The Desire of My Heart

THE DESIRE OF MY HEART

On October 12, 1952, I preached my first sermon in the city jail at Ft. Smith, Arkansas. I was on the outside looking in, by the way. So, this October marks my fortieth year in the ministry. Kaye has been with me for thirty-five of those forty years. I couldn’t have made the trip without her.

From the day I started preaching, I asked God to let me do two things: travel the country teaching the bible and write books. That has been the desire of my heart from the beginning. And God has satisfied that desire a thousand times over. He has not only let us travel this country sharing the Word, He has taken us around the world to places we never dreamed of going, opening doors that we could not have blasted open with an atom bomb.

Since leaving the pastorate in 1975, we have ministered in churches, colleges, seminaries, conventions and conferences in most of the fifty states, Europe, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Central America and the Caribbean Islands. God has also blessed our tape ministry more than we could have imagined. Everywhere we go, somehow the tapes have preceded us. We’ve yet to travel in a foreign country where someone has not told of being blessed by the tape ministry.

Earlier this year I believe God gave me a promise that the last years of our ministry would be greater than all the others. And that’s the way I want it to be. Watching the Olympics last summer I noticed that the runners in every race didn’t slacken their speed when they caught sight of the finish line. No.. .that’s when they went to afterburners and pushed the accelerator to the floor.

A note from Kaye:

This note was written by Ron in 1992. Ron had almost 10 more years of fruitful ministry...but those final two months he went to afterburners and pushed the accelerator to the floor. For the eight months that God had him in the hospital or in bed healing at home, he was studying the book of Philippians, preparing messages on the subject of KNOWING GOD, believing with all his heart that he would be traveling and preaching again. These were the messages he was planning to preach at the MEF Bible Conference in Colorado Springs in June, 2002, the week of his death. But first he preached them at a Bible Conference at our home church, MacArthur Blvd. Baptist in Irving, TX, pouring everything he had into them. He would climb those steps to the pulpit so slowly, breathing heavily, but then would open his mouth and the Lord would supernaturally anoint the Word with power.

Just a few weeks later he was back in the hospital. The night before he went into ICU for the last time, he sat up and preached to me what he was planning to preach on the last Friday night of the Conference in Colorado. (We had been told he would be going home from the hospital the next morning). He was so excited about what God had given him from the Word... .but I was the only one who heard that message because he went into the presence of His Lord the Friday morning he was to have preached that message.

What a blessed way to enter into His presence.