Personal Experiences of S.O. Susag | Page 8

seem to mean anything to me. I prayed and still no message. Then coming down stairs I met Sister Anna Hanson who was just starting for the service. I said to her, "Please give me a text to preach on." She said, "O you will have a text." I told her I was in earnest, that I could not think of a single text in the whole Bible that meant anything to me, that I was too worn out to think. Sister Hanson then said, "I have often wished I might hear you preach on the first text I ever heard you preach on and that was in Chicago. The text was, 'The Lord weigheth the spirits.'" Then the Lord opened my understanding and I had a text. At the close of the service Sister Hanson walked ahead of me to the parsonage and into the kitchen where Sister Millar was. She asked, "How was the service?" Sister Hanson answered, "The right message for the right people at the right time." Sister Millar said, "Well, praise the Lord!" and when Bro. Millar came in he said, "Praise the Lord," and jumped and shouted and said that every stump had been pulled--twenty-two of them!
While this meeting was in progress Brother Tiffany Flint from Milwaukee came down and asked me to come and hold a two weeks' meeting for him, but I had no open dates. In those days I was, at times, booked ahead as many as forty-two meetings, so I had to refuse him. But he urged, "Won't you come just a few days?" So I promised to go for three nights. When I arrived he said, "I have something to tell you: I have three persons here needing spiritual help." I replied, "Tell me nothing, on the train the Lord gave me three texts, one for each night, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, which I am going to preach on." It happened that each text fitted each one of the three mentioned persons and each one came to service on the very night his particular text was preached on, and received his special benefit.
I am relating all these incidents because I have always believed in the leadership of the Holy Spirit; and now, after these fifty years of work in the ministry I am more firmly grounded in that belief than ever.
Some time later I held another meeting for Brother Millar. One afternoon, as I sat studying, the Lord said to me, "Here is your text; you go down to street so and so, such and such a number and preach at 2:30 this afternoon." After lunch I said to Brother Millar, "Let us take a walk." On coming out I said, "Is there a street in the city of such a name," stating the name the Lord had given me? He said, "I think so; what of it?" I told him that the Lord had given me a text to go down there and preach at 2:30. Bro. Millar then said, "We will take a street car and go down there and see, but I will tell you that if there is a chapel at that number you will not get an opporunity to preach there." We boarded the street car and the motor-man directed us to the street, and as we approached the given number we found a chapel and a meeting in progress. We went in and sat in the back seat. The singing had just stopped and the evangelist took his Bible and went to the pulpit. Bro. Millar smiled and hung his head, looking at me out of the corner of his eye, as much as to say, "I thought so." But I was pretty sober. I took my watch out of my pocket and held it in my hand and after the evangelist had given out his text and had spoken just seven minutes, he closed his Bible and said, "This is queer; I cannot speak this afternoon," and turning to the pastor, asked him whether he had the message. The pastor replied, "Why no, I haven't even my Bible with me." Then, looking over the audience, the evangelist said, "There must be someone here who has the message." Pointing to me, he said, "Haven't you got the message?" I answered, "Yes." "Then come on up here," he rejoined, "and take the pulpit."
On taking the pulpit I promptly explained just how it was we happened to be there at that particular time and proceeded to preach the sermon the Lord had given me to preach. I announced our services and everybody seemed to be well pleased with the sermon. I was not acquainted with any person in the audience, nor did any one know me as far as I knew. A little later a