FRUSTRATED?--Part III DFO 835_3 22/9/79
39. HOW CAN ANYONE BEMOAN THAT THEY ARE NO LONGER IN GOD'S FULL-TIME SERVICE WHEN THEY HAVE FOUR LITTLE CHILDREN TO TRAIN & TEACH FULL-TIME!--And a husband to take care of besides!--A bread-winner who is willing to support you & your children while you teach & train them! How can anyone complain that they are out of the will of God & out of God's service when they have that big a job to do, which takes all your time, day & night, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, taking care of a home, a husband & a family of small children! I don't see how some of you young mothers with small children find time to do anything else to serve the Lord, outside of serving your children & your husband & your home!
40. BUT GOD BLESS DEAR MOM! SHE DID! She trained them to memorise Scripture & to recite it, & to sing songs & testify, & finally got them out on the streets & in the cafes & wherever we went, singing & testifying & quoting Scriptures for the Lord! GBH! She did what she could with what she had in her hand, & God blessed it & made them a blessing!
41. SHE TRAINED THEM UP IN THE WAY THEY SHOULD GO, so that when they were older they didn't depart therefrom (Pro.22:6), but they became a tremendous blessing to thousands of young people throughout the world! You have the Family today as a result of her years of faithful ministry as a poor little frazzled, bedraggled, frustrated weary young mother of a family of four small children!
42. SHE DID WHAT SHE COULD WITH WHAT SHE HAD IN HER HAND, & God blessed it & magnified it & increased it abundantly, until now she can take a large share of the credit for the fruit of this tremendous Family throughout the world! She was faithful in one little Home to a poor weak struggling husband & his four small children, & to the Lord in taking care of them!
43. NOW WE HAVE NEARLY 2,000 HOMES & THOUSANDS IN OUR FAMILY WHO ARE DOING THE SAME THING that we did when we were just one tiny family trying to serve the Lord! Thank God! It's not always easy & & you can't always do it full-time, & many were the times I had to stop & take a job to try to earn the money to support my family.
44. BUT WHEN I FINALLY REALLY INSISTED ON SERVING GOD FULL-TIME BY FAITH WITH OUR LITTLE FAMILY OF SIX, believe it or not, those children began to support me in their service for the Lord! God began to bless their ministry so much, it didn't seem like I needed any ministry anymore! I was nothing but the driver, the chauffeur, the car repairman, the flunky! I no longer did any preaching or teaching or had any public ministry whatsoever!
45. ALL I DID WAS DRIVE THE CAR OR THE CAMPER! The only ministry I had besides having the gift of helps--helping them to minister--was to teach those four little children the Word of God when they were at home, to have classes, sometimes all day, teaching them the Word, reading the Word, telling them stories, absolutely baptising them in the Word, immersing them in the Word!
46. I THINK SOMETIMES THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE ALMOST DROWNING IN THE WORD! For we gave them the Word day & night, & prayer & singing & praise & testimony, & we had a very happy little Heavenly home right in our little tiny trailer or camper, not even as big a home as some of yours!--The last one was only 8-feet wide & 26-feet long--virtually all one room! But we survived & we served the Lord. We sacrificed having a bigger home & a more lucrative job with more money & more things, we sacrificed all that in order to serve the Lord!
47. WE MOVED INTO CAMPERS & TRAILERS SO WE COULD KEEP MOVING FOR GOD & serve Him full-time by faith, & it worked! Our little children became our ministry! They were our ministry from the beginning, although we did not realise it, & eventually became our major ministry! They were the ones who were now ministering!
48. WE HAD MINISTERED TO THEM FOR YEARS AS TINY TOTS, to all their little needs, bearing & caring & rearing & sometimes tearing our hair feeding & clothing & changing & training & teaching & guarding & supporting & providing--all the things that little children need & keep you busy with night & day, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day!
49. I DON'T SEE HOW ANY MOTHER OF A FAMILY OF SEVERAL SMALL CHILDREN CAN POSSIBLY DO ANYTHING ELSE BUT TAKE CARE OF THEM & HER HUSBAND & HER HOME!--But some of our mothers do! God bless you for it!--That's over & above the call of duty, & you deserve medals for it! You take them out serving the Lord in witnessing, singing, quoting & testifying, & God blesses you for it! So praise the Lord! But I'll tell you, you're rare & unusual mothers who can do both!--If you can take care of your home & your children & your husband, & still find time to get out witnessing & litnessing & singing & testifying etc., I've got to hand it to you!
50. WELL, WE DID IT TOO & that's why I can hand it to you, because I know what it takes! I know what we went through, & I know how hard it was for poor Mom, but she did it! She was determined she was going to do something for God. If she couldn't, at least she could get her children to, & she did! That's the greatest thing she ever did for God, to rear that little family to serve the Lord!--And you can see the results now yourself! In fact, you yourself are a part of the results, praise God?
51. SO, I KNOW WHAT A LOT OF YOU LITTLE FAMILIES ARE GOING THROUGH RIGHT NOW, especially some of who have had to go back home & into the System, like I did several times, & I think that indeed was the most trying time of my life!--Those were the most trying times of all, those times we had to spend in the System, me working at a System job 8 hours a day or more, coming home exhausted to a house full of screaming kids & a bawling & complaining wife!
