Month: May 2016

“Pastor Jim” as so many men, women, and children called him over the years was simply “Jimmy” to me. I remember so clearly when I first spoke to him in the cafeteria line at Oral Roberts University in 1967.  “Hi, I believe you’re new on campus,” I volunteered as I extended my hand to shake his. He turned his head and focused those azure blue eyes on me as he returned my greeting.  “Oh hello. I’m Jimmy Hatcher,” he said flashing a smile and speaking with a pleasant touch of drawl. “What a dreamboat!” I clearly remember thinking.

He stood six feet tall and sported sandy hair. He was friendly and easy to approach. I found my heart “strangely warmed” to use the words John Wesley used to describe a divine encounter. I was from that moment of connecting with those beautiful blue eyes of his on the alert for other places and times when I might “run into” Jim. I discovered he was a seminary student and had just arrived in Tulsa from Louisiana at the mid semester break. He worked in the library in the evenings, friends told me. I was suddenly in need of much research assistance. In fact every night you could find me hitting the books and looking quite helpless.

Our relationship was first a friendship, and how blessed I was to call Jim Hatcher friend. He would help me with my studies, he would offer to pray for me when I was ill or homesick. He shared insights into the Bible which he obviously loved and read with frequency and even devotion. He told me about a retreat where Tommy Tyson, a much loved Christian speaker, would be speaking in Ardmore, Oklahoma and offered me and other friends a ride to the weekend gathering. I accepted the invitation to accompany him and other hungry college freshmen to a “Camp Farthest Out.”

At the retreat in rural Oklahoma, a hundred or more assorted Christians from many denominations sang choruses and listened to sermons and testimonies. We prayed in small group settings for each other. We took long hikes among the camp trails and cabins. It was a slice of heaven for me so far from home and facing all the many new academic and social challenges of life at a university. I met Jim’s Dad and Mom and his brother Craig. I also was surprised to hear that the other featured speaker at the retreat would be the Reverend James Brown from Parkesburg, Pennsylvania. This man led the service of praise and prayer on a Saturday night two years previous in his small Presbyterian church close to my home in Maryland where I had opened my heart to the Lord and asked Him to fill me with the Holy Spirit. I was so happy to see Rev. Brown, and I still remember that he delivered a powerful sermon that night called “Jesus, Friend of Sinners.”

During Rev. Brown’s message that evening I felt a profound moving of God’s Spirit in my heart. I knew I was having a divine appointment. And now as I look back on that providentially arranged service of worship, I realize God was giving me a peek into my future because six years later I would stand with this man who was sitting to my left- Jim Hatcher- in front of this minister Rev James Brown, and we would be married and enter into a holy covenant that would determine and bless the rest of my life.

Eventually our friendship would grow into a  God-breathed love and a long lasting commitment although it would not be an easy route to marriage and a new life together. Jim’s Dad would pass away in 1968 and Jim would leave seminary to care for his Mom. He would work in several different jobs and try to find his way after the sudden loss of his father whom he adored. I, meanwhile, would graduate and return to my home in Maryland in 1970 and eventually find a job and ministry position in Parkesburg serving as the youth minister at the Upper Octorara Presbyterian church where Rev. Brown was the pastor.

By the grace of God Jim and I would come together again after being separated by hundreds of miles and four long years. Jim called me out of the clear blue one day and said he was wondering if I were “dropped, pinned, going steady or engaged.” When I said “No, to all of the above,” Jim drove to Pennsylvania at Christmas of 1972 and asked me to marry him. I was speechless, but managed to nod my head in assent. God had given me the friendly blue-eyed Southern gentleman! It was all a girl come ask for.

The wedding took place in the old historic church in Chester county Pennsylvania on May 5, 1973. We would first live in Tulsa and try to make a life around Jim’s position as an admissions counselor for the university. However we both were restless and felt God’s calling to ministry on our lives. Jim would try a stint at Perkins seminary in Dallas, and I would try a secular job in real estate. During his entrance interviews at Perkins, the officials spoke of “demythologizing the Bible.” We both knew God had Bible teaching and pastoring for us. After prayer and fasting we decided to refuse the liberal interpretation of the Scriptures that the seminary offered and simply trust the precious Holy Spirit to teach us how to minister the truths about God’s love and Jesus’ grace to people. In the fall of 1974 we left Dallas and drove to my parents’ home in Baltimore where we could live rent free for a season and seek the Lord.

