Northwest Tennessee Repost from 2013

I heard a story today from Northwest Tennessee. I will tell it as best as I remember it. A man from Northwest  Tennessee was telling about his church starting a bus ministry some 40 years ago. At the time the church had a membership of about 25 people. They drove around the area looking for houses that had bicycles/tricycles in the yard. At this one house, he described as a sharecropper house built on blocks. the roof was needing repair, the broken windows have been stuffed with rags to keep out the cold. They knocked on the door of this house and found an older lady with two young girls about 8 years old.  Inside there were only a few sticks of furniture and a potbelly stove in the middle of the room. Some of the paneling on the inside had been torn off the walls to use in the stove for heat. They asked if they could come back and pick up the girls for Sunday School the next Sunday. Their Mother said no because they didn't have any clothes to wear to church. The man telling the story said they told her not to worry about that. She gave her permission and the next Sunday they came to pick up the girls for Sunday School. He went into a lot of detail telling about the house because he wanted us to know how bad the conditions were for this woman and her two girls. Her husband and some of the older boys were working but after they got paid they would drink and gamble it away until there was nothing left for her. When they came to pick up the girls for Sunday School, the mother asked them if they would pray for the salvation of her boys. They did and every week she would ask for the same prayer saying she was standing in the gap for her family. They took the girls to Sunday School and the Pastors wife would give them a bath and feed them before Sunday School. Some of the members bought the girls new dresses. After Church, they would put them back in their old clothes and take them home. After a few weeks of this, they asked the mother if she would come to Sunday School with her daughters and she said she couldn't because she didn't have any clothes. One of the members had bought her a dress and they gave it to her. She came. When an altar call was given she would go over to a corner of the church building and pray for her children. This went on for some time. One Sunday, one of her sons came with her and got saved. Several weeks later another son came and was saved. I believe, if I heard right, the name of the family was Sullivan. At some point, her husband finally came also and he was a terrible individual that had cut her and the girls with kitchen knives at different times. He was also converted and has since passed on. Anyway, they now have some 40 plus members of the Sullivan family attending their church.  He told this same story at her funeral a few years ago. She had 16 children, 10 of them sons. Seven of those sons are now ministers. One of her family is a doctor, another a nurse,  one son is a Deacon. At her funeral, they listed the 16 children, 54 grandchildren, and 4 great-grandchildren. 30 members of her family are Sunday School teachers. A couple of her sons are Pastors of churches in the area. One son has a very large church in Michigan. The man telling this story says one of the sons spoke at his own Fathers funeral a few years back. That particular son had quit school in the third grade and could barely read at the time he got save. He can now read and speak better than he could (the man telling this story). This woman left a letter in her bedside drawer when she died, which he read to us.  She told her family that she loved each and every one of them and to keep praying for a couple children that were still struggling. She said she did the best she could for them. She stood in the gap for them as best she could and prayed for them every day. She said she wanted to see all of them on the other side someday. She asked that one of her sons preach at her funeral as she now had ministers in her family. She had stood on the promise of James 5:16 " Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man (or woman) availeth much."  The healing she had prayed for was the spiritual healing of her family. She never asked for a better house or living conditions. 40 years ago there was not a lot in the way of welfare for this woman. The speaker said we could go around the room and ask each of you to tell a story of a prayer God has answered in some dramatic way, and it would take all day. I have repeated this story as accurately as I can. I do not hear as well as I use to. God Bless, LVZ.