Clyde Barlow – Pastor         Shirley Barlow – Pastor’s Wife

Memory is a powerful tool that God has given us and the longer we live the more we can look back and recall the many chapters of our lives and how God has directed and protected us. When I was young, more than once I was spared from death. The sad truth is at the time I was just lucky or “it must not have been my time” or some other bit of youthful nonsense.

At the young age of 17, I had joined the Army and three months before my eighteenth birthday I found myself in Germany in the 7th Army. One time coming back from field maneuvers in the winter as we came up over the crest of a hill the jeep I was in began to slide and rolled down the hill. I was spared that day except for a shoulder injury.

One other time, at night I had been drinking and drove back to the barracks. In the process, I flipped the VW I was driving over and over, landing on its top. I was uninjured excepts for a slight bruise on my knee. The reason I mention all of this is not to glorify my foolish youth, but to show forth the praises of God who delivered me from certain death. In 1968 I was married with two small children living in McCall, Idaho and working in the woods. I had a deck of logs roll on me. Again, my shoulder was dislocated and I ended up in the hospital. That time I recognized the hand of God and called on him for deliverance.

The following year I was in Portland, Oregon attending Bible College answering the call to the ministry. Daniel 6:22 “My God hath sent his angel and shut the lions’ mouths, that they have not hurt me:…” In life, there are many lions that will maim and destroy you but like Daniel, you can expect God to shut the mouths of the lions of destruction. One cannot read the Bible and not be struck with the realization that so many of the heroes of faith were men who in times of great trial and tribulation were able to set down and recall from memory how God had delivered them from destruction. David, when his village had been raided and the women and children have taken that he sat down and “…encouraged himself in the Lord his God”. I Sam.1:6 He encouraged himself in the Lord no doubt recounting how God had defeated the lion, the bear that had tried to destroy his father’s flock, and Goliath of Gath. Now he needed God to give him direction and courage to retrieve his family and his men’s families.

God is still the same today he is ready to defend you in your time of weakness and distress. Remember the power that you have in your memory unlock it and realize what all God has done for you so many fail to recognize his hand in their life don’t cheat yourself.

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– Pastor Clyde Barlow