Jim worked as an office painter at night in Washington D.C. and used the money to pay off student loans. I soon got involved with young people and served as a youth counselor and activities’ director at Randallstown Presbyterian church in the northwest suburbs of Baltimore. We loved this period of our early lives. We sensed God’s Spirit’s anointing on us to sing and teach God’s word to youth and home groups. We eventually moved to Jim’s home in Shreveport, Louisiana when some of the leaders in the area formed a multi-faith ministry non-profit organization in the north part of the state and invited us to sing at a conference they were sponsoring at the Shreveport Civic Centre. The invited speakers gave testimony to dramatic new outpourings of the Holy Spirit among denominational churches across the nation. Jim and I sang and also gathered the children up and prayed with them while the conference speakers held forth. Many parents told us they preferred our meeting with the children where we sang and laid hands on each other to the learned speakers.

“Christian Ministries of Shreveport” became our spiritual “covering” and provided many varied opportunities for us to learn about caring for people. They offered to provide some financial support in exchange for our representing them in home groups and churches interested in the charismatic renewal. In this way we were introduced to venues for our guitar playing and singing and for our teachings about the Holy Spirit’s workings in our lives. We were like the early church. We met in homes and in rented public venues. We shared in Catholic masses and Pentecostal churches. We shared in summer camps and marriage retreats. We shared in children’s meetings and youth conferences and adult study groups. But soon our flexible life style  of travel and ministry would be interrupted by the coming of our own children.

Rebecca Christine Hatcher made her appearance in the Schumpert hospital in Shreveport on the Sunday morning of May 2, 1976. Our good friend Ed Dilworth’s father was the well respected  area obstetrician who delivered her. She was a precious pink little creature who completely stole our hearts. She was good natured and put herself to sleep easily with the help of music and recorded books. She was a singer from an early age and a reader too. In a few months after her birth, I discovered we were expecting again. This time it was a beautiful baby boy – James Christopher- who made his way into our hearts the very next May 4th.  He was born playing the guitar and making everybody smile. Not really, but it seems like it.

After the children came, Jim and I had a gathering of friends at our house, and we prayed together about starting a new church in Shreveport where the Holy Spirit would be free to move in the many gifts of His presence in the church. Tongues, interpretation of tongues, prophecy and words of knowledge and wisdom and discernment, healing and miracles were all desired and welcomed. It was a rich time. We incorporated our faithful friends and supporters into a non- denominational church and called ourselves Zion Christian Fellowship. At first we met in a local Doctor’s home but moved to the Smith building on the Centenary College campus in Shreveport as we grew and needed more room. We sojourned for a while at the LSU-Shreveport campus, but eventually purchased a church property on Greenwood Road in west Shreveport.

From 1979 to the year Jimmy passed away in 2002, this local fellowship of believers met and worshiped the Lord and prayed for people to be saved from sin and filled with God’s Spirit. We taught the truths of discipleship and how God has made healing and abundant life available to us in this life. We invited the local Jewish congregation to our service during the Feast of Tabernacles. We hosted tours to Israel and prayed for the peace of Jerusalem. We loved our city and always tried to be a blessing to the people God brought to us.

I miss those days. They were not without stresses and challenges, but nothing worthwhile is. Jimmy was a pastor at heart. He loved people. He  performed hundreds of weddings and dedicated countless babies. He was moved with compassion for the sick and was a frequent visitor of the sick from all different churches at the area hospitals. He was a worshipper. He could play any musical instrument but was especially gifted on the guitar. He and I led many folks in worship over the years. It brings tears to my eyes to remember making harmony with my sweet Jimmy in every possible setting. We even sang at the walls of Jericho. And shared sweet adoration of the Savior down in the dark dungeon in Caiaphas’ house in Jerusalem where Jesus was held on the night before He was crucified.

