Culture & Christianity: The Allen Jackson Podcast - How One Man's Faith Changed Generations [Featuring George Jackson]

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

How can a single person’s faith leave a lasting impact across generations? In this episode, Pastor Allen's father, Dr. George Jackson, discusses how his life wasn’t defined by fame or titles, but by a deep commitment to caring for people—both in his daily work as a veterinarian and through the quiet power of prayer. He and his wife, Betty, started a small Bible study in the 1970s that grew into World Outreach Church and Allen Jackson Ministries, touching countless lives along the way. Whether you’re searching for encouragement in your journey or wondering how your faith can truly impact the future, Dr. George's story will inspire you to believe that every prayer—and every small decision—carries an impact that reaches far beyond today.More Information:An Extraordinary Life: https://store.allenjackson.com/purchase/bk130228__ It’s up to us to bring God’s truth back into our culture. It may feel like an impossible assignment, but there’s much we can do. Join Pastor Allen Jackson as he discusses today’s issues from a biblical perspective. Find thought-provoking insight from Pastor Allen and his guests, equipping you to lead with your faith in your home, your school, your community, and wherever God takes you. Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3JsyO6ysUVGOIV70xAjtcm?si=6805fe488cf64a6d Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/culture-christianity-the-allen-jackson-podcast/id1729435597

Welcome back to culture and Christianity. Today's session is a little different for me. It started as a Father's Day idea. I wanted you to meet my dad and hear him tell a bit of his God story as a part of Father's Day. And we didn't fit it all in, so he agreed to come back and do a second session, thus today. And it looks like there may be a third session. If anybody watches, it's really my dad's 88 and became a Christian about third. 30. So he's got about 50 years invested in the journey. And the fruit of that life has really

has exceeded anything I think any of us imagined from a spiritual standpoint. And so today you're going to get to hear a slice of that. But there's some themes in it that I think are worth noting. They have been principles upon which I have built my life. To be completely candid, I'm a Christ follower today. Because as a young person, a teenager in particular, when the family was at home and there was nobody watching, my dad would read his Bible, and he and my mom would pray, not in a weird way, we were pretty normal people. But I realized that his faith was real to him

in a way that I didn't see in other places. And it gave me pause. I wasn't sure I wanted to do that, to be candid. I mean, when I left home to go off to college, I was still negotiating with God as to what I would do with my life, never imagined ministry. But I wasn't sure I wanted to be. a Christ follower. I realized it had changed my dad's priorities and how he spent his time and his

money and what he did. He was different from most of my friend's fathers. And I wasn't sure I wanted to do that. And so as I'm kind of inviting him to tell a bit of his story, what I'm asked, I hope you can hear is the transformation that came in his heart. Faith, Jesus for him was more than a church experience. He understood something remarkable that happened, and he wanted other people to have a similar experience, not to go to church, not to be religious, but to have that transforming power of God at work in their lives. And in the midst of that, they would pray with people, talk to people, share their story, and they brought it into our home. So it became an unmistakable part of our own journey. And there were some great victories in the midst of that, and there's

some great sadness in the midst of that. Following God is not always neat and clean. There are tremendous victories, and you see God move, and there are times of great heartbreak. I think that's called life. But I pray it encourages you, not to be religious, not to be churched. I don't want anybody to have a facade of faith. I have no time for that. I'd rather be ungodly than have a facade of faith. I think whatever you're going to do, you should do it with your whole heart. That's in the book of Revelation. If you want to be wicked, be really wicked. If you want to be godly, be really godly. But don't pretend. But there's an invitation on the table for every person. And we're living in a very unique season. I believe that God's involvement in the earth is

escalating rapidly. And the middle's in trouble. And I would invite you to get off the fence and decide who you're going to honor with your life, who you're going to serve with your life, what you're going to do with your life. I've known my dad, my wife, obviously, and it's not a perfect story. Every chapter is not a celebration. But there is a thread of the faithfulness of God that in the midst of our brokenness and what we're not,

the purposes of God can emerge in ways that we could never imagine. And I believe that's every bit as true for you. I don't think he's unique in any way or not. I certainly don't think I'm unique in any way. but I want to give you that invitation. You simply begin to cooperate with God, say yes to the Lord, read your Bible, pray, find a community of people who will do that. They won't be perfect.

If they were perfect, they wouldn't let you join. You'd mess them up. But begin to do life in community. And it may not happen this week or this month. You may not see it this year. But God will write a narrative that I believe will be celebrated throughout all eternity. That's my desire. It's why I do a culture and Christianity podcast.

And I hope you can hear that in his story. And God willing, we'll do a volume three, and there's a whole international component of this. God took him all over the nations of the world, quite to my amazement. And I'll see if he'll tell that story next time. But in the interim, you start saying yes to the Lord in a new way, and we'll celebrate your victories together. Welcome back, Papa, this is volume two. We're here. When we started this storytelling, we didn't know how long it was going to last.

So we'll see if we can recapture the momentum. Well, I'm still here, so we don't know how long it's going to last. Well, there'll be no early exits, please. But we did in the first session, we started telling your story, really, from childhood. As you said, we went back to 1936, which we really hadn't planned to do. The book you did, an extraordinary life, didn't start really until, what, 65? 65 in May. It started in May of 65.

