A Journey Into Personal Revival
By Sammy Tippit
http://sammytippit.org/
I felt the tear trickling down my cheek as I stared at the broken piece of grass. It looked exactly like I felt – burdened and broken.
Three drops of water rested on that blade of grass and seemed to cause it to bend to the ground. I wondered if those drops were my tears. Life seemed so unfair. I found it difficult to understand what was transpiring. It was the third time that one of my best friends had been tragically killed.
I thought that I was as broken as a man could ever become. But that day was the early stages of God’s work in my life. It was the beginning of the greatest personal revival that I have ever experienced. When I hear someone speak about revival, they often speak of the spectacular. However, this work of God in my heart wasn’t flashy. It was a deep pruning.
I had just spoken at the memorial service of my friend and colleague, Billy Hobbs, after he was killed in an automobile accident. Our ministry hosted a dinner for out of town guests who traveled to San Antonio for the funeral. During the meal, I collapsed. The next thing I knew, an ambulance was transporting me to the hospital. Until then, I was a stranger to health problems. I only visited hospitals to comfort others. Now I found myself needing comfort.
After I was released from the hospital, I went to my favorite place of prayer. As I sat under the trees early that morning, I saw the blade of grass and felt my tears. What I didn’t understand at that moment was that revival was in the tears just as refreshing for the Earth was in the dew drops. The drops of water resting on the grass weren’t my tears. They were the teardrops from heaven, the morning dew that refreshes the Earth. In a similar manner, I was about to discover that the tears that flowed down my cheek would become the source of a great renewal in my heart.
Billy was scheduled to travel with me to Pakistan on a dangerous mission for a major evangelistic meeting in several cities in the country. Billy was one of the few people who were willing to go.
After Billy’s death, my son, Dave, said, “Dad, I’ll go with you.” Consequently, Dave, my wife, Tex, and I headed to Pakistan for the evangelistic meetings and a pastors and leaders conference. The trip was filled with the blessings of God as many hundreds responded to the gospel in this stronghold of terrorism. God also used the pastors’ conference to encourage those dear men who were on the front line of the battle for souls.
On the flight back to the United States, I became ill. By the time we arrived in the DFW airport, I was running a fever. I made it as far as the gate where the plane was leaving for San Antonio, but couldn’t go any further. I lay on the floor and began violently shaking. An ambulance was once again dispatched. While in the Baylor Medical Center in Dallas, I told my wife, “If I can just get back to San Antonio, I think that I will live.” God enabled me to get home, but I arrived a broken man.
I told Tex, “I think that I have hit bottom. I don’t think anything else could happen. I am as low as I can go.” However, I didn’t understand that when God gets ready to revive a heart, He digs deep. I was still a long way from the refreshing.
A few months later, I traveled to my birth state of Louisiana for an area wide evangelistic crusade. I made a luncheon appointment with a long time friend, Wayne Jenkins, the Director of Evangelism for the Louisiana Baptist Convention. While Tex and I were waiting at the restaurant for Wayne and Martha, one of my staff called. “Sammy,” he said with a trembling voice, “The man who translates your materials in Pakistan has just been kidnapped by Islamic terrorists. They are demanding $60,000.”
Shocked would be a mild way of expressing what I felt. My mind was reeling. No seminary nor Bible college training could have prepared me for that moment. I had no idea what to do. I told my colleague that I would get back to him as soon as possible. However, he called once again. My translator had been brutally murdered. The details of his murder were horrifying.
When I returned to San Antonio, I went to my favorite spot. Life seemed so confusing, but the small still voice of the Holy Spirit spoke in the midst of the chaos, “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” (Proverbs 3:5, 6 KJV). “Oh, God, I don’t understand, but I choose to trust you,” I cried out as my tears fell to the ground and watered the grass.
Three weeks after my translator was murdered, my sister called me on the phone. “Sammy,” she said, “I have just received a letter from a man in Portugal who says that he has evidence he is our brother.” It felt like someone hit me in the stomach and knocked the wind out of me. “God,” I shouted as I drove. “What is going on?”
My father died nearly 40 years earlier and my mother had been dead for about 10 years. Dad became ill when I was a small child and spent almost as much time in the hospital as he did at home. He grew up deep in the forests of southwest Louisiana, while I grew up in the capital city, Baton Rouge. My grandparents died before I was born. Thus, I knew very little about Dad’s background. Although I was named after his father, I don’t ever recall him talking about his father or mother. I didn’t know what to think. Yet, that was the beginning of the refreshing that was to come from the presence of God.
After numerous phone calls to Portugal and DNA testing, I learned that this man was not my brother. However, everything else he said was true. He knew more about my family than I did. I desperately needed to talk to someone. I told my pastor, “David, I don’t know who I am anymore. This has shaken me to the core.”
David looked at me and spoke what was the beginning of a great revival in my heart. “Sammy, you know who you are. You are a follower of Jesus Christ. You are a pioneer of the gospel. That’s who you are.”
In the days that followed, God set me on an amazing journey. Suddenly, I had an insatiable desire to discover my roots. My mother put me out of my home when I came to know Christ, and my father died shortly thereafter. Consequently, I decided to follow Jesus and never look back. But now, I found myself 57 years old and searching for answers.