In the year before Jim died suddenly of an AVM (an arterio-venous malformaton) hemorrhaging in his brain, Jim was compelled to write down all the Lord had taught him through some thirty years of ministry about communicating the Gospel to people. He had no idea he had little time left on the earth, but he faithfully rose early in the mornings in the years of 2000 and 2001 and sat at the computer writing and editing His remembrances. He was consumed with the desire to get it all down on paper for his children and anyone else who might want to read his memories. Jim had been influenced by many ministers and teachers, but I have to say Oral Roberts was probably the strongest mentor. Jim could preach by heart “the Fourth Man” sermon that Oral preached so effectively in the tent revivals of the 40s and 50s.

Jim often shared the story Oral used to illustrate our loving Father’s heart. Jim, sounding a lot like Oral, would often tell how a little boy once carved a sailing vessel out of wood and played with it for hours in a stream that flowed behind his house. One day a strong wind blew up and carried the boat out of reach in a moment. The boy could not catch up with the boat in the swiftly moving water and was so saddened by its loss. However one day the boy was in a toy store in a nearby town and saw the boat for sale. He knew it was his very own boat because his initials were still faintly visible where he had carved them on the bottom of the boat. When the store owner heard the story of the boy losing his boat, he simply said, “You will have to pay the price I have set. It is mine now and is for sale.”

So the little boy determined in his heart to work hard for as long as it would take to raise the steep price. He did chores at home as well as for friends and for strangers, and at long last, he had saved the money for the purchase of the boat. The happy day came when the boy went and claimed his boat. As he walked home, the boy was heard to say, “Little boat, little boat you are twice mine. I made you and I bought you back.”

As you read through the memories Jim records about the Lord he served so well, please know God loves you and that you belong to Him. He made you and He bought you back. He paid the high price to buy you back from eternal separation from God by sacrificing His only begotten Son whose spotless blood paid for our sins. We have a place in the Father’s heart through the atoning love of the Son. You have a place in the Son. You always will have the place of a beloved son or daughter who is twice Your Father God’s. He made you and He bought you back.

 

 

Introductions are important and sometimes socially awkward. When you meet someone or perhaps you introduce a friend or acquaintance to others for the first time, do you struggle for just the right words? Perhaps you include in the initial phrases something about where the friend lives or hails from. Perhaps you say what they do for a living or what common interest brought you together. Looking back on life, it is interesting and often remarkable to call to mind the exact circumstances as well as the words that were spoken when we first met people who later became extremely important and even precious to us.

Consider the first chapter of John’s Gospel as the writer John introducing us to the most important person in all the universe, the God of eternity! The beloved apostle does not make small talk, but rather gets right to the point. “World” he says, “Here is the Word!” Here is the One who was with God from the very beginning and helped him create the universe. Nothing was made without Him. He is the source of all life and His life/light came into a dark world and shines. Darkness attempts to extinguish the light but the light will outlast the darkness. The Light who comes from God wants to meet and indwell everyone who has been cut off from the Light of God through the disobedience of Adam.

Next the gospel writer teaches The Word had a forerunner to announce His coming! There was a man called John whom God sent to make the introduction. He was sent into the world of men to bear witness to the Son of God who was Life and Light. Since Christ the Word that expressed the Father’s Mind was the divine agent in creating the universe, He came into the world so men and women could “know” Him and “receive” Him. Thus a new birth, a new creation, was made available to fallen people who were made for living in the light forever but who had been darkened by sin and death.

John the Baptist was not the Light but he announced the true Light was in the world. He declared that God had pitched His tent in our world and we could see His glory as he lived out His life of unprecedented “grace and truth.” John lamented that even though He came to His own people, they did not receive Him. But the Good news of the gospel of John is that “as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become the children of God.” John 1:12 NKJV. Receiving Him would bring about a new birth of the spirit, not by the passion of the flesh or human effort, but by the will and power of a loving God.

Think of what a privilege it was for John the beloved disciple to introduce God incarnate to the world. His words in the fourteenth verse of the first chapter of his book recording the life of Christ are immortal and known and loved by millions of people. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among  us and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” Today we have that very same privilege as modern day disciples of Jesus the Messiah. We get to share the Good News. We can go tell it on the mountains. Tell it in the cities. Tell it in the small towns and in the rural settings. It is our great honor to share the Savior on social media and share Him in person. He wants to be introduced to so many who don’t know Him yet. Let’s have the manners and good graces to step up to folks and say,  “World, here’s the Word.”

