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CBN.com – By the end of Joe's first year at the barn, things had settled into a routine. Every week I'd go to the CBN studio to record the three-hour Scott Ross Show. The show was now on 40 stations and Jacki had to have help answering the mail. Peg gave us another piece of land to go with the barn. After the original shakedown, Patterns hadn't affected the numbers of people wanting to become part of Love Inn; it just attracted a great group: Paul Freed, Bill Clarke, Glorya Garafola, and Ted Sandquist.
Ted was a twenty-three-year-old who first read about us in an article in the New York Times. He came up and moved into the dorm room next to Joe's. The two of them made a fantastic team: Joe's black bush beside Ted's trim, honey-colored hair -- Joe's burning black eyes and Ted's mild blue ones.
Christian Scott Ross was born in November 1971. We got insight into how our neighbors were starting to accept us when the time came to pay the hospital bill. One of the principles in Patterns was service to the community. Love Inners had been doing volunteer work all over town, among other places at the hospital. When I went into the cashiers office the day Nedra and Christian Scott were read to come home, the lady behind the desk opened her own pocketbook. "That's a great place youve got out there," she said, and handed me twenty dollars toward the bill.
In other words, things were going great.
So great that for long periods of time I could actually kid myself that the old, unreconstructed Scott was dead and buried. Then something would happen to show that he was still alive and kicking. Like the visit from the local fire marshal. He inspected the living quarters we had built in the old pony stalls.
"How many people are living here on a regular basis?" he asked as he peered into the last of the little rooms.
I was wary. "Quite a few," I said. No, that wasnt good enough. "17."
The marshal asked more questions, made more notes. Then came the verdict. We were violating every safety regulation in the book. Unless the violations were corrected in 30 days we would have to close the dormitory.
Well, I hit the ceiling. Who were the nit-picking legalists who had nothing better to do than think up stupid regulations? Ted Sandquist and Joe Laiacona halted my tirade: "Christians are told to obey the laws of the state, Scott. First Peter 3:13 makes it about as clear as it can be: Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lords sake."
There I was once again. In rebellion against authority.
"And if I'm a German," I said, "and the Nazis tell me to put some little Jewish kid in the oven?"
"Then it's a moral issue and you have a higher law to follow. But there's nothing immoral about putting in a fire alarm." And without another glance in my direction Joe and Ted took on the job of complying with the states standards. It wasn't easy. They needed materials and blueprints and money and they had none of these things, but within 15 days, half the time the fire marshal had allowed, there were new clearly marked exit doors, new windows, fire detectors, fire extinguishers. I remember the pleased look on the marshals face when he came back to inspect the work.
"Beautiful", he kept saying. "Yes, that will pass now". Then he let drop his final explosive. "Just be sure," he said, "that no more than five people live here at any one time. Otherwise it becomes a public housing facility and those clearances take years to get."
The visit from the fire marshal marked two changes at Love Inn. First I saw that I was no longer the sole head of the operation. Almost without realizing it as most things happened at the farm Joe and Ted had stepped in to assume that responsibility with me. And second, we were no longer a physical commune. People found rooms and apartments all around Ithaca. It was probably a healthy thing, keeping us from getting too ingrown and wrapped up in our on little world. But it caused problems too, and the chief one was money.
Renting living quarters, eating in groups of two or three instead of all together, traveling to and from the barn, all of this cost more than we were earning. A number of us had paying jobs as grocery clerks, farm hands, office help, construction workers but even when these resources were pooled there wasn't enough to meet our personal expenses and keep the barn going as well.
Nedra and I weren't even getting the $125 a week the job at CBN used to bring in. The Scott Ross Show, which went out free to stations, cost more to produce than came in from donations.
And just at this point, when our need for money was most acute, the offerings habitually left by visitors in the Love Buckets at the barn suddenly and mysteriously dried up. Once, that summer of 1972, 20 of us lived for four days on twenty-five dollars. On the third day a visitor left a quarter in one of the Love Buckets. I carried that quarter in the palm of my hand all over the barn, showing people, rejoicing. If God was trying to teach us gratitude for everything we received, He was certainly succeeding.
