 with
guest:
Eddie Lindsey
I have nine brothers and sisters, and I am the baby of the family. When you
tell someone there was 12 in your family and that you lived in a four-room
house, everybody wants to know how we did that! The truth is that I really only
grew up with two or three of them because the rest had already grown up and left
home.
But we were a big closely knitted family. We didn't go to church, but every
Sunday my brothers and sisters would bring their families together, and mom
would cook. My mother was a Christian, but because my dad didn't go to church,
my mom didn't go either.
Today I see so many kids having a hard time, not knowing who loves them. But
I'm grateful that, even when my daddy was drinking, my mamma would be there
for me. I'm glad she hung in there. I know she cried every night over that. My
dad would drink a lot and there'd be times when mom would ask me to go look
for him. I'd have to go to town and go through the bars to find him.
But one night, when my dad was 56 years old, he received Christ as his
Saviour. I remember him coming home and I told my brother, "I don't know
what's wrong with him. I don't know what he's drinking. I can't smell it,
but I know he's drinking something because he's acting funny."
It did seem funny to us because he was different. I told my brother, "It'll
go away. It'll go back to like it was." But he never went back to like he
was. My dad had found Christ and it made a difference in his life! We saw it in
the way he did things. Then, when he was around 65 years of age the Lord called
him to preach and he became the pastor of our church. He had no formal training,
but the Lord had given him pastoring skills. He knew how to work with people.
And the Lord used my dad to reach me. I remember one summer I was sitting on
the porch and he talked to me about inviting Christ into my life. He said that
if I did, God would provide for everything that I would ever need. So I was
about 12 when I got saved. I was baptized and joined the church. Pretty soon
after that, one of my brothers got saved, and now almost all of my family is
Christian. And it's simply because God just took an old drunken Indian and
changed his life.
Unfortunately, one of the things about my church back home was that it did
very little for young people. It was an older peoples' church -- the kids
just went outside to play. So I didn't grow very much in my faith, and I kind
of backslid. But I never forgot the things my daddy shared with me.
I went into the military when I was 17 and they let me out a few days before
my 21st birthday. My plans were to go straight to the pool hall where
they always used to throw me out. I wanted to see them try to throw me out now!
The day after I got home my dad's church was having a special meeting. I
don't remember why I wanted to go -- I just went. I remember that a man
preached and they gave an invitation, which they usually didn't do. But I knew
the Lord was speaking to me. I walked down to the front and I said, "I just
need God in my life. I've been running from Him, not doing what He wanted me
to do."
So I found something a lot better than sitting in a pool hall and doing what
I had planned! And one day soon after that I was walking down the road and
thinking that it was a very hot day and that I needed a can of beer. So I
stopped, bought one, and popped the lid. I took a drink and it just didn't
taste like it used to. I spit it out, threw the can down, and got me a bottle of
pop instead. That's the last time I touched alcohol.
He just took that desire away, you know. And that's what makes me know that
God can do that for our people, as well. God can take away the taste of those
kind of things. God has changed me. I surrendered my life completely to Him when
I turned 21, and from then on it's just been a walk with the Lord. It hasn't
been perfect; there have been ups and downs. But in my downs He keeps pulling me
up -- and taking me along the road. It's been a good road. I wouldn't trade
it for all my life.
In the early 1970s Eddie began serving as a pastor among the Ponka people
of Oklahoma. Later God called him and his wife, Gretchen, to serve in Alaska
(with Southern Baptist Convention). Eddie has been our guest on Tribal Trails on
several occasions.
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