Praying for Reviving — Bertha Smith

When revival comes, people not only see themselves sinners, but to get right with God. They get right with God. Well, how do we get right? In the last chapter of Hosea, we have instructions for getting right with God.

Returning to the Lord Through Confession

People are out of tune with the Lord, coming back in tune. Take with you words and turn to the Lord and say unto him, take away all iniquity. Now, iniquity is the general term for anything that's unholy.

And the way to have a reviving is to come to the Lord in sincerity and say, take away all iniquity. Of course, we've got to face up to what iniquity is before we can even want it taken away. And see how our lives are failing the Lord's purpose for us before we can want something better.

Revival Brings Joy in the Lord

And then what will the result of reviving be? In Psalms 85, 6, we have, Wilt thou not revive us again? What for? That thy people may rejoice in thee. The result of reviving is joy in the Lord. Joy in the Lord.

Now, let me ask you, how long has it been since you've seen people just bubbling over with the joy of the Lord? Well, I've got a little more personal. How long has it been since you yourself just bubbled over with the joy of the Lord?

Maybe you've never seen anyone revived. Maybe you've never been revived yourself since the day you were saved. Well, it's the time to pray for reviving. After I'd been in China a number of years, the missionaries all over Shantung province where I worked in northeast China began to pray for revival.

Missionary Work and the Prayer for Revival

We had about 50 missionaries, about 80 churches, about 80 preaching places that were not churches, preaching chapels. We had 86 country schools where some of them weren't teacher schools where a teacher taught four grades.

The village furnished the building and every people furnished their own desk and stew. The villagers paid a portion of the teachers' wages. I couldn't call it a salary. It'd be $5 or $6 a month. Then we pieced out what they couldn't pay with money from the foreign mission board.

Every year we took back a little bit that we gave and let them give a little bit more. It was a public school, free for everybody. Those who could pay something did and those who couldn't didn't. Then in several market towns we had six grades of work, two teacher schools.

Just imagine the hundreds of youngsters we were reaching with the gospel. When the Depression came in 1932, all those schools had to be closed instantly, every country school, which was a tragedy indeed because the villagers were not able to keep them going completely.

They would have been in a few years. Well, the gospel was being spread and we wanted to see a gracious reviving in our churches. After praying for some years for reviving in the city where I worked, the pastor, I suppose the suggestion made to him by the missionaries, set aside the first day of every month as a day of prayer to pray for reviving.

And everybody who could went to the house of God at 8 o 'clock and stayed till 12 and went back at 2 and stayed till 5. That was a day of prayer. We had a leader each hour, a different leader each hour, not to talk, not even talk about praying.

He only read a passage of scripture and we chose a hymn and then we spent the time praying. We prayed for a whole year and all the Christians who couldn't go to the church knew that the first day of the month was a day of prayer.

And as soon as they, any time during the day when their mind didn't have to be on their work or what they were doing, they were supposed to be lifting their hearts to the Lord in prayer for reviving at our church.

We prayed a whole year, no reviving came. The second year, third year, fourth year, no reviving came. We did see, however, greater blessing on our work than we'd had before. But lo, instead of seeing a gracious revival.

Political Turmoil and the Missionaries' Evacuation

China at that time was trying to jump from an absolute monarchy where the people had no voice whatsoever in the government to a democratic form of government. No nation has ever done that and China didn't either.

They fought it out for years and suffered greatly from trying to make such a leap at one time. People in different places of China wanted their man up in Peking as president. And in the province where I lived, the western end of the province wanted one man for governor and the people over at the eastern part of the province wanted another man for governor and all they knew was to fight it out.

And it was not long until, and all the common people wanted, I'm for the man who will not let his soldiers march across my little farm. If my crop's destroyed, my children will go hungry. And that's all they knew.

With one man and a hundred able to read and one woman and a thousand, you can realize they were not very well informed on government affairs. Well, the next day after the city of Nanking was burned in 1927, all American missionaries received a message, a telegram from the American consul, proceed to the ports at once.

And British missionaries, we had a few Swedish missionaries out there and a few from Norway received the same message. And we all had to go to ports and pack up. Those of us in the northern part of Shantung province, 28 of us went out to the port of Chifu.

We had a few families on furlough, and the others went down to the port of Qingdao. We had only two mission residences in Chifu, and there were no houses for rent. There was so much communism in the Chinese city that the American consul requested us not to go into the Chinese city.

