I Really Wanted To Preach

I Really Wanted to Preach!

Our Director of Missions asked me to preach at a mission church somewhere south of Clarksdale, Mississippi. I was seventeen years old at the time. The Lord called me to preach the Gospel when I was thirteen and my church licensed me when I was seventeen years old. I really wanted to preach and knew my father would let me drive his 1951 Chevrolet truck, a farm pickup. But there was a catch: my father told me he needed some new tires on the truck and he didn't want me driving that far on them.

I talked with the young man who lived on our farm who owned a 1948 Ford car and he told me he was having some kind of engine trouble, but he agreed to let me borrow his tires. The tires were the same size, but the Ford wheels would not fit the lug nuts on the Chevy truck, so I had to change out all the tires. These were the old tube type tires and I had a lot of experience fixing flats in those days.

You would have to take the wheel off, let the air out of the tube, break the tire loose from the wheel, take out the tube, patch it (if you were fixing a flat) and then put it back inside the tire, and using tire tools, force the tire back onto the wheel. Then you had to pump up the tire with a hand pump. You got a good workout, especially in the hottest part of the summer in the Mississippi Delta where you can count on it being hot and humid.

I took off all the wheels from both vehicles (one at a time, and brought the friend’s wheels 1/4 mile to our house), let all the air out of the tires, broke down the tires, took out the tubes, and then put the tubes in the other tires, took my tire tools and worked the tires back on the rims and then put the wheels back on the vehicles. A lot of lug nuts!

It was like fixing eight flat tires. Don't forget that I had to pump up eight tires with a hand pump!

On Monday I had to reverse the total operation, going through all those steps eight times again. I wonder how many young fellows today would work that hard just to get o go to some new place to preach?

In fact, I wonder how many young boys these days would work that hard. Let me confess something: I wonder if I would do it again! There was no way back then that I was going to miss that opportunity to preach, and I had a little more energy then than now.

I thank the Lord for those who are paying a much greater price to preach the Gospel around the world today, many are away from home and family, others risking their lives. We need to pray for them.