So we were telling a little bit of the backstory. and we got all the way up through about the time you brought the family to Tennessee, which it was June of 1967. Correct. June 10. So I'll see if we can kind of reconnect the narrative from that point. We were living in, if anybody missed the first session, they'd go back and listen. We were living in Miami, Hollywood, Florida.

Hollywood, yeah. You were working on the thoroughbred tracks. We live 10 minutes from the beach. Yeah. Well, you remember that. I didn't remember that. friends all had pools in their backyard. And you had this brilliant idea that you wanted to relocate the family to Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Miami's not good enough. You wanted to come to the center of civilization. Where things were happening. Murphersboro, Tennessee. But, you know, you tried to bring a thread through it as we worked through the other day. and my last lack of comfort probably, I didn't catch on, and I need to apologize to you.

I'd keep here you saying, and there's a thread of how the Lord worked in your life, and there's a thread, and I wasn't doing a very good job as sewing the other day, and after we stopped the podcast, I went home, I began to think about it, and it really came clear to me, which I'd talked to you about in the past,

but I have the genealogy of both my father's side, back for a ways, but I have my mother's side of the family back to 1720. But back through all those years, there was one lady that was outstanding spiritually, and it was my great-grandmother on my mother's side. that was Grandma Herndon's the way I knew her. And as I look back and the stories I heard,

she had to be a remarkable lady. She was born in 1855. She lived to be 95 years old. And she experienced the Civil War. She experienced World War I. she came through to when there was victory in World War II. But the thing from the spiritual angle of it and the aspect and trying to see how a person comes to the place you are today,

I've got a picture here in my pocket of her holding me when I was six months old. I didn't know you were coming with props. So if you give him a warning, He'll throw you a curveball. And she knew me. And so I lived again when I was eight years old in the third grade in the same little tiny town in Missouri, where she lived, had come to town from the farm,

and retired. Her husband had died several years before. And I lived there in the third grade, and she had her 90th birthday. So I knew from those facts, and then my dad said he never went in the house to see her when she didn't have her Bible open. Knowing the other aspects of my genealogy, she's the most likely person where I know she knew me personally, and the reason she had an interest in me

was that her daughter, who was my grandmother, at 31 years of age, there was an explosion on the old wooden stove in the kitchen, which caused her death in 10 days. Then her granddaughter, my mother, died two weeks after I was born, and she was still alive because she knew me in the third grade. She had a personal connection to me so that I've always attributed much of my life to a godly woman. Because I know she would have prayed. She had a reason to pray.

And from that, I've learned the significance of prayer beyond a prayer. asking for what we need today or tomorrow, but how it can affect lives generations later. And so that's really the thread you kept trying to get a hold of last time, but I couldn't catch you on. Well, if you're going to get to bring all of your ancestors back to 1720 into this story, it's going to be a 42-week series. Yeah. Well, I won't go back that far. But I do think the point is well taken that a person of faith, a person that chooses the Lord, a person that gives time to prayer can impact a family far beyond your consciousness. Right.

I mean, there's a generational impact far beyond anything that she could have imagined. Oh, yeah. And I think that's a biblical principle. You know, the Bible tells us that Abraham saw the day of Jesus and believed it. It's hard to understand that, or that David understood that his throne would be established all the way to the Messiah. It's hard to understand that. I think Paul and Peter and the crew in the New Testament clearly understood they were doing something more important than just their lives. And I think one of the deficiencies in contemporary Christianity is we think we get saved so we can go to heaven and we can be blessed in between.

And I think the real assignment is that to be world changers. It isn't about having our needs met always. It's about letting the purposes of God come forward. Well, I just saw that she had so many reasons for me to be significant to her wasn't with the things that had happened in the family. Well, to maintain your faith. Right. Losing a daughter and a granddaughter.

That would not be an easy thing. So that she knew me personally. I mean, that's what this picture shows me. And then I knew in the third grade where she lived and the little town we were in. So it's really where I think the strength that the Spirit of God had an aspect of my life that I can't naturally explain. Now, I'll let you carry on. I've apologized. No, no, it's your story.

I'm just facilitating the podcast. I'm not your story. We said last time when we moved to Florida, we had pulled a U-Haul trailer behind a car. That's right. We got an upgrade when we came to Tennessee. We have a U-Haul truck, or did you... Yeah, we had a truck, and I think Mom drove the car behind me.

So we were accumulating stuff. Oh, yeah. The boys were growing, and we had more junk. Yeah, well, somewhere someone saw the other day that I went to whatever store, was in Florida, and they said, you were spending money when you bought all that furniture. So, yeah, we made enough. Ethan Allen.

Yeah, Ethan Allen, that's what they said. Yeah, we were changing. So why Murphersboro? Why would you bring? I was 10. Philip was six, and Doyle was three. Oh, he was four coming four. No, no, we were down there two years, so he was just three.

