But don't seek the supernatural; don't seek for experiences:
seek first the Kingdom of God. One doesn't seek gifts or things,
one seeks the person of Jesus alone. When you seek Jesus alone,
He never fails to give you what you need and what other persons
need through you. He cannot fail.
Jesus saved me right there at that altar. (And do you know
what God is telling me right now as I share this with you? He is
saying, "I will guide you and direct you." Isn't that wonderful?
Just as I shared that Jesus saved me, He spoke within me and
said, "I will guide you and direct you." To walk with God and
have Him reveal Himself to you is one of the most wonderful
things in the world! I sense His presence in my heart right now.
Thank you, Jesus.
(I get excited and I can't help it. I am wonderfully glad
about Jesus living in my heart. If you have Jesus in your heart,
and if you are walking with God, you are really going to be
excited about the Kingdom of God. You are going to be
enthusiastic about everything that Jesus is in. You don't have
to work up excitement; it is simply within you, and it gets
better as you go along.
(I am convinced that very few people are following Jesus
with all their hearts. Some people claim to be Christian, but
there is scant evidence of joy in them. Precious persons stand
in service to testify that they love Jesus, but there is so
little of the love of Jesus in them. Their faces are full of
99 shadows, and through their eyes one can see hidden darkness.
There is a great possibility that at home they find fault,
complain, murmur, or criticize. Some individuals claiming to be
Christian say beautiful words at church, but at home they can be
harsh and cruel, complaining and hard to get along with.
(Listen, dear ones--if a man is a Christian, he has the joy
of Jesus and the fruits of the Spirit in this life. The time is
short, and we need to be examining our lives for solid evidence of
Christ's indwelling. We must go with Jesus wholeheartedly and
rid our lives of all these unclean things. If you are in this
with all your heart, God will begin to work through you to help
someone: to encourage, to lift, or to heal.)
When I rose from the altar to a standing position, I felt
like I was going to lift right up off the floor. Really! I
actually thought that I was going right up. I didn't say a word
to anyone, but Jesus had so lifted the load of my heart that I
thought surely my feet would come off the floor. Others could
sense this divine presence too, for John Wesley Lewis, the son of
the evangelist and the song evangelist for the meetings (who has
been in the church for over fifty years) told me recently: "I
have been in many revivals and in many church services; but the
night you were converted, I felt the most power of God that I
ever felt before or since."
Only a few had remained to pray with me during this deep
struggle of the soul. Satan had been there determined to own me
forever; but Jesus delivered me by the power of His blood and
started me on a heavenly path.
The beginning of my salvation was so wonderful that, by
God's grace, I have never wanted to give up and turn back. Even
though Satan has fought me severely, I have had to say, "Get
behind me, Satan, I am going with Jesus of Nazareth. I belong to
God." The Lord being my Helper, I want to be faithful. I don't
want to be up and down, in and out. I want to be true to Jesus.
Observing this tremendous day in my life from the distance
100 of these intervening years, one brief moment stands out in bold
relief: it is the moment when my father said to me, "Son, you
will sing in the choir tonight." If my dad had not been firm in
his decision and given that command, I would never had met Jesus
as my Saviour that night. It might have been months or years
before I yielded to God, or perhaps never.
But that was the night God wanted to graft me into the
True Vine. That was the hour He had appointed to start getting me
in readiness for the calling of God which had been upon me since
birth or before. I would have missed that appointment had it not
been for a father who expected obedience and demanded it.
You see, that fleeting moment on Sunday evening, January 22,
1933--when I faced my parents on the walk of the church and
informed them of my own plans: "I am going to the Rivoli Theater
with the young people"--had been emerging for nearly seventeen
years. Every time Dad had corrected me in the preceeding months
and years; each time he had needed to whip me and disappoint me:
these moments were preparing me for that particular evening and
this apparently insignificant encounter of wills.
I did not want to go to church. My will was to go with the
young people to the theater. But, because my dad had
unswervingly demanded my obedience in the past; because he had
not yielded to the pathetic persuasion of a cute and adorable
youngster in the preceeding years; he carried with him absolute
authority that night which spoke volumes in a few simple words:
"You will sing in the choir tonight."
Without the years of consistent adherence to continued
discipline and obedience within my life, I would have resisted my
parents that evening. Either I would have argued and whined,
trying to get my own way, or else I would have done what they
wanted me to do, but with resentment and grumbling in my heart.
But because my parents had broken me as a child to obey
101 their every command, and obey willingly and joyfully, I didn't
argue or fuss. I didn't murmur or complain. I didn't carry
resentment or a grudge into the church with me. As best as I can
remember, by God's grace, I didn't greatly mind not going to the
theater, and this was only because I had been accustomed to
disappointment time after time in the preceding sixteen years.
Because of my father's command, not only was I brought into
the necessary place to be drawn to Jesus, but my friend, Thomas
B., was affected as well. His salvation, as well as my own,
hinged on my father's life of discipline.
As I observe across the years how hundreds and thousands of
divine guidances have been intricately intertwined with the
preceding leadings of Jesus, the significance to my salvation of
my father's life of discipline and obedience increases
profoundly. If it had not been for God working through him in
this way, a great host of appointments in the Holy Ghost would
have been missed. I would have been out of step all along the
way.
We have discovered through experience that when God orders
things, a matter of a few seconds can mean the difference of
someone being saved or lost, a loved one being healed or left in
affliction, a family avoiding tragedy or going to accident. It
is all because of the guidance of God, the direction of the Holy
Spirit; but if I had not started at God's time on his precious
path of trusting and obeying, I might have missed hundreds or
thousands or many more who were waiting on a lowly servant of
Jesus to come their way.
My words aren't adequate to relate what I am seeing, for in
this walk with God, one revelation leads to another. There are
no short cuts in God's ways or in God's timing. If we fail at
one point to obey His word or follow His guidance, then we set
out of joint all that He had planned for us in the seconds, the
minutes, the days and the years ahead.
Of course, He is so gracious to forgive us and help us when
we have failed. But, if we only hold steady, continue
102 right on trusting and following the best we know without looking
back, He will bring us, by His grace, to those precious and
sacred appointments with people or situations where He will work
His Kingdom through us entirely for His glory. Almost every
leading which the Holy Spirit has given me over thirty-some years
has been like this: the preceding guidance leads to the next.
BOLD What God is able to do through me today pivots on what He
has helped me to obey of His guidance months and years before.
END_BOLD
Therefore, I am striving to appreciate the great debt I owe
to my parents for training me in the way that I should go--in
absolute obedience to their wishes--for when the eternal fate of
my soul, and that of many others, hinged upon a single response
to my father's command, I was able to obey immediately and
without contention. I owe all to our loving Jesus; to the work
and leading of the precious Holy Spirit of God.
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