They didn't call it communism at that time. They called it the Western, the Western atmosphere. Anti-West, anti-Western atmosphere. Well, it surely was an era of anti-Westernism because they'd just been stirred up by communism.

Well, the city church was out on the main street where we could attend the Chinese church. They had a Chinese pastor, and we could go to church Sunday and Wednesday evening. And that said, humanly speaking, we would have had a very difficult time when we packed up 28 people in two residences, children and spinsters and couples.

Well, we had a glorious time. We had spiritual sense enough to know that the Lord could take even the work of the devil, even what the devil may have brought about in that war, to work out for good for his children if we committed it to him.

And that's surely what we wanted to do. And we began to meet every morning after breakfast at 8 o 'clock to pray together for an hour. We wanted to pray that we would not miss what the Lord wanted to teach us in permitting us to be torn away from mission work that we loved more than we loved our own lives and packed up down to Annaport City where we couldn't do anything.

Well, we had one other subject for prayer when we began. Some of the Chinese military officials were Russians, and others were officers that had been trained in Russia, and they were permitting their soldiers to break windows out of preaching chapels.

And we knew if that army were victorious, our Chinese Christians would be in for persecution. And, of course, we wanted to pray for the Lord to enable them to show Christ in them when persecution came.

From Missionary Zeal to Self-Examination

Well, it was not long, friends, until we were praying not from 8 to 9 but from 8 to 10 and 8 to 11 and 8 to 12. And no one was remembering to pray for the Chinese whom we'd left behind. We were all praying for ourselves.

And the Lord just got us away from our work. Now, to show us what kind of missionaries we were, I'm sure that never a more dedicated group ever went to a mission field or got put together than those 50 missionaries in North China.

We put in, some of us, 15 hours a day at our work. We kept long prayer lists. Some got on their knees once a day to pray for those lists. Through those lists, some got on their knees twice a day to pray through those long prayer lists.

And I'll tell you, we were doing everything that we possibly could to advance that mission work and spread the knowledge of our Lord and Savior. But, you know, friends, it's kind of dangerous to ask the Lord to do something for you.

If you're not ready for Him to do it, you may find Him doing it. And that's just what we found. The Lord began to show us our self, friends. We began to see that we were just a crowd of dedicated self, fairly dedicated self doing jobs for God.

And we were doing the Lord's work and calling on Him to come and help us do His work. And the Lord has something better for His people than dedicated self doing jobs for Him. And He had to get us away from our work to teach us.

Fortunately for us at that time, one of our number, Miss Jane Lyde from South Carolina, perhaps one of the most brilliant minds that the mission board ever sent out, had just returned from Southern California where she'd had to come home the autumn before to bring her sixth sister, Miss Florence Lyde.

She was not even able to go to church on Sunday while she was there. During the day, she looked after her sister all day. They had an apartment and a private home. So there were people there on week evenings.

So the only service that Miss Lyde could get to during the week was to a Bible class held nearby in a home where one woman taught one subject all winter. I don't know whether it was in a home or not. May have been in some little preaching hall.

Anyway, Miss Jane, Miss Florence, got tucked in bed at bedtime, and Miss Jane slipped out to that Bible class. And what do you suppose, what subject do you suppose that woman taught all winter? Christ, our life.

Christ Living Through the Believer

Christ living His life in us. Christ expressing Himself through our personality all the time. This old sinful nature not in control anymore. And Paul and his officials called it living dead to yourself.

We'd never heard anything like that. The best we knew was to dedicate yourself to the Lord and work for Him, and we were ever more doing it. But we surely were not pleased with our work. We had a little handful in our churches who were just on fire for the Lord.

Inside, in the big cities, perhaps we had ten or twelve like that. Maybe out in the villages we'd have only one or two in the churches. And we wanted all of our church members to be just like that little handful that were just on fire, cracking on Jesus everywhere they went, and telling people how wonderful it was to have a living Lord living inside of you instead of going to a temple to bow down before a dead idol.

Dumb idol, never had had any life. Well, the Lord began to show us that the trouble was He had to begin with us before He could answer our prayers for revival. Miss Jane came back full of her subject.

That meant full of Christ. And she was so different. We all wanted to know her secret. We wanted to know the Lord like she knew Him. And we asked her to share some of that teaching with us at our morning prayer time.