He turned four in May. before we got here. But so why Murphersboro? Well, by that time, Betty and I had become Christians. It had changed the way we looked at life, what we wanted to accomplish with life, so that to be a great equine practitioner on the racetrack

had lost my view. and I saw that the things that had made the biggest difference in my life was not when I lived in some of the big cities, but when I lived in some of the small towns. Because through my life, I went to a lot of different schools for five or six years. And I wanted you boys to grow up in a town where you were a part of the town.

town. You weren't just in a section of it. You knew the people and we could be a part of the town. And so that was one aspect as far as the family. And then the other was at that point in time, I was committed to doing equine medicine and I needed an area that had a high population of horses. and I'd come and visited this area three. Well, the first time I came, you were two years old, so that was 1960. And 20 years ago. Yeah. Plus.

And I liked the area from the standpoint of agriculture. The fall still had green grass. and where I grew up in South Missouri, the falls had brown grass. And so there were many things. We liked the climate, the size of the town. And with all of those things, I saw it, I could probably make a living as an equine practitioner because of the population of horse at that time in the 60s.

Pretty courageous, or at least courageous enough to start a new business in a town where you didn't know anybody. I mean, we knew two families that lived here. So you came and started a business out of our home. We talked about that a little bit in the cavalcade of strange animals that came through the house. And you started the Bible study, which was a big step. That was as courageous a step as starting a new business because small groups and home Bible studies were not normal in 1967. Oh, no. Well, there was just an evidence of the dramatic change that had taken place in our lives spiritually.

But that was a weird part. You all were weird. Yeah. We were by the culture in Middle Tennessee in the 60s. No, but I've been helping people a long time, and you're weird. Because most people become Christians, and they're pretty content to be Christians. I mean, they're going to go to heaven. And when you all became Christians, you were determined you were going to tell anybody that couldn't get away.

Yeah, we could tell stories all day. I mean... Well, at least for a couple hours. They won't live in all day. But you can take that nice saddle horse farm up in Lebanon. I worked for them for many years. But one year, when we went up there for some reason, it was a pretty summer day. And I asked Mom, she wanted to ride along because we had to drive a lot.

because we had to drive up to Lebanon, 30 mile. She went along with me, and I was in the barn doing what I needed to do, and she had brought a picnic for us and had a blanket. This farm had a lovely setting to have a picnic. There's a very wealthy family that owned the farm. They were from Boston. They were from Boston, and their horse barn had screens on the windows and the doors, which for a horse barn in Tennessee.

was not normal. That wasn't normal. And so anyway, mom spread out the picnic blanket and she sat down and was there. And while I was doing the work, the lady that her and husband owned the farm, she came out and sat down to talk with mom. And she began to, once again, do what we did that was natural. She began to talk to her about Jesus. And, um, she spent a little time with her, and before the lady left, she said, what's in the scripture? She said, you've almost persuaded me to be a Christian, and she got up and left, and as far as I know, she never made that move. I was there in the house one time many, many years later when she was in a hospital bed, sick and to death. but we used our life as a family to reach other families.

We didn't just go to church. When I think about the Bible study, because in my head, the veterinary practice in the house and the Bible study, all that really came at the same time when we came to town. Right, yeah. And Murphysburg was very different then. The schools were still segregated. It was still very much a small southern community closed in many ways.

and here we roll into town and you start a new business and then you start a Bible study. And you mentioned you went to visit the lady in the hospital, but my imagination of that Bible study was by today's language. It was like a walk-in clinic because all sorts of people walked into that Bible study. Some stayed for a few weeks and would cycle out. They were different colors, different nationalities, different life stages. It wasn't nearly as much about Bible study. as it was you cared about people? Well, I was well enough familiar with what I didn't know

that our Bible study, the first night we ever had anyone in was a neighbor that lived a block and a half away. And what I knew was I knew when that little cassette player said, play, you pushed it down and you could listen for 45 minutes to a Bible teacher. And that's the way we started. It wasn't, we were giving information that was in us. We were learning with the people. And that's how we started with a cassette player.

So it wasn't like you had a desire to be a preacher or you had so much Bible knowledge you wanted people to hear what you knew. No question about that. In fact, as you know, within the next 68 to 80, 12 years, I tried to give it away two times to pastors. and they didn't have the vision that mom and I had for people, because as you have so well said many times, we were the Bible study for Misfit Toys.

It was composed of people to where there were problems in their life, and they heard about us, and they started coming on Thursday nights, and we'd give them little bits of Bible teaching piece by piece. But there was a, I say weird, I'm making fun of it a little bit, but there was something that happened that I think only God could have orchestrated. You would tell them what the Bible had to say, or you would learn it together or read it together.

But you also were engaged in helping them with the challenges in their lives. And that combination is not normal. We have civic clubs that will help people with eyeglasses or food. Or we have Bible studies where people will tell you about Greek and Hebrew words, but it seems that we still have a shortage of places where people will tell you the truth of God's Word and still be engaged in the circumstances of your life. And that's what that walk-in clinic of a Bible study really was.

Yeah, that was our home when you boys suffered because of it, because we weren't maybe as considerate of you as caring parents could have been, but we allowed you to be a part of the medical team that was caring for their hurts because we had people come, as you know, all the way from Kim Bellamy, who was dying from Lupus. We had the family that you grew up with that he came to the back door one night with a 45 pistol and a Jack Daniels. And we kept him, we didn't take the gun and send him home.