All summer long the lean times continued. The odd thing was that the crowds at our music weekends and mid-week teaching sessions had never been greater. Just the giving stopped. Our Volkswagen bus was still running fine, but we had no money for gasoline. We put ourselves on strict food rationing: no meat, eat only vegetables from the garden, buy day-old bread from the bakers.
"One thing we know," Ted Sandquist pointed out, "there are no accidents in God's Kingdom. He's allowing this for a reason."
And then one day Joe and I independently heard the same idea in our prayer time. The problem wasn't with other peoples generosity; it was we who weren't giving enough. We'd always tithed all income at Love Inn, ten percent of all receipts going outside our own community. Now the incredible thought came that we were to double that amount.
If it hadn't been for the fact that we both got the same message on the same day, we might have ignored it. Here we were, just barely able to feed ourselves. But because of the coincidence we presented the idea to the whole group at the next family meeting and to our amazement everyone agreed that it came from the Lord.
So, we went ahead. Twenty percent. Off the top. Before any expenses were met. If a quarter appeared in the Love Bucket, we gave away a nickel.
And with this step came a remarkable change in our attitudes about money. The purpose of income was different now. First and foremost we were to meet the needs of others. Part of the fun was giving in secret. The need could be right here at Ithaca: it might be a fund drive at a local school, or a neighbor who needed a vacation. Or it could be anywhere in the world. Biafra. Bangladesh.
And with the change, suddenly, astonishingly, mysteriously, there was more money from which to take our double-tithe. Once again God provided, as He had in the beginning, in abundance beyond our dreams. We'd started publishing a newspaper at Love Inn, called Free Love. We knew we could save hundreds of dollars per issue in typesetting costs if we could buy a type-composing machine. But the machine cost $4,400. We'd raised part of this sum and were discussing where the rest was to come from, when Peg's quiet voice came from the back of the book room.
I guess that's why the man settled up early.
A while back, Peg explained, she'd sold a building she owned in Ithaca, taking back a ten-year mortgage. Peg had been receiving monthly checks from this note, but recently the new owner had decided to pay off the mortgage all at once. His check just came in, said Peg. Ive been wondering what all that money was for . . .
The Love Buckets, too, were suddenly overflowing. Donations poured in to the Scott Ross Show. They came from people who had visited the barn in the past. A note would arrive from Earmuff, Iowa. "Dear Scott. You don't remember me. But I came to Love Inn on an all-time high. You people there really helped me. Here's five bucks." Or from parents of young people we had helped, like the bald-headed fellow who stormed into Love Inn one night cursing us out and demanding to know "what the hell is going on here." I showed him around. At the end of the tour the man shoved a fistful of bills into my hand. "My daughter wasn't kidding then", was all he said. We never knew which of the girls who'd wandered into the barn was his daughter.
Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over. These words from the Sermon on the Mount had sprung to life before our eyes.
And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the whole thing had begun with that family meeting. I'd brought a financial decision to the group, and the group, together, had heard God's voice with more certainty than any individual among us could.
Why then was I still so reluctant to bring the whole of my life oh, not to Jesus so much. That was comparatively easy: He understood, after all, He made allowances. What still terrified me was the thought of giving over the reins of my life to a group of human beings.
And then one day Joe said something that was like a light going on in a dark corner. He'd just come back from a trip to visit one of our offspring groups, communities started by people who'd had their training at Love Inn. It was a trip the whole community had prayed about, decided upon, sent Joe off on. "And it's the first time," he said, "I've ever taken a trip where I haven't expected something terrible to happen. A plane crash, an automobile accident -- its crazy, but I've always had these morbid fears when I've traveled."
Morbid fear . . . I thought of the irrational, senseless terror that could still grip me in the course of an ordinary stroll down the street.
I found myself remembering something else. The nightly bombing raids over Glasgow. Certainly Id been in more real danger then than I'd ever been in since. And yet I hadn't known what fear was. Was it, I suddenly wondered, because as a small child I'd been, humbly and unquestioningly, under the authority of flesh and blood representatives of God? Covered by my father and mother, in the Christian phrase? Was it this covering Joe had experienced on his trip?
