GOD IS IN CONTROL
Don Ervick
Midland SDA Church
December 5, 2009
Before I begin I think I have to give a little introduction to my subject. When I look back on my life I feel that from my birth in Chicago to the present in Midland, God has been leading me into relationships or situations, all with good results bringing unexpected blessings. From Chicago to a small village in southwestern Michigan, through my school years, a tour in the Army, my marriage to Joyce and my job being transferred to Midland I can now see God’s hand was at work in my life. He was in control, if I had been solely in control I surely would have messed things up.
Let us Pray:
Now this is how it all began: A couple of years ago in the Sabbath School class I was attending, the leader asked the question, “How did you come into the church? Just how did the Holy Spirit lead you into becoming a member of the SDA church? What convinced you that this was God’s remnant church?” Most said that they were born and raised in a Seventh-day Adventist family but others said by taking Bible Studies, some by attending evangelistic meetings and others from reading some of the Church’s literature, like “Desire of the Ages” or “Great Controversy.” Others joined the church after close friendships with members of the church. The leader thought it would be interesting to some day hear the stories or testimonies of how different members became Seventh-day Adventist Christians.
Have you ever wondered or thought about how you got to be here in Midland, and more specifically, here in this church, and why you’re here? When I was younger there was no way in my wildest imagination I planned on living in Midland, let alone becoming a Seventh-day Adventist or more specifically a member of the Midland SDA Church. I believe this congregation, you and I are not here by accident or happenstance. I think it is God’s plan that we are together at this time. He put together a diverse group, men, women, children, chemists, doctors, nurses, teachers, accountants, musicians, electricians, managers, laborers, old and young.
God has blessed each one with different talents and gifts that He can use to serve His purpose and complete His work here in Midland so He can come and take us home. He tells us in (John 14:2, 3) “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”
Jeremiah 29:11 says “For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.” So, God is telling us that He has plans for us. Do you want to know God’s plans for you? The only way I know how we may find out is through earnest, heartfelt prayer, asking God “What do you want me to do today, who needs to know that you love them?” I think, if we listen He will supply the answer in His own way.
Usually, testimonies are given by new members shortly before or after their baptism. They relate their experiences of how the Holy Spirit worked in their lives and how the love of God changed their lives. Well, this is sort of my testimony, however it is about 30 years late.
I think I have told bits and pieces at times to some of you but I have never put the whole thing together. Recently I was thinking back on my life and wondering what led me to the Seventh-day Adventist Church and specifically to the Midland Seventh-day Adventist church. Was it all in God’s plan for me to be here or was it all just by coincidence? The many events that led me here I believe were not just coincidences and I feel they must have been all in God’s plan for me. But where did His plan start in my life? I know that God knew me when I was still in my mother’s womb and probably that’s the point in time that His plan for my life began. So how and when do I think my journey to become a Seventh-day Adventist began, well I have to go back some 70 or so years.
I was born into a family of mixed religions. My father, was a Lutheran and my mother was Catholic. Their choices of religion being made for them by their parents or by the State. My father being from Norway naturally was a Lutheran because that was the state religion. My mother followed the religion of her parents, Catholic.
I was baptized into the Catholic church as an infant. As a young child I can remember going to the Catholic Church with my Mom and Grandmother and then some times going to the Lutheran Church with my Dad. As I remember the Catholic Church was dark and cold and there was a man high up in a balcony, his voice echoing throughout the sanctuary, speaking in a language I didn’t understand. Some time later, when I was about five years old, I went to Norway with my father to visit his family. Some times I attended the Lutheran church school just down the mountain from my grandparents home. I liked that much better than the Catholic Church because I remember that when we completed our studies we were allowed to play games and then served hot chocolate and cookies. As time went on my mother and father did not go to church at all. So that’s how it was, I was raised by parents and grandparents that believed in God but didn’t appear to have a serious love relationship with Jesus Christ.
My first contact with Seventh-day Adventists came about when I was about or five years old and living on the north side of Chicago where I was born. My mother’s father passed away before I was born so I don’t remember having him as a grandfather. My grandmother owned and operated a restaurant and I can remember a man from Michigan that stopped by weekly and sold eggs and butter to her for use in the restaurant. After some time they became attracted to one another and one day my grandmother and he got married. My grandmother left Chicago and went to live with her new husband in a small town in southwestern Michigan. His wife had passed away at an early age leaving him with seven children, ages 6 to 20 years old. My newly acquired grandfather was a tall, strong man with silver hair, very compassionate, hard working and honest as the day is long.
One summer my grandmother asked my parents if I would like to come and spend my summer vacation at her new home in the country. I think I was sort of special to her because I was the first grandchild in the family. So, I went from the busy, noisy city to a quaint little Southwestern Michigan village to spend the summer with my grandmother and my new grandfather.
