Distributed Nearest Neighbors methods

Shortly after that, I drove home one evening from making house calls on different members of the church, and I pulled up in front of our house, which was the new parsonage, in my now old beat-up Chevrolet. A car was parked directly in front of me, and when I put on the brakes to stop, they didn't work very well, and I smashed into the back of it!

I was emotionally crushed. We had very little money, and I'd hit a car and damaged the back end of it.

It was just like the devil to whisper, "The owner of this car will never know you did this. Don't say anything about it." No wonder Jesus calls Satan "the tempter" (Matt. 4:3)!

I knocked on the door of the house next to ours, and a man answered the door. "Sir, my name is Oral Roberts. I'm your next-door neighbor. Is that car out there yours?"

"Sure is," he said.

I proceeded to tell him that I had just run into the back of his car. I told him if he would get an estimate on the cost for repairs, I would pay it.

He came out of his house and looked at his car and said, "Why did you tell me? I never would have known who did it."

"But I would have known it, and it's right that I pay," I replied.

"My name is Gustavus," he said. "Just call me Mr. Gus." He shook my hand.

"Young man," he said, "you just forget you hit my car. I'll take care of it."

When I started to tell him I was responsible to do it, he seemed embarrassed and went in his house.

I was mowing my lawn in the backyard late one afternoon when Mr. Gus leaned over the fence and said, "Mowing your lawn, huh?"

"Yes, I've been neglecting it." The truth was, Evelyn had lit a fire under me to get it done.

Mr. Gus said, "That is your car out in front, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir, it is."

"It's not much, is it?"

"No, I guess not."

"Well, you come down to my office in the morning. I want to talk to you about it." And he gave me the address.

When I arrived at his office the next morning and was seated, Mr. Gus said,

"Young man, I am not a member of your church, I am not even a Christian, but something tells me you are about to do something unusual in this world."

I did not say anything, but I was thinking of the strong urge I was feeling concerning my calling.

Mr. Gus continued, "What you're going to do is too big for this town. It will take you to the world."

I could scarcely believe what he was saying.

"I have felt ever since you came to my door and told me of hitting my car and offered to pay for repairing it that I should take that old worn-out car off your hands."

I was too stunned to reply.

"I am the Buick dealer, you know," he said.

I did not know.

"You drive your old car to my car lot tomorrow. I'll take it and sell it for the highest price and get you a new Buick at my cost. I'll even arrange any financing you need."

He did not know I had grown up loving the Buick automobile. To me, it was the best. I could scarcely believe I was about to own one, a brand-new one.

"Well, what do you say?"

"Are you sure you want to do this? My old car is not much."

"Oh, yes, I want to do it. As a matter of fact, I won't be happy until I do it."

"All right, then," and I started breathing normally again. Later to my further surprise, Mr. Gus said he got quite a high price for my car and the difference between that and the new Buick at his cost was only a few hundred dollars. He had the papers ready for me to sign.

Evelyn was overwhelmed. I reminded her of that fifty-five dollars I had given, which was over and above our tithes, and how that seed had gotten the church started in getting a parsonage. We had received about seven times more than we had given through God dealing with Art Newfield, besides becoming spiritually closer to the Lord. "Now," I said, "look what a larger harvest God is giving us on that seed: a new Buick!"

After we went to pick up the new car and were driving it home, Evelyn suddenly said, "Oral, stop the car!"

"What's the matter?"

"Just stop the car and get out with me."

She put her hands on the car and asked me to put mine on, too. She said,

"Oral, this is more than just a new Buick. It represents what God will do when we obey and take Him at His Word. Let's just praise the Lord."

As the cars whizzed by, it must have looked strange to see a young man and woman with their hands on a car, praising the Lord.

It was a physical machine, but it was a spiritual moment! It seemed our faith took wings, and the call to take God's healing power to this generation and someday to build Him a university didn't seem so impossible after all.

7

T ^HE S ^{TIRRING OF} M ^Y N ^EST

HINGS WERE going pretty well in Enid. I had even selected a potential site on which to build a university when God's time came.

T

However, as I neared my twenty-ninth birthday, tremendous dissatisfaction seized my spirit and mind. No longer was the beautiful little town of Enid a delight to me.