With Joe's example I began to share just with him and Ted at first my own fears, to talk about these secret areas of my life. I told them about the pizza oven, and the rubbery buildings and the snipers on the rooftops. All the silly childs nightmare things and my own role in opening up my psyche and spirit to such phantoms. I told them about the visitations from the dazzling angel of light and the paralyzing terror that had come with them.
The relief I felt as I stammered out each confession was more that somehow, in bringing it to these visible, physical members of His Body, I was bringing it to Jesus Himself in a whole new way, and that His power was setting me free.
I was learning to submit my fears to the Body of Christ, and I was getting free of them. But what about my lusts? My resentments? What about the sex fantasy I'd wallowed in all last week? The way I'd exploded at Nedra when she wasn't ready on time? No, there were certain things I knew I'd never be able to share with anyone.
One day Jacki brought the morning mail over to Peg's house and sat down to wait while I thumbed through it.
"What's this?" I asked, holding up a phonograph record. Jacki didnt know. The record had simply appeared, along with a note, handwritten and brief: "The guy who plays guitar here is a Christian from Youngstown, Ohio."
Later, I put it on. It was by a group called the Glass Harp from the label I saw that the lead guitarist was a guy named Phil Keaggy. I put the needle down and listened to the most incredible sound. Keaggy was unreal. He could do things with a guitar that werent in the instrument.
But what did it have to do with us? I put the record away, and forgot it.
That fall, 1972, a thought kept coming during my morning time: we were supposed to become involved at Love Inn in recorded music. Repeatedly, I dismissed the idea. It would cost a fortune, and besides, it would take a huge staff. It was true, some incredibly talented people had recently been led to the community Eleanor Smith, Peter Hopper, Gary and Mary Hamilton, Mutt and Ann Minton, John and Nancy Shorey, Duane McNett, Pierre and Maggie Joseph. Still, we already had much too much to do.
The Scott Ross Show, for example. We were now sending tapes to 80 stations, and it was long past the time when we needed our own studio. We decided as a group a least where Love Inn affairs were concerned I no longer even attempted the solo act- that the studio should be built under the eaves at the barn, raising the roof in one place to make room for it. We set out to pray in the money.
Like the check from Mia Hansen, which showed we were on the right track to order food in bulk, money simply appeared. It flooded us from everywhere at once, as it had never come before. Pat Robertson helped us. So did Nedra's mother. Noel Stookey heard about what we were doing and joined in. Old friends from New York wrote, sending money. The show itself stimulated giving. Even our neighbors and area farmers wanted to be a part of the new project. In all more than $20,000 came in.
That would equip quite a studio! Surely we didn't need such a fancy facility just for the Scott Ross Show. Perhaps our thinking had not been big enough?
I was wrestling with this one morning when Jacki buzzed me for a long distance call. I picked up the receiver.
"This is Phil Keaggy."
My mind drew a blank. And then I remembered: the uncanny lead guitarist from Youngstown, Ohio. "I got this strong impression last night that I was supposed to call you," Phil Keaggy said. "Got anything going on?"
"I cant believe this . . . "I said, and then I told Keaggy about the brand new studio and the idea we'd discussed at a family meeting the previous evening for recording top-quality Jesus music under a label called New Song Productions. Phil caught the idea right away. We'd put an album together. We'd keep costs down because he would do the whole session himself, overdubbing the various instruments.
So it was that toward the end of 1972 Phil Keaggy came to Love Inn. There was one surprise right off the bat. When he was a boy Phil had gotten his right hand mangled in an old-fashioned farm pump. Phil Keaggy produced his unbelievable music with only nine fingers.
The owner of our apartment on Elm Street had decided to remodel the building and once more Nedra and I were looking for a place to live. Joe and Ted were both married now. Joe and his wife Ann had moved to West Groton. Ted and Dawn had found a rental nearby. Nedra and I decided to build a log house of our own on the Love Inn property. The day we sunk a shovel into the rocky upstate soil we also purchased a third-hand mobile home to live in until the house was ready. We parked it in the field back of Peg's.
