EXPERIENCING GOD'S CALL


It was a week or two before the beginning of my senior year at Loris High School. Rev Willie Shepard was pastor at Buck Creek Baptist Church where my family attended in 1966. After my experience with Jesus on the housetop, I went to Pastor Shepard’s home to tell him about it. I told him how Jesus had supernaturally revealed Himself to me and confirmed His call on my life. The pastor was excited, especially that I had accepted God’s call to the ministry. He had known it for a long time and had actually told me two years earlier that he felt the Lord was calling me to preach.

Others had thought so too. When I was a little kid, Miss Molly, an elderly lady in our community used to tell me, “You’re our little preacher boy. Your great grandfather, William Hickman Long, used to pray for God to raise up a preacher in the family, and you’re it.” He was born in 1836. His prayer “closet” was a tree that had fallen over in the edge of the woods behind his house. The horizontal trunk of that tree was his altar. He would kneel there and pray at the same spot regularly and often. The effect was to produce two depressions in the ground where he placed his knees during his prayers For a while he was Sunday school superintendent for Buck Creek Baptist Church and Ebenezer Methodist Church. I don’t know how he managed that logistically. The Methodist church was at the crossroads in Longs. The Baptist church was about one mile away. My great grandfather was a praying man, and I believe the Lord inspired his prayers…and heard them.

Preacher Shepard, upon hearing that I had accepted the call to ministry, decided that I should make the big announcement to the congregation the next Sunday, which was the church’s annual Homecoming Service. On the big day the church auditorium was packed, a very big crowd. I went up front during the invitational hymn as we had planned. At that time I was a little nervous. Doubts were pressing in. Was I doing the right thing? Pastor Shepard was certain about my call. He told me to proceed in faith. He told the congregation to be seated, and I went up to the pulpit. The moment I stood at that pulpit and looked out at the congregation, I felt an immediate surge of confidence and faith. I thought, “This is where I belong.” The Lord was touching me again and revealing Himself in a wonderful and joyful way.

I began to share my testimony with the congregation. I told how I had prayed on the housetop, and how Jesus had revealed Himself and called me to the ministry. The Holy Spirit anointed the word and confirmed the message. I saw many wiping tears from their eyes. Preacher Shepard then scheduled me to preach my first sermon the second Sunday of October, 1966. This was the beginning of an exciting journey. ---Billy Long

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