Now after the opening fourteen verses we have just read and pondered, the Gospel of John says that religious people began to pepper John the Baptist with questions. They were not asking for an introduction to the Lord. They were questioning and searching for something about John and his message to discredit. The religious know -it -alls asked the Baptist, “Who are you?” “Are you Elijah?” “Are you the prophet Moses said God would raise up?” The Baptizer protested that he was not the Christ nor any of the prophets, but rather “a voice crying in the wilderness” quoting Isaiah chapter 40 verse 3.

Then Pharisees’ henchmen pressed John further and said, “Who gives you the authority to baptize if you are not the Christ or Elijah or the prophet that was promised?” Then in response to these inquiries John the Baptist had the privilege of introducing another member of the Triune God. He said, “I only baptize with water but there is One in your midst whom you do not know. I am declaring that the One upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining on Him, this is He who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” Here John says, “World and even religious world, here is the Holy Spirit!”

Next day the Gospel tells us that John the Baptist was standing with two of His disciples when Jesus approached them. These two disciples were Andrew and probably John the writer of the story. John the voice crying in the wilderness points to the Lord Jesus and declares with authority, “Behold the Lamb of God!” Those two seekers of truth turned from the Baptizer to the King he heralded that day. They began to follow Jesus and the Lord turned to them and said to them, “What do you seek?” They replied “Teacher, where are you staying?” To which the Lord simply answered, “Come and see.” They followed and stayed close to Him the remainder of that day.

The next introduction in this book of important introductions is when one of the two who we are told is Andrew went to find his brother Simon Peter so he could meet the Messiah. Andrew soon located his brother and “brought him to Jesus.”  Jesus looked at Simon and said, “You are Simon, the son of Jonah. You shall be called Cephas which translated means ‘the stone.'” What an odd meeting this was. Jesus is drawing men to Himself and then naming them and speaking a new identity and destiny over them in His service.

The next day after Simon Peter and Andrew were brought into His circle, Christ travelled to their home town Bethsaida in Galilee where He found Philip. Jesus told Philip to follow Him and he did. Then Philip went to get his friend Nathaniel and encouraged him to come meet Jesus whom Philip said is “the One that Moses and the prophets had foretold.” He told Nathaniel that the man’s name was Jesus of Nazareth to which Nathaniel replied with a question, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip simply replied, “Come and see.”

In a little while when Nathaniel got within sight of Jesus, the Lord spoke out and said, “Behold an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile.” To this strange greeting, Nathaniel asked how Jesus knew him or his character. Without batting an eye Jesus countered that he had seen Nathaniel sitting under a fig tree before Philip had even come for him. This word of knowledge made an impression on Nathaniel since he immediately believed and declared, “You are the Son of God. You are the king of Israel.”

Jesus was amazed that such a small demonstration of his power had won Nathaniel’s heart. He said to his newest disciple, “Because I said to you ‘I saw you under the fig tree’ you believe? You will see greater things than these.” Then the Lord went so far as to promise Nathaniel and his disciples that “hereafter you shall see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

I love this first chapter of the Gospel of John so full of introductions and first encounters. This scene with Nathaniel and our Lord interacting at the beginning of their relationship is my favorite. Jesus reveals to this honest Jew with no deceit in his heart that He is the Messiah and that He has climbed down the ladder of his Jewish lineage and now stands in the human family as a Redeemer of sinful, wasted lives and the source of new birth and Holy Spirit infilling. He is available to Jew or Gentile, male or female, rich or poor, slave or free. He is the Messiah of Israel and the Savior of all. Jesus is the ladder God showed their ancestor Jacob. He is the link between heaven and earth. Angels ascend and descend on Him and by Him to our aid.

In the spirit of this Gospel of John, let’s get busy introducing people to Jesus. You could start right where you are. You could say something like, “Let me introduce you to a download from heaven, share a link to a great God, befriend the friend of all sinners and tell you the name that is above all names. Jesus descended the ladder from heaven and offers to give you access to God in heaven. He will take you to heaven. Like Nathaniel, He sees you sitting there in front of your computer. He even knows if it’s an Apple.