"It's full circle Scott," said Nedra. Shouted, rather: "Nedra Kristina (an Indian chief) was chasing Christian Scott (paleface settler, still wearing diapers), around the small formica table, with war whoops which demonstrated there was nothing the matter nowadays with her bronchial tubes. We're back in a Tin Can again."
And it was in Tin Can Two that the struggle continued over what I still considered mine as opposed to His or worse, yet theirs. Once it was an ad for an x-rated movie that caught my eye. I let my mind play with the provocative title, spinning out the story as I imagined it to be. There was a hill across Route 13 from the barn where I often went when I wanted to be alone. I went up there now, and it was there that the Lord showed me how easy it is to say, I lay down my life. What was hard to give up were the little pamperings, the private areas where we indulged ourselves. You think you have a right to these things because they're inside your own mind. Don't you know yet that you have no right to anything? As long as you have rights, you have not really laid down your life.
I remember walking for a long time on that hillside that day. I remember kicking the trees.
All during the fall and winter of '73 and '74, the Lord reminded me in a hundred ways that a Christian has no rights. Now that we lived next to the barn, I had no right to sleep through the night, no right to avoid being waked at four in the morning to talk to a runaway, or fix him a bowl of soup. I had no right to a car of my own. These things were sometimes granted me by the grace of God, but never as rights.
Above all I had no right to keep part of my life hidden. I had no privilege the Lord didn't have as He hung naked before the world on the cross.
But you know, God talks only so long to someone with his fingers in his ears. Suddenly the communication seemed to cease. My prayers topped getting answered. Clouds of darkness hung over me. I was brusque with Jacki, Peg, Ted, Joe, Nedra and the kids . . . everyone. During our Tuesday night teaching sessions I had nothing to say. Everyone knew I was going through a heavy time. One cold February afternoon Ted came into my office and found me sitting on the sofa, in tears.
"I don't know what's hurting you, Scott," Ted said, "but I'll go through it with you."
"Yeah. Thanks, Ted."
I couldn't say to him how much those words meant. They were to mean even more as the Lord began to peel back the layers of my heart, revealing what was really there.
It was a Sunday morning in March. Nedra Kristina had already run up to the barn where the worship service would soon be starting. Nedra, who was pregnant again, was sitting with me at the formica table in the kitchen of the trailer, putting off the moment when it would be time to clear away the breakfast dishes. Two-year-old Christian was puddling with his orange juice. I told him to stop, but he continued to pour the juice out of his cup.
"Christian!" I shouted. I slammed my hand on the table. The little boy looked up, startled. "Stop that!"
"Now Scott," said Nedra. Her voice was soothing. "Arent you overreacting?"
"What do you mean?" I shouted again, my voice bouncing off the metal walls.
Youre terribly angry, honey.
"I'm not angry?" I yelled, furious.
And then the most amazing thing happened. I reached down and grabbed the edge of the table where we were sitting and yanked it upward. The dishes, the juice, the coffee, all went flying. Nedra jumped up. Christian stared at me from his highchair.
Nedra picked up the telephone.
I reached over and tore it out of her hands. Then I tried to yank the whole instrument out of the wall.
Nedra waited a while, frozen. Then very softly she said. "This is it. This is really it, Mr. Scott Ross."
I ran into the little bedroom. In a moment I heard the front door softly close. I waited, then crept out again. The dining room was empty, a shambles. The table was upside down. Juice and oatmeal and marmalade ran together on the linoleum. I started to cry as I picked up the pieces of broken glass.
It's no good, Lord. Its just no good at all.
I expected someone to come down. But an hour passed and there was no knock on the door. Finally I walked slowly up to the barn. I could hear the service going on up in the loft. I went to the kitchen and made myself a cup of tea. Pierre Joseph looked in, rubbing his black mustache.
"How are you doing, Scott?"
"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies."
