I feel led to share now about the difference that Donnie McClurkin’s music has made in my life. It is a very large part of the already huge influence music has always had in my life in general, but Pastor McClurkin has been weaved in there as the voice of God calling to me in my darkness in my personal wilderness.

To begin, I have to share that my mother gave me the gift of music from as early as I can remember. She taught me to appreciate the sensuous music of Harry Belafonte’s Calypso and the smooth sounds of Nat King Cole. But she did not limit us to the rich soulful sounds that are found in the music of those who are of African descent. 

My mother, bless her heart, also gave me Rogers and Hammerstein. One of the few things I remember from my troubled childhood is viewing South Pacific on a stage!

So when I became aware of the sacrifice of Christ, it was in the area of music that I think I found I had one of the greatest voids. I knew I had to change my tastes in music. I tried hard to make the transition from the bump and grind of the 80’s, back to the hymns I had learned in the choir of a Baptist church as a pre-teen. I was not very successful.

But God offered me a little consolation prize for trying anyway. I can remember the first time I heard my friend’s sister on the radio. It was the same voice that I had listened to in a club as a teenager. I knew I was in for a treat. God had finally remembered me, I thought, and not only me, but all those who came from where I did.  A place where the beat was allowed to take you places that sometimes you really should NOT go!

Still, though, it was “tinny”. Not very well done. But it had a beat and it had a message that anyone from my old neighborhood could identify with. I guess He was calling me back to the ghetto even then, as I ran my hardest to get out of it.  Even running that hard, I can still remember thinking of how others, who had known me before, those who had danced with me to the latest hits, would better receive this music than what I had tried to learn to appreciate from the hymnals.

This was not like the stuff I sang in the choir.  It was closer to what I was used to hearing on that am station, than anything I had EVER heard!

So as I felt myself drawn to a voice that probably was familiar to me because it could have come right out of a Rogers and Hammerstein musical, I made a mental note. I didn’t have any idea of who I was listening to, but I recognize the quality.  Even more, I recognized the message.

I was backslidden. In a broken relationship that I just stayed in because I had convinced myself that this was the “one” for me.  That God would not have allowed me to have such a love for this man if He had not intended for this man to be my husband. ‘Til death do us part? Certainly not!  I knew the word. I had claimed the pat promises of TV preachers. He was mine, right?

WRONG!

I don’t remember the first time I heard the words “Speak to my heart, Holy Spirit”, but after I did, the words remained in my spirit, and the Spirit was able to find an opening in my heart. I had never heard the name of Donnie McClurkin, but from that moment to this one, he has been singing those words in the background of my life. It became that prayer that the Holy Spirit uttered when I was unable to pray because life had all become so much more that I could bear.  Facing the Lord was something that struck fear in my heart like nothing else. I knew that I had walked away. I had taken on a new idol. My baby’s daddy but I remembered that the God I served was a jealous God.

Know what He did? He answered that unspoken prayer. He spoke to my heart. In the midst of one of the worst altercations with my baby’s daddy, I heard the scriptures scream loudly, “Be not afraid of them that kill the body and after that have no more that they can do.” I had come to fear death, but at that moment, I began to welcome it. I had heard the words so loud that they had come pouring out of my mouth.

I guess it scared him, because although the violence did not go away completely, it was never THAT violent again. He probably thought I had lost my mind and, as I later learned, he was not as crazy as I thought he was. Not even under the influence of crack cocaine was he crazy enough to ignore the fact that something in me had changed. 

But neither was I. I know that it was because the Lord had heard my prayer and had indeed begun to “speak to my heart”.

Well, the music has gotten a lot better, hasn’t it?  I mean I have begun to collect RAP in a household where RAP has been totally ignored as something that brings it’s listeners into bondage. I mean, RAP was something that encouraged women to be whores and men to be murderers, right?

Not any more!

It’s gotten so good that it got mixed up with Dream Works Studios!  And the Prince of Egypt Inspirational CD was born.  I put it in my CD changer and my kids were bombarded with it during a time of transition for me. Somewhere I returned to the message that the music I had been listening to, even though it was “just oldies”, was pulling me back, into the old lifestyle that I had lived when those “oldies” had been “the latest”. 

By the time the Prince of Egypt came out, I was backslidden into another relationship.  How do you spell stupid? Well, for me, stupid=man.  Meaning that I have a history of getting stupid when it comes to man.  But at this particular time, I was coming out again. This relationship had not been like the one before. This man allowed me to think.  He allowed me to seek out my own passions (that is as along as his passions were satisfied first).

So why, after I had listened to that CD at least a hundred times, what made me finally “hear” the words of the song “I Am”? 

Whatever it was, the Lord spoke to my heart again.  He renewed a vision in me that had been lost over the years. It had been a vision that would involve setting his people free. What makes a song that had just been merely an awesome song, being sung by a still unknown but incredible voice, suddenly turn into the voice of God? speaking to me? personally?