And we learned from this book that that's the secret of the Lord working. It's Christ living through us, expressing Himself through our personalities all the time. And I had trouble for years over that passage in 2nd chapter of Galatians where Paul said, I am crucified with Christ.

Nevertheless, I live. But it's not I that live. Christ lives within me. Well, I just couldn't understand why Paul could have an experience like that, and I couldn't. Now, I didn't have Paul's heredity and all of his marvelous Old Testament Bible teaching.

I didn't have his great mind. But I had his Savior. And if Paul could say I'm dead, why couldn't I say I was dead? Birth was always too much a lie. Oh, I could just think of more things to do for the Lord.

And my work was being in charge of a girls' boarding school. And I taught all the Bible and all the English. And I had six years of English. They started English at the 7th grade and went through the 12th.

And where there were no schools in the village, they had to come into the city. Children would have to come in for 1st grade. And then I taught all the Bible, 1st grade up. Of course, we had Bibles just like we had history.

Every day for the youngster, for the lower grades, and three times a week for the upper grades. And by combining grades, I was able to teach it all. I led chapel about three times to a Chinese teacher's one.

We took turns because I knew the Bible better and could give them more of what they needed. And the Chinese teachers knew that and asked me to do it. And at night, sometimes after teaching all day, and had a lot of preparation to do, I would go into the city, walk two miles, no other way to go unless I rode a donkey.

And that wasn't very comfortable. I preferred to walk to a chapel where a Chinese man was a pastor, preacher. Our pastor was going in there to preach. And to get the students to come, they asked me to go in and teach an English class.

And I didn't know any better than to go. And the woman that I lived with, that saint from Alabama, Miss Alice, she was an older missionary than I was by a good deal, used to say, Bertha, the Lord is not a slave driver.

You ought not to go into that city at night. Well, the only thing I ever did was to take my proper sleep. About seven hours at night. The Chinese don't go around working like Americans to make money and get eligible.

They take it easy. They have two hours off at noon from 12 to 2. And then, of course, schools go the same way because the teachers all had to have their rest after their noonday meal. And so I got my rest and got in another hour.

And I always got in some kind of walk. I always kept up my walking for exercise. That was all I could do. It was raining. I just walked back and forth across the porch until I'd walked about two or three miles.

I measured my walking with a clock and a watch. Well, anyway, I did take care of my health. But I found out I didn't. That was not of the Lord going to that. But that's just the way we went. And we lived just as frugally as we could out of our $45, which we had left after we took out the tents for the Lord, to put where we thought he directed it.

We had a lot of churches to help. We couldn't help just the city church because we were going to the other churches anyway a good deal. And there was absolutely nothing that we wouldn't have done for that mission work.

Death to Self and the Call to Holiness

And yet, friends, as that moment showed us from the Word of God that we ought not to be living anymore, that the Lord put us in the position of death when we were saved, of course, not actually dead. We'd have had to been buried in a grave of dirt, not just a grave of water that we were buried in announcing to the world that we had died in Christ, that we'd taken his death as our death.

But the Lord showed us that we had to live in that position of death that the Lord had shown, that the Lord saw us in by counting the death of his Son to us. Well, that was something new to us. And I'll tell you, that meant live a holy life.

And, of course, we wouldn't have been there working and had any sin that we'd known about in our lives. But, oh, how much began to come out, attitudes and attitudes toward each other, and proud of our mission work.

Oh, so proud when we went up to mission meeting every year for that letter that was going to be sent, a report on our work for the year that was going to be forwarded to the foreign mission board if we'd had a lot of converse during the World War.

And we didn't know that a lot of them were not really born of the Spirit. Well, the Lord began to show us ourselves, and we began to make apologies to each other and get right. And she talked about Christ living his life and all the things that didn't show Christ in us had to come out.

We went down to Chifu in March. And people go out to war. They couldn't fight in the daytime. And when kings go out to war, that means they go out in the spring in the east. They have nothing but one blanket they carry on their shoulders and no tents and no heaters.

And they would die, freeze to death, out in the winter in north China with one wrapped up in a blanket lying out in the field. So the war is over in the middle of November, and then that's what they call they get home before the big cold comes.

And then they come back after Easter and take up again right where they left. And one army in our city that spent the winter there came out the next spring with different insignia on the collars. They'd change sides during the winter.