Pierre and his wife were relative newcomers to the barn, but he was a perceptive guy. "We'll stick by you, Scott. Through anything."
After the service I locked myself in my office with Ted and Joe. I described the ugly scene at the breakfast table, blow-byshard-by-tear. They did not condemn me; they did not excuse me. They heard me out, and then again that mysterious phenomenon of oneness in Christ occurred: they shouldered the experience with me. With me and for me they lifted it to Jesus; with Him and for Him they spoke words of forgiveness I could never have believed if I had heard them only with an inner ear. Then they went with me down to the trailer and stood by while I apologized to Nedra and asked her forgiveness.
And with, an in spite of, and through the pain, I could sense God at work. He was using this experience to show me what was in my heart. Murder. A rage quite out of my control. Something that had been inside of me since -- I tried to remember how long.
I recalled the anger I had felt toward the soot-stained church on the drab Glasgow street, the church that wouldn't let me play soccer on Sunday with the other kids. I remembered the bullies I'd encountered when I first came to America. The homosexual who made a pass at me in my bedroom. I remembered the hypocrites, the backbiters, the man in the big New York church who turned me away because I didn't have on the right clothes, the listener in Portsmouth who was going to shoot me because I had prayed for dying Martin Luther King.
And suddenly I saw that in every case I'd been telling myself I had a right to be angry.
But . . . if I had no rights, then that included anger too no matter how justified. I had to give it up, every bit of it, and not just to my own private concept of God, but to Christ as He existed here and now in flesh and blood and people.
It took quite a while, unloading the resentments one by one to Joe and Ted, but as I did, healing began. Deep, lasting healing. The red brick church-on-the-corner, for example, that Id held in such contempt so long. Bit by bit with the help of the others I uncovered the roots of this ugly plant a hurt here, a disillusionment there and saw how Id let these few experiences spread to choke off my relationship with millions of my fellow Christians.
To see it, to confess it, to repent of it I don't know whether I could ever have done these things shut away in a private prayer closet somewhere. Above all, to know finally that I was forgiven, and to start again. Already, in fact for years, Love Inners without my hang-ups had been quietly serving churches all over the area. Preaching on Sundays, transporting the elderly, helping with their youth programs. When I began to join them it was as though walls that had kept my ministry shut up in a narrow channel tumbled down, and a whole world of service, of speaking, of fellowship opened up.
I remember the family meeting when I knew it was really happening. We were discussing where 20 percent of a recent donation to Love Inn should go, when someone remembered a nearby church that was badly in need of new seats. We agreed on this and had gone on to other matters before I realized that the church in fact was located on a corner, and that the person making the suggestion had been me.
The hardest healing of all, however, lay ahead.
The date was April 4th, 1974. A group of us from Love Inn had gone over to the local high school gym as we did every week, to play basketball. Once more that black cloud engulfed me. I was sick of basketball. I was sick of the whole stupid scene at Love Inn. Finally I just walked off the court.
"Aren't you going to play any more, Scott?"
"No."
I went to the locker room, showered, got in my car and roared away. In spite of the gas shortage I took off on a long trek over the back country roads. I didn't help. Returning to Ithaca I drove to Pierre Joseph's house and knocked on his door.
"I'm going to get drunk," I said. "Will you come with me?"
Pierre looked at me. But he said nothing and shortly we were sitting on stools at a local bar and I was downing beers as fast as I could. It reminded me of New York when I would handle my uptightness with alcohol. Only tonight for some reason I couldn't get high.
After an hour I got worrying about Nedra and went to the pay phone to call her. "Where are you, Scott?" Nedra asked. I told her. "What's happening, honey?" she said.
I wish I knew.
A girl came into the bar and sat down on a stool.
"Dawn Sandquist's here with me," said Nedra. "We're praying for you." I didn't want to hear about it. I told Nedra I wanted out of Love Inn. I just wanted to do my own thing, whatever that was. I wanted to be free.
The girl shifted on her stool, and I caught a glimpse of a tremendous figure silhouetted against the row of illuminated liquor bottles behind the bar.
