THE CURE THAT WORKS

When Johnson Begay died a few months ago, it left a big gap in the Indian Ministry of the Southwestern Indian Missions. For years he and his family have carried on the work on the Salt River reservation. Johnson and I have met only a few times. Our longest conversation was when by a strange coincidence we met at the Kansas City airport and were seat mates from Kansas City to Phoenix. I was going there to preach the funeral of "Chief" Kenneth Mendenhall.


I first met Johnson at an Indian Camp meeting in Arizona where I ministered in 1991. It was there that I heard him tell his story. For a long time he had been a slave to alcohol. It is a known scientifically established fact that the Indian people have an extremely low tolerance for alcohol, yet a great fondness for it. For a long time, Johnson had been a total drunk, and finally to overcome that he could do no work, then later, could not even feed himself. No pleas from his wife or friends had any influence to turn him to a life of sobriety.


One day when he was more sober than usual, his wife asked him to attend church with her.


"What! Me go to church? No. I not go to church!"


"Johnson, you go to church with me, I get you a bottle of Thunderbird." (Publishers note: Thunderbird, was the cheapest "rot-gut" fortified wine of its day and only consumed by the most desperate of drunks.)


Now we all agree that this was an unusual approach to evangelism; but that word "Thunderbird" got his attention when nothing else would. This was his main love - his drink, his food, his life. He surely misunderstood what he had heard. Surely, he was mistaken!


He responded, "I go to church, you get me a bottle of Thunderbird?"


"Yes, Johnson, I get you a bottle of Thunderbird."


All attention now, he replied, "I go to church."


He said that "That preacher preach so long, I thought he never would quit. All I could think about was when he quits, I go get that Thunderbird."


When the service was at last over, the two went to the store, and here Johnson again picks up the story. "I look at that Thunderbird on the shelf, and I reach up to take him, and something says to me, 'You been to church,' and I say, 'Yes, I been to church, and I turned around to the shelf behind me, and I take this bottle of orange juice."


That day, at that moment, Thunderbird died, and Johnson Begay was born again to a new life in more ways than one - life in Christ, and life for Christ! Not just father and mother, but sons and daughters, now grown, formed a powerful unit in serving Jesus Christ.


Of course, there are questions to which we would like answers. Who's prayer was answered? Wife, child, or some unknown person? We cannot know, nor do we need to know. God had been searching for a dependable worker and preacher for the Indian people. At one magic moment, God found the opportunity to work a miracle - not in church, not at an altar of prayer, but when Johnson Begay was reaching for the coveted bottle, quick as a flash of lightning, God performed that total transforming miracle. And it lasted!