He who did not spare His own Son–but delivered Him up for us all–how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?  (Romans 8:32)

Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called the children of God! And such we are!  (I John 3:1)

First story.

I was doing a revival in Jerry Clower’s church.

The year was 1990 and we were in East Fork Baptist Church between McComb and Liberty, Mississippi.  Anyone who has ever heard the inimitable Jerry Clower tell his stories will have heard of this church where he grew up.

That week I was staying in the Clower camphouse, a block through the woods from Jerry and Homerline’s mansion.  We had morning services each day that week at 10  and evening services.  The Clowers did not miss a service.

The organist was Clyde Whittington.

Mr. Clyde had one arm.  You read that right; the church organist was playing the hymns with one arm.

We were at lunch one day–Jerry, and Clyde and I—and Jerry said, “Clyde, I want you to tell Brother Joe how you lost that arm.”

He was baling hay, he said.  The baler was the same kind we had used on the Alabama farm where I grew up.  You pull the baler over to the pile of hay, then uncouple it and turn the tractor around and use a conveyor belt from the tractor to the baler to operate it.  (Sorry, that’s as good as I can describe the process.)  Usually, baling hay would require several people. Mr. Clyde was doing it alone.

You feed the hay into the baler, then get out of the way of the huge arm with a claw slams down upon the hay driving it into the bottom area, then packing it and sending it down the tube to be tied off into bales.  Mr. Clyde was doing it all himself.

And somehow–I’m unclear on this–the huge arm with a claw caught his arm and drove it down into the bottom area.  Breaking it badly.

Not only was his arm now crushed, Mr. Clyde was stuck.  He couldn’t extricate himself from the baler.

And he is alone.  A half mile from the house.

Mrs. Whittington grew concerned about him a time or two that morning. This was taking longer than expected.  But as she looked out the window, she could see smoke rising from the tractor over the hill.  So she knew he was still baling hay.  He must be all right.

And Clyde is stuck.  He prays.

And then someone shows up.  A man dressed in white is how Clyde described him.  “It’s going to be all right,” he said.  And then he left.

And it was all right.

What happened is one of the strangest things ever.  That conveyor belt which ran from the tractor to the baler continued running.  And it ended up cauterizing the arm.

Clyde said, “Had someone come along and shut off the tractor and gotten me to the hospital, I would have bled to death before getting there.”

So, no one came and the belt closed off the bleeding.

He was there for 30 to 45 minutes, he told me.  Eventually his wife came to check on him and called for help.

Clyde said, “One thing about it.  I will always feel I am special to my Lord!”

He had something else to tell me.

A year or two after that, my wife and I read in the Baptist papers of 12-year-old Mark Durrance of Golden Gate, Florida, who was in the woods and got bitten by a rattlesnake.

The article told how he was unable to walk home.  But after a while, he showed up at home. “I’ve been bit by a rattlesnake,” he told the family.

And in recovery, Mark told of a man in white who picked him up and carried him home.

Clyde Whittington and his wife drove to Florida to meet this child and his family and to tell them what had happened to him.

He will always feel special to His Lord.

I smile and think, “Look at Calvary!  how could you not feel special?”

Second story.

My first grade teacher was Marguerite Gilder. Nauvoo (AL) Elementary School.  She was lovely, sweet, kind, and ideal for the children of coal miners’ families. I’ve often thought with such a great beginning in my education journey, it’s no wonder I kept at it for so long!

Forty years later, I was in a revival at the First Baptist Church of Carbon Hill, Alabama, a few miles from Nauvoo. One day after lunch when I was chatting with some senior ladies, something occurred to me.

“You know,” I said, “I have heard that my first grade teacher retired to Carbon Hill.  I wonder if any of you know her.”

Who was she, they wanted to know.  And I told them: “Marguerite Gilder.”

They exclaimed in unison, “Oh honey! She has been in your services every night!”

They wanted to know the year she taught me and promised to call her with the news.

That evening I got to church early.  I recall where I was standing near the pulpit area when I saw this beautiful octogenarian lady–beautiful coiffed, dress to the nines–coming down the aisle. This had to be Mrs. Gilder.

We hugged.  And she reached into her purse and brought out a packet of school photos from the 1946 class. “The photographer used to give the teachers a set of pictures of their students,” she said.

She wanted me to have that packet of photos of my class.  She had written the names on the back, thankfully.  (Early in the second grade, we moved from rural Alabama to West Virginia and I never saw any of those classmates  again.  So, having their names on the back was excellent.)

I said to Mrs. Gilder, “You know what I remember about you?  You loved me.”

She said, “Oh, I always loved all my…” and then she stopped, thinking this might not sound right.

I said, “I know! That’s what made you such a wonderful teacher.  You loved all your children!”

She said, “Well, one or two over the years was very difficult.”

I said, “But you did love me more than the others!”

She said, “Now, why in the world would you say that?”

I said, “Because you have two of my photos in this packet!”

And she did.  We laughed.

And that’s all I remember about the visit.  Except when I got back home to Mississippi, I called a florist in Carbon Hill and ordered some flowers to be sent to Mrs. Gilder.

It’s great to feel special, isn’t it?

Third story. 

Bryan Harris was minister of students in two churches I pastored, the First Baptist Churches of Columbus, Mississippi and Charlotte, North Carolina.  Bryan was an excellent witness for our Lord and I have numerous stories from him.

This is my favorite…

In Charlotte, Bryan had boarded the plane to fly to Casper, Wyoming, where he would be addressing a statewide meeting of teenagers.  As the plane sat at the gate, Bryan takes the aisle seat and sends up a prayer.  “Lord, please don’t let anyone sit in this middle seat. We have a four-hour flight to Salt Lake City and I need the leg-room.”

