Experimental results

I know that when I married Evelyn Lutman, I received a gift from a Higher Power. She is a woman of German descent who fits me like a hand in a glove. She is not only warm, protective, and close like a glove; she has been my wife, my lover, the mother of my four children, my adviser, my partner, and my darling for fifty-six years.

Evelyn is not a weak woman who takes everything I say as gospel or lets me boss her around. I would never have wanted a woman like that to be my wife.

No two have been more different in temperament. This difference has caused some very rough moments in our marriage, but we always returned to our faith in God, which brought us together in the beginning.

For example, during the first year of marriage when I would get moody and not speak for three days, Evelyn would wonder what she had done wrong. My mother, learning of it, explained to Evelyn that all her people were like that, and I showed the Indian traits more than any of her children. She advised her just to ignore it, and as I got used to living with Evelyn, I would come out of that.

Evelyn said that took a load off her mind. She learned to ignore my "Indian spells," as she called them, and in time I was able to change.

In our home, Evelyn is orderly, disciplined, and clean as a pin. It took me quite some time to even approach her orderliness around the house or in the care of my clothes. She has given me a pretty tough time in this area.

I am orderly in my ministry, disciplined in my relationship with God, and punctual. I am true to my word, and whatever I have bought I have tried never to get the family in debt.

Evelyn and I have always been close in our love and marriage. Yes, we've had our ups and downs, our disagreements and hurts, but over the years, we found ourselves growing even closer in our prayers, our hard work, our seed sowing, and our expectation of miracles. We literally had to do this to survive!

No matter how much obedience I have to God, how strongly I preach the Word of God, how much I use my faith to help others, or how strong is my character and honest are my dealings with one and all, I have realized more and more the truth of God's Word: "Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the LORD" (Prov. 18:22).

I have found myself leaning on my wife in times of stress, in times when I'm attacked as I carry out God's call on my life, and in times of just being a man subject to mistakes and shortcomings. To feel her arms around me, to have her say, "Oral, let's look at this from the standpoint of God's Word," or to know she is often in her prayer closet or is doing little things for me so that would not take away time from my studies, my writings, my preaching and praying, and my doing the things in our ministry that only I as the founder can do has been a real comfort to me.

I know when it is time for God to hand out whatever rewards He has for Evelyn and me, hers will exceed mine. For I know we're rewarded not just for the things that people can see and praise or criticize. Those things often done behind closed doors, in the name of the Lord and for His glory, bring God's highest rewards both on this earth and in eternity.

Without question, Evelyn has been the most respected and popular person on the Oral Roberts University campus and in this total ministry. I take that as a great honor to me. I had the wisdom to listen to my discerning friend, Frank Moss, who shared the beauty and qualities of Evelyn Lutman with me at the perfect time in my life. I had the ability to recognize Evelyn as the one for me and the good sense to wait until I was ready to get married.

In all the years, no matter what God spoke in my heart and I sought to obey, she has never once tried to hinder me. She has questioned me, as she ought, until she felt in her own spirit I had, indeed, heard God speaking more of His plan to me.

She has prayed alongside me, both day and night; she has wept with me when the going was complex and hard and the opposition seemed too much to bear. She has hated it when people and certain church leaders misunderstood that I was not acting on my own when I did what God called me to do (knowing I have many shortcomings as a human being and ordinary man). She has hung in there through good times and bad, and she has never faltered in supporting and loving me as her husband. I owe all that to God.

I trust my wife. She is my best friend. She will not desert me. I can count on her.

I cannot even try to estimate the number of people who have told me, "Oral,

without Evelyn you never could have accomplished what you have." I couldn't agree more.

I was about to learn this firsthand as we were embarking on a journey of experiences harder, yet more glorious, than either of us could ever have imagined. During the next few years, my growing dissatisfaction with the status quo of my ministry would cause our home to be uprooted and changed many times. I was searching for an avenue to fulfill God's call on my life and hitting dead ends everywhere I turned. Something somewhere had to break, but what, where, and how?

6

M ^Y S ^PIRITUAL V ^OLCANO

HE BEST way I can describe myself from the time I heard God's call on my life until the day I actually began taking His healing power to my generation is with three words—a spiritual volcano! A volcano seems peaceful on the outside, but underneath it can be experiencing a tremendous amount of pressure to bring about a change. Finally after the pressure has built up enough, it erupts and flows out everywhere, effecting a change on the surface of the land forever.

T

I knew pressure was building inside my spirit to fulfill God's call on my life—

to take His mighty healing power to hurting people. The spiritual eruption had to happen, or I could never truly be used to bring God's miraculous deliverance to defeat sin, sickness, demons, fear, and lack in the lives of others. I also knew once the spiritual eruption of God's power and anointing took place, it would flow out on others, change the direction of the church far more toward the miraculous power of God, and give multimillions hope who did not have it. What I didn't know was how painful that eruption would be. As with any volcanic eruption, some old things have to die to make room for the new. But it was going to take twelve years of hard work and growing dissatisfaction in my life before even the smoldering of change could be seen.

When Evelyn and I and little Rebecca began traveling as I preached revivals in churches in many states, we encountered the real, cold world—literally. I had joined the Pentecostal Holiness Church, which had ordained me through Bishop Dan T. Muse, a man who became my friend for life.

That first revival after Rebecca's birth was in January 1940, in Byars, Oklahoma, and it was bitterly cold: four below zero, and much lower with the chill factor when the Oklahoma winds blew. We really had to bundle up.

During the three-week revival, we stayed in a home of a member of the church. The house was rather open, with plank walls that let the wind through.

Only in the kitchen and the living room, where the woodstoves were kept going day and night, was there warmth in the house.

57

In our bedroom, Evelyn would say, "Please, Oral, get in bed first and warm my side."

I did and then rolled over to my side of the bed, and we placed little Rebecca between us. Soon her body was like a heating stove. We had to be careful that she wouldn't be smothered.

When Evelyn would awaken to nurse Rebecca and change her diaper, with the subzero winds seeping through the house, she really got cold. It didn't take long, however, to get warm again when she put Rebecca between us. Her little body kept the bed warm.

The best thing after getting up in the morning and dressing on the cold wood floors was to go into the warm kitchen where a breakfast of hot biscuits, country ham, and either cream gravy or eggs was waiting. We would sit there and eat and talk together with the family about the Lord.

There was no indoor plumbing. Going to that outhouse at four below zero and using an old Sears catalog for toilet paper was an experience. The first time we stayed in a home where there was indoor plumbing we thought we had died and gone to heaven!

Both Evelyn and I had just turned twenty-three years old. We never thought any of that was a hardship; we were just happy somebody wanted my ministry.

At the revival each night in the little small-town church, we had a full house.

The pastor said, "They came to see and hear that young Roberts boy who'd been healed of tuberculosis and was called to preach."

Evelyn played the piano for the little choir. Rebecca was in her bassinet, which was placed where she could see her mother or she would let out a yell.

Later, when we pastored a little church, Evelyn had to put Rebecca's bed close enough to her hand that she could hold Evelyn's finger or she wouldn't go to sleep.

In that revival in Byars, the people kept coming every night despite the cold.

A big woodstove in the middle of the little thirty-by-forty-foot building was kept red hot all through the services.

I couldn't hold out to preach more than fifteen to twenty minutes, but the people said I took them with me through whatever area of the Bible I was preaching. One older lady said to me one night at the close of the service, "Hold in there, son. You keep preaching like this, and you'll be a preacher one of these days."

That upset Evelyn a little bit. She said to me later, "You can preach now!"