<TITLE>03. Par 10-13</TITLE>L-10  I told you, believe the other day, how I tried to take up my first offering. Wife and I would get a tough spot where we couldn't make the ends meet, and I... Many of you know what I'm talking about. So I--I told her, I said, "Well, I'll just take up an offering over at church."
She said, "Well, I'm coming over to watch you do it." And she set down in back a little piece from me. And all the time my heart was failing; I just kept talking around different things. Directly I said, "Oh, I forgot," I said, "I got to take up an offering tonight for myself." I said, "If ever you... I hate ask you, but I've just got a snag that I can't get through." And I looked around, and bless their hearts, I believe some of them that are in here this afternoon was right there.
And I happened to look, setting to my right, and a little old mother, was wearing a little old gingham, I guess, or whatever kind of clothes... I don't know nothing about goods that women wear, so little old dresses on, you know. She had little pockets beneath her apron, and she went down there like my grandma used to have. She brought out one of them little old long pocketbooks, you know, that you snap over the top. She was reaching down after those nickels, and I looked around. I thought, "Oh, my." That would haunt me as long as I lived if I took that. I couldn't do that. That...

L-11  The deacon had went and got my hat and was going to pass the hat. I looked at that, and my, I felt a big lump come up, and I said--well, I said, "Now, look. I was just teasing you, but I didn't mean that." I said, "I just wanted to see what you would say." And my wife looked at me.
And we really had an obligation had to be met. But you know what, I had an old bicycle over home, and I went and sold that old bicycle, and we got to meet the obligation, didn't have to take up the offering after all. I never want myself tied to any earthly thing. I want to be free where I can study the Word of God.

L-12  Now concerning the tent here, the tent does not belong to me, or none of the equipment belongs to me. It belongs to the "Voice of Healing," a inter-evangelical paper which is published in Shreveport. A little paper, the paper once was mine. When I started, we--the ministers kept telling me that, "You need a paper to carry your articles in." And, well, I told Brother Lindsay, the one who was very much interested in that; I said, "Brother Lindsay, all right, we'll start it." And I, one day while in praying, God gave me the--the name, the title, "Voice of Healing." And it will--will rank right with my ministry, "the voice of one crying in the wilderness," and so forth. And so I gave it the name of "Voice of Healing."

L-13  I stayed so long in the platforms and things until I had to take a eight month's rest. I was off the field when they thought that I would leave the world. You've heard the story of that. And while I was gone, why, some of the other ministers that were following along behind my ministry, but going ahead praying for the sick, and they were carrying articles and so forth. So the suggestion was made that we make it a inter-evangelical paper, and just not have any--representing any one certain man. And that's the way I like to see things. I don't want things that are looked as to myself; I want it for the church of the living God, for everybody.
You know, Jacob dug three wells. The one well, they drove him away, and he called it "strife." And another one was "malice," I believe, or "hatred," or something. He dug the third well and he said, "There's room for us all." So I think that's what it is now: there's room for us all.
Way down in Kentucky where an old Missionary Baptist Church, we used to sing the song, "Room, room, yes, there is room. There's room at the fountain for me." Did you ever hear of it? It's a little old song, and that's what it is.


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