Did I say Bryan is large?  Six feet-something and considerably beyond 200 pounds.

While he was praying this woman tapped him on the shoulder. “Excuse me, sir. Those are our seats.”

Bryan looked up at the  largest woman he had ever seen.  And her young daughter, who said, “Mother, since I’ve never flown, can I have the window seat?”

Bryan said, “Thanks a lot, Lord.”

Once they were airborne, this woman wanted to talk.  After a bit, she found out that Bryan was a Baptist minister and she had questions for him.  In responding to her, Bryan ended up giving her his testimony.  It’s a great story, but this article is lengthy enough without that, so I’ll have to skip it for now.

As he often did, after telling how the Lord had redeemed him, Bryan was going to ask her if she would like to give her heart to Jesus.  But before he could say the words, the little girl leaned around and said, “Could I do that, Mother?”  She said, “Why don’t we both do that, honey.”

So, Bryan leads mother and daughter to the Lord at 30,000 feet.  When they finished, she said, “Bryan, let me tell you what we are doing.”

“My husband and I have been separated because of his drinking.  But he has quit drinking and we’re going to try being married again.  He’s going to meet us at the airport in Salt Lake City.  But he needs this too.”

“When we get to the airport in Salt Lake, will you talk to him about the Lord?”

Bryan assured her he would be pleased to.

They got separated getting off the plane and he went into the terminal looking for them.  He spotted a little cluster of people hugging one another.  There were the woman and her daughter and two men standing there.

She spotted Bryan and walked toward him. “Oh, Bryan, come on! I want you to meet my husband.’  Bryan wondered who the other man was.

It turned out that the other man was a missionary on furlough from the other side of the world.  Thirty minutes earlier, he had sat down beside the husband and led him to faith in Jesus Christ.

I recall where I was standing when Bryan told me this story.  I said out loud, “How much the Lord must love that little family.  He arranged the schedule of two ministers on opposite sides of the world to get them into the kingdom.”

As soon as the words came out of my mouth, the Holy Spirit whopped me.  “How much I must love every one of you. I moved Heaven and earth to get you into the kingdom. ”

Fourth story.

Marijohn Wilkins was a songwriter in Nashville. I read her autobiography.  She told how she was on a plane flying over east Tennessee after a snowfall and was struck by the pristine whiteness of everything.  And she thought of Heaven.

And she wrote a song with this line…

And the only thing there that’s been made by a man, 

Are the scars in the hands of Jesus. 

That became the title of the song: The Scars in the Hands of Jesus.

Isaiah 49:14-16 fits here–

But Zion said, ‘The Lord has forsaken me, and the Lord has forgotten me.”

(God answers) “Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb?  Even these may forget, but I will not forget you.  Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands.”  

Isn’t that wonderful? The song says, “Yes, I’m going to a land built by God’s own hands.  Hallelujah, praise the Lord, I am.  And the only thing there that’s been made by a man are the scars in the hands of Jesus.”

He could not forget us if He wanted to.  The very scars in His hands won’t let Him!!  (See Luk 24:39-40)

Last story. 

In the early 1970s I taught the college Sunday School class at our church, the First Baptist Church of Jackson MS (where Bertha and I presently belong).  It’s a great church and we love it dearly.

That morning, as the students from Mississippi College were entering, someone called “Brooks! Tell Joe what happened to you.”

Brooks Griffin was a pre-med student at MC. (Later, put in a full career as an OB-GYN here in Jackson.  He’s in Heaven now.)

He said, “Joe, my part-time job is an orderly at Doctor’s Hospital.  Last Saturday, they brought in a woman who had tried to kill herself by taking an overdose.  They pumped her stomach out and put her in a room.  The nurse asked me to sit with her. She said, ‘I think she’ll be all right, but I want to make sure.'”

“The woman was out of her head.  She was crying nonstop. And kept saying, ‘Nobody loves me. Nobody loves me.”  I didn’t say anything because I didn’t figure she would even hear me.”

“After a while the nurse came in, checked her vitals, and said, ‘She’s going to be all right, Brooks. You can go on about your job.’  But just before I left I walked over to her bedside.  She was still crying, ‘Nobody loves me. Nobody loves me.'”

“I said, ‘Lady, Jesus Christ loves you.’  And I went out.”

“My next shift was on Wednesday afternoon.  When I get there, someone said, ‘Brooks, the lady in 235 wants to see you.'”

“Wants to see me?  I didn’t know any of the patients.”

“When I entered the room, I recognized her. She was the woman who had tried to kill herself last Saturday.

“I told her who I was.

“‘She said, ‘You were the orderly when they brought me in her last Saturday?’

“Yes ma’am.”

“She said, “Do you remember what you said to me?”

“Yes ma’am.  You were saying nobody loved you and I just told you Jesus Christ loved you.  But I didn’t think you heard, you were clearly not thinking right.

“That’s what I thought you said.  Could you tell me more about that?”

Brooks said, “Joe, that morning, as I was getting dressed in the dorm, I picked up a copy of the Four Spiritual Laws.  For the first time ever!  And when she asked if I could tell her more about that, I said, ‘I sure can!’  I pulled a chair up to her bed and opened the leaflet.  ‘God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life….'”

She got saved.

After Brooks died, I met his widow and told her that story.  She just beamed.

May I say to you too, my friend,  He loves you. Enough to die for you.  That ought to make you feel special. He moved heaven and earth to get you into the kingdom.

As someone has said, ‘If you go to hell, it will be over His dead body!”

My friend, how could you not feel special, considering all that the Lord God has done for you!

Herein is love, not that we loved God. But that God loved us and sent His Son to be the sin-offering for us!