The Reshaping of
Priorities
How is the Master Potter at work reshaping priorities? Does He do it only as we read the Bible and pray? Does He use friends, and even our enemies? Or does the Master Potter sometimes just burst into our lives and dramatically reshape what we're about?
It seems there are several levels at which priorities are reshaped. The most dramatic reshaping of priorities often occurs at the time we commit our lives to the Master Potter. There may also be a reshaping of vocational priorities at one or more stages of our lives. And when we wander away from the priorities once they are established, He attempts to stop us and begin reshaping them once again. At least, that's how I've experienced it — but is there biblical basis for it?
Possibly the most dramatic biblical example of God's reshaping a person's priorities is found in the book of Acts. In an earlier chapter we presented the apostle Paul's illustrious background as a pure Pharisee, with his zeal for Jehovah demonstrated in the intensity with which he persecuted people of the Way. As far as Paul was concerned, the purity of the Hebrew
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faith and the ethnic expression of it were in danger of eroding if this new sect gained a strong foothold. Having people of the Way, or Christians, as they were first called at Antioch, killed was the the only way to prevent the infection from spreading.
Saul's first priority, as he saw it, was to create such terror, such fear of being arrested among people of the Way that they would back off and become a silent minority. With arrest warrants in hand, and accompanied by a party of similar Jewish zealots, he headed north to Damascus.
New Priority Announced
The Lord looked down at this party of zealots and set about changing priorities in a dramatic way. A blinding light flashed from heaven. Saul fell to the ground and heard a voice questioning his priorities: "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?" (Acts 9:4).
That produced a counterquestion related to authority: "Who are You, Lord?"( Acts 9:5).
The answer must have totally confused this Hebrew zealot, for it questioned all of his assumptions about Jesus. Once considered a figment of people's imagination, the symbol of a false cult that threatened society, the name Jesus now represented a new kind of authority.
"I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against the goads" (Acts 9:5).
Then came the kicker. "Arise and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do" (Acts 9:6).
No ifs, ands, or buts were permitted. Get up and go. You will get new marching orders. That new priority was presented first to Ananias, who presented it
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to Saul: "Go, for he is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear My name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name's sake" (Acts 9:15-16).
After Saul's conversion, his priorities changed from following his own ideas to listening for the leading of the Holy Spirit. No longer was he Saul of Tarsus, an imposing figure of human intellect and prideful arrogance, but Paul, a lowly servant, willing to move in keeping with the Master Potter's commands. He had embarked on the path of humility, so that eventually he would say:
But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ. (Phil. 3:7-8)
So it happened with Saul, who became Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles. But does it happen today as well? Does the Master Potter initiate that kind of major reshaping of priorities even today?
Yes, especially if you have a totally wrong set of priorities from God's perspective. The Lord's "voice" for me was Dr. Jack MacArthur, my Ananias was my son, Tom. Just as Saul seemed to have known enough about Jesus to recognize what the Master Potter was all about, so also I knew enough about what God wanted of me. I just had to accept that His will was best for me, that His priorities were more important than mine.
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God had to get me to the place where I recognized that God is the only one who can make my life count. He let me experience failure in the area that counted most to me — my family — as I experienced failure after failure in marriage. Yet He let me have success in my career long enough to let me know that it never would satisfy me. Only He could satisfy me.
My way simply was not good enough. No one's way is good enough, for only God's way is perfect. Because of that I was absolutely miserable, as though a civil war were going on inside. What I did not realize was that, just as a lot of Jerusalem believers must have been praying for Saul's conversion, a growing number of Christians were praying for me.
My son, Tom, began praying very specifically for me when he was sixteen. He asked a friend who attended a Bible study at the ranch owned by Leonard and Frances Eilers to pray for me. The Eilers had others praying for me as well. I'm convinced that's why I was so miserable.
Possibly because I knew what had happened to Saul, that he had become a missionary to the Gentiles, I labored under the delusion that if I heeded God's call I, too, would have to become a missionary. I would probably, I thought, need to go to innermost Africa. As far as I was concerned, that would be a waste of my talents. Little did I know that God' plan for me would take me as a "missionary" to Americans and the British instead, and that the talents and abilities He had given me fit into that plan perfectly.
What Was Important Changed
When I came back to the Lord, the things that had been so vital to me were no longer important. It's not
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that I thought, "Now I will be humble." Rather, I had a different center. As Jesus clearly teaches, he that is forgiven much, loves much (see Luke 7:41-47).
Very early in my Christian experience, God showed me where my focus should be when I used the talents He had given me. We had helped found the Hollywood Christian Group. Dick Halverson, for many years the Chaplain to the U.S. Senate, was the first executive director. He understood Hollywood people, for he used to sing with dance bands before coming to know Christ.
At one of our meetings, Dick sang a hymn in a popular singing style — quite different from how it was normally sung in church. I was blown away. A new Christian, I walked up to him and said, "Dick, I didn't know you could sing like that." He looked me right in the eye and simply said, "Praise the Lord."
I thought, "What is the matter with this man? Is he nuts? Can't he take a compliment?" But I understand him now. Praise is hard to accept. It is harder to accept than criticism, because it can get to you. Criticism stings and makes you look to see if is right.
Dick's response to my comment changed the way I responded after a concert. I never gave a concert after that without pointing my finger up at the finish. What I was saying was, "Never mind me. I'll give the praise to Him."
Change in Family Priorities
When I said to the Lord, "I'm Yours, shape me as You will. Whatever it takes, I'm willing," I also did not realize He would change my family priorities. Yes, I did recognize that His first priority was the family
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ily He had given me in Roy's children. They were very important to me. They remained my first priority even though I was eventually invited back to do several more westerns as Roy's leading lady (due to public demand). But I wanted more children of my own.
God said, "Okay, I'll give you a little girl. But I'll use her to change your priorities on family." When Robin Elizabeth was born with Down's syndrome and a congenital heart defect, He awakened more than the usual mother instinct in me. Coupled with my experience with Nancy Hamilton, the little girl with the enlarged feet and hands, He opened my eyes to the needs of what we then called "retarded" children; today we call them special children, or children with disabilities.
I had wanted a little girl to be proud of and to show off — every mother does. After all, I had to keep up my image of success. God knew that would just feed my pride, so He sent me a little girl society was not proud of and kept hidden. When publicity people would come to our ranch to take pictures, they left Robin out of the pictures at our request. I was broken-hearted that I could not show off my special little girl like other mothers did. But God used that to teach me humility, that He had special love for those who need us the most.
When we had Robin, Roy and I faced a critical decision. I was thirty-five and he thirty-six when we married. I was Rh-negative, and he was Rh-positive. Even though the doctor said that our next child could be fine, we decided not to take the chance. We decided to adopt children, especially since Roy's first child, Cheryl, had been adopted and was doing well.
God truly works in amazing ways as the Master
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Potter. He started shaping my desires even before Robin died. About four months before Robin died, I had to go to Texas because of the illness of my father. While there, my sister-in-law accompanied me to Hope Cottage in Dallas, where Roy had found Cheryl, and I wanted to find out more about where she had come from.
Preview of Coming Attractions
While at Hope Cottage, we asked if we could see the babies. Looking them over, my sister-in-law said, "Frances, come here and let me show you something. Now, if I was going to adopt a baby, this is the baby I would want."
There lay a baby with light olive skin, big, vigorous and piercing eyes, and blue-black straight hair. She was everything Robin wasn't. Robin was like a little blonde angel. So I looked at this baby and said, "She's cute, isn't she?" I noticed her eyes following us all over the room.
That was in April, and Robin died in August. Soon after Robin died, Roy and