{"id":19915,"date":"2020-03-24T08:31:17","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T13:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/?p=19915"},"modified":"2020-03-24T08:33:05","modified_gmt":"2020-03-24T13:33:05","slug":"in-my-pain-i-said-lord-im-ready-for-that-life-changing-phone-call-the-phone-rang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/in-my-pain-i-said-lord-im-ready-for-that-life-changing-phone-call-the-phone-rang\/","title":{"rendered":"In my pain, I said, “Lord, I’m ready for that life-changing phone call.” The phone rang."},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cDelight thyself in the Lord and He will give thee the desires of your heart\u201d (Psalm 37:4).<\/strong><\/div>\n

My ministry in that church was uphill all the way.\u00a0 Everything was hard, it seemed. There were few rest stops, places where we could take a breather and enjoy a sense that we are accomplishing something significant for the Lord.<\/p>\n

The church had few financial resources due to a heavy debt load, made worse by a major split in the congregation 18 months before I arrived as pastor.\u00a0 The ministerial staff had little money for the outreach and educational programs they wanted to do.<\/p>\n

It was a tough time in the life of that church.<\/p>\n

Perhaps I was tired.\u00a0 Or discouraged.\u00a0 Or needed a boost of some kind.<\/p>\n

Anyway, one day, \u00a0on the way back to the church office from lunch\u00a0I\u00a0prayed a prayer unlike any I\u2019d ever prayed before.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I said, \u201cLord, I\u2019m ready.\u00a0 I\u2019m ready for that phone call that will change my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

As soon as the words came out\u2013surprising even me, I must say; where did that come from?\u2013I began to reflect that\u00a0 I have had only two or three life-changing phone calls in my life and although I had never actually voiced this prayer, \u00a0I have lived with that kind of expectation for many years.\u00a0 A call or a letter that changes everything.<\/p>\n

In 1973, a call from\u00a0a committee chairman\u00a0brought me to Columbus MS as pastor of the First Baptist Church, where I remained for nearly 13 years.\u00a0 In 1986, it was a call from another chairman\u00a0that brought us to Charlotte\u2019s First Baptist Church.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, phone calls can change one\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

So, a few minutes after entering the office, the secretary said, \u201cPastor, you have a phone call.\u00a0 A Bob Cannon is on line one.\u201d\u00a0 Bob Cannon.\u00a0 I knew him.\u00a0 He was a friend and advisor of a sort for a longtime friend in North Carolina.\u00a0 He had a message from her.<\/p>\n

\u201cInez wants to give some stock to your church.\u00a0 She needs some information from the church\u2019s stock broker to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n

I said, \u201cWait a minute.\u00a0 What?\u201d<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cAs you know, she has a considerable estate.\u00a0 This is some kind of excess and she is dividing it among three churches.\u00a0 Your church should get about $25,000 in stock.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inez was in the room and we chatted, with me telling her how surprising this was and how much we appreciated her wonderful\u00a0generosity.<\/p>\n

Bob\u00a0commented that Inez did not have a lot of family members who \u201cdeserve\u201d gifts from her.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0laughed, remembering\u00a0one story in particular to confirm that.<\/p>\n

Inez was concerned when the property next door went up for sale.\u00a0 Her neighborhood was changing and, being a senior lady living alone, she feared riff-raff moving in. So, she called her niece in another state and made her an offer.\u00a0 \u201cI would be willing to buy the house next door and give it to you, if you and your family would move here.\u201d\u00a0 The niece decided that was too good an offer to turn down.<\/p>\n

Inez bought the house and the niece\u2019s family moved in.<\/p>\n

Six weeks later,\u00a0 a \u2018for sale\u2019 sign went up\u00a0in the front yard.\u00a0 When Inez asked, the niece said, \u201cWe don\u2019t like it here and have decided to move back home.\u201d<\/p>\n

They sold the house and pocketed the money.<\/p>\n

Inez told me, \u201cThat\u2019s all the inheritance she\u2019s getting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Readers are wondering what we did with the $25,000 gift to our church.\u00a0 Ah, there is the fun of it.<\/p>\n

Inez wanted me to decide where the money would go. The last thing she wanted, she said, was for a committee to get hold of this and decide.<\/p>\n

And I did.<\/p>\n

Several of the ministerial staff got money for their ministries.\u00a0\u00a0 And I did something that was dear to my heart.<\/p>\n

I bought time on a Christian radio station.\u00a0 For the next seven years, I did a live \u201cphone call from the pastor\u201d for a couple of minutes around 6:50 am.\u00a0Mostly, I\u00a0made the phone call from my breakfast table. A few times I pulled over to a pay phone and made the call while traveling.\u00a0 But it was almost always \u2018live.\u2019<\/p>\n

I loved doing\u00a0it.\u00a0 We soon had people visiting our church as a result.\u00a0 And\u00a0the program\u00a0paid for itself many times over.\u00a0 When the gift money ran out, the church put the cost of the program in the budget.<\/p>\n

Seven years after we started the radio program, I left the pastorate of that church to become director of missions in that five-parish (county) area. That\u2019s when we ended the radio program\u2013much to my sorrow. \u00a0I had loved doing it.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, for the next six or eight years, strangers would speak to me in elevators or department stores, \u201cI recognize your voice from the phone call from the pastor.\u201d\u00a0 A Catholic priest said that once.<\/p>\n

So, be careful what you think you really want, be careful what you ask the Lord for, and be careful once He entrusts it to you.<\/p>\n

What is dear to your heart today?\u00a0 What if you laid it before the Father and asked Him to do it in His way, on His schedule, for His glory?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDelight thyself in the Lord and He will give thee the desires of your heart\u201d (Psalm 37:4). My ministry in that church was uphill all the way.\u00a0 Everything was hard, it seemed. There were few rest stops, places where we … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-50-year-perspective-on-ministry","category-pastors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19915"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19944,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19915\/revisions\/19944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}