Came on back to take up where they left off. So we had to stay in Chifu while they fought, and then we were able to go back for the winter. Well, we'd spent most of the summer way up mid-August just getting right with the Lord, getting right with the Lord, missionaries, preachers, and we surely thought we were right with him.

Now, we did start a mission work with the American Navy when the American Navy goes up the 7th Fleet from the Philippines up to the northern ports, all the destroyers and the flagship to Chifu and the submarine carriers down to the port of Qingdao.

And there's nothing for the U .S. men to go to there. They did have a YMCA building, but the men didn't have any confidence in the YMCA secretary. He borrowed too much money from them and couldn't pay it back, so they didn't care to go there.

And we rented an empty preaching hall and rented some little cheap handmade wooden chairs, folded wooden chairs. No, they didn't fold, I guess. They weren't that clever yet. And so we had services every night, and in the afternoon I gave to teaching Bibles to those that could read and those that wanted it, to Christians and those that loved the Bible and wanted more of it.

And then every evening we were there. So we got busy after a while. But anyway, at the time this lied, it shared a good deal with us on Christ our life. And we were confessing everything as we went along, as the Lord showed us things that were not like Christ.

As I said, most of it attitudes. Sometimes something we'd said to another missionary, but most of the time it was inner feelings of pride for ourselves. And it certainly came from the devil. The Lord didn't make us like that.

Holiness, Faith, and Healing

Well, we had among our number a woman who'd had a terrible eye malady, Mrs. Charles Kupfer from Texas. And she'd suffered a number of years. Occasionally she'd have an attack with that eye, a twitching uncontrollably so, and the twitching accompanied by such excruciating pain that it tore her nerves to pieces for days.

When our mission doctors could do no more for her, they asked her to go to Peking, where John D. Rockefeller, Jr. had built a university combined with a mission university. All the missionaries that did mission work in Peking went in together.

And he built a wonderful hospital in connection with the medical college. And it was a great deed of social service. That's what we Baptists called it. Other people talked about it being John D. Jr.'s mission work, but we called it his social service.

But it was great training doctors for China. And John D. went all over the world and got the leading specialist in every field and sent him out there to teach in that medical college and practice in that hospital.

The eye specialist at that time was a leading one from Vienna, Austria. And he told Ms. Kupfer that he couldn't do it, that eye couldn't take any more treatment. She would lose it in a period of from three to six months.

And no doubt the good eye would soon follow. And she came back knowing that she was facing blindness. If that man couldn't help her, nobody in the world could. She didn't even tell us. She just said the doctor couldn't do anything for her.

She didn't even tell us she was facing blindness. And no, when we had been there in Chifu about three months, that eye didn't start up again, have another attack. And we knew there's no human being in all the world that could help her.

Well, we loved her devotedly. And she was a wonderful missionary, and her husband was one of our key men. He was head of our educational institution, which had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of high school students that had come from all over that part of the province.

And we had a college, a junior college, and our seminary. And a business college and a teaching college, training teachers. And we just thought we couldn't spare him. And she was a wonderful missionary herself.

And we just couldn't bear the thought of losing him. And we decided we'd just get holy enough to call on the Lord to perform a physical miracle and heal that eye. Now we knew we'd have to be holy. You see, we would have to have faith.

And faith is produced by the Holy Spirit in cleansed hearts. Now, you know yourself, right after a meeting, when you've been gloriously revived and gotten your sins forgiven up to date, why, you just have faith for anything.

And then you get cold, and you know that you're not living to please the Lord, and your faith's gone. You want somebody else to produce the faith. You're calling on somebody else to do the prayer. Well, we knew all of that.

Of course, we never called on somebody else to pray. We kept him praying to Him. But we knew. We just believed that if we were right enough with holy God, that we could call upon Him in a case like that and expect Him to perform a physical miracle.

By that time, our 28 had come down to 18. And some had gone on furlough. Furlough was nearly due, and they went on early. And some had a furlough due. And about a half a dozen of those saved, thoroughly dedicated, hardworking, love the Lord, missionaries, said, Why, we can't expect the Lord to perform physical miracles in this age when we have doctors and when the Bible is complete.

He worked physical miracles through his apostles as an evidence that he was alive and seated up in the heaven and working through his apostles. Now that the Bible is completed, we just can't expect physical miracles.

Well, about a dozen of us agreed with him in theory. But we had something to add. My God shall supply every need of yours. And this is a definite need that no human doctor can do anything about. And we were just convinced if we would get holy enough, we could call upon the Lord to perform a miracle and heal that eye.

