Chapter Two – Called from My Mother’s Womb (cont)
Grandpa was outside the house checking on the chicken coop when a man he later described as a “pipe smoking Methodist” came into the yard looking for children to gather up for the Vacation Bible School that his church put on each summer. Grandpa wiped his hands on his faded overalls and shook hands with the man. That Methodist spoke things into John’s heart that moved him deeply, and when the man asked him to accept Jesus as his savior, John began to weep profusely under the conviction of the Holy Ghost. The man stepped over and wrapped his arms around John like a loving father. He told John that Jesus loved him and that he loved him in Christ. Grandpa would later testify that up until that moment; no human being had ever said to him that he was loved. As a result, he plunged his life into the things of God and quickly identified and accepted the call to ministry.
Grandpa John’s wife Opal was born again immediately after he was and they gathered up the children in the buckboard (in the 1930’s mind you) and found their way to the “Old Red Barn Church.” It was called the Old Red Barn Church because it met in a crude, hay-strewn abandoned red barn on the wrong side of town. Soon after they began attending, the young couple was filled with the Holy Spirit with evidence of speaking in other tongues. Dad and his three siblings as young as they were, gave their hearts to Jesus likewise, and he immediately gave proof of a call to the gospel. When company came to visit the Walden house, my Dad (at the age of seven) would gather all the children inside the woodshed at the back of the house and set out nail kegs and a makeshift pulpit where he would preach a salvation message to his young cousins and playmates. The adults would sneak over and look in the windows at these children playing at church. It was more than play however, as Dad recalled years later that there were children whose families had no spiritual light in them whatsoever who gave their lives to Christ in that woodshed and carried a lifelong testimony of faith from that time forward.
This was the background that I was born into in August of 1960 in Kansas City. During those years what became known as the Latter Rain Revival from the 1940s was still going strong 20 years later. Mom and Dad were immersed in this outpouring and in the Healing Revivals that raged during those days. They attended meetings with William Branham, AA Allen, Jack Coe, Oral Roberts, and others. When the tent preaching season would close for the year, Dad would hire out of work tent preachers to work in his painting business. After hours these preachers would all go to mom and Dad’s house spending hours in prayer and seeking God’s face for greater glory and outpouring. I was only in diapers at this time, and I would waddle in among these spiritual giants and my Dad, taking a place of prayer kneeling at a big overstuffed chair.
Before I was born, a prophet visited the house for dinner. As my very pregnant mom-to-be cleared the dishes away the man took on a distant look in his eye and commenced to prophesy to my parents that this child yet to be born would be filled with the Holy Ghost in his mother’s womb. In that moment like Elizabeth of old when she carried John the Baptist – I leaped in my mother’s womb with a great show of activity. Mom and Dad took this as confirmation of the words of the prophet. Fast forward to the time as a toddler praying with the preachers and prophets in my parent’s living room. Dad spied me kneeling in prayer and could faintly hear my little voice raised to God as the others who were praying as well. Dad came to my side to listen more clearly, and just as the prophet said, he found me praying in a distinct and clear prayer language by the word of the Lord. In this, they sensed that all the warfare and My near death as an infant that God had something in mind for me and that there was a calling upon me for exploits in the kingdom of God.
What is the lesson to take away from this for your life? Never rule out the dealings of God with young children. When as a young child, my Dad prayed and preached in the woodshed with his playmates – he wasn’t taken seriously by the parents looking on. They thought they were just playing church, and that was all there was to it. What they should have noticed was the genuine emotion in these children’s faces as Dad preached. They might have paid particular attention to those little ones slain in the spirit before the Lord at that makeshift altar doing business with God in their hearts. These things gave Mom and Dad particular sensitivity when they witnessed similar situations in My young life even as a toddler.
Years later, at the age of seven, I gave my life to Jesus and was born again. At the time the family had moved from Kansas City to their home town of Clinton Missouri They were returning from church meetings in Lawrence, Kansas. We were listening to AA Allen preach on the radio as the miles whizzed by on old Highway 13. As they were passing through Peculiar Missouri, Allen declared over the radio “Folks! The Lord killeth and maketh alive – God’s in a killin’ mood tonight!” Something about that touched my young heart, and from the back seat, I tugged on my daddy’s sleeve asking, “that’s not true, is it daddy?” Immediately Dad turned to the side of the road, and right there in Peculiar Missouri, my parents prayed Me through to the assurance of my salvation.
