I'd like to begin with a word of prayer.

Almighty God and Father in Heaven.

We come to moments like this which are short and we will be here and then we will be gone and tremble at the prospect that it could all be in

vain or wasted or misleading. And yet and yet thrill at the prospect that a seed might be sewn in a heart that could grow up and bear

fruit in a lifetime of faithfulness that the latter be the case and that this

Father, that you would grant that the latter be the case and that this effort to make

plain the goal and ground and gift and gravity of preaching would bear fruit 30, 60, a hundredfold, beyond its worth because of your mercy.

And I ask this in the name of your son, our Lord Jesus.

Amen. In September of 1966 I was a junior at Wheaton College and I had just finished a summer school in chemistry.

I was head over heels in love with Noel,

who is sitting right here in the third fourth row and to whom I will have been married 20 years now in December.

And I was sicker than I have ever been before or since with mononucleosis and therefore quarantined

for three weeks in the health center at Wheaton College about 200 yards from the pulpit of Edmon Chapel.

In those days, Wheaton began its fall semesters with Spiritual Emphasis Week. I think you do too.

And the speaker, September 1966, was John Harold Aikenge.

And I lay there on my bed with these big yellow tonsils unable to go and the radio station WETN carried the messages.

That was the first and last time I ever heard John Harrell Ocken Gee preach.

And those were three of the most crucial weeks of my life.

Because by the time those three weeks were over,

I had changed my goal in life from pre-med to pre-ministerial.

And I attribute that under God to the Ministry of John Harold Aiken Gay.

Because I can remember listening there on my bed

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