Tag Archives: Jack Hyles

A Call from Within

Read:

From a sermon preached by Jack Hyles in 1974:

I was an introvert when I was a boy. I was still sucking my thumb when I was fourteen. On my 17th birthday I weighed 93 pounds dripping wet and full of bananas. I could not pass public speaking. I was called “Jackie boy.” Nobody took me seriously. When God called me to preach, the angels wept and Heaven’s flag was flown at half-mast for three days!

One day when I was an older teenager, the chairman of our deacon board, Jesse Cobb, met me after the service on a Sunday morning in the back of the auditorium. Jesse was the best lay soul winner I think I ever met. He said, “Jack, will you do something with me this afternoon?”

“What, Jesse?”

“Will you go soul winning with me this afternoon?”

“Jesse, you know better than that! You know I am a timid introvert. I would not know what to say if I went out soul winning. Jesse, I couldn’t do it.”

“Jack, I will make you a deal. All you will have to do is to just go with me. I will do the talking. All you will have to do is listen.”

Well, since I had a Ph.D. in listening, I said, “Now, let us get this straight. You talk, I listen.”

He said, “Well, you may have to say hello.”

I said, “I think I can handle that.”

So that afternoon for the first time in my life, I went soul winning.

Jesse Cobb and I knocked on the door. A big high school football player, tackle on the Adamson High School football team named Kenneth Florence, came to the door. Kenneth looked down at Jesse and at me. Jesse looked up to Kenneth and said, “Kenneth Florence?”

“Yes, sir.”

“My name is Jesse Cobb.”

“How do you do, sir?”

“And this is Jack Hyles.”

I generated all the extroversion at my disposal and said, “Hello.”

“Kenneth, Jack here wants to say a few words to you.”

Stuttering, I said, “Kenneth, will you go to church tonight?”

Jesse said Kenneth said, “Yes, I will.”

And I said, “You will?”

Kenneth said, “Yes, I will.”

I said, “I will come back and get you at seven o’clock tonight.”

At seven o’clock that night I went by to get Kenneth Florence. For the first time in my life I knew that God had given me a soul I had to win. I didn’t know one single Scripture of the Roman Road. I had never taken a soul-winning course. I had no idea in this world what to do.

The sermon was finished. I put my arm around Kenneth’s big, broad shoulders and said, “Kenneth, would…would…wouldn’t you like to be saved?”

He said, “Yes, I would.”

I said, “I can’t tell you how, but if you will come with me, the preacher can. Follow me.”

We went down this aisle. The pastor met me. I said, “Pastor, Kenneth wants to be saved.” I then turned and walked away. I got about two rows back, and the pastor said, “Hold it, Jack. Kenneth, Jack here wants to kneel and show you how to be saved.” No, Jack didn’t!

But I knelt and put my arms around Kenneth’s big, broad shoulders and said, “Kenneth, I do not know how to tell you how to be saved. John 3:16 says something like this: Jesus died for you because God loved you and gave Himself for you. Now, I believe that if you would be willing to ask God to forgive you and trust Him as your Savior, God would save you tonight.”

Thank God, somebody had already told Kenneth how to be saved. So Kenneth Florence bowed his head, and on his knees he began to pray something like this: “Father, thank you that this fellow is interested in me. I know I am a sinner. I know Jesus died for me, and I know that You, God, can save me, and I do now trust You as my Savior.”

While he was praying, something turned loose inside my soul! I tell you, the fireworks of Heaven began to ignite! The lightning flashed, the thunder rolled, the sparklers began to sparkle as I realized that here was something I could do. I couldn’t make the football team, but I could point a person to Heaven. I couldn’t make the senior play, but I could point a person to Heaven. I couldn’t get a date, but I could point a person to Heaven. I couldn’t make the basketball team (I did make the team, but because my legs were so skinny, people laughed at me, and I would not go on the floor); but I could point a person to Heaven.

I got off my knees and said, “Dear God, this is something a little introvert can do. This is something ‘Jackie boy’ can do.”

There is not a man or woman or a boy or a girl in this house tonight who can’t point someone to Jesus Christ…I am saying, there was a call in my breast, a call from within! I am praying that God tonight will give you that call, burning in your soul, and you will leave this place determined to be a soul winner. *

Reflect

Read from your Bible what Peter and John said in Acts 4:20.

Respond

Prayerfully consider what you have read today. Then take a few moments to pray for yourself, your students, and others with whom you serve in ministry.

Remember

When David Livingstone returned from Africa to England for a visit, he recounted some of the hardships which he had endured. Then he added, “The thing that kept me alive, the thing that kept me going, were the words of Jesus, ‘Lo, I am with you always.’”

Yes, in the midst of the fiery trials of life, we are not alone and even though David Livingstone later died on the mission field, he gave his life in service to the Lord.**

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*Curtis Hutson, ed., Great Preaching on Soul Winning, (Murfreesboro, TN: Sword of the Lord Publishers, 1989), p. 44-46.
**W. Herschel Ford, Sermons You Can Preach on John, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1958) p. 329.

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A Call From Below

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Taken from a message preached by Jack Hyles:

My father was an alcoholic. He is buried tonight in a drunkard’s grave in Italy, Texas. My father heard me preach two sermons, one on Sunday morning and one on Sunday night, New Year’s Day, 1949.

New Year’s Eve I got burdened for my dad. So I got in my car in Marshall, Texas, and drove 150 miles to Dallas to the Hunt Saloon where my dad was a bartender and a drunk…My dad was sitting at the bar drinking beer. He was a big man, weighing 235 pound, and the strongest man I ever knew.

