The LORD Directeth His Steps
By Jerry Palmer
October thirtieth, nineteen eighty-eight. Standing in the parking lot of Eastland Baptist Church for the first time. We had just relocated to Tulsa from Denver, this being the first Sunday we were in town. Sitting in the car, a little nervous, we were greeted by John Egbert who accompanied us into the church and began introducing us. We immediately felt home.
Little did we know at the time, but that October morning thirty-three years ago was the beginning of a story that is almost magical to us but orchestrated by the Lord as only he can do. This is a story of our lives becoming centered in the church we have called home. It is the place where our boys grew up; where our family was strengthened; where we have been mentored and led by two of the most influential and inspirational men I have ever met: Dave Hardy (Preacher as we still call him) and Troy Dorrell, our pastor. It is the place where our boys have married, and this story continues as they and their families carry on in serving the Lord. By the good hand of our God upon their lives, it is the place where our grandchildren will carry on the legacy they have been given.
As I type this it is impossible not to reflect back--back to that autumn evening in nineteen seventy-nine when I called upon the name of Jesus and asked him to save me. To think about the intervening forty-three years, how the Lord guided Phyllis and I to meet. Back to the delivery room in St. Anthony’s hospital in Denver, where, as I held our newly-born son David, the Holy Spirit spoke to me, directing me to leave my beloved Santa Fe Railroad and change careers to enable me to be at home rather than out on the railroad. That prompting would lead me into aviation which in turn would lead our family to Tulsa and to Eastland Baptist Church.
“A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.”
Proverbs 16:9 reads, “A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps” (KJV). Phyllis’s dad, a Baptist preacher was one of the kindest and most gracious men I have ever had the pleasure to know. In my infancy as a baby Christian, it was he who instructed me to buy a King James Bible because, as he said, there is a majesty in its vocabulary that is unmatched. The elegance in the wording of this Proverb was apparent when I read this for the first time and then committed it to memory. Dad became one of my closest friends. It was through his counsel that I became not only a Baptist, but an independent Baptist. He taught me so much about being faithful to a church and loyal to my pastor, and much about being a loving father and husband.
Words simply do not exist to adequately express the depth of gratitude in my heart for these men. Preacher had a personality bigger than life in the thirty years he led Eastland Baptist Church. We are who we are as a church today under Pastor Dorrell, in part, because of the influence and contribution Preacher made in our lives, individually and collectively. He didn’t preach at people; he opened his heart and preached to us. In this he became so much more than just our preacher: he loved us, made himself accessible to us, and befriended us. His life and ministering made a contribution to our family that could never be calculated.
As if our years under Preacher’s leadership weren’t enough, the Lord continued to pour out his blessings when Brother Dorrell became our pastor. We felt as if the second chapter of our lives at Eastland was opening. From Pastor we have learned and continue to learn how to apply the Scriptures to our lives in a practical way. Having taken sermon notes for many years, I have a library that permits me to look back with a sense of awe at the wisdom with which God endued our Pastor.
What a blessing it is to serve the Lord in a church like Eastland! Phyllis and I have been SO blessed to have made many wonderful friendships in our years here. Neither of us can imagine how life could have been any happier for us.