Filled with Gratitude

I was born one of three children to a policeman’s family in Houston, Texas. Although having strong Southern Baptist ties on both sides of the family, we children were rarely encouraged to attend the neighborhood church at the end of the block. Speaking of and about the Lord had little place in our house. However, things changed when I was twelve when my mother was driven to the Lord by my father abandoning her and their subsequent divorce. Soon, night after night, she began having a personal time with the Lord. My seeing this and the difference in her life affected me. The following summer, as the Lord opened my heart at a tent revival, I followed my mother in faith to receive the Lord Jesus’ salvation. Although something truly transpired within me that day and I regularly “attended church” there was little noticeable change in the way I carried out my life. Pursuing the same interests in the same way increasingly bothered me. By my seventeenth year, the notion of the vanity of this brief life along with the continuing disappointment of particular, personal failures weighed heavily upon me. At this point my mother was given a book to bring home by the church librarian. I remember that with great interest I began to read The Breaking of the Outer Man for the Release of the Spirit by the Christian writer Watchman Nee. My inner registration as I read was: “this writer knows something of God’s work in man unlike any person I contacted before.” After an excited reading of this book, I found and read with increasing interest The Normal Christian Life and Sit, Walk, Stand. The following fall I believe the Lord sent a Christian teacher into my senior government class and into my life. This teacher was in the actual enjoyment of the matters I read about from Watchman Nee. In fellowship with this teacher, I found out about the continuing work on the earth initiated by Watchmen Nee and that it had reached the USA, and even Houston. So from that time, under the Lord’s arrangement, the care of this brother in the Lord and other believers’ care, I began meeting with the local church. Later, I found out that a co-laborer with Watchman Nee in China, Witness Lee, was laboring in this country. I began reading his materials and going to conferences where he was the speaker. Later I attended Bible trainings given by him. I benefited profoundly as a young person being able to hear him open up the word of truth. In all these activities I continued to experience this deep inner assurance that I was following those who were really following the Lord. Now after 26 years of exposure to Witness Lee and Watchman Nee’s ministry, I believe the word of truth in the Bible has, to some degree, penetrated my inner being. Over this time the Bible has become to me an unending, unsearchably rich feast as well as an open window displaying a panoramic view of God’s heart’s desire with man. I consider myself, a small brother whose pursuit of the Lord has been too meager, to have been so greatly privileged by the Lord to have been connected to this ministry. Watchman Nee and Witness Lee’s leading and shepherding through the word along with other believers has motivated me to want to seek, gain and follow the Lord Jesus at whatever cost in this age to fulfill His purpose on earth.

A.C.

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