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About the Book
"Live Before You Die" by Daniel Kolenda is a book that encourages readers to embrace their God-given purpose, live with passion and intention, and make the most of every moment. Through personal anecdotes, biblical teachings, and practical advice, Kolenda inspires readers to overcome fear and obstacles in order to fulfill their destiny and live a life of significance.
Kathryn Kuhlman
Kathryn Johanna Kuhlman was born on May 9, 1907, in Concordia, Missouri. Her parents were German and she was one of four children. Her mother was a harsh disciplinarian, who showed little love or affection. On the other hand, she had an extremely close and loving relationship with her father. She would describe, as a small child how, her father would come home from work and she would hang on his leg and cling to him. She often said that her relationship with God the Father was extremely real because of her relationship with her own father.
Kuhlman was converted, when she was 14, at an evangelistic meeting held in a small Methodist church. When she was 16 she graduated from high school, which only went to tenth grade in their town. He older sister Myrtle had married an itinerant evangelist, Everett B. Parrott. They spent their time traveling and asked that Kathryn could join them for the summer. Her parents agreed and she went to Oregon to help out. She worked with them, and often gave her testimony. When the summer was over she wanted to stay, and the couple agreed. She ended up working with them for five years.
The evangelistic team was made up of four people, Everette, Myrtle, Kathryn, and pianists named Helen Gulliford. In 1928 Everette missed a meeting in Boise, Idaho. Myrtle and Kathryn preached to cover for Everette. The pastor of the church encouraged Kathryn to step out on her own. Helen agreed to join her. Her first sermon was in a run-down pool hall in Boise, Idaho. The team covered Idaho, Utah, and Colorado for the following five years. In 1933 they moved into Pueblo, Colorado. They set up in an abandoned Montgomery Ward warehouse. They stayed there for six months.
Denver, being a much bigger city, was the next stop. They moved several times but ended up in a paper company's warehouse, which they named the Kuhlman Revival Tabernacle. Then in 1935 they moved once more to an abandoned truck garage they named the Denver Revival Tabernacle. Kathryn was seeing a lot of success in Denver. The church grew to about 2000 members. She began a radio show called "Smiling Through" and invited speakers from all over the country. One of them was Phil Kerr who taught on divine healing. In 1935 another invited evangelist was Burroughs Waltrip.
Waltrip was bad news for Kuhlman. He was a charismatic, handsome man several years older than she was. There was an immediate attraction, and one family claims to have seen the couple embracing in 1935, but he was married and had two children. Waltrip left Denver and went home to Austin, Texas, but the relationship simmered between Kuhlman and Waltrip. In 1937 he was invited back to Denver to take the pulpit for two months. Shortly after he divorced his wife and abandoned his two sons. He then spread the story that his wife had left him. He moved to Mason City, Iowa, where he told everyone he was single, and started a new ministry. Waltrip raised pledges of $70,000 to build a ministry building called Radio Chapel. It was state of the art with a disappearing pulpit and an art deco style. He appeared to be a successful and dynamic preacher.
There was an ongoing relationship between Kuhlman and Waltrip, and they married in September 1938. Kuhlman was naive about the consequences of her choices and the marriage was a disaster. She announced to her church that she and Waltrip were married and they would go between Denver and Mason City preaching at their two churches. Most of the people in her congregation left due to her relationship with Waltrip. She gave up her church in Denver, lost some of her closest associates, and moved to Mason City. Waltrip's success turned out to be a pipe dream as well. The Radio Chapel was completed in June of 1938. By October 1938 Waltrip could not meet his debts. In December Waltrip was demanding a higher salary, even with the shortfall in income. His Board of Directors quit and left him to deal with the finances. His solution was not to pay the mortgage or debts on the Chapel. Radio Chapel went into bankruptcy. Waltrip's last sermon was in May 1939. The Waltrips were on their own. Kathryn's happy vision of she and her husband flying back and forth between Denver and Mason City with a successful preaching careers was utterly demolished.
