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Jim's PERSPECTIVENovember 11, 2013For I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11 (RSV) I met the Reverend Earl Summeral Tyson in August 1975, when he came down to Selma, NC—my hometown—to preach a revival service at Brietz United Methodist Church. Brietz, which was pastored by R.G. Gurley, was not the church I normally attended, but I did participate in their events and goings-on rather frequently. Mr. Gurley and I had been doing some ministry things together at both his church and at the medium-security prison near Wilson’s Mills. His regular pianist had come down with the flu just days before the revival, and Rev. Gurley asked me to play for the services. The Spirit of God was so evidently present all week long, and the atmosphere in the filled-to-capacity church was electric. Earl and I got to know each other a little during the week, and on the last night of the service he invited me to come to Virginia to visit with him and his family up in Scottsville. “I’d like for you to plan to stay for a couple of weeks,” he said. I thought the “two weeks” thing was a little odd, and having a sense of undue familiarity that I felt should preclude such an extended visit so soon, I decided to defer gently by thanking him and telling him that I was self-employed, working six days a week, and didn’t know when I would be free to go. He asked me, “What kind of work do you do?” “I’m a house painter,” I responded. I was twenty-two at the time, and had spent the last couple of years painting for businesses, churches, and residences in and around Johnston County. With what I would later know as a typical Earl Tyson exuberance, he exclaimed, “For six months I’ve been asking the Lord to send me a house painter! When can you come?” “Not until late October or early November,” I said half-heartedly, still not embracing the idea of running up to Virginia to stay a few weeks with this Methodist preacher. He said, “I’ll call you toward the end of October.” I thought he was a pretty cool guy and meant well, and I liked him a lot, but I didn’t really believe that I would ever hear from him. I mean, how could he have expected someone to drive four hours north to Virginia to paint when there must be perfectly good painters within five miles of his home? Yet Earl Tyson did things like that, and without hesitation. And as it turned out, it was a divinely ordained thing from the beginning. God had been planning this for a while. I just didn’t know it at the time. After that week I hadn’t given it another thought. Until the end of October when the phone rang at Rev. Gurley’s office and I just happened to be there. He said, ”It’s for you.” I picked up the receiver and heard a voice say, “Jim, this is Earl Tyson. I told you I would call. Can you come and paint?” As it turned out, the work down in NC had mysteriously ceased. I literally had nothing to do, so I figured that I might as well make the trip. The following week I found myself driving up to Scottville in my red ’71 C-10 Chevy pick-up, loaded down with ladders and all the rest of my equipment. It never occurred to me then that I was leaving North Carolina for good and spending the next thirty-eight years of my life doing ministry in Virginia. At a 1989 concert at First Baptist Church in Charlottesville, where I was opening for Michael Card, Earl introduced me by saying, “I’d like for you to meet my son-in-law, Jim Radford. He came to Virginia fourteen years ago to paint my house, but ended up staying and marrying my oldest daughter, Teresa.” I would say that I don’t know why it is so hard for us to believe that God has a plan for us, but I know better. It’s because we are a people of little faith. However, after many years I am finally learning that God has a dream for us that we don’t dare dream for ourselves. And we will argue with Him without even being aware of it. But, thankfully, God is a lot smarter than we are. Through the pretext of a job as a housepainter, He “lured” me to Virginia. For me, this story is something of an insight into God’s desire to “give us the desires of our heart” when we don’t even know what those desires are. But He does. - Jim Radford |
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©2013 Jim Radford. All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication prohibited.
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