Big Doors Swing on Little Hinges

The story I am about to tell you happened fifty-three years ago, so why am I telling it now? I don't know. Maybe you will.
In our first ministry after Bible college and seminary, with Ray and Elaine Stedman, we were stuffed with doctrine. ...up the kazoo. ...but training in relationships? Zilch!
In our third year of ministry, God hurt us and then He healed us. Nobody knew why we left that sophisticated ministry with well-educated, pre-Silicone Valley people for a dinky little ministry on Rosedale Highway in Bakersfield, California. ...except us. ...and God. Sunday I visited that once-dinky little ministry and sat in a crowd of thousands and my mind was not where anyone would have guessed in a million years.
Big doors swing on little hinges. I am about to tell you about the "hinge" that took us to a ministry where we would remain for fifteen years in a church then known as Fruitvale Community and now is RiverLakes Community, covering a city block.
In Palo Alto, our lives and home had teemed with young people. I thrived on having a full house. Ted? ...not so much. We had led the first runner-up to Miss California, a teacher, to Christ. With Ted being gone most of the time, I was lonely for adult companionship, plus I needed help with my kids and half of Palo Alto's kids who had their feet on our sofa and under our kitchen table most days and nights. ...SO I invited Miss First Runner-up to Miss California to live with us. Stupid!
...but "stupid" appears to be beautiful when the world, your flesh and the devil are after your family and your ministry.
Ted, being male and conveniently blind, ignored (and we'll name her Jezebel) Jezebel's thinly disguised flirtations. Having been trained as a farm girl to watch for snakes in the grass, I recognized seduction for what it was, knowing the tricks of THAT game very well myself. One day I confronted Jez face to face, helped her pack her suitcase and threw her out! I was furious at her, at Ted, at God, at myself and totally unforgiving. ...which led to depression. ...but I was trapped.
Somehow, even though Jez seemed to be ever-present, I was pregnant with our third child, so I couldn't divorce Ted and I couldn't kill him, because who would put food on the table for three kids and a mom? ...so God did what only God can do. He broke my pride (Oh! Ow!!!) and gave me forgiveness and followed it with passionate love for Ted which I had never really experienced before. Satan had set us up and we fell for it, but God was 'way ahead of him. I was willing to follow Ted Stone to Timbuktu, and that is exactly where God and Ted took us...to work with farmers and blue-collar workers from which I had fled years before upon graduation from high school.
I was sick as a dog in that pregnancy for months, we had no air conditioning, there was no "green" within miles but only dirt and air so thick we couldn't see the mountains to the east (I live in those very mountains now and thank my Father every single day of my life!).
What was the "little hinge"? ...God-given willingness to let go of my pride, my smugness, my inability to forgive, my ignoring my husband's need to have his little family all to himself in a quiet house, plus a few other sins I don't have to tell you about. Ted had his own confessing to do and we had to confess to one another and forgive one another. ...and so we went to Bakersfield to a ministry Ray Stedman told discouraged pastors about around the world: "They went to a church where nothing should have happened but it did!"
Now how does God turn such ugliness that could have destroyed not only a family but sabotaged a ministry to thousands for the rest of our lives, into something truly beautiful? I don't know, but He can and He does. This very week, he has brought me couples who have been seduced into a black widow's web that looks different from the one we fell into, but in reality, is the same. Nothing really changes with Satan's tactics except the faces and the places.
Remind yourself daily who your enemies are: the world (...and you are IN it, fighting not to be OF it), your flesh (which will never die completely 'til you breathe your last breath), and the devil, who will relentlessly fight you with dirty weapons that appear to be clean. Ol' black Ethel Waters who used to sing "His Eye is on the Sparrow" like nobody else ever sang it, said it this way: "God don' waste no agony!" ...and you can take that to the bank.
Christmas for us is never over, so let's close this story with words from Isaac Watt's "Joy to the World"!
No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow, far as the curse is found.
Jo