The next few years were very hard for the couple. They embarked on the road as traveling evangelists, primarily staying in the Midwest. They were not accepted in many places due to their marriage history. Initial advertisements listed Waltrip as the primary evangelist. Then occasionally Mrs. Waltrip was also mentioned. By the early 1940s Kathryn Kuhlman Waltrip was given equal billing. Finally by the mid-1940s Kathryn was using only Kathryn Kuhlman in meetings where she was the primary speaker. In 1944 Kuhlman went on an evangelistic tour on the east coast without Waltrip. It may have been a conscious decision to leave him, or she may also have taken the opportunity to reassess her life. It appears to have been more gradual as Waltrip wrote about them as a couple as late as 1946. Kuhlman never returned to Waltrip and they eventually divorced in 1947. She left her marriage behind and from then on acted as if it never existed in the first place.
In 1946 Kuhlman was asked to speak in Franklin, Pennsylvania. She was well received and decided to stay in the area. Kuhlman began preaching on radio broadcasts in Oil City, Pennsylvania. These became so popular they were picked up in Pittsburgh, and she was preaching throughout the area. She began to preach about the healing power of God. In 1947 a woman was healed of a tumor while listening to Kuhlman preach. Several Sundays later a man was also healed while she was teaching on the Holy Spirit. She was now convinced of God's healing work. One important thing to note is the context and timing of this breakout period in Kuhlman's life. 1947 was the beginning of the Healing Revival (sometimes referred to as the Latter Rain Revival) that would last for the next 10 years. What was happening in Kuhlman's meetings was breaking out across the United States. It was in this time frame that the Voice of Healing Ministry was established and men like William Branham, Oral Roberts, A.A. Allen and many others were propelled onto the public stage. Kuhlman was not associated with those groups, but stepped into the flow of what God's Spirit was doing across the nation and the world.
In 1948 Kuhlman held a series of meetings at Carnegie Hall in Pittsburgh. She eventually moved to Pittsburgh in 1950, and continued to hold meetings at Carnegie Hall until 1971. She was used by God to bring the charismatic message to many denominational churches, including the Catholic Church. (She received a lot of criticism over this and was accused of being a closet Catholic.) These were her best known years. Her style was flamboyant. She would hold her famous miracle services and the auditorium was filled to capacity every time. She was on radio and television shows. She was ordained in 1968 by the Evangelical Church Alliance. Hundreds of people were healed in her meetings, and even while listening to her on the radio or television. People she prayed for would often be hit with the power of God and be "slain in the Spirit." Kuhlman never claimed that she was the healer. She always pointed people to Jesus as their healer.
Kuhlman had been diagnosed with a heart problem in 1955. She kept a very busy schedule and overworked herself, especially in the 1970's. She traveled back and forth from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles frequently, as well as taking trips around the world. Her heart was enlarged and Kuhlman died on February 20, 1976, in Tulsa, following open-heart surgery. Videos of some of her services are still available and continue to be popular today.
Faithfulness in Forgotten Places
When the Holy Spirit cultivates his fruit in our lives, he often works in ways we would never pray for (Galatians 5:22–23). To grow the fruit of love in us, he may give us an enemy; to grow the fruit of peace, he may allow conflict to come near. And to grow the fruit of faithfulness, he may send us to forgotten places. Forgotten places are those corners of the world where no one seems to be watching, where our efforts go unseen, unthanked. Perhaps we labor among diapers and dishes, cubicles and emails. Or maybe, more painfully, among unfruitful mission fields, rebellious children, or spouses whose love has cooled. All of us live in forgotten places sometimes; some live there all the time. Drudgery as a Disciple We should beware of underestimating the spiritual strain of such monotonous and seemingly unrewarded toil. The daily duties in forgotten places may be small, but pile them up over months, years, or decades, and you may start to sympathize with Oswald Chambers when he writes, We do not need the grace of God to stand crises, human nature and pride are sufficient, we can face the strain magnificently; but it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours in every day as a saint, to go through drudgery as a disciple, to live an ordinary, unobserved, ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus. “To grow the fruit of faithfulness, God may send us to forgotten places.” Chambers may overstate his case — but not by much. In truth, the forgotten places can feel like a wilderness, and many days come when we find ourselves searching for something to keep us going, some water from the rock to sustain us in this desert (Psalm 105:41). We will find it, not in the forgotten places themselves, but in the God who sent us here, who is with us here, and who promises to reward us here. God’s Providence At times, we may stare at the responsibilities in front of us and wonder how we landed here. How