It was a fun summer and as it went on I began to feel more at home with my new family and I began to learn more about each one of them. My new uncles were much older so they didn’t have too much to do with me. However. the two younger girls were closer to my age so we became playmates. The oldest daughter was married and didn’t live at home.
I can remember my grandmother always making a special Sunday dinner with all the trimmings and everyone was invited. The oldest daughter came with her husband and we all sat down to eat. Everyone filled their plates with all the good things but I noticed that my aunt and her husband did not take any meat. After the main meal, they ate dessert but they didn’t light up a cigarette or have an after dinner coffee like most of the rest. I wondered why? So I asked one of the younger girls and I was told “They are Seventh-day Adventists” and they don’t eat meat or drink coffee, smoke or drink alcohol. At that time it didn’t mean too much to me except they were sort of different. They didn’t eat meat, they didn’t drink or smoke like everyone in my family did. They were very plain but they were very polite and they were always very nice to me. Let’s call my new aunt Crystal. There will be more about her later as well as her younger sister, Ingal.
Like I said this was in the summer and what happens in most towns during the summer months, you guessed it, churches offer Vacation Bible School to the young children. It so happens that right across the road from my grandmother’s house was this little white, wooden church, I really didn’t think much about it at the time but it was a Seventh-day Adventist Church. Sometime during the VBS activities someone took a picture of all the kids standing by the VBS sign. In later years I saw the picture and there I am standing with my two new aunts some other kids and a little blonde girl. I believe it was the next summer they had built a new larger church and a picture was taken of the membership standing in front of their new church at the dedication. There I am again with my aunts in the front row and looking closely at the picture there is that little blonde girl again. She was standing next to her grandfather and grandmother who were long time members of the church.
As the years went by I spent many of my summers at my grandmother’s. My new aunts were not that much older than I was so we spent the summer days playing together, after we did our chores, which consisted of watering the newly planted pines during the day and doing the dishes after supper. With time I found out that their mother had died when she was relatively young from a blood disorder. Naturally they loved their mother very much and they told me stories about her and that she was a very loving mother and a devout Seventh-day Adventist and a strong member of the local church and that she went around helping many people. Their father, my new grandfather, was not an Adventist, but many of his sisters and brothers were.
After a taste of living in this small southwestern Michigan town, I didn’t like living in Chicago, so instead of just spending my summers in Michigan, I began staying year around going to the local public school. I have a recollection of being in kindergarten or first grade and we had to take naps on our little rugs and there sort of close to me was that little blonde girl again.
There were times when my mother and father wanted me to come back to Chicago and be with them so I had to go to school in Chicago. I didn’t like the hustle and bustle of the city and I would plead with my parents to let me go back to my Grandmother’s in Michigan for a while. Both my parents worked so if I went to Michigan they didn’t have to pay for a sitter to take care of me. So that’s the way my early years passed, I went back and forth going to school in Chicago then back to Michigan and finally graduated from high school in Michigan.
In Junior high school I made friends with a boy named Don. During the school year we became great friends but one summer day before we entered the ninth grade Don told me that he wouldn’t be coming to school this fall but he would be going to go the academy in Berrien Springs. Right away I thought he did something bad and his parents were sending him to a military academy to straighten him out. Well he said “No it’s a Seventh-day Adventist school and my mother and I are Seventh-day Adventists and my mother wants me to go there to finish high school”. Up until then, I didn’t know that Don was a Seventh-day Adventist. When he left for the school year I was very disappointed in losing one of my best friends. One thing though, for the next four years we had our summers together and we spent time together during the Holidays. Don now lives in New Mexico and we correspond with each other now and then. Since his mother and father passed away he strayed away from the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
I don’t think he ever joined another church. When I have visited with him, the religious upbringing his mother gave him and what he learned at Berrien comes out. Now let’s put a hold on Don, his name will come up again a little later.
Here is where my aunt Ingal comes into the story. Ingal was sort of a tomboy and she could beat up any boy in town and I was scared of her so I did what she told me to do. When she was about 16 she ran away from home and married a soldier who has just come home from the war. I lost track of her for many years but heard that she had many children and was sort of on the poor side. I saw her again at her father’s funeral, she had become a Seventh-day Adventist and was not the rough and tumble tomboy I remembered. Boy, was that a surprise. I learned that after all her children were raised, she put herself through college and became a teacher and taught in a southwestern Michigan school. She was a very strong and determined person. When she made up her mind to do something, she did it.