I began to feel deep within me God's time had come to begin carrying out His call to take His healing power to my generation. Every breath that I took, I knew I could take it only because the Lord had healed my lungs twelve years before. The call became certain in me to begin praying for the sick.

Someone once said, "Coming events cast their shadows before them." There were shadows all right.

I became terribly aware that I knew of no healings in the Enid church since I had been pastor. I had preached on healing, giving examples from the Bible, especially concerning Jesus and the believers in the early church. I had given the history of healings documented through the centuries, including my own. But like the parsonage situation, there was no response that I could see or feel. Yet I was burning inside to get on with the call that I had carried since the evening of my healing. My nest was being stirred.

—— Get Off the Briar and Get on the Wing!

The best way I know to describe what it was like during that time is to compare it to a mother eagle teaching her babies how to fly. She stirs their nest to get them off the briar of the nest and onto her wing so she can show them how it feels to fly. God talks about this in Deuteronomy 32:11-12:

As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young,

spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings:

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So the LO R D alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him.

The first thing the mother eagle does is to build her nest in a high place, usually some inaccessible area. There in the loneliness of the heights, she gathers all kinds of materials such as briars and sticks to build the nest. Then she covers it with her own soft down feathers. She makes it comfortable, snug, and secure.

She lays her eggs, and then she hatches her young ones. There they spend the early part of their lives while she flies far and near to get food for them. The mother's warm body hovers over and near them, protecting them. While they watch, she flies and soars into the sky—into that great unknown to them. They are content to remain in the beautiful soft nest.

The day comes when it is time for the baby eagles to leave the nest and to learn to fly. But the nest is so comfortable.

Built into the mother eagle's nature is a way to get her little ones out of the nest. If she doesn't, they will forfeit their rights to be eagles and never become all that God intends them to be. So the mother eagle begins to remove the soft covering and let the little eagles down on the sharp briars where they begin to stir uneasily. They wonder why the world is treating them like this. They become frightened and begin to scream.

When the little eagles see that soft wing, that powerful wing there on the side of the nest, while they are stirring around uneasily on those sharp briars, they start climbing out of the nest and getting on the wing. The moment they have fastened their talons on the big broad strong wing of the mother eagle, she begins to fly, and they hang on for dear life.

There she goes—up and up, mile after mile—soaring, flying, drifting, winging her way across the sky. The little eagles forget about everything else from the sheer ecstasy of that flight. Up over the hills and into the deep blue of the sky, up and around and down they fly.

Then she brings them back, and she puts her wing down. They jump off and get back into the nest only to find that they are right back on the sharp briars.

She puts her wing back down, and immediately, they climb off the briars, get on her wing, and up she goes again. She comes back and dumps them off. Again they get back on, and up she goes. She keeps on until their fear is taken away.

Then one day, with them on her wing, as she is soaring high above the earth, all of a sudden she lurches and they fall off into space. The little eagles begin to scream and plummet toward earth like rocks, beating their wings and screaming at the top of their voices. Before they can hit the ground, the big mother eagle speeds downward with superb accuracy. Spreading out her wings under them, she catches them, and up she goes again, high into the sky. She shakes them off and then catches them up again until they stretch out their wings and find that they, too, can fly. There they go, side by side, flying, soaring, and gliding.

That was how God was dealing with me. I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me. I no longer felt at home in Enid. I felt like I would smother.

When I would try to share my feelings with the bishops of my denomination, seeking counsel, they would send me home, telling me I should be satisfied and thankful that I was pastoring one of our most successful churches at such a young age.

I recalled how, shortly after I had begun preaching, my dad and I were sitting in chairs leaning back against the outside of the house. We had been reading our Bibles together and sharing our thoughts.

"Papa, do you believe that a return to the miracles of the early church after the day of Pentecost, as told in the book of Acts, will come again?" I asked.

"I not only believe it," he replied, "I know it. And you have got to know that is the very reason God raised you up and told you His plan for your life and ministry."

"What do you think I should do?"

"Keep on learning the Word, keep listening to the Holy Spirit, who is in you, and continue to preach as you are now until God's time comes. And it will come.

I may not be alive when it comes upon you and upon many, many others, but when I die, I'll know those great miracle days are coming to deliver people all over the world."

Mama had walked near, and looking at me, she affirmed Papa's word. "It will come, son. Just remember to obey God and stay small in your own eyes, and God will bless the world through you." I have tried to live by those very words.