I said goodbye to Nedra and went back to my stool. Pierre wanted to call his wife too and left me alone with the girl. I found myself wondering why Pierre had come, since he obviously wasn't in a party mood. "We'll stick by you," he'd told me. Words from a Psalm dropped into my mind: Through I make my bed in hell, thou art there . . .
Pierre took a long time. While he was away I struck up a conversation with the girl. Soon we were sitting closer to each other.
"How're things at home?" I asked as Pierre appeared again.
Pierre shrugged.
"Maybe you'd better be with Maggie," I said. "I'll be all right." Pierre sat down on the stool, making no move to leave.
"I mean it, Pierre". I didn't say the words get lost but that was the message, and it must have been clear, for Pierre said, "All right, Scott," and got up. As he was leaving he looked me staight in the eye: "It's now, Scott, isnt it?" What a strange remark. What's now?
As soon as he closed the door I turned back to the girl.
"Your friend doesnt seem very happy," she said.
"He's Lebanese."
"What's that got to do with it?"
"When you see things through Arabian eyes they look upside down."
The girl looked at me quizzically. It was like I was tripping again. An hour passed on the Four Roses clock on the wall. The girl put her hand on my arm and asked for another drink. When it came she didn't take her hand away. And suddenly I knew for sure that in addition to the sin of murder, I was also capable of adultery.
We were the only two left in the place and the bartender kept looking at his watch. Finally he said it outright. "Closing time." As I paid the bill I knew that I was at the crossroad. I watched the girl get down off her barstool. The words I said next would chart our course. It was like Pierre said. The time was now. I took a breath . . .
"At-Love-Inn-we-help-people-find-the-Lord." The words came out in a rush.
The girl stopped still. She stared into my face as though she couldn't have heard right. And as she did I remembered the time I'd torn a ligament in my leg as we were getting siding from a neighbor's barn to build the new studio. The pain was so bad I was afraid I was going to faint. And then I made a discovery. I could bear the pain if I talked about Jesus.
This moment of temptation was like pain. It gripped like pain. It forced all the attention on itself, as pain does.
"Because we've found that Jesus is the answer to every problem. He can help us even when we can't help ourselves."
And suddenly I saw the humor in the situation. Here I was walking out the door of a bar with a girl who had made it clear she was interested, and I'm talking about Jesus! We both began to laugh so hard from the pent-up tension that the bartender, following us, snapping out lights, turned to stare.
"You all right?" he said.
"Yes," I spoke with feeling. "Yes, I'm all right."
The girl drove me to Love Inn since Pierre had taken the car. She let me out at the top of the driveway.
"I can't figure you," she said as she put the motor in reverse. "But, well, thanks for what you said about finding answers and everything."
I took my time walking down the hill. The sky was already turning pale. Inside the trailer Nedra was asleep. I picked up the telephone and dialed Ted Sandquist. The phone rang only once.
"Can you come down?"
Within ten minutes Ted knocked on the door. We walked together in the early dawn light through the wet pasture down to the pond. We just talked. Later guys came to the nearly finished log house and started working on the roof. I guessed from the way they kept staring at us, they knew something was gong on.
I spewed out everything to Ted. I told him about the girl and the adultery I'd seen in my heart.
Ted had just one question. "Have you repented, Scott?"
I didn't answer that right away. I wanted to be sure about it. Then I said, "Yes, Ted. I have repented. I made my decision when I headed back here. I want to turn it all over, every grubby corner of it, to the Lord and to the people here."
Together we went back to the Tin Can. Nedra was holding Christian in her lap. I stood looking down into her incredible eyes.
"Is it all right, Scott?"
How could I say it was all right. I began to sob.
"Are these dramas going to keep happening?" Nedra asked. I couldn't take that.
But somehow I knew they were not going to keep happening. Healing, effective, permanent healing, was taking place. Not through any decision of mine to shape up, but because of the Body of Christ. I'd had a hint of the Body's strength years ago, down in Portsmouth, when some people at CBN formed a circle around me in a hallway, and an enemy I'd struggled with endlessly as a single individual, simply took to his heels at the united voice of the church.