A couple of years ago at her funeral, I was talking with one of her sons and he related to me that his mother, Ingal, was very devoted Christian. She and made sure that all the children attended Sabbath School and the church service each Sabbath. They didn’t have a car so they had to walk to church and it was quite a ways. Sometimes they had to walk in the rain. To this day, two of her daughters are still in the Adventist Church but for some reason her sons joined other Christian churches. More about Ingal later.
Right about now you are probably wondering, where is he going with this. Well as we get near the end you will see why I now think that God was working out His plan for my life without me being aware of it.
Well, guess what, that little blonde girl that was in the pictures with me at VBS and in kindergarten well we ended up in the same grade in high school and we became quite attached to each other, oh by the way her name was Joyce. I like to say that “I chased her and chased her until she finally caught me”. A few years after graduation we were married in Big Delta, Alaska where I was stationed in the Army. (I think Joyce marrying me was the part of God’s plan for my life that I like very much).
After we were married I found out that, Joyce’s grandparents on her father’s side were Seventh-day Adventists. However I never got the chance to know them as they passed away before Joyce and I were married. Joyce told me the story that her grandfather prayed for many years for his son, Joyce’s father, to accept Jesus Christ and be baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church. We all know that God answers prayer in His time, well the answer to this prayer came after her grandparents passed away and in his early 70’s my father-in-law was baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
We were living here in Midland at the time and I was not a church goer and didn’t fully realize the importance of baptism, so we did not witness the ceremony. . Some time later Joyce’s Mom was also baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church. After my baptism I realized what a huge mistake I had made and that we should have been there to share that happy time with her father and mother and the rest of the family.
After their baptism I found out that the woman who gave Bible studies to my father and mother-in-law was my grandfather’s sister-in-law. My grandfather’s brother and his wife were leaders and long time members of the local Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Joyce’s family was a very close family and we would travel to southwestern Michigan every Holiday. At a visit shortly after Joyce’s Dad’s baptism I noticed a great change in his life since Jesus came into his life. He would study his Bible and would be intent on making sure that he laid his tithe aside every time he received any income. He even made a change in his eating habits. One morning at breakfast he had us try some of this new fake bacon he ate. Well, it looked like plastic and didn’t taste much better. I hate to admit it but now, years later we eat it and we like it and can’t think of eating the real thing.
Now as with all newly baptized Christians Joyce’s Dad was on fire for the Lord and one day when we were visiting Joyce’s parents, her dad got me in the corner and said “Don you need God in your life and you should go to church on the Sabbath”. I told him, “If you can prove to me that Saturday is the Sabbath and the correct day to worship, I will become a Seventh-day Adventist. Now that is a challenge that every Seventh-day Adventist likes. He could not gasp air fast enough, let me explain why.
Before he became a Seventh-day Adventist, he was a very heavy smoker and contracted cancer of the larnyx. To stop the cancer from taking his life the doctors performed a tracheotomy and removed his larnyx and vocal cords so he could no longer talk normally. In the hospital at Ann Arbor they taught him esophageal speech. In order to speak he had to swallow a bunch of air and then speak on a column of air as he released it. The finer he could squeeze the muscles in his throat the more words he could get on a gulp of air. If he got excited he might be able to get out only one word.
Well he got excited when I gave him the challenge and like I said he couldn’t gulp enough air but managed to get out Luke 23:54 – 24:3. He got his bible out and had me read those passages. Then proceeded to ask me on which day do we celebrate the resurrection of Christ and I told him on Easter Sunday. He then told me that Jesus was crucified on what was called the “Preparation Day” which today we call “Good Friday” and laid in the tomb and rested during the Sabbath and arose on the first day of the week. So then he said if Sunday is the first day of the week, Saturday must be the seventh day the day God blessed and sanctified and created a Sabbath day rest for man (Genesis 2:3). He told me he would pray for me. Well I thought about that for a while and that was it.
Well, one summer day Joyce and I were sitting on our front porch and up come two men, they introduced themselves. The one said I am Pastor Harbour and the other’s name was John Hodges. I asked them what they wanted and they said Joyce’s father had asked his pastor to contact the local Adventist pastor in Midland and for him to come and visit us because we were interested in learning more about Seventh-day Adventists. You see, Joyce’s father was a man of action, he not only prayed but he didn’t want to wait for 40 years for his daughter and son-in-law to come to God and be baptized and see his prayer answered, so he contacted his pastor and asked him to put things in motion. Well we decided to go ahead with the lessons.
