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About the Book
"Not I, but Christ" by Watchman Nee reflects on the Christian journey of dying to self and allowing Christ to live through us. Nee emphasizes the importance of surrendering our own desires and ambitions to God, and allowing His will to be done in our lives. Through personal anecdotes and biblical teachings, Nee encourages readers to seek a deeper intimacy with Christ and to let go of their own self-centeredness. Overall, the book serves as a guide for believers to grow closer to God and live a life that reflects the character of Christ.
Oral Roberts
Granville Oral Roberts was born January 24, 1918 in Pontotoc County, near Ada, in Oklahoma. His parents were deeply religious. His father was a farmer who also preached the gospel and established Pentecostal Holiness churches. His mother regularly prayed for the sick and led people to Christ. While she was still pregnant, Robert's mother committed Oral to God's service. Even though Oral had a very strong stutter his mother would tell him that one day God would heal his tongue and he would speak to multitudes.
The Roberts family was desperately poor. When Roberts was 16 he moved away from home, hoping for a better life. He rejected God and his upbringing. He started living a wild life and his health collapsed. Roberts had contracted tuberculosis. He returned home and eventually dropped to 120 pounds. He was a walking skeleton. God spoke to his older sister, Jewel, and told her that He was going to heal Oral. During this same time Oral turned his heart back to God and gave his life to Christ. A traveling healing evangelist named George Moncey came to Ada and held meetings in a tent. Oral's elder brother was touched when he saw friends of his healed in the meeting. He decided that he should get Oral and bring him to be healed. On the way to the meeting God spoke to Oral and said "Son, I'm going to heal you and you are to take my healing power to your generation. You are to build me a University and build it on My authority and the Holy Spirit." Once at the meeting Oral waited until the very end. He was too sick to get up and receive prayer, and so had to wait for Moncey to come to him. At 11:00 at night his parents lifted him so he could stand. When Moncey prayed for him the power of God hit him and he was instantly healed. Not only that but every bit of his stutter was gone!
After Roberts was healed he began to travel the evangelistic circuit. He met and married Evelyn Lutman, a school teacher from the same Holiness Pentecostal background as Roberts. They had their first child Rebecca and then the entire family began traveling as ministers. In 1942 they left the evangelistic field for a while and Roberts became a pastor. He also returned to college to further his education. While a pastor he prayed for a church member whose foot was crushed. The foot was instantly healed. God continued to speak to Roberts about his call to the multitudes. God called him to an unusual fast. Roberts was to read the four gospels and the book of Acts three times consecutively, while on his knees, for thirty days. God began to reveal Jesus as the healer in a new way. God also began to give Roberts dreams where he would see people's needs as God saw them. God called him to hold a healing meeting in his town. A woman was dramatically healed, several people were saved and Roberts' ministry changed overnight.
Roberts resigned his church in 1947 and began an itinerant ministry. Notable healings began to occur. One man tried to shoot Roberts. God used the story to bring him media attention, which expanded his ministry very quickly. Roberts felt called to purchase a tent and take his evangelistic ministry to larger cities. His first tent held 3,000 but he quickly exchanged it for a tent that held 12,000. In July 1948 The Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association was established. Oral began traveling continuously throughout the United States. Like many of his Pentecostal brethren Roberts held inter-racial meetings. This brought him a lot of negative attention from groups who didn't like his stand. He even received death threats for not holding segregated meetings. In 1956 Roberts was invited to Australia. He held meetings in Sydney and Melbourne. In Melbourne there were outright physical attacks and destructive gangs. He was literally driven out of the city for praying for the sick. Often when people discuss the healing revival of the 1950s Oral Roberts and William Branham are listed as the most widely recognized leaders of the movement. Others came along side and many emulated them, but they were the most widely recognized personalities.
Roberts was a man who understood and used the media for his benefit. Roberts began publishing a magazine almost immediately upon starting his ministry. He grasped the power of radio and television. In 1954 Roberts began filming his crusades. He began playing his sermons on radio and then airing the crusade tapes during evening television prime time. Unfortunately there is some evidence that healing meetings were scripted ahead of time, and not all healings were genuine. People began writing to the Ministry headquarters by the thousands. They were accepting Christ as their savior after seeing a person healed on TV. By 1957 the ministry was receiving 1,000 letters a day and he was getting thousands of phone calls. He established a round the clock prayer team to answer calls and pray for people who contacted the ministry. In 1957 Roberts claimed 1,000,000 salvations. Between 1947 and 1968 Roberts conducted over 300 major Crusades. Money was flowing into the organization at an unprecedented rate.