did we wander into this wilderness of drab days and hidden obedience? We have become familiar with the backward glance, wondering if we missed a turn somewhere. How clarifying, then, to remember that our life situation is not ultimately a matter of chance, nor of any mistakes we have made, nor even of the string of events leading up to the present, but of God’s providence. The tasks in front of us are, at least for today, God’s assignment to us. To be sure, God’s providence does not nullify the decisions — and perhaps the mistakes or sins — that led us to this station in life, nor does it discourage us from striving after better circumstances: we are more than twigs in the stream of God’s purposes. But God’s providence does teach us to see, as the Heidelberg Catechism puts it, that “leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things, come to us not by chance but by his fatherly hand.” No matter how we got here, the forgotten places are ultimately from our Father’s hand. Over and again, God describes our own plans and efforts as significant, but his as decisive — even over the most personal matters of life. He determines when and where we live (Acts 17:26). He assigns to us a measure of faith (Romans 12:3). He apportions spiritual gifts as he wills (1 Corinthians 12:11). He entrusts to us a number of talents — whether five, two, or just one (Matthew 25:15). He gives us a specific ministry (Colossians 4:17). He even calls us to a particular life (1 Corinthians 7:17). In time, this forgotten place may give way to somewhere different — and depending on the circumstances, we may be wise to seek that change. But for now, we can look at the responsibilities in front of us and say with relief, “My Father’s hand has led me here.” God’s Pleasure God not only sends us to the forgotten places, however; he also meets us there. When we labor in obscurity, he is near (Psalm 139:5). When our work escapes the notice of every human eye, it does not escape his (Luke 12:7). He catches every whispered prayer, every Godward groan. He stands ready at every moment to mark the smallest tasks we perform in faith. The wise man tells us why: “Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who act faithfully are his delight” (Proverbs 12:22). God delights not mainly in the greatness of the work, but in the faithfulness of the worker. What else could explain the New Testament’s insistence that even the lowest, most invisible members of society are “serving the Lord Christ” when they walk faithfully in their callings (Colossians 3:24)? The smallest duties done in faith become duties done for Christ. “God delights not mainly in the greatness of the work, but in the faithfulness of the worker.” The missionary Hudson Taylor was fond of saying, “A little thing is a little thing, but faithfulness in little things is a great thing.” Cooking a meal, filling a spreadsheet, buying groceries, wiping a child’s nose — these are little things. But if done faithfully for Christ’s sake, they become greater than all the triumphs and trophies of an unbelieving world. They become the delight of our watching Lord. God’s Promise Once we have traced God’s providence in the past and felt his pleasure in the present, he would have us consider the future, when all our obedience will be rewarded. When many Christians imagine judgment day, we assume the spotlight will fall on the grand acts of sin and righteousness. And surely it will — but not only. Remarkably, when Jesus and the apostles speak of that day, they often focus on life’s ordinary moments. “On the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak,” Jesus tells us (Matthew 12:36). On the other hand, God will reward his people for the smallest good works they do by his grace: for giving to the needy (Matthew 6:4), for praying in the closet (Matthew 6:6), for fasting in secret (Matthew 6:18), even for giving a cup of cold water to one of Christ’s disciples (Matthew 10:42). The apostle Paul similarly writes that “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:10). But then in Ephesians he clarifies the kind of good he has in mind: not just extravagant good, impressive good, or above-average good, but “whatever good” (Ephesians 6:8). Come judgment day, every scrap of unseen obedience will find its fitting reward. Living and dying in forgotten places, then, is no infallible index of our labor in God’s eyes. Many saints, in fact, will not know the true worth of what they’ve done for Christ until Christ himself tells them (Matthew 25:37–40). Exceptional in the Ordinary Chambers, after remarking on the grace required to endure drudgery as a disciple, goes on to write, “It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God; but we have not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, and this is not learned in five minutes.” Again, Chambers may slightly overstate his case. God sometimes does call us to do exceptional things for him: to adopt children, to launch ministries, to plant churches, to move overseas. But the point still holds, because none of us will do anything exceptional unless we have first learned, through ten thousand steps of faithfulness, to be exceptional in the ordinary. We are not on our own here. Faithfulness, remember, is a fruit of the Spirit. And to bear that fruit in us, he would have us treasure up the providence, the pleasure, and the promises of God that hem us in behind and before, and follow us into every forgotten place. Article by Scott Hubbard