Pastor Harbour and John gave us most of the lessons but when John could not come, Ken Blosser would come with the Pastor. When the pastor could not come Reid and Ardith came. As with most new Bible students I challenged everything and searched and searched the Bible so I could prove them wrong and to my frustration, all I did was convince my self that they had the correct understanding of what we were studying. One evening as I was reflecting on what we had studied, I began to realize that God had such great love for His creatures that He allowed His son to die a terrible death on the cross. This was the ultimate sacrifice to make atonement for the sins of the world. To make thist up close and personal, He died for my sins. And if I would only believe and accept Him as my Lord and Savior, He promises that I wouldn’t perish but would have eternal life (John 3:16). How could you not love a God that great? You know to love God is good but being in love with God is much more intimate and that’s what I think God wants, an intimate love relationship with us.
Continuing on, there were two other Bible verses that helped convince me that the Adventist church was God’s true church. One day at work I was discussing a lesson with one of my co-workers, who was an elder in a local Lutheran Church and the subject of the Sabbath came up. He told me “They have it all wrong, Sunday is the Sabbath and I can give you the scripture that proves it. I can’t remember it right now but I will bring it in tomorrow”. Wow, that got me thinking, I am being led astray or what, is the Seventh-Day Adventist Church really God’s remnant people? That night I started to search the Bible to see if I could find some chapter or verse where God changed the Sabbath from the seventh day to the first day of the week. With the Bible on my lap I had a short prayer before opening the Bible asking God to help me find the truth. Well I just flipped it open and when I looked at the page I was in the book of Hebrews. Out of all the text on these pages my eyes fell directly on chapter 4 and verse 8, which read, “For if Jesus had given them rest, He would not have spoken of another day after that. There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God”. Right then and there I knew the seventh-day Sabbath was correct and my friend was wrong. To this day he has not shown me the text that says Sunday is the Sabbath.
One other text that made an impression on me and convinced me that this was the church for me was John 13:5 – 15, the ordinance of humility the washing of each other’s feet. It impressed me very much to read Jesus’ words, “If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you.” This was a command directly from the Son of God. I did not know of any other church that followed Jesus’ example to that degree.
So on March 17, 1979 Pastor Harbour baptized Joyce and myself along with Vernon Dowker, who later became a very good friend and a faithful deacon.
Now here is where the funny stuff comes in. I can’t remember the exact occasion but Joyce and I were visiting with Ulah and Budd Thomas and as I remember during our conversation Ulah asked if I had any Adventists in my family. Well, I told her how my grandmother married a man whose two daughters, Ingal and Crystal were Seventh-day Adventists. Ulah said “Well I knew them both when I lived in Gobles, they were very good friends of mine”.
Ulah is no longer with us but we all know, she had many good friends because she was a good friend to many. Ulah will be missed by everyone whose life she touched.
.
To continue, at another occasion in a Sabbath school class I was telling them about my school friend Don and that he went to the Academy in Berrien Springs. Ardith asked me what his last name was and when I told her what it was, she looked sort of amazed and said
“He was the president of my senior class and my he was very handsome”. Yes, my friend Don was tall with curly blonde hair, and one of the nicest men you would ever want to meet.
On another occasion I was talking with Ardith about the Adventist Church in the little town where Joyce and I used to live and I happened to mention that the Head Elder there was named Lyle McNeal. “Well” Ardith said, “When I was young girl, he was a good neighbor of ours”. Now how strange is that
Now that is two Adventists that were friends of my close Adventist relatives and friends. As Paul Harvey says, “Now here is the rest of the story”. Another coincidence happened the first time I served as Head Deacon. I was assigned the duty of purchasing a vacuum cleaner for the church. I went to the local vacuum dealer and began investigating the vacuum cleaners and in the process of haggling price I told the manager that I was purchasing it for a church, he asked me, “which church”? I told him the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The manager said, “My mother is a Seventh-day Adventist!” “What’s her name” I asked. He said “Ingal Shook”. Boy that took me by surprise because that was the married name of my aunt Ingal. So here was another relative that was an Adventist but according to his mother he had fallen away. She asked me to pray for him and invite him to come to church. I did on several occasions, but he never accepted the invitations.
Now as I look back through those 70 some years, I see a trail of Adventists all during my growing up and adult years. Some may say, “That all of this is just a coincidence” but I think that I could have wanted to join a different Christian denomination but I feel that it was God’s plan for me to become a Seventh-day Adventist Christian and also to become a member of the Midland Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Sometimes I wonder, about tomorrow or what will the next year bring then Jeremiah 29:11 comes to my mind, “For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope”. I am happy and satisfied with God’s plan and I thank Him and praise His name, for He has blessed me with a good life, a wonderful wife and family and a loving church family. I pray that I will be able to accept God’s will for my life and continually ask Him for the wisdom to recognize it and the strength to follow it.
I am sure you all have heard a certain insurance company’s slogan that asks the question, “Are you in good hands?” to which we can truly answer “Yes we are in good hands” our God is in control.
Benediction