“While the leader was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.” — John Wesley, May 24, 1738
God calls us to tell our story so that others may come to know Jesus Christ. “Hearts Strangely Warmed” was created to share these stories about transformational encounters with the Living God.
Rev. Tom Willard
My first full day of retirement was on my birthday, July 1, 2018. Sixty-five years ago, when my twin sister and I were born, my mother weighed ninety-four pounds before she became pregnant. After giving birth to my sister ten minutes before me, my mother went into a coma. I always tell folks she saw my sister and she was out for three days. When she awoke three days later, she had a curious story to tell. She remembered waking up part way through her coma and seeing herself and what she described as a “figure of light” that she identified as Jesus, walking together across the room. And as she watched herself and her Lord, Jesus turned and looked at her and whispered, “All will indeed be well.” In a couple of days, all was, indeed, well. It didn’t always stay that way.
When we were eighteen months old, I had a raging fever, and in those days, you didn’t rush to the hospital, you rushed to your doctor. And our doctor notified my mother and dad that it was unlikely that I would survive the night. And if they were people of prayer, he encouraged them to take me home and pray over me. So, my mom and dad took me home and knelt beside their bed and they prayed. And their prayer was simple, “In return for his good health, O Lord, we surrender him to your service.”
Thankfully, my parents chose not to share that story with me until I was eighteen years old and had already been called by Christ into ministry.
On August 30, 1970, I came to know Christ personally as my Lord and Savior as part of a youth revival that swept through Perry County where I lived. It was a part of a youth Sunday service in my home church, Liverpool Church. And the speaker that morning was seventeen years old and had just come back from a transformational experience at church camp. At the end of his message, he gave an invitation. And I was one of twenty-five young people that responded and came to know Christ that day.
Suddenly, the little youth fellowship group of about eight swelled within about six or eight weeks to sixty-four. And instead of meeting just on Sunday evenings, we went to the church every night of the week at nine o’clock, laid our heads on the kneeling pads, joined hands on our backs, and devoted ourselves to prayer.
As the months went by, three of us, all young men, all age eighteen, were called by God to do a summer singing ministry when we graduated from high school. And so I graduated from high school one day, and the next day left with my two friends, hitting the road not knowing where we were going except that we were going to follow the call of God.
That first night we set up in a campground, pulled out our guitars, and began to sing. And we watched as people from all over the campground began drawing closer and closer. And when we were done singing that night, the questions, naturally, started to flow, wondering why seventeen- and eighteen-year-old young men were singing about Jesus. And we had opportunity to share our witness for Jesus Christ. And we watched that summer and the next as hundreds and hundreds of people committed their lives to Jesus Christ as a result of what we were learning to do and to call ministry.
When I returned after the first summer, I was starting at Messiah College as a freshman. The college administration knew what I had been doing for the summer, and so my roommate and I formed a music ministry team for Messiah. My wife auditioned for that group. She made not just the group, but also my heart, and the very best partner in ministry I’ve ever had. Throughout college and seminary, we continued to have hands-on opportunities to do ministry in the name of Jesus.
On the day that I turned twenty-five, I was appointed to West Fairview United Methodist Church as their pastor, and went on to serve four churches over these forty years. All in Cumberland County, none more than eighteen miles from another. And I was blessed by God.
I learned and was taught by lay people what it meant to be a pastor. And I grew to love them, and they loved us. And together we served Jesus Christ side-by-side.
I’ve been blessed over these forty years with wonderful colleagues in ministry. Men and women of God who have challenged me, laughed with me, and cried with me.
On the day I turned fifty, I was appointed to the district that in those days was ‘miles above the rest.’ I spent six wonderful years working with the pastors and lay people of the Wellsboro District, and loved every minute of it. It was a time of great blessing. And they are still ‘miles above the rest.’
Over the past nine years I have been privileged to be in ministry with a congregation in a very small village eight hours out into the bush of Sierra Leone. I’ve been privileged to visit our sister church three times. The first time I came back with malaria. It took six months to get diagnosed, and I now have chronic kidney disease as a result of it. But I have to tell you that I wouldn’t trade any of it, regardless of the consequences, because of the privilege of learning to be in ministry alongside brothers and sisters in Christ in Sierra Leone.
Now after forty years of ministry, I have laid down the mantle of active service and entered retirement. This great church that we have served for all of these many years is on the brink of some of its greatest challenges and opportunities in my lifetime. My petit, now eighty-six year old mother, is suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease and battling severe dementia, so that I have become the keeper not just of my own memories, but of hers as well. And Christ is raising up a whole new generation of young women and men he is calling to serve him within the United Methodist Church. And I continue to hear that still, small voice whisper to me, as it did to my mother, “All will indeed be well.”