In the late 1950s the healing movement was waning and ministries were under attack for their lack of financial accountability. Roberts began to move on the vision God gave him to build a University. It was chartered in 1963 and became open to students in 1965. Roberts was having a significant national impact in the late 1950s and early 1960s. For several years his named appeared in the Top 100 list of the nation's most respected people. Although Roberts continued to hold healing meetings his focus shifted to the University and the television programs.
The 1970s and 80s brought many crises to the Roberts family. Their daughter Rebecca and son-in-law Marshall were killed in a plane crash. Their son Ronnie struggled with depression after serving in Vietnam and also declaring himself gay. He grew despondent after losing his job and committed suicide. Richard Roberts got a divorce. After Richard remarried he and his wife lost a new born son within two days. Roberts began teaching a doctrine of "seed faith" where he claimed that if you gave to his ministry then God would pay you back in multiplied ways. The television ministry received heavy criticism for the constant requests for money. The Roberts were living an extravagance lifestyle while many of their supporters were not wealthy. Financial questions were raised in how Roberts used University endowment funds to purchase personal homes and cars.
In 1977 Roberts had a vision to build a hospital where people not only received care but received healing prayer. It was to be called City of Faith. Roberts put his heart and soul into the project, believing that God would build it as He had the University. The hospital struggled along and Roberts called his followers to give to the project, believing he had a vision from God to raise the money. Roberts even claimed twice that if money didn't come in that Jesus would "take him home." The hospital was built, but never succeeded financially, and finally closed in 1989. Financial giving was plummeting for both the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association and Oral Roberts University.
Roberts retired in 1993, at the age of 75. Roberts, with his wife Evelyn, moved to California to live near the coast. Evelyn died in May 2005. Although Roberts influence waned after the problems of the 1970s and 1980s, he was still recognized for his pioneering work on the "sawdust trail", television evangelism, and building a Christian University. He often appeared on religious broadcasting networks as a recognized leader in the healing movement of the last half century. He died December 15, 2009 at the age of 91.
Oral Roberts' legacy is a mixed one. Roberts brought the truth of God's healing to the public in a way that few others accomplished in his lifetime. His financial and personal issues and increasingly extravagant claims eventually brought his ministry into disrepute. The University he established continued to have financial crises under the leadership of his son Richard Roberts. It was only after Richard stepped down in 2009 and new leadership took over the University that it stabilized financially. The University is no longer connected to the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association.
Where Does God Want Me to Work
How do I find God’s will for my life? It’s always a pressing question on the college campus, and especially in our day of unprecedented options. Like never before, in an anomaly in world history, students loosened from their community of origin, “going off” to college, now make decisions about their future with minimal influence or limitation from their adolescent context. “God wants to take you by the heart, not twist you by the arm.” Before asking, “Where is God calling me?” we would do well to first ponder, “Where has God already called me?” — not that your current callings won’t change or take a fresh direction in this formative season of life, but for a Christian, our objective calling from God always precedes our consciousness of it. If it is from him, he initiates. He makes the first move. This is true of our calling to salvation, and also true of any “vocational” assignment he gives us in the world. Consider Three Factors For the college student or young adult who may feel like a free agent — considering options and determining for yourself (and often by yourself) which direction to take — it’s important to acknowledge you are already moving in a direction, not standing still. You already have divine callings — as a Christian, as a church member, as a son or daughter, as a brother or sister, as a friend. And from within the matrix of those ongoing, already-active callings, you now seek God’s guidance for where to go from here. Given, then, that you are already embedded in a context, with concrete callings, how should you go about discerning God’s direction after graduation? Or how do you find God’s will for your work-life? Christians will want to keep three important factors in view. 1. What Kind of Work Do I Desire? First, we recognize, contrary to the suspicions that may linger in our unbelief, God is the happy God (1 Timothy 1:11), not a cosmic killjoy. In his Son, by his Spirit, he wants to shape and form our hearts to desire the work to which he’s calling us and, in some good sense, in this fallen world, actually enjoy the work. Sanctified, Spirit-given desire is not a liability, but an asset, to finding God’s will. The New Testament is clear that God means for