What happens when the Lord speaks to your heart? What is it that sets everything in place where you can hear? What is it that makes you KNOW beyond a doubt that this is for you? Even if you shake it off later, as I did, because it is a task that is far beyond anything that YOU could EVER even THINK of doing on your own? How DO you then come to KNOW? What makes it just stick to you?

One thing for me was that I had heard that voice again. That distinctive voice of Pastor McClurkin. That voice that has the quality of the finest crystal if crystal had a voice. That voice that pours out all over you and wraps itself around you like a warm comforter. That voice that coaxes you into believing that you have heard from God, then leaves you knowing, beyond a doubt that you have been touched by an anointing that is beyond the man who is being used to sing the words of God to you? What, what, what is it?

Well, it’s the Spirit of the Most High God! When He places a call on your life, He then sets things in motion so that you can’t avoid Him.  Not for long anyway.  I have heard His Spirit referred to as the Hound of Heaven. I have experienced Him pursuing me. He is relentless. I have felt His breath on my neck as He pulls me in closer so I can hear. I’m thankful for that.

So He returned to me a distant dream.  Not a means of carrying it out short of a series of miracles, mind you, but a knowledge that I would eventually need to return to the places where people knew me. Too many of them in the “Biblical” sense. He re-placed that dream in my spirit, in my soul and then began the process of releasing me into it. A hard and most difficult process that includes the voice of Pastor McClurkin, opening me up then pouring the will of God into my spirit, where the words can’t escape.

I got a hold of a copy of the Live in London CD by “accident”. You should know that when I use the word “accident” I don’t believe that there is such thing with God’s people. It’s a long story that I hope to tell at another time.  For now, I will only say that I had it in my possession for quite a few months, maybe even a year, before I finally listened to it.

I listened to it because I got desperate for “something” new. It was, in fact, the same feeling that used to send me into the streets hunting for a “new” victim.

By now I was a grandma for the 3^rd time. My third grandchild had been placed in my care while his mother worked.

Let me share here that that little baby HATED me!  I was not only NOT his mother, but I was someone who his mother had the NERVE to leave him with. In fact, I believe I was the ONLY someone she ever left him when back then.

Baby Eli screamed at me for months!  It was training in humility like I had never had before! And I have to share here too,  that I had made up my mind, when I found out that he was coming into the world, that I would NOT allow myself to become attached to him! I did not like his father and was not certain that he was not waiting to coax little Eli and his mother out of my life.

But, it happened anyhow. In the middle of the night, while little Eli was burning up with fever, I looked into his eyes, his eyelids so weak that I could see that it was an effort for him to even hold them open. I had a flash of memory and over little Eli’s face, I saw his grandfather’s death mask. As fast as it came, it was gone. And when it was gone, I saw him pleading with me to help him as his grandfather had done so many years ago.

I cursed all the way to the hospital. This was NOT my trip.  I didn’t have any babies! Where was the dummy who got her pregnant now that she needed a ride in the middle of the night!

Then they were so incompetent at the hospital then the doctor’s office the next day, that I cursed for the rest of the night and the next day when he was finally admitted to another facility. His doctor was one who I had warned my daughter against. In my opinion, she almost killed little Eli. But prayer prevailed. There still is NO diagnosis for what happened to him, but no one will convince me that one reason for that illness was so I would see that I could not separate myself from him.

A few months later, as we ran an errand together, and “I’ll Trust You Lord” was playing for the gazillionth time in the holy Tercel, I learned a huge reason why Eli had to be placed in my path.

The words go like this:

I know how bad it hurt you

When that loved one went away

And when they had to leave you

You said you’d never love again

And what are the odds that I would be looking into Elie’s eyes at that moment. Not little Eli, but his grandpa, Elie, who died when I was 17 and pregnant with his daughter, my first child? What took me back at that very moment of contact, to that moment when I had sworn those very words?!

And how well did Pastor McClurkin bring those words back to me. So completely, that I felt the pain that had caused me to swear such an oath back then. How did he know?

At that moment I realized that I had shut down a part of my heart. At that very moment, I began to cry tears of repentance, because at that moment, I realized that the Lord was telling me that I had not only shut out other people, but that I had also shut Him out of that place in my heart! What are the odds that Pastor McClurkin was there again? What are the odds?

It was as if a dam broke that day. I had finally learned who my musical mentor was, and he was hammering away at the fallow ground. That day, the Lord removed my heart of stone and replaced it with a heart of flesh.

Today, as often as possible, I am still rollin’ with Pastor McClurkin. But today, I am hard pressed to keep driving and often have had to pull over as I hear Pastor McClurkin sing of how holy our God is.

I look forward to each new work of God through Pastor McClurkin. And through him, the Lord continues to remind me that if I call His name He’ll be right there. Today, I remain broken, but today, my heart breaks, but not for me alone, as I realize how unworthy I am to possess the love of One who would pursue me with such pure and holy love, today, with my new heart, I feel the pain of knowing that there are so many who need to know…

Only You Are Holy, Lord!

I’m still singing with Pastor McClurkin, because I have realized that the Lord is ALL I need and I’m begging the Lord to Draw me Close...

As I anticipate being used to spread that Good News.

I am as always…

In His love

4-2-06