SOBER TESTIMONY

I have just finished reading your article An Open Letter to a Rejected Minister. I can identify with the young minister, having just gone through a similar experience, resulting in the loss of my job and disfellowship from the church for my whole family.

Recently my wife was healed from an illness that had plagued her for over two years, including several weeks of hospitalization. Her healing resulted from the prayers of those who believe God heals today as he did in New Testament times. Numerous doctors and specialists were unable to help her. When it was again recommended that she go to the hospital, we decided to take the matter to the Lord, the Great Physician. The results were immediate. She is now totally healed.

This was foreign to both of us, for we had been brought up to believe that the day of miraculous healing is past. Yet it was through Church of Christ friends, who had similar experiences in prayer, that we turned to the Lord in desperation, asking for their prayers. My wife Carla and I had long felt that something was missing in our relationship to God, even though she taught in the Christian school and I was working for one of our church supported children’s homes. That closeness with the Lord was not there. Something was missing. So we began attending studies with those who had been filled with the Holy Spirit, the Lord giving me a hunger that I had never had before. We met with numerous groups, in and out of the Church of Christ, including the Full Gospel Men’s Fellowship.

My elders, who are also my employers in the children’s home, told me that I must not visit any more with “unbelievers.” I was bluntly told to “shape up or ship out.” I had reached the point where I could no longer deny what I was beginning to see as the truth. What I saw in the lives of others was real. So my wife and I felt that we would have to continue to seek the Lord’s truth and will in our lives. Three more meetings were held with the elders, and finally on Nov. 18 I was fired from my job at the home and we were withdrawn from. A letter of withdrawal was sent to all the local congregations, and it was published in the children’s home newsletter which is mailed to 35,000 families.

Praise the Lord for the opportunity to witness to so many that we believe the Holy Spirit is alive and operates in the lives of Christians today as he did during the days of the apostles. The Lord has blessed us with his Holy Spirit, including the manifestation of tongues. — Donald B. Meyers, 5113 Berget, Amarillo 79106

If a rich man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it. — Socrates