And we began to search our hearts. And Miss Culpepper went through a week. And I'll tell you, the Lord began to bring to that woman everything that she'd said that didn't please him, and not everything, but a plenty.

A plenty. All the way back to the time she was a young woman that she'd never diagnosed as sin. Now, she was always saying something cute and clever to the delight of all of us. And she just one of the prettiest women you'd ever see anywhere.

We took turns there in each house. The women each took turns being head of the house. And we planned the meals. And, of course, everybody helped with the work. But one was the head and planned the meals.

And the one that planned the meals sat up at the head of the table and served the meal. And the sitting up there at the head of the table just looking so perfectly lovely and charming. She said something to me or she said it to the group about me.

I've forgotten which. Now, we lived in the same city and loved each other devotedly. But she's just going to be cute, you know, and make people laugh. Well, what she said was cuddy. It wasn't cute as cuddy.

Now, she didn't mean it to be cuddy, I'm sure. She just meant to be cute. Well, everybody laughed at me. I suppose I had a grin on the outside of my face. But there wasn't any laugh inside. There was no call for it.

And it didn't do me any good. Now, I didn't hold it against her. I forgave her immediately. I knew she just wanted to make people laugh. And she didn't know any better than to attract attention to herself, to make somebody else laugh.

And she didn't know then that every time we attract attention to ourselves, we grieve the Holy Spirit. We're supposed to be magnifying Christ through our personalities and be living in a position of death to this old self.

But she didn't know that then. But did you know that last week when we were getting right enough to call upon God to heal that eye? The Lord just showed that woman that it didn't please her to say things about other people that didn't do any good or to them.

Didn't do any good. And she came into my room with the tears just rolling down her cheeks, begging me to forgive her for that thing she'd said. Well, she still says just as cute things as ever. But I've never heard her say anything good since that day.

She was cured. And the rest of us were searching our hearts. And the Lord showed me two, three little things. One I especially remember, I went over to another missionary. And I said, I don't know why the Lord sent me over here to confess this to you.

But I'm trying to get right enough with him to pray for Miss Culpepper's eye. And when I told her what it was, she said, I know why he sent you over here. That's just one of my sins. That's one of my sins.

The Lord wanted you to come over here and remind me of my sin that I've got to get right. Well, we got on our knees and called on the Lord to deliver us from whatever it was. And when it came time, and when the Culpeppers couldn't think of anything else to be made right, they called us in.

And I went into that room, friends, right with the Lord. I wouldn't have dared gone otherwise. Miss Culpepper sat in a chair in the middle of the room. We all stood around. Dr. Culpepper read from the 5th chapter of James about calling for the elders of the church when anyone was sick and anointing them with oil.

And the admonition is made, confess your false one to another. And then the promise is, the prayer of faith should save the sick. Well, he didn't give that oil any significance. And we all have olive oil in our pantries.

That's what we use for company when we want some mayonnaise. It's shipped out from pure olive oil from southern Europe out to the port cities. And we keep a bottle of it on hand because we don't have anything else that we make salad dressing from.

Well, he was just not leaving undone anything the Word of God speaks of. And after he put the oil on her head, he said, we'll all come up now and put our hands on her head and pray. Well, Doctor, I was younger than most of the missionaries at that time.

And, of course, as a young person should, I stood back and waited for all the others to go up. And I went up to the very last one and put my hand on Miss Culpepper's head. Friends, I had to bring my hand back.

Conviction of Hidden Pride

There stood just opposite me a dear old woman, 68 years old, who had had charge of a girl's boarding school in her early mission work. But for about 25 years, she'd gone from village to village teaching the old women who didn't know one Chinese word from another about the Lord.

And she'd get them saved. And then she'd even teach them how to read that funny language. And many of them she taught after they were 50 years old because they wanted to learn to read the Bible. And they'd walk miles to a church and give their testimony to the church and be baptized.

And she'd just built up a great store of illustrations from the weaving and the spinning and the hatching of the chickens and all of that in their country life that illustrated the gospel. And the boy's school and the port of Chifu had been neglected for years.

Mr. Moore was head of the school, mind you. And his evangelistic field was 14 counties, villages and towns in 14 counties and 14 county seats. Well, of course, he didn't have any time for the school. His wife taught English.

