What Do You Want The Lord to Say?

I had an amazing blessing from looking at Pastor Marvin Winans, preserving the traditions of the elders on a video. I had that wonderful experience of seeing the elders in our neighborhood testify at service, before the Lord. It was amazing to me, to see the regular guys, who confessed that they had grown up on the streets of NY and God had changed their hearts. I kept saying to myself, if I could just get my daddy to meet one of these guys, he couldn't refute me about Jesus, like he does. God can do it for you, Dad!

Look at Deacon So and So and Elder Such and Such. They got up so beautifully and talked so really about the move of Christ in their lives. I always looked at them with a mix of amazement and incredulity. I had experienced the move of Christ in my life, but my daddy was a very stubborn case of unbelief. He argued and fought me tooth and nail for his faith and the discouragement that I felt when he died, left me kind of neutral to any kind of evangelism of this sort, at least.

Pastor Winans showed me who he is aiming at. The young people need to see this kind of faith. We can't show them this, because we weren't brought up in the street. Those wonderful men are mostly dead or quieted by age. The comfortable and prosperous generation that they fought to protect from their troubadorial street experience, have no clue of the beauty of seeing the tired elder saints who trudged to midweek service to get up before God and thank him for the week's provisions.

Why do we always say, the elder saints would get up and sing a little song, like this...? We were sitting there, in full confidence of our faith. We were wondering, if so and so, would finally talk to us after service,perhaps. {confessing some dual motives for having been at service}But, Brother So and so and Sister Such and Such came after a long day at the daily grind. She had children at home, who were waiting for her and he had responsibilities that were calling to them and they would hush the service with a simple testimony..."What Do You Want the Lord To Say?"

Somehow we don't believe that we can embellish that testomony at all, so we just repeat it. Some things get lost in the translation sometimes, but the truth of their testimonies is what keeps us preaching, these many years later.