God’s Doctor

The Episcopal priest sat across from me at the dining table in our gracious home near the beaches of Galveston. His tale was spellbinding. Here were stories of a God who was not trapped in a 2,000-year-old book but Who was alive today and doing amazing things. The priest’s name was Graham Pulkingham.

I began thinking to myself, That’s Bible! That’s just like it says in the Bible! I began to say some things to God. At that time it was “God,” which is a distant and impersonal title for Him compared to “Lord” or “Jesus” or “Father.” I wasn’t yet able to call Him “Lord” and I wasn’t speaking to Jesus. Next, I prayed, God, I want that…that which Graham has. I want that.

How had I gotten to this point? I had met Graham while I was in medical school. Nancy and I had become Episcopalians and he was the Episcopal chaplain on the medical school campus. We were doing really well in life. I drove a new Plymouth Sports Fury every year; we had a nice, big, fancy home and this farm boy was now “Doctor Eckert” with all of society’s rank and privileges. We enjoyed a private club in Galveston and I had a partnership in a liquor store. I decided to contact Graham, who had become the rector at Church of the Redeemer Episcopal on the east side of Houston. I called and asked if he and Betty could come for dinner at our home in Alta Loma, just west of Galveston. It was the fall of 1964 and I was intent on showing him what a great life I had going. After supper when the kids were playing elsewhere, we four lingered around the table.

“Graham,” I asked him, “what’s been going on since the last time we were together?” He started telling me about God leading him, speaking to him and working through him. Physical, mental and situational miracles were happening before his eyes. The story of Graham’s stunning personal transformation and that of Redeemer was just getting out. At first, the bishop had told Graham to just give Redeemer, then a dying parish, a decent burial. Graham reached out to the neighborhood, met up with the local gangs, even rode with them in their cars, but nothing changed in their lives. These neighborhood kids ended up wrecking the church.

Meanwhile, Pentecostal types began inexplicably seeking Graham and telling him to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. Graham began finding verses popping out at him in the Bible about this. He went to New York to visit David Wilkerson, a Pentecostal minister, and saw the powerlessness of the traditional church. Then Wilkerson and a friend prayed over him. He felt a “swoosh,” as if he was cleaned out from head to toe, and began weeping. He knew there’d been a change. Graham began seeing changes in the Eastwood gang leaders when he talked to them about Jesus, and he began to see healing miracles at Redeemer.

I listened patiently for a while. As I began to get the picture he was painting, it really disturbed me. What’s wrong with my friend, I thought. Does he have some mental disturbance? Is he delusional? I dismissed that as I had also dismissed the possibility of him being a rank liar. He talked for two hours. After the first hour, it began to dawn on me that his testimony was scriptural. They were things that had also happened in the Bible.

Having been raised in the Baptist church, I knew all those Bible stories about miracles. But for me, those things were in the distant, non-functional, unreal past. Here was Graham, a respected and trusted friend, seated across the table, in living color, telling me of his having seen and participated in actual, biblical-type miracles. For the first time in my life, I was hearing that aspect of the Gospel from someone who could testify to its present reality and applicability. I made fun of him, saying, “Graham, you need to see a doctor, and you know which kind,” pointing to my head. I laid into him in that way but he kept talking. During the second hour of Graham’s story, I started having this interior conversation with the Lord. I saw a relationship between Graham and “God” and I wanted it. So I said those things to “God” and then I described it to Him, saying, I want that relationship that Graham has. I want you to be number one in my life.

Immediately, I felt terrible. I almost felt like I had an upset and burning stomach. I felt sick! I knew I had just said something absolutely wrong. After I thought about it a bit, the Lord showed me that what I had said was indeed off base. He didn’t want to be my Number One. He wanted to be my whole life. He didn’t want to have any competition with any numbers two, three and so forth. So I followed that with, I don’t want You to be my number one; I want You to be my whole life. It didn’t take long after that, just a few seconds later, when I said (I was still talking silently to God): In fact, if it’s not going to cost all of my life, if it’s not going to cost ALL OF ME, I’m not going to start.

Somehow, I saw the unsurpassed value of what the Lord was offering me. All of me had to go. My confidence at that point was that God could accomplish all of my “going.” It wasn’t like “I can do that; I can accomplish all of my going.” I knew the Lord could do it. The pressure was off of me and the transaction was made: All of You, God, for all of me.