Page 9 - Evidence of Things Unseen

because I was supposed to do so. I served in the church and supported its programs because
I had been raised to believe that a true believer should do these things. In all of this I had
little comprehension of what it meant to be Spirit led. I was merely being led by the external
set of rules that had been delivered to me, which all good saints had to abide by.
I do not mean to indicate that all of my Christian service was a drudgery to me, for I
was very zealous to do things for God and for the church. I was at church every time the
doors were opened, and no one had to prod me to be there. I was active in some type of
service almost all the time, even being made Sunday School superintendent of a church I
was attending when I was only in my mid twenties. Because of my zeal I was advancing
beyond many of my contemporaries, yet there were glaring deficiencies in my life.
Probably the greatest deficiency in my life was in my prayers. I hated prayer time. I
prayed because I knew Christians were supposed to pray. I would intend to pray for an
hour, and I was barely able to endure fifteen minutes. I would dispassionately go through
my prayer list, and it would be exhausted, and so would I, after only five or ten minutes. I
have often recounted to others that my prayer times were as dry as sawdust and that I had
no sense of my words rising above the ceiling of whatever room I was in.
I cannot remember the exact time, but I believe I was about 23 years old, when I had
an encounter that was to change my life. At the Southern Baptist church I was attending
there was an elder by the name of Bill Martin. Bill is about twenty years my senior. It was
at Bill’s house that the young people of the church would congregate, for he and his wife
June had a sincere love for others and they were very hospitable. Bill, in particular, really
enjoyed engaging young men and women in conversations about spiritual matters, and
provoking them to think about things that they may not have considered before.
Bill was not your typical church elder, being considered by the more traditional
members of the church to be a bit of a wild man. Yet there was no doubting that he was
serious about his relationship with God and that he was passionate about encouraging
others to greater depths of spirituality. I found myself hanging out at his house a lot, and
when I was around 23 years of age I even lived with he and his wife and daughter for a
month.
One day Bill and I went for a walk around a peach orchard that was located behind his
house, and as we walked Bill shared some things with me that I really needed to hear. Bill
began telling me about his prayer life, and I was both greatly challenged and encouraged
by what I heard. I had been accustomed to formal, spiritual sounding prayers all my life, so
I was amazed by what Bill shared with me.
Bill told me that he would pray to God often as he took walks, or during various times
of day, and he began to relate to me the substance of his prayers. He said there was no sense
in attempting to sound spiritual in God’s presence, nor to present ourselves to God as
better, or more noble, than we actually were, for God already knew what was in our hearts.
He saw every aspect of our lives, and was able to judge the thoughts and intentions of our
hearts.
Bill went on to share with me how he would talk to God. He would tell God things like,
“Lord you know when I saw that good looking woman today that I had lustful thoughts in
my mind, and I don’t want to be a lustful man, so I ask You to forgive me and to deliver me
from these thoughts.” Or he might say, “God you know that man at work provoked me today
and I felt like punching him in the nose. I wanted to really hurt him Lord, but I know these
thoughts are fleshly and not from You. I ask you to forgive me and deliver me.”
The frankness with which this elder brother in the Lord prayed, the lack of posturing