pastors to aspire to the work of the pastoral ministry. And we can assume, as a starting point, that God wants the same for his children working outside the church. “Desire is a vital factor to consider, but in and of itself this doesn’t amount to a calling.” In 1 Peter 5:2, we find this remarkably good news about how God’s heart for our good and enduring joy stands behind his leading us vocationally. The text is about the pastoral calling, but we can see in it the God who calls us into any carefully appointed station. God wants pastors who labor “not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you.” How remarkable is it that working from aspiration and delight, not obligation and duty, would be “as God would have you.” This is the kind of God we have — the desiring (not dutiful) God, who wants workers who are desiring (not dutiful) workers. He wants his people, like their pastors, to do their work “with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage” to those whom they serve (Hebrews 13:17). So also, when the apostle Paul addresses the qualifications of pastors, he first mentions aspiration. “The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task” (1 Timothy 3:1). God wants workers who want to do the work, not workers who do it simply out of a sense of duty. Behold your God, whose pattern is to take you by the heart, not twist you by the arm. Desire, though, does not make a calling on its own. It’s a common mistake to presume that seeming God-given desire is, on its own, a “calling.” Aspiration is a vital factor to consider, but in and of itself this doesn’t amount to a calling. Two additional factors remain in the affirmation of others and the God-given opportunity. 2. Do Others Affirm This Direction? The second question to ask, then, after the subjective one of desire, is the more objective one of ability. Have I seen evidence, small as it may be at first, that I can meet the needs of others by working in this field? And, even more important than my own self-assessment, do others who love me, and seem to be honest with me, confirm this direction? Do they think I’d be a good fit for the kind of work I’m desiring? Here the subjective desires of our hearts meet the concrete, real-world, objective needs of others. Our vocational labors in this world, whether in Christian ministry or not, are not for existential release or our own private satisfaction, but for meeting the actual needs of others. “You may feel called, and others may affirm you, but you are not yet fully called until God opens a door.” Our desires have their part to play, but our true “calling” is not mainly shaped by our internal heart. It is shaped by the world outside of us. We so often hear “follow your heart” and “don’t settle for anything less than your dreams” in society, and even in the church. What’s most important, contrary to what the prevailing cultural word may be, is not bringing the desires of your heart to bear on the world, but letting the real-life needs of others shape your heart. In seeking God’s will for us vocationally, we look for where our developing aspirations match up with our developing abilities to meet the actual needs of others. Over time, we seek to cultivate a kind of dialogue (with ourselves and with others) between what we desire to do and what we find ourselves good at doing for the benefit of others. Delight in certain kinds of labor typically grows as others affirm our efforts, and we see them receiving genuine help. 3. What Doors Has God Opened? Finally, and perhaps the most overlooked and forgotten factor in the discussions on calling, is the actual God-given, real-world open door. You may feel called, and others may affirm your abilities, but you are not yet fully called until God opens a door. Here we glory in the truth of God’s providence, not just hypothetically but tangibly. The real world in which we live, and various options as they are presented to us, are not random or coincidental. God rules over all things — from him, through him, to him (Romans 11:36). And so as real-life options (job offers) are presented that fulfill an aspiration in us, and are confirmed by the company of others, we can take these as confirmation of God’s “calling.” Not that such a calling will never change. But for now, when your own personal sense of God’s leading, and good perspective and guidance from others, align with a real-world opportunity in the form of an actual job offer in front of you, you have a calling from God. “It is finally God, not man who provides the job offer.” And we can say this calling is from him because God himself, in his hand of providence, has done the decisive work. He started the process by planting in us righteous desires to help others; and he affirmed the direction through our lived-out abilities and the affirmation of friends. Now, he confirms that sense of calling by swinging open the right door at the right time. It is finally God, not man who provides the job offer. God not only makes overseers (Acts 20:28) and gives pastors (Ephesians 4:11–12) and sends out laborers into his global harvest (Matthew 9:37–38) and sends preachers (Romans 10:15) and sets wise managers over his household (Luke 12:42), but he makes dentists and plumbers. In his common kindness, he gives school teachers and entrepreneurs and social workers for the just and unjust. He sends executives and service workers. He gives you to the world in the service of others. Article by David Mathis