I'd been too scared then to grasp what had happened, too busy running toward where I thought freedom was. I wasn't running any more.
All this was almost two years ago now. Since that April night Ive had some flare-ups of temper, and being human I have been tempted. Whenever this happens my old enemy, so adept at dressing himself up in light, whispers, See, you havent changed at all. But thats just no true. When I yielded my rights to anger and desire to the Body of Christ, they really did lose their power. And when ghosts of the past rise up, I know where to turn to get the victory.
I remember a while back we were getting ready for a concert at one of the local colleges. The guy who was supposed to set up the amplifying equipment arrived late and there was a big crisis. Why cant you ever get anything straight I exploded at him, and strode off the stage.
I got two strides away, that is. Then two strides back. Apologize for my rudeness, and ask everybody on the stage to pray that I'd be able to master my temper. In 45 seconds a situation that could once have seethed for hours or days, destroying harmony, disrupting relationships, was confessed, healed, finished.
Victory! That's the theme-song of the church. Not just over the darkness in our lives, but in the work God gives us to do. Healing, for example. What He couldnt trust me to do as a single individual, He allows me to witness as part of a group. Bill and Peg Nichols, who gave us the red-and-white Volkswagen, have a son, Lynn, who with his wife Kathy is now a member of the community. Lynn and Kathy's baby was born with a dislocated hip. Just before she was to undergo surgery we prayed for her and that hip was instantaneously healed. Jim and Debbie Harrington were told they could not have children. We prayed for them and now Debbie us expecting her second baby. Jim had to wear thick glasses until we prayed for his eyes to be healed. Now he runs the farm with no glasses at all. I myself have had an unusual healing of my teeth of all things. There are before-and-after X-rays to verify arrest of two cavities and the disappearance of five more. Recently a dentist studied the X-rays. "That's God," was his only comment.
Our ministry.
Our's is far greater than any Lone Ranger could achieve. Recently we opened a grade school at the barn, headed by a Spirit-anointed teacher, Ragnhild Kjeldaas. The radio show goes out over 150 stations. Between that and Free Love Jacki and her staff answer more than 600 letters a week.
Victory in everyday problems. There are 250 of us in the Love Inn community now -- two are Nedra's mother and my Mum -- and every one of us has some daily experience of His power. Just keeping the books now is a complicated job involving 27 different postings under five categories Love Inn, New Song Productions, the bookshop, Free Love, and the Scott Ross Show. The possibilities for mix-ups are enormous. Peg Hardesty and our young business manager, John Shorey, start working on the books a little after nine oclock every Monday morning. They pray before they start, they pray for each other as they work. By five in the evening they are ready to see if God has once again done the impossible. John's finger poises over the calculator key. He punches it. Time after time the endless long columns balance to the penny!
The other day I climbed to the top of the hill opposite the barn and sat looking over the farm and thinking about all the victory going on down there. I could see our snug log cabin house where our second little girl, Heather Brooke Ross, is just learning to walk. And the silo with its new colored glass dome, where 24 hours a day prayer goes up for our needs and the ones we hear about.
I could see Peg Hardesty and Ted Sandquist standing in the parking lot with a carload of new arrivals. Peg is positively skinny today after losing 45 pounds for the Lord. It was too far away to see her face but I knew for sure she was smiling.
That's the church down there, I thought suddenly. The church that I feared and fled for so many years, while I looked for freedom in every other place.
And then I'd made a discovery. The church that's just another name for Jesus. Not Jesus the historical figure, or Jesus the invisible Spirit (though He's both of those too, of course.) But Jesus in bodily form on earth.
I saw Nedra come out of our house with Heather in her arms. And suddenly I knew there was only one place in the world I wanted to be. Only one girl in the world I wanted to share it all with. Jesus had set me free at last to be myself. I ran through the hummocks of grass down the hill to home.
This excerpt from Scott Free is reprinted with permission from the author. Any use of this material without written consent of the author is strictly prohibited.
A caring friend will be there to pray with you in your time of need.