We kept him. He stayed overnight. Yeah, I remember. And, I mean, we incorporated them into our family. And in fairness, we complained. Yeah. I mean, my brothers and I. Well, it wasn't convenient. We didn't always celebrate your choices.

Or we weren't old enough to put it in language that we were being mistreated. We just didn't always like it. Well, there wasn't a resource that you could have put us in jail yet. We weren't that far. place to report you. But I think a couple of those stories are worth telling the... Kim Bellamy was Vietnamese. Right. She married an American military officer.

And when they moved to the states, his family didn't approve. And so he rejected her. And the disappointment, rejection, pain of that, she ended up with lupus diagnosis. And by the time we met her, she couldn't walk. Yeah. But it was a client. It was your veterinary practice. Yeah, through the veterinary practice, there was a groomer who we'd known he'd been in the Bible study some. And he brought her for us to meet her one time because they brought her, she had a little brown poodle.

I want to interrupt you for a minute because it's an important point in the narrative. Your veterinary practice was the hub of most of the ministry. Exactly. You had credibility as a veterinarian. People would trust you with their pet. and you would help them with their pets. And because they appreciated that, they would tolerate you telling them then about your passion for faith.

We didn't give them good opportunities to escape sometimes. But, yeah, we lived back when you're talking about, we lived at the way at the edge of town. They had to be intentional to come out where we lived and bring their pets. But I'll go back to Kim. That was a groomer. Yeah.

It was a dog. groomer that had taken care. She had a poodle. Right. And when they saw Kim's physical health deteriorating, they asked you to reach out to them, which it was still a small enough town. We were the weirdos. That's right. We were the spiritual freaks out on the edge of town that would pray with people. Well, we had a Chinese woman that was already in the Bible study then. And so Kim, I think part of her healing was the fact we incorporated it because she was living in an apartment. her husband had put her an apartment so that she wasn't at home with his mother and the culture. They were divorced by the time we met.

And so Kim lived in an apartment and someone had to bring her out each time because she couldn't drive any longer. Now she had this huge big, compared with cars today, a 225 Buick tank that's set in front of her apartment, but she couldn't drive it. And someone always had to go get her. And so that's where you fellas sometimes would go and pick him up and bring her out to the house. And we incorporated her into our family. And she could scoot around on the floor because she literally could not step over. If you put a one but two on the floor, she couldn't step over it. And so she would scoot around on the floor and clean Betty's cat.

cabinets. Yeah, but let's keep the narrative because you told how your life changed when you accepted Jesus is Lord of your life. And that's where you started with Kim. Right. I mean, because she didn't know Jesus. She grew up in a culture with no Christian faith. And you explained the gospel to her enough that she made that choice. And then she got the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Right. And there was no immediate change in her. We were still picking her up physically. You had to carry her wherever we went. Yeah. But she was persistent. She began to develop a faith with the Lord. I guess I do want to put words in your mouth, but I'm trying to get to. And I think a significant time is how when you're willing to learn what the scripture says,

you're willing to impart it into your life. She was home alone one day. And Betty had spent time with her just in our kitchen and stuff. But she was home alone and was praying. and at that she was still where she had to hold onto the cabinet to move around. And she felt the Holy Spirit come on her, and she began to pray in the spirit. But she said that she felt physically something moved from her feet, clear up through and out through the top of her head.

And with that spiritual deliverance that she got all alone, she was a changed person. And she could begin to move and to walk. And then you can... Gradually overtime. Right. Right. It took months.

Yeah. But the Lord restored her health. Right. Yeah. She called Mom one day and said, I come see you. And mom said, well, we don't have time to come get you today. I come see you. And so anyway, she drove the big, big tank out.

all on her own. She'd got so much healing that had come to her that she came out on her own to the house, parked in front of the clinic, and walked up the walk to our kitchen. That's the extreme. It went from where she couldn't walk to where she was driving a car. No, the Lord healed her. But as I watched that happen, where God healed mom instantaneously and supernaturally. He healed Kim over a period of time without any fanfare as she kept saying yes to the Lord and inviting him into her life more fully. She invited Gigi.

That's the way in Vietnamese they called it Gigi. And I'm watching that because I remember my vantage point. And I candidly as many days as not, I thought of Kim as an intrusion. Like if we had a family, if we had a break, because we had a small business, a veterinary business that took all of us to make it happen. And if we had a holiday, the 4th of July or something, and we were going to go to Fall Creek Falls one time, I remember. And as you or mother would say, don't we want to take Kim with us? And our answer was no. We don't want to take something else to be responsible for.

Because at that point, we were carrying her around. Right. But you said, no, we're going to take Kim with us. So I don't remember who picked her up. I just remember we took her with us to the park. Yeah. So my confession in the midst of this is you're modeling something. something for us, but we didn't always cheer for it.

Oh, well. And we weren't monitoring it every day going, you know, this is a God thing, and it's so wonderful. No, we didn't. That was like fasting. Well, but preachers have a way of telling stories that are pretty disconnected from the truth. Right.

This is a little different. Now, that was her life, was we cared about the people. I can find some emotion on you from Kim. After she got well enough to stand, she's a gourmet chef. Yeah. And she wanted to give back. She wanted to do something for us. So she told us to invite some friends, and she would cook a Vietnamese dinner for us.

