What To Do When Nothing Seems To Work Order Printed Copy
- Author: John Osteen
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About the Book
"What to Do When Nothing Seems to Work" by John Osteen provides practical advice and biblical wisdom for navigating challenges and setbacks in life. The book encourages readers to persevere in faith, trust in God's promises, and take proactive steps to overcome obstacles. Osteen emphasizes the power of prayer, positive thinking, and staying true to one's values in order to achieve success and fulfillment.
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.
Men of Faith Are Men Who Fight
Men professing faith in Christ have been walking away from him since the church began. “Some have made shipwreck of their faith,” the apostle Paul reports in his first letter to Timothy. In fact, the language of leaving is all over 1–2 Timothy: men were wandering away from the faith, departing from the faith, swerving from the faith, being disqualified from the faith (1 Timothy 1:19; 4:1; 5:12; 6:10, 20–21; 2 Timothy 3:8). There seemed to be something of a small exodus already happening in the first century, perhaps not unlike the wave of deconversions we’re seeing online today. We shouldn’t be surprised; Jesus told us it would be so: “As for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature” (Luke 8:14). Those same thorns are still sharp and threatening to faith in our day. In fact, with the ways we use technology, we’re now breeding thorns in our pockets, drawing them even closer than before. This context gives the charge in 1 Timothy 6:11–12 all the more meaning and power, both for Timothy’s day and for ours: As for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. “Men professing faith in Christ have been walking away from him since the church began.” Who are the men who will fight the good fight of faith? Who will stay and battle while others fall away? In the words of 1 Timothy 4:12, which young men will step up and set an example for the believers in faith? Fight of Faith That faith is a fight means believing will not be easy. It won’t always feel natural, organic, or effortless. We could never earn the love of Christ, but following him will often be harder than we expect or want. “If anyone would come after me,” Jesus says in Luke 9:23, “let him deny himself and take up his cross” — and not the light and charming crosses some wear around their necks, but the pain and heartache of following a crucified King in the world that killed him. If we declare our love for Jesus, God tells us, suffering will expose and refine us (1 Peter 4:12), people will despise, slander, and disown us (John 15:18), Satan and his demons will assault us (John 10:10), and our own sin will seek to ruin us from within (1 Peter 2:11). If we refuse to fight, we won’t last. The ships of our souls will inevitably drift, and then crash, take on water, and sink. The verses before 1 Timothy 6:12 give us examples of specific threats we will face in the fight of faith, and each still threatens men today. ENEMY OF PRIDE When Paul describes the men who had walked away from Jesus, specifically those who had been teaching faithfully but had now embraced false teaching, he points first to their pride. These men, he says, were “puffed up with conceit” (1 Timothy 6:4). Instead of being laid low by the grace and mercy of God, they used the gospel to feel better about themselves. Like Adam and Eve in the garden, they seized on the love of God to try to make themselves God. Many of us do not last in faith because we simply cannot submit to any god but ourselves, because we do not see pride — our instinct to put ourselves above others, even God — as an enemy of our souls. ENEMY OF DISTRACTION Pride was not the only enemy these men faced, however. Paul says they also had “an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people” (1 Timothy 6:4–5). It’s almost hard to believe the apostle wasn’t writing about the twenty-first century. Were these distractions really problems thousands of years before Twitter, before the Internet, before even the printing press? Apparently so. And yet the temptation explains so much of our dysfunction today. In our sin, we often nurture an unhealthy craving for controversy. Faithfulness doesn’t sell ads; friction does. As you scroll through your feeds or watch the evening news or even monitor your casual conversation, ask how much of what you’re allowing into your soul falls into 1 Timothy 6:4–5. How much of our attention has been intentionally, even relentlessly, steered into passing controversies and vain debates? How much have we been fed suspicion, envy, and slander as “news,” not realizing how poisonous this kind of diet is to our faith? ENEMY OF MORE Greed is a threat we know exists, and often see in others, but rarely see in ourselves — especially in a greed-driven society like ours in America. The insatiable craving for more, however, can leave us spiritually dull and penniless. Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. (1 Timothy 6:9–10) When you read “those who desire to be rich,” don’t think elaborate mansions in tropical places with pools beside the ocean; think “those who crave more than they need.” In other words, this isn’t a rare temptation, but a pervasive one, especially in wealthier nations. The temptation may be subtle, but the consequences are not. These cravings, the apostle warns, “plunge people into ruin and destruction.” Their life is choked out not by pain or sorrow or fear, but by the pleasures of life (Luke 8:14) — things to buy, shows to watch, meals to eat, places to visit. “The more we see how much threatens our walk with Jesus, the less surprising it is that so many walk away.” Do we still wonder why Paul would call faith a fight? The more we see how much threatens our walk with Jesus, the less surprising it is that so many walk away. What’s more surprising is that some men learn to fight well and then keep fighting while others bow out of the war. How to Win the War If we see our enemies for what they are, how do we wage war against them? In 1 Timothy 6:11–12, Paul gives us four clear charges for the battlefield: Flee. Pursue. Fight. Seize. FLEE First, we flee. Some have been puffed up by pride, others have been distracted by controversy, and still others have fallen in love with this world — “but as for you, O man of God, flee these things” (1 Timothy 6:11). Spiritual warfare is not fight or flight; it is fight and flight. We prepare to battle temptation, but we also do our best to avoid temptation altogether. As far as it depends on us, we “make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Romans 13:14). If necessary, we cut off our hand or gouge out our eye (Matthew 5:29–30), meaning we go to extraordinary lengths to flee the sin we know would ruin us. PURSUE Spiritual warfare, however, is not only fight and flight, but also pursuit. “Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness” (1 Timothy 6:11). We could linger over each of the six qualities Paul exhorts us to pursue here, but for now let’s focus briefly on faith. Are you pursuing faith in Jesus — not just keeping faith, but pursuing faith? Are you making time each day to be alone with God through his word? Are you weaving prayer into the unique rhythms of your life? Are you committed to a local church, and intentionally looking for ways to grow and serve there? Are you asking God to show you other creative ways you might deepen your spiritual strength and joy? FIGHT Third, we fight. “Fight the good fight of the faith” (1 Timothy 6:12). We avoid temptation as much as we can, but we cannot avoid temptation completely. Whatever wise boundaries and tools we put in place, we still carry our remaining sin, which means we bring the war with us wherever we go. And too many of us go to war unarmed. Without the armor of God — the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit — we will be helpless against the spiritual forces of evil (Ephesians 6:11–12). But having taken our enemies seriously and strapping on our weapons daily, “we wage the good warfare” (1 Timothy 1:18). SEIZE Lastly, men of God learn to seize the new life God has given them. “Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called” (1 Timothy 6:12). This is the opposite of the spiritual passivity and complacency so common among young men — men who want out of hell, but have little interest in God. Those men, however, who see reality and eternity more clearly, know that the greater treasure is in heaven, so they live to have him (Matthew 13:43–44). Their driving desire is to see more of Christ, and to become more like Christ. They may look like fools now, but they will soon be kings. They wake up on another normal Wednesday, and seize the grace that God has laid before them. Some men will lay down their weapons before the war is over, even some you know and love. But make no mistake: this is a war worth fighting to the end. As you watch others flag and fail and leave the church, let their withdrawal renew your vigilance and fuel your advance. Learn to fight the good fight of faith. Article by Marshall Segal
