God's Answer to a Grandmother's Prayer, Mark Whilden

I was born to a believing mother and unbelieving father. My grandparents took care of me a lot when I was young. They were very seeking Christians. Their aunt had been a missionary to Thailand and they were proud of her. When I was with them, I would go to their denomination. By the age of eight, I definitely believed in the Lord and wanted to get baptized but was told it was against their regulations. I gave up being a Christian for the next four years. During the summer of my twelfth year, I visited my Grandmother's house again. Their Sunday evening meetings were the most enjoyable, maybe because of the emphasis on the gospel. It was there that the Lord would convict me of my need to confess Him and be baptized. Every meeting He would bother me about getting baptized and I would argue back. By the end of the summer, I was exhausted, so I gave in to Him, and got baptized. I met the Lord in a real way. I knew I was saved and even developed a personal relationship with Him.

By the time I was in high school, I had forgotten about my salvation experience. Outwardly, I was a typical 17-year-old, but inwardly I was empty and searching. I tried many different things, including some which got me in trouble, in order to satisfy my emptiness. Eventually, I exhausted all options and was discouraged to the uttermost. But when I reached my end, I was reminded of Jesus. Crying out to Him, my despair was lifted and I was filled with joy. Jesus had come to me again. I was joyful again. I told all my friends what had happened to me. Within three days, a fellow student invited me to a meeting of the local church in my city. I soon found that the very day the Lord had recovered me was the day they had had their first meeting. I have met with the local church since that day, over 28 years ago. I graduated from high school, attended college, getting a bachelors and then a masters degree. Eventually, I got married and now I have a 12-year-old son. This year I saw him baptized.

One of the first things I was impressed with in the local church was that God doesn't want me to improve my behavior but He wants to get into me and fill me. My salvation was just Jesus coming to me the first time. Now He wants to grow in me by coming into me more and more. When I first began to meet, I wasn't told a set of dos and don'ts but encouraged to touch God in my spirit, the deepest part of my being. I was encouraged to call on His name, pray over His word, and fellowship with other Christians. Bit by bit, I would contact the Lord in my spirit and experience Him. Through these experiences, I touched my spirit and substantiated the things of God. This was the real faith. I was no longer just trying to live the Christian life, I started to live Christ. One example of this was a time at a conference when I was waiting with another Christian for a ride. We started fellowshipping but both of us had been busy during the day and didn't have much to fellowship about. We started to call on the Lord in a quiet way. Each time we called, we touched something a little sweeter of the Lord. Finally we felt so full, we couldn't call anymore. When we looked at our watches, half an hour had passed. I remember that experience more then anything said in the conference.

Besides my own experiences of the Lord, I have found the ministry of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee most helpful. Through attending many conferences over many years and through reading their many books, I have come to respect what the Lord has done in them. I am impressed by how faithful they were as servants of the Lord. I never met Watchman Nee but I did meet Witness Lee and I attended many of his conferences. I never saw him promote himself or seek something for himself. His ministry was always for the Lord's interest. His speaking always caused me to seek the Lord more, to love Him more, and it brought me into a greater oneness with other Christians. He also never hesitated to give credit to other Christians upon whose work or writing he based his work.

One of the greatest treasures I have received from my years in the local churches is a real love for the Lord. It didn't happen over night. But gradually over the years, my love for the Lord has grown and my walk with the Lord has deepened. These two must go together. How can I walk with someone whom I have not loved for that long? An extract from a footnote on I Corinthians 2:9 in the Recovery Version of the Bible says “To fear God, to worship God, and to believe in God are all inadequate; to love Him is the indispensable requirement.” And as Mary in Matthew 26 was drawn to break her most precious treasure on the Lord, a little bit at a time I have been drawn to cast down my treasures for the sweetness of our Lord. Not that I have stories of great fortunes or positions that I have sacrificed. But day-by-day, I have given up my opinion, my way, and my choices for the Lord's opinion, the Lord's way and the Lord's choice. There has been a cost for this, but the joy of the Lord has been well worth it.

After I was married, and within the last years of my grandparent's life, I got together with them at a funeral. I don't remember how the conversation got started, but we talked about my mother's Christian life. My grandmother confided in me that she and my grandfather had prayed much that their daughter would follow in their aunt's footsteps and become a missionary. She said that their prayers had not been answered. Then they both prayed for my brother and me. She said that although they didn't understand what I was doing, she believed that God had answered her prayer through me in a different way. I also believe that it was their prayers that always brought me back to the Lord and to the local churches, no matter how many times I wandered away.