And we were going to eat at like, I don't remember, we were going to have dinner at like 6 o'clock. Well, who I didn't know was her clock was not set on the same time zone that ours was. So she doesn't have dinner ready until about 8.30. You know, and somewhere in the midst there, you lost the love of Jesus. I can imagine. So when Kim cooked, the food was amazing. Oh, yeah. Eight grows.

Oh, man. But if dinner was supposed to be at six, we sell them eight before eight-thirty, and it didn't matter what you did. That's just the way that timeline worked. Yeah. But God healed her. Oh, my. She opened her own business.

She opened a jewelry store. No, no, she opened a restaurant in Galveston, Texas. She still calls once in a while. She calls me now and says, I watch on TV. She called when Mom. Mom passed away a year ago. But that Bible study, that walk-in clinic, was those stories, they weren't instantaneous, but they were consistent.

Yeah, we had horse trainers that we got involved in their life, people that weren't seeking God. Lots of them. I mean, it was a remarkable incubator for watching God change people's lives. and all the while we were being changed, but there were lots of families. We helped a family whose mom had a prescription drug problem and couldn't get out of bed. And I remember mom taking us with her.

We went to, this was before we had Walmarts, and we went to the local equivalent of that, but several grocery carts filled with sheets and towels and went and helped them clean their house. And they're still a part of our store. today 40 years later. Yeah. I mean, it was just, there was a constant cavalcade.

It really was like a walk-in clinic. And not everybody would accept it. Some people would get mad. Yeah. Then go away. And the whole time, your practice in veterinary medicine, we had horse manure in the refrigerator.

That time when one of some kind of repairman was at the house and he had to open the refrigerator door. There was a man hanging drapes. helping mom hang some new curtains. And Doyle, my youngest brother, open the refrigerator and said, Dad's put horse manure in the refrigerator again. Explain why I did it, though. Yeah, but the poor man doesn't know.

He didn't get the explanation, and he just acted like he hadn't heard a thing. He kept working. But to check to see if a horse had parasites, we need as a sample. And so, but that was normal. To me, the point I think it was serving God and having a veterinary practice and three boys and all the things that go with all of that was all in the same bucket. Yeah. And you were figuring out how to live life and we didn't feel godly every day.

Oh, man. There was stuff happening and yet you persevered. Leading with our faith is often not easy. You know, you're in a business setting. How do you start a conversation or you're with family? and maybe it's awkward to bring faith forward or maybe it's children and you're not sure how to get to it on their level.

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one for your family, one for your gatherings with friends, and another to use young children. Request your set of Lead with Faith conversation starter cards today at allanjaxon.com. And then you got involved with Bible studies outside of Murphersboro. You went to Tullahoma. Yeah. Lebanon. Through full gospel.

ventured out to meet Christians in the whole Middle Tennessee area. Yeah, but the Bible, I don't remember the sequence, whether full gospel preceded. We did start a Bible study through people in Tullahoma. We had friends in Tullahoma, and you had friends in Lebanon. Right. You went up there. You went up there and you went to Nashville. It was outside of Lebanon, even on the highway that you go to Carthage on.

We had to drive outside of there. Lebanon's country and up. Then you went to Nashville to do a Bible study. Yeah. I'd forgotten a lot of those. So on a monthly basis, you got a Bible study in your home weekly when you're shepherding these monthly Bible studies in surrounding communities. Yep.

I said you were weird. I know it. You're just bringing it out. And again, it wasn't because you were teaching. You took the walk-in clinic. Yeah. Because the people would show back up in Murfysboro. That's where I'd get connected.

They show up at the house with their stuff and their kids. They'd hit a crisis. They'd hit a crisis. You'd tell us we needed to take care of somebody's kids for an afternoon because you were going to pray with somebody. Yeah. We saw dramatic things take place that were beyond our understanding. So what, why?

I mean, there's something in that. Because, you know, today we have a church and ministries and. stuff. But none of that was in the imagination. We didn't imagine a church. Our spiritual formation didn't take place in a church. We didn't tell it. But we got baptized. You and I got baptized the same day in the Atlantic Ocean. Right.

And you accepted the Lord in an airline pilot's living room. Right. You got baptized in the Atlantic. You didn't get the baptism of the Holy Spirit in a church building. It was in a spiritual... Your spiritual formation didn't take place in a church. No. And we're going to a church.

Murfreesboro, but you're wearing out a car traveling around Middletons. You're going to practice all day long, get a babysitter, abandon your children and your responsibilities. Overnight. And go do a Bible study in a little outlying community. And there's this harvest of people. I interact with them all the time. You're now seeing two and three generations after some of these people.

that you saw as a kid. So what caused you, I mean, you could have gone to the lake. You loved horses. We went to a horse show every Friday or Saturday night for several years from May until Labor Day. Yeah. Tennessee walking horses brought us here. You kind of slid over that while ago.

Right. Well, that was the horse population was middle Tennessee. And you liked Tennessee walking horses every bit as much as you like thoroughbreds. Right. Oh, yeah. We went every Friday and Saturday night. and then the Bible studies, you would do those throughout the week. But you could have been doing things with horses or doing things with the lake.