I said, “Dad, this is Saturday night, New Year’s Eve, 1949. I am going to take you back today to Marshall, Texas, to hear me preach tomorrow.”

My dad cursed me. “I’m not going to go and hear any preacher preach.”

“Dad, you weigh 235 pounds, and I weigh a little over half that. But we are going to have a brawl here in this bar, or you are going to go with me to Marshall, Texas.”

He realized that I meant business. I gave him enough coffee to sober him up a bit; then we got in the car and I took him to Marshall, Texas. On New Year’s Eve, 1949, my father went on our watch night service with us. We got on buses and rode around town and sang songs and had a wonderful time. We came back to church and prayed the old year out and the new year in.

Sunday was on New Year’s Day that year. I stood to preach, and my dad sat on the fourth row from the front. The invitation time came, and he clawed the pew in conviction. I pleaded for him to come, but he would not.

That afternoon we went for a walk out in the pasture. I put my arms around his shoulder and said, “Dad, I want to see you be a Christian more than I want anything in the world. Dad, will you not be saved?”

My dad opened the joybells of Heaven when he said, “Son, I am going to get saved. I am going to go back to Dallas and sell out. I am going to move to Marshall. I am going to buy me a little fruit stand or a small grocery store and set up a little business here. I am going to get saved in the spring and let you baptize me.”

I said, “Dad, that is wonderful! That is good enough for me.”

I wish I could relive that afternoon. I wish I had a chance to try again. I thought he had plenty of time. He was only 62. I clapped my hands. The last word my dad said when he got out of the car on Washington Street in Dallas, Texas, was, “Son, I am going to let you baptize me in the spring.”

Every time I baptized that winter, I heard him say, “Son, I am going to let you baptize me in the spring.”

On May 3, 1950, about ten o’clock in the morning, my telephone rang. The operator said, “Reverend Jack Hyles?”

“This is Brother Hyles.”

“Go ahead, sir.”

A man’s voice said, “My name is Smith. Reverend Hyles, I worked with your dad. We hung dry wall together. He was up on a sawhorse this morning hanging dry wall on the ceiling, and he just a few minutes ago dropped dead with a heart attack.”

I didn’t say anything. I just put the phone down.

“Son, I am going to let you baptize me in the spring.”

I got in my car and drove back to Dallas, Texas, to the O’Neil Funeral Home.

My dad was buried in Italy, Texas.

Several months passed. One Sunday night past midnight there came a knock on the door of my study. I went to the door, and my only sister was at the door weeping. “Earlyne, is it Mother?”

“No, Jack. Would you tell me how to be saved?”

“Sure I will.” And I told my only sister how to be saved, and she was saved in my study about one o’clock in the morning.

After she got saved I said, “Earlyne, why tonight? You could have been saved anytime through these years. Why did you choose tonight, and why did you come so late at night to get saved?”

She said, “Jack, you know that I was daddy’s pet.”

“That is right.”

“Daddy did not care much for you, Jack, but he loved me very much.”

“That is right, Sister.”

“Jack, when dad died, I thought I would die too. I couldn’t sleep at night. I lost weight. I cried almost every waking hour. I had a dream shortly after he died. I dreamed that I was taken into a big building, about like this, by a heavenly creature up to the second floor of that building. I was taken to a corner. There I saw a casket. I looked in. The corpse had a look of peace on its face. There was a casket next to that. In that casket was a corpse. That corpse had a look of peace on its face. And the next and the next and the next. The entire wall was lined with caskets, and in each was a corpse. And on each face a look of peace. The same thing across that wall and across this wall.”

She said, “Jack, we got to the last casket, and the heavenly creature said, “You can’t look in that one.”

“I said, ‘I must. I have to look at all of them.’ The creature said, ‘No, you can’t look in that one.’”

She said, “Jack, I saw two hands raise themselves above the casket. They were daddy’s hands. Jack, daddy was saying, ‘Sister! Sister! Sister!’

“I broke away from the creature and went over and looked in daddy’s face. Jack, his face was writhing in pain, and daddy was saying. ‘Sister! Sister! I—I—I—ju—j—bu—bu—I—I—Sister, Sister!’ I said, ‘Daddy, what is it? Tell me!” He said, ‘Sister, Sister!, I—I—I—eh—B—je—je—be—, Sister, Sister!”

She said, “Jack, the creature took me then, but I knew what daddy was saying. When I heard you preach tonight on the rich man in Hell who said to go tell my five brothers not to come here, I knew that daddy was telling me not to come to Hell where he was.”

And now for these twenty-four and a half years, the thing that has motivated my life and my ministry has been the fact that somewhere in the torments of the unprepared, my daddy says, “Jack, tell them all not to come here. Tell them all! Tell them all! Tell them all!”*

Reflect

Read Luke 16:19-31 from your Bible. 

Respond

Prayerfully consider what you have read today. Then take a few moments to pray for yourself, your students, and others with whom you serve in ministry.

Remember

A generation ago, Jim Elliot went from Wheaton College to become a missionary to the Aucas in Ecuador. Before he was killed, he wrote, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”**

Get all 52 Children’s Leader Devotions HERE

Find more children’s ministry resources and training at:
 www.330resources.org/children.

If these resources bless you, consider supporting this ministry:




*Hyles, Jack, “Four Calls for Soul Winning,” [1974], Hudson, Curtis, ed. . Great Preaching on Soul Winning, (Murfreesboro, TN: Sword of the Lord Publishers, 1989), p. 54-57.
**Billy Graham, Approaching Hoofbeats: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1983), pp. 94-95.

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