YES! YES! YES!

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This Checkpoints recounts memories Opie (Opeline) Crowder shared of times in her childhood that God used to bring her to Himself… to Jesus.

 

“No! No! No!”
          Several times growing up, if I had not remembered my sweet Mama’s words reminding me, “Opie, you know we don’t live like other people. We live with what… as Jesus provides.” I might have hated those girls at school who bullied and made fun of me. I might have screamed out at them, “No! No! No!”
          Sometimes, other girls would hatefully point out, “Opie, you’ve got a hole in your sweater. Your shoes have holes in them….” At times, some of them would laugh and point when passing by my house, “Who lives in that dump anyhow?”
          Even though I told them, “I live there… I’m proud of that place, sometimes I cried and cried and cried.
          Instead of going to the beauty shop like other girls, I cut my own hair. I didn’t do a bad job, but some girls pointedly made fun of my hair. Many times, during a break in classes, I would sit on the toilet and hide in a bathroom stall with my feet off the floor, pressed against the locked door.
          I could have hated them, but I couldn’t.
          At the age of 10, I heard Corrie Ten Boone talk about guards when she had been imprisoned in a concentration camp. “I should hate them, but I can't,” she said. Her words reminded me of the girls who bullied me.
          When I saw Corrie, the first adult I met in a church camp I attended, she was sitting on grass, her hair, one huge braid, looked like a crown on her head.
          “Hello,” she smiled and said, “I am Corrie Ten Boone."
          When I sat down beside her, several other girls gathered around us. “This is my first time to share my story in the States,” Corrie told us.
          “I should hate the Nazis, but I can't,” she said. As she shared her life and the Holocaust, however, love reflected from her voice, from her face… from her soft blue eyes, not hatred. As she talked, Corrie ran her fingers through the soft, green grass. She told us about Betsy, her sister. Corrie shared horrific details about how Hitler's Communist soldiers had tortured and murdered Betsy and thousands of others. Before Betsy died, however, she and Corrie had ministered to others they lived with inside the concentration camps.
          “God spared my life,” Corrie said.
          Later inside the chapel with sawdust floors and backless benches, the dark-haired, young man speaking that night stepped forward and introduced himself. “I am a Royal Prince from India,” he said. “I cannot tell you my name because I accepted Jesus… and now my family wants me dead. In my country, they are offering much money, trying to find me here in America."
          Prince then began singing a sweet old gospel song he claimed as his testimony, " I have decided to follow Jesus.”

Though none go with me, I still will follow;
The Cross before me, the world behind me;
No turning back, no turning back.

          Those of us attending camp that year were the first to hear and sing his song. In our songbook, it showed the author as “Anonymous.” Later, I learned that some research shows that several publications attribute the song to “anonymous” or “source unknown,” while a few identify it as a “Folk Melody from India,” “Attributed to an Indian prince,” or “Attr. S. Sundar Singh.” 
          When the Prince preached, he said, “My message is about Noah and the Ark. I want each of you to select an animal you would have wanted to be during the flood.”
          I knew this story by heart, but Prince had an ark on the stage with a huge door and made me see the biblical account of Noah in a fresh, different light. 

          I would have been a huge, strong elephant, I decided.
          "I am closing this door,” Prince warned after he shared his message. “If you don't make it inside the Ark, you will die.”
          Without hesitating, I jumped to my feet and ran down the sawdust aisle straight toward the alter while screaming. “Don't shut the door!  Don't shut the door!”
          Immediately, I knew I was saved.
          After the meeting, Prince invited some of us for a boat ride. Sitting close to the front with my arms crossed, resting my chin on them, I saw a cross burning on the hill. Suddenly, I heard God’s voice speak loudly inside me,
          Will you go where I ask you to go?
          Will you speak what I want you to speak?
          Will you do what I want you to do?
          I could not hide the joy in my heart as I cried, “Yes! Yes! Yes!"
          Not long afterward, my Daddy baptized me.
          Growing up as a poor preacher’s kid, I remember that for years before being saved, I secretly wanted to get saved. I wanted to “be born again,” and have the new life Daddy talked about. God answered my heart’s desire, my secret prayer, that year in camp.
          Today, 67 years later, I can thankfully say, that because my Jesus is my everything, I have been walking with Him since I said, “Yes! Yes! Yes!"

 

shELAH’s NOTE:

          In my, as in Opie’s childhood, other girls sometimes bullied and made fun of me. My mother, at times like Opie’s, when she was not mentally sick, often reminded me of Jesus. My dad, diametrically opposite of Opie’s, became known as “the town drunk.”
          Thankfully, Jesus saved me at about the age of 10. Unlike Opie, however, I did not remain close to Him at times. Today, however, I see that as the Bible reassures in Philippians 1:6, “being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ...”
          Because I said “Yes” to Jesus Who died on the cross for our sins, and believed in Him, like Opie I can now say, “Jesus is my everything.
          “Yes…, Yes…, Yes…!”