During the next year, my search led me to Virginia, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Every day brought a new sense of God’s Sovereignty. All of my Christian life, I thought that I came from a non Christian background. My parents never brought me to church when I was growing up. I was completely surprised to learn that I came from an incredible history of pioneers of the faith.
My third great grandfather worked with Joseph Willis, a Baptist pioneer of the gospel, and he helped Willis plant some of the first Baptist churches west of the Mississippi River. My fourth great grandmother donated the land for the first Baptist church west of the Mississippi River. My grandmother (my father’s mother) was an incredible woman of prayer. The only thing written about her life spoke of her prayer life.
I’ve walked into revolutions, war zones, and the aftermath of genocide to preach the gospel. I’ve been threatened on numerous occasions - had knives put to my throat and guns to my head for proclaiming Christ. All these years, I thought that I was blazing a new trail. But I began to learn that I came from a long line of pioneers of the faith.
My people came from a multi racial background and were derogatorily called “Redbones” in Louisiana. Anthropologists have called them tri racial isolates. One historian has referred to them as Louisiana’s mystery people. They were mostly from Native American heritage, but to me, they were simply my grandparents – a people who loved Jesus and proclaimed Him in a very dangerous place at a dangerous time.
This discovery renewed my soul. As I learned my heritage, I longed for God to work deeply within me. Therefore, I cleared my schedule during the spring of 2006. The only engagement that I kept was at The Cove, Billy Graham’s training center in North Carolina. Our ministry was a cosponsor of the Heart Cry for Revival conference, and I was scheduled as one of the speakers.
Yet, I desperately needed God to speak to me. During the conference, Dr. Crawford Lorritts led an early morning prayer meeting and said, “Let’s not take prayer requests this morning. Let’s just pray.”
As people began to pour their hearts out to God, the Holy Spirit spoke deeply to my heart, “Sammy, you have been telling people how tired you are. You’ve told them about all your difficulties and how they have exhausted you. But you are a liar.” Those words were like a two edged sword cutting deep into my soul. I knew the truth. God’s word says, “But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Is. 40:31 KJV).
The real reason that I had become exhausted in the midst of the fiery trials was because I had not waited upon the Lord as He wanted. I confessed my sin to God and to the group and asked for prayer. Dr. Lorritts spoke to me afterwards saying, “Sammy, I believe that God is bringing you to a new level of prayer. He has used you in the past, but I believe that He is going to do even greater things in the future.”
I didn’t know how true His words would become. God was attempting to bring me to a new level of intimacy with Him. Exactly one year after that conference, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I knew that God was in it. I embraced the cancer and said, “God, if you have permitted this cancer, then I want it to be for Your glory.”
As I went into surgery, I asked the surgeon if I could pray for Him. That was the last thing that I recall until I saw my wife afterwards. I spent the next eight days at home. People sent me books and videos to occupy my time. But my heart longed to be with God. I took my Bible and my IPod with worship music and spent time with God. Oh, how wonderful it was. Moments of worship turned into hours, and hours turned into days of worship. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. I spent the next three months reading the Bible and worshipping Jesus Christ. It was incredible.
When I first went home, I had a dream. I don’t put a lot of stock in dreams. Our source of authority is the Word of God. Understanding that, I could not shake this dream. I saw two Indians in the dream, an old man and a young boy. They were staring into the distance. Then I heard two words and they began to echo. “Wounded Deer. Wounded Deer.”
When I awoke the next morning, I couldn’t shake that picture and those words. “Wounded Deer.” I began asking God what it was all about and He led me to Psalms 42:1 which says, “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for Thee, O God” (NAS). That was it. God’s work and message was so simple. He was working in me to produce a longing for Him that was far beyond anything that I had ever known. As I listened to the voice of the Lord speaking to my heart through the Scriptures, I realized that I could never minister again as a strong powerful evangelist. I could only minister as a “Wounded Deer.” The only hope for a wounded deer is to live by the waters.
Once the doctor told me that I could resume my travel schedule, I purposed in my heart that I would not lose what I had found through these past few years which climaxed with my cancer surgery. I would look for the waters every day and drink. I can not preach until I have been to the waters. I cannot lead until I have been to the waters. I can do nothing without having been to the waters. There’s life and joy in the waters that flow from the throne of God. Hallelujah! His presence flows from the waters.
I took my first ministry trip three months after the surgery. My wife didn’t go with me because she stayed behind to help our daughter who having her first child. I flew northwards to Canada and rented a motel room before driving to the conference center in the mountains the next day. I drove about 15 miles down the highway and saw a sign that said, “Waterfalls.” I stopped and hiked back to the falls. And I drank. Oh, how I drank from the waters. After a couple of hours of drinking from the waters, I returned to my car and drove another few miles. At the town of Hope, two rivers merge. I stopped and went to the rivers and drank from the waters. I must have been there drinking and worshipping God for more than an hour. I then returned to my car and headed into the mountains. I passed by a lake and my heart cried out, “Stop and drink.” I found a quiet place at the edge of the lake and drank from the waters – the waters that flow from the throne of God.
And now, I’m once again running full force with the call of international evangelism. I’m going to war zones like Angola and Sudan and harvest fields like Brazil and South Africa. I am preaching on television and radio inside Iran. This time, I’m running, but not growing weary. I’m walking, but no longer fainting. I’m revived. Hallelujah. I’m revived.
Wait upon the Lord, and He shall renew your strength.