52. IT JUST SEEMED LIKE WE WERE GETTING NOWHERE & DOING NOTHING! I was really Mr. "Nowhere Man" for sure! Those were to me some of the most miserable times in my life, when I had to go back into the System & work at a System job to try to support my family. But it helped us to survive! It made it possible for our children to eat & have a place to live & grow & be taught & trained & exist, until we were able to do something more for the Lord.
53. BUT I MUST SAY, SOME OF THE HAPPIEST TIMES OF OUR LIVES WERE THOSE DAYS IN CAMPERS WHEN THE CHILDREN WERE SMALL, the days when we had nothing, almost no place to live, barely anywhere to lay our heads, but living full-time for the Lord by faith!--At first I used to tell the kids, "Well, at least we've got a car & a little tent.--That's more than the Lord & St. Paul had, so we should be very thankful!" Later we had trailers & finally our big camper. But those were years of sacrifice & privation & sometimes almost starving, although we never really missed a meal because we didn't have it--God always provided, sometimes at the last minute!
54. THOSE DAYS OF HARD LIVING BY FAITH WERE THE HAPPIEST DAYS OF OUR LIVES with a family of four small children, a family of six. And those days on the road, living in the car or a tiny tent or tiny trailers, but serving God full-time by faith & just trusting God from day to day for our food & our gasoline & our tires & engine repairs & our housing, & most of all for places of service where we could serve the Lord & do good, & also for our support, those seemingly most sacrificial privation days of living by faith for the Lord & serving Him full-time with a small family of small children, those were the happiest days of our young family's life!
55. THE DAYS WHEN WE TRUSTED GOD & WE JUST LIVED BY FAITH & SERVED THE LORD FULL-TIME, sometimes never knowing where we were going to lay our heads or where our next meal was going to come from, those were exciting happy days!--And God never failed, TTL! As long as we were faithful & served Him diligently & got out there & witnessed & litnessed & sang & testified & praised the Lord, He never failed us!
56. WE ALSO WENT TO THE CHURCHES to tell them all about it & how to do it & to try to get them out too--that was pretty difficult!--But anyhow, it was a joy to tell them what they could do, even if they wouldn't!--And some of them did, TTL! We got a few to get out, particularly the young people. They were fascinated by witnessing, & they loved it! But the old folks held back & the pastor often fought us, because he got jealous of his young people falling in love with us. But those were wonderful days!
57. THE HARDEST DAYS WERE THOSE DAYS IN BETWEEN IN THE SYSTEM when we got discouraged & sometimes got out of God's will & I had to get a job & just barely eke out an existence, just manage to survive, & when all Mom could possibly do was just take care of her children & her husband but she at least continued to try to train & teach them, including me!--Ha!
58. THAT'S THE BIGGEST JOB YOU'VE GOT TO DO RIGHT NOW, IF YOU HAVE A FAMILY OF SMALL CHILDREN--THAT IS YOUR JOB! I've said that, I don't know how many times! They are God's work! Don't talk to me about having to leave God's work & no longer in full time service! I don't know how you could be in more full-time service than taking care of four small kids 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! What the hell do you call full-time service anyhow??!
59. THAT CERTAINLY IS ABOUT AS FULL-TIME SERVICE AS YOU CAN POSSIBLY GET!--And it certainly is for God!--Because God gave them, & they're His children & He wants you to take care of them & train them!!--And it's a full-time job! I don't see how you could be any busier than you are! And how could you grumble & complain about it? May God forgive you!
60. ANYHOW, THIS POOR GIRL, SHE DOES NOT TELL US THE WHOLE STORY, of course, they never do. There is always another side to the story that somebody else has to tell that they are ashamed to tell, don't want to tell, are afraid to tell & hardly willing to even confess to themselves, much less to you or me! Sometimes they virtually blind themselves to it, because they don't want to admit that it was some failure on their part or even their own fault that got them in such a mess!
61. SO ANYWAY, SHE DOES HONESTLY CONFESS THAT SHE FELL IN LOVE--after five years of faithful service on a difficult field with four small children--she finally fell in love with another man! Well, I must say, at least that's one thing that Mom did not do to me, at least not then! She was very strict in her beliefs about that. Though she may have fallen in love with other men at a distance, she didn't admit it & she didn't yield to it & she didn't get involved with it till we were all gone.
62. MOST OF ALL, THANK GOD, SHE DID NOT DESERT ME & THE CHILDREN! Sometimes she sort of deserted me in her heart, but thank God, she never failed the children, at least. Sometimes she failed to give me the companionship that I longed for, although she often reluctantly yielded her body to sex. But sometimes we had very little spiritual or other mental companionship because of her hardening feelings toward me & feeling I was a failure, & her disappointment with me & feeling I was to blame for all her troubles & her loss of ministry by getting her tied down with all these kids! She sort of blamed it all on me, as well as herself.
(See Part IV.)
Copyright (c) 1997 by The Family