So as many of you know, I attended Oral Roberts University for undergrad. My dad attended the ORU med school back in the early 1980s and my husband and two brothers also attended ORU. Needless to say, I grew up with a little bit of Oral permanently lodged into my heart and mind. Oral Roberts started his medical school with a passion for "merging the healing power of medicine and prayer." This vision is perhaps one of the main reasons Oral is so revered by my family. Coming from a family of doctors and standing at the beginning of my husband's medical career, the idea that medicine and God's power go hand in hand is a concept Josh and I are passionate about. Oral began his ministry after his own miraculous healing of tuberculosis at age 17. He went on to pastor churches and host crusades where he reminded people that our God is a healing God. Oral Roberts was the first minister to bring the message of God's healing power and salvation to the masses through television. He's written more than 130 books and founded Oral Roberts University. Oral Roberts' ministry has forever changed the concept of reaching people for Christ. He has changed the world. For anyone who has not seen the news today, Oral Roberts passed away yesterday at the age of 91. We are certainly thinking of his family and close friends right now who are grieving and missing their dad, grandpa, and friend. However, I have to see Oral's death as being an event of great joy for a man who's body was wearing out and who is now in his perfect, heavenly body with his Lord and with his "darling wife, Evelyn."
When I was a senior in high school and looking at colleges, I made a trip to Tulsa, OK to visit family and my parents made me tour ORU while we were there. I was not interested in going to ORU, but I humored them. I toured the gaudy, gold campus that looked like it was straight out of the Jetsons. It was designed to be futuristic back in 60s, but architectural style still has not quite caught up with the honeycomb details and pointed arches of the ORU campus. It's almost laughable. But then you drive by the giant praying hands and you get that gut-churning feeling... that one that tells you you have just entered someplace special. The ORU tour takes you through the prayer gardens and to the prayer tower where somebody is praying, 24 hours a day, for all the requests that pour into the ministry. You see the flame burning above as a symbol of the ever-present power of the Holy Spirit and you feel it even more, it's like electricity... it's not JUST someplace special... you can feel the actual presence of God. You know immediately that these grounds are almost sacred. Yes, it is a university where thousands of young people have goofed off, pulled pranks, stayed up all night cramming for tests, flooded the dorms to make human slip and slides, and done their fair share of complaining. BUT... it is also a place where young people gather in the prayer gardens for spontaneous worship times with just their voices and a guitar and a place where students would gather around to pray for a struggling friend in the dorm rooms. The grounds of ORU have been a place where students were trained to be a whole man; mind, body, and spirit, and where they could discuss their faith openly and share new ideas and challenge old ones. It's a place where young men and women learned not only their course material, but also how to take their faith into every man's world, whether it's the office, a hospital, their homes, or capital hill (and yes, ORU grads are in all of those places). The grounds of ORU have birthed vision...thousands of visions in young people who then went out into the world to accomplish the thing that God called them to. Oru has been the training ground of alumni who started too many ministries to name, many of which have absolutely changed the world forever. And when you think about all of it and the vision upon which Oral Roberts University was founded, it's difficult not to feel chills at the power of God on that campus, that training ground, that holy place. The heart and sould behind ORU can be summed up in the statement that God gave Oral many many years ago:
"Build Me a university. Build it on My authority and on the Holy Spirit. Raise up your students to hear My voice, to go where My light is seen dim, My voice is heard small, and My healing power is not known, even to the uttermost bounds of the earth. Their work will exceed yours, and in this I am well pleased."
Needless to say, I changed my mind about ORU that Fall day in 1998. I finished my tour of the ORU campus with the presentation about Oral Roberts and his ministry in the visitor center at the base of the prayer tower and God moved my heart, very simply... I knew that I was to go to ORU. I'm thankful I did. I enjoyed my education in Communications at ORU and learned lifelong lessons from teachers and friends that had nothing to do with the classroom. But isn't that what learning really is, afterall? So on this day after the passing of a man who committed his life to bringing the healing power of God to people, and who started a university that trained so many of us to "hear God's voice and to GO where His light is seen dim and His voice is not heard, and His power is not known" ... I want to say thank you, Chancellor Oral Roberts. Thank you for teaching us to "Expect a Miracle!" and to believe that because we serve a great God, "something good is going to happen."
Some interesting quotes from and about Oral Roberts:
Note: Rev. Billy Graham dedicated Oral Roberts University in 1963
"If God had not in his sovereign will raised up the ministry of Oral Roberts, the entire charismatic movement might not have occurred," said Jack Hayford, president of the California-based International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, in the statement. "Oral shook the landscape with the inescapable reality and practicality of Jesus' whole ministry. His teaching and concepts were foundational to the renewal that swept through the whole church."
Before his death, Roberts said, "After I'm gone, others will have to judge how well I've obeyed God's command not to be an echo but to be a voice like Jesus," the statement said. "As far as my own conviction is concerned, I've tried to be that voice with every fiber of my being, regardless of the cost."
incredibly well said!
ReplyDeleteLove the post!
ReplyDeleteI feel proud and blessed to be a part of this great university
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