And a Chinese had to teach the Bible who hadn't had much training. Well, because I was a school person, I'd majored in education in college. And by that time, I'd had 10 years of teaching experience. I was asked to take his place at the school when he became infertile.

And, no, they opened the school in the middle of August. They'd just give him a short time. And I just arranged to put all the Bible together that I could for the lower grades and taught all the English and all the Bible.

Mr. Moore had to go home, too. Now, that was a pretty big task. But I did it all. And then I suggested to the Chinese teacher, head teacher, who planned the worship every day, that we have one person lead a week so they could build up a message in a week.

There was only one Christian in the senior class which was going to finish the following July. Another one had been saved, but his parents wouldn't let him be baptized. Well, I'd never let a graduate get to the senior high school in my room, I mean a Chinese, without getting them saved.

It's a very interesting gospel. I didn't have room for them anymore after they'd heard it. That was my plan, but I never did have to send anybody home because they didn't know I had that plan in my head.

But I did. I wasn't going to keep anybody and make them educated, too, for the devil. I thought the devil could use them better educated than he could ignorant. I'd leave them in ignorance if they'd go on serving him and resisted the gospel after they'd been taught it.

Well, anyway, I asked that old lady, suggested her to the head teacher, and he invited her to lead chapel for a week. And if she didn't come down there and treat those port city young men just as if they'd been those old Chinese women and gave all of her illustrations.

But they'd never been to the country in all their lives out in a village and probably never would. And they didn't know what she was talking about, and they just took her to be a joke. Well, I sat there just so wanting those boys saved, and I thought the gospel had to be presented to them relatively.

They were not those old ignorant women. Why couldn't she give them? If she couldn't paint them any illustrations, just take some from the Bible. I thought she surely could have found some illustrations in the Bible of the difference in people being saved and what the gospel did for them.

Well, I couldn't wait till Friday. And if Monday morning here she didn't come, I'd go through another week. But it was harder on me that week. And a third week and a fourth week. You see, somehow she understood that she was to lead chapel, period.

Well, I knew then since I'd gotten her out, gotten her in, I had to get her out. And I didn't know as much then as I know now about dealing with people. So she was living with Miss Lyde, and I just told Miss Lyde to tell Miss Hartwell that her time was up leading chapel.

Well, if I'd gone over there myself and told her, I hope she wouldn't have been hurt. But she was hurt and hurting me. Well, you know I wouldn't have hurt that old soul for the world. But, you know, I just didn't have particular patience with her being hurt.

Well, I just thought that old fogey ought to have more sense than to present the gospel like that. I know. When I put my hand on Miss Culpepper's head to call upon Holy God to stretch forth His holy hand and touch Miss Culpepper's eye, blessed did that woman just opposite me.

I shall never cease to praise the Lord that He made me bring my hand back. I got my hand off of that woman's head in a hurry. Now, it would have been so much easier if the Lord had convicted me of that sin when I was pleading with Him in my room on my knees that morning, show me anything else that needs to be right before I pray for Miss Culpepper's eye.

I could have gone over to Miss Hartwell's home and called her out over to the next house, and I could have begged her to forgive me, and the rest of the missionaries wouldn't have known I ever had an attitude of disgust toward her.

Well, the Lord knew that, and He had to cut that pride out of me, and right there before all those missionaries I had to say, Miss Hartwell, she's in the glory now, she'd love me to share this with you.

I didn't have the right attitude with you about that school affair. I begged you to forgive me. Well, then she begged me to forgive her. Now, friends, I really believe had I kept my hand on Miss Culpepper's head after I was convicted of that sin, Miss Culpepper would be a blind woman today.

Sin Hinders Prayer and Revival

Now, sin hinders prayer, and the promises of those who are of one accord, one accord, one accord, and I wouldn't have been in one spiritual accord with Miss Hartwell, nor she with me. Well, I put my hand on Miss Culpepper's head again after I'd prayed, after I'd confessed that sin, and we prayed, and friends, heaven just came down.

It would just be impossible to ever share with anyone the thrill of our souls. Now, we didn't have to wait to see if she was going to have another attack. We, everyone knew in our hearts she would never have another attack, but now you just imagine how we acted.

We didn't act very Southern Baptist, but I assure you we were quite biblical. We just started walking around in that room, waving our hands, every one of us praying his or her prayer out loud, just praising the Lord at the tops of our voices.