And you chose to make an investment in caring for people. Well, you weren't collecting offerings for it. I know that for a fact. No. I wasn't a very good financial consultant when it came to those aspects. We supported them more than we benefited from. But I don't know. I have no explanation except that's just something God did when we went from where we had lived for 30 years to really having a personal awareness of Jesus.

But for me, that's why, and you, this week I've told you about people that I talked to them about the baptism, the Holy Spirit. when you move from that understanding of what Jesus did for us to where the Holy Spirit that worked through Jesus to change people becomes a part of your life, that's when we really changed. It was when we came to understand the Holy Spirit and let it be a part of our life. We had an interest in people with no benefit to us,

but to see them change. And that was the thing you boys all growing up. You saw so many people change so much. Their homes change. And now you've seen two and three generations behind them. And it was just we cared about people. And I can't explain it. It's not just natural without God doing something to you.

From the seat I sat in, I think you were, you understood something had happened in your life. Yeah. It wasn't a church initiation or a membership or you were excited about that. There's another threat I want to pick up through this season because I think it's on point. We told a bit about mom's healing and how supernatural it was. She had breast cancer. Right.

We didn't define it. And after we moved to Tennessee, the lumps came back. I mean, so we didn't have a biopsy yet. yet, but there was a lot of fear. Because there's a season, I'm going to unpack with you, where there were several people, including in our own house, where sickness was a threat again. But when mom's lumps came back, there was a lot of fear.

She didn't even want to go to the doctor. You'll know more about this story than I do, because I was on the outside. But Aunt Mary came, and she went and had a lumpectomy. She had lumps removed, right? At a clinic in Nashville. Mm-hmm. And everything was benign.

It was all benign at that point. So it was kind of like you had a victory over the fear. Right. And how long did it take before the lumps came back? Well, she would have some then following that. But I mean, in a matter of months, a few months. And she didn't, I don't think she ever had another biopsy from them. Right.

There was that one time we went to that clinic and they did it, and it was just tissue. Right. And so we trust to the Lord after that. And that's how she went to the hospital to see a lot of women because of it. Well, there was a steady stream of people. Yeah. But that's what I remember. That's when the blood of Jesus confession got taped on the wall in the bathroom.

Right. Well, that was another aspect of what we just did in the community was to the young people. There was a time you didn't have deviated. players and things. And we had an, I bought a real-to-real video player. And we would get invitations to go to a group of Christians we'd met in an apartment building. And we'd go and show them Bible teaching videos. We were big time.

We could show those through a TV that we hauled in their car. we built a wooden stand to set it up on. And for the record, that was not a flat screen TV. No, no. That was a TV that looked like it had been built out of two-by-fours and concrete blocks. And we would show them there. And then one night we went to a Methodist church and brick church Pike in Nashville. And while the video was playing, Derek Prince was teaching on the blood of Jesus.

And mom took notes as he was teaching. it and then transcribed them into a sheet of paper to where we now still have that blood of Jesus that Derek taught way back somewhere in the 70s. And that's how we would help people. But, I mean, I remember mom saying that confession. I wasn't clever enough to know at the time. She put it in the bathroom. Right.

But I understand today when you took a bath, you'd be far more aware if you had lumps. threats. Right. And so she'd say that make that profession of faith. Right. It was taped up on the wall. I remember where it was taped. I just wasn't smart enough to know why. But in that same window, your best friend from school who lived in Missouri, was diagnosed with lung cancer. Yeah, he had lymphoma, is what he had. And you'd been friends since boyhood, you. Well, we, when we were in high school, his girlfriend was voted queen for our senior class, and George Jackson was voted king.

And I said, Darrell, I'm not going to do this. You go and do it. She was the football queen, and I was the football king. I said, I'm not going to do it. You go and do it. So Darrell took my position. I mean, that's how close of friends we were. when I played Center my sophomore year, I had all that I wanted.

I wanted some action and I wanted to play end. So I recruited Darrell and he came and started playing Center. I mean, we were close friends from high school. We went to junior college together. Today they'd wonder about us because the little apartment, we had two rooms. we had a single, what do you call a bed where two people sleep back in the dark ages. A double bed. I mean, we were friends.

He'd bring food from the farm where they lived and we cook for ourselves. And I went to see him. When he called you and told you he'd gotten a diagnosis. Right. Because you didn't see him a lot. We would see them. I remember we'd go visit them once in a while, a couple times every other year or something like that. But you got a phone call that he'd gotten a really serious diagnosis.

Oh, my. And I remember, because we had a small business. If you left, somebody had to pick up the slack. We had to feed the horses and take care of the clients. And you left to drive to Missouri. Right. He was in the hospital in Springfield. And I took a cassette player with a couple of cassettesettes to make sure that he knew the Lord.

And I stayed, I think, the first time stayed two days with him. And he played the tapes and listened to it. And he said, God touched him in the night, and he literally shook from his feet to his head. But he came to know the Lord in a real way. That was the first time that I went to see him. And it made a huge impact in him. it changed his whole family. I mean, his wife was a friend with your mom.

They roomed together when they worked in Joplin. So we were connected, as you'd say today. We were connected. But he was another person in your orbit that had gone to church. Oh, he... But he wasn't a Christian. I went to the church who went to in that little town we grew up. He and I went to church there together.

but we didn't know Jesus. That's why I went to the hospital to make sure he knew Jesus as his Savior. And really, the Lord healed him. I mean, he got a... He went for a while, yeah. But, I mean, he didn't go through an extended regimen of chemotherapy. Oh, no. They didn't do dramatic surgery.

No. The doctors, I mean, he got a clean bill for a season. For a season, he did. I have a point I'm fishing for, but I want to get some of the facts. on the ground, at least as I remembered them. Yeah, because he... He had a newborn when he got diagnosed. Right.

Little girl. Right. And he had a desire to see her grow a bit. Right. That's right. She was born with some heart abnormalities, and he prayed a prayer that he'd get to see her because he already had his lymphoma diagnosis. He'd prayed that he'd get to see her.

till she was, I think, three years old. And that happened. He saw her. And she lived another year or two, and then she went to heaven. And in this same bucket of time, Cleo, my grandmother, your stepmom, she was diagnosed with cancer. Right. Yeah.

And you got in your car again. Right. Mom and I drove up there a couple of times, flew up one time, but we sat with her and we knew we heard her make her confession in Jesus. We didn't, but there was a lot harder. Oh, that's why it took more than one trip, because they had been religious, but they hadn't experienced a personal relationship that they needed in their spiritual life. And in fact, while we were there one time, a sister of hers who was staying in the house where mom and I were staying, when we got home from the hospital, she asked me something about our spiritual life, and we led her to the Lord there at the house while we were there with her. But I think in hindsight, when we were living through it, it wasn't any of it clear to me. But in hindsight, Darrell, your friend, the Lord healed him, but for a season.

And then Grandma got sick. Right. And she accepted the Lord, which was a big victory. We all celebrated that the whole family was in on that. Every time you were going to Missouri, you'd get all of us together and we would pray because they were very churched and very religious, but they didn't know Jesus, and they thought we were a little goofy because you were not like, you know, you had a Bible study. She'd come visit, and she was fascinated by the people in the Bible study,

because it was like the Isle of the Miss Vitt toys, and she wanted to interview them. Yeah. Because she'd find out how weird we were. You're just trying to see the hole in the blanket. And in the same window, Mom's Lumps are back, which is an internal battle, and Daryl goes to heaven and Grandma goes to heaven and Kim Bellamy is healed

and we're seeing people have miracles on a pretty, I mean, not like every day, but it was the fabric of the world we were living in but you're also seeing people that you care about

step into eternity. Right. Oh, yeah. There was, they weren't all wins. Well, I don't, you have to help me with it.

the wind, Darrow went to heaven. Well, they did. No question. He was good shape spiritually, boy. And we knew Twala for many years later, and she was a faithful Christian. Yeah, until today we're in touch. Yeah. Cleo went to heaven.

Right. I mean, that's not small. Well, and they all had trickle-downs to like you saw your grandfather before he died at 90 years old. he knew the Lord. He'd been baptized in water. And he would sit on the center aisle, third row to hear his grandson preach. He thought I'd thrown my life away because I didn't go to med school. And by the end of his life, he waved me over one Sunday.

And he said, you're going to be okay. But I'm not doing a very good job. We're going to have volume three. But there's one adult one thing. You're not hauling hay. You can hold up under this. Okay. There's another piece of this that is an important part of the story, I think.

As we're sitting here today, there's rockets falling on Israel. Oh. And it was in this same window of time. When we moved to Murphersboro, we came in 67. I think it was 69. You went to Israel the first time. 69. We did.

Yeah. How'd you do that? Did you just, well, this year. story. We had met Lydia and Derek Prince when we became Christians in Florida at some seminars where he taught. And then we moved to Murphsburg in June, and by July, we'd written them a letter into Chicago and said, if you ever, because, I mean, we'd moved up here, and for the teaching and the lifestyle we had in Florida with a Bible study every week. and seminars every month, we had moved to the jungle. And we asked them if they were traveling to Florida again to stop by,

spend the night with us, which they did. And they did that in August, it was 67. And while he was here, he spoke at a Bible study that the pastor had with about 10 people on Wednesday night. Well, I always like telling, here I was, starved to spend some time with a Bible teacher. They've got a little group they're getting together with, and what happens to me? Mrs. Smith over in a town 20-mile away has a sick mayor, and I go and spend the evening with the sick mayor, and Derek's teaching the Bible course.

Those are the things we experienced in their life. He became a friend with the pastor, made a commitment to come back for three days in March of 1968. That was six, eight months longer. But they came back in March, and he talked for three nights at the local church we were attending. And out of that, before he left to go on to Florida in March, he said, I've told the pastor that on Thursday night, you're starting a Bible study. So that was the initiation of our Bible study. How did you get to Israel?

So with that relationship that we had been building over two years knowing Lydia and Derek on a personal basis, he called one day and said, you need to go with us. I'm taking a group to Israel. So we agreed. We'd done what he'd said so far. And we went to Israel in 69. But then when you went on a trip to Israel, it was three weeks. We went one week to England, another week to Israel, and another week to Italy.

So we were gone for three weeks, which is a major thing, to leave your practice when it's brand new. Two years old. And that was two years after the Six-Day War, so Israel was a very different place. Right. And you came home, and it had such an impact on you that the next year you took Philip, my middle brother and myself. Doyle was just two. Yeah, we went. It was in April, and we got back in May, and we took you all back with us.

Wouldn't it in the fall? The next May. May? Okay. Took us out of school. Yeah. But it totally changed our lives, Mom and I, to go see and experience it. It was dramatic.

But hindsight is a lot more helpful. You weren't conscious that the Lord was really planting a seed in you at that point. But Israel's become a big part of the story in your life. You lived there for more than a decade, the better part of the years. and have many friends in Israel today and are a voice for the Jewish people in Israel. Right. In our community, in our country, and beyond. So those tours that seemed kind of a throwaway.

Yeah. But they were a sacrifice. I mean, the resources, it was a sacrifice to spend the money to go to do that. Well, financially, yeah. We had to plan in order to do it. It's a good way to say it. But it made such a difference, as you know now, as I've been a pastor all these years,

it made a difference in the history of our family, number one, and then it made a difference in the history for the church because we're a pretty new, unique church with the relationship that we have with Israel. And because we got to know Derek and Lydia back in the 60s when it came to 2002, and Derek was getting near the end of his life, he asked us to come and take his ministry in Israel, which there had never been one there just for Israel. There'd been a Middle East kind of a basket for all of it.

And, yes, Mom and I live there 10 years, six months out of the year, and then 10 years for another four months a year at least. Well, if you're tough enough to come back, maybe we'll do a third session and we'll kind of tell that part because eventually you're going to retire from veterinary medicine. Oh, yeah. Then the church gets started and there's some stuff. But this window, there's about a 10, 12 year window that's in this bucket that you've talked about today. And that's really where the skill set that you've used all over the world got shaped. Right.

It wasn't so much that you were doing expository preaching, but you were showing. sharing your experiences about faith, what you knew about Jesus. Learning how to take what we had learned personally in our own lives and transpose it into the lives of people that we ran into or ran into us in many different countries. We helped them. But when you say what you learned personally, what I understand that to mean was you changed how you spent your time, you changed how you spent your resources,

you changed what your ambitions were. You reoriented your life in a different direction. Totally. And as you did that, you got healing in your relationships and your marriage. Our home became a better place. We're still doing all the things that families do. I mean, we're all going to school and trying to get grades and all the junk that comes with growing up and the family.

But all this stuff is incorporated into the Bible studies and the families, the miracle stories that you see, the miracle stories that we don't see. And we're, I mean, you got three boys asking you questions. Why did that happen or why didn't that happen? And then the Israel component gets added in, and all of a sudden our faith is bigger than Middle Tennessee. And we realized God's moving in the earth in a way that we didn't imagine.

You took us to Spain in that window on a mission trip. 72. We went there once again with Derek was teaching there, and I took all three of you boys there. Southern Coast of Spain for a week. Right. And that opened a whole other set of questions and chapters in the narrative. Right. And out of that, all of those things are the seeds that are given, it's the DNA for the church today. And all the people that know it through a podcast and have never been here and seen the building.

Right. that's a lot from Grandma Hurndon's prayers yeah but it's the point is what you've said from the pulpit people matter and it takes the spirit of God to be real to where people matter enough

that you'll change your life what you're doing what's your time and that's kind of the basis I'd say of world outreach it's just about people it's not about theology. I'd say it's the basis of the kingdom of God. Yeah. The church is incidental. Church to me is no more significant than your Bible study was. It was a vehicle for doing what God wanted done at that point in time. It's a door of people who can walk in. And I'm at the place in my

life where I realize God's desire to help people are much larger than a Bible study, a church, a ministry. If we'll do our part, then God brings the help to people. So I haven't heard you say, yes yet. Can we get a volume three? Yes, I will comply. Okay, I'm like, I needed to be sure. Okay. I think we ought to pray. We prayed over the first one. That was for Father's Day. I think we ought to pray over this, that the Lord, Jesus said, the harvest was plentiful, but the laborers were few.

Give us the words and the thoughts and the direction that people need, not what we remember. You know, I've got to go. We prayed for fathers. I want to pray in this one that the Lord will raise up harvesters. Okay. You and I are only going to work in this harvest field so long. Yeah. But we need another generation of harvesters. Right.

Isn't that right? I agree. For sure. You prayed last time. I'll do this one. Okay. Lord, I thank you for the story of faithfulness that we can hear. I thank you for a man and a woman that would give their lives to you, Lord, and all their

brokenness and all they weren't for your faithfulness. But you told us to pray for laborers, and Lord, I pray you'll raise up people. people, men and women, young couples, young families, who will recognize that there is a Jesus and that they will spend themselves telling that story. I thank you that we will see it, that it will exceed anything we could imagine today. I thank you for your faithfulness in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you, Papa.

Okay. That wasn't too bad. It worked okay. That's better than hauling hay. Once you get going, you kind of, it's downhill. Hey, thanks for joining me today. Before you go, please like the podcast and leave a comment so more people can hear about this topic too. If you haven't yet, be sure to subscribe to Alan Jackson Ministries YouTube channel

and follow the Culture and Christianity podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Together, let's learn how to lead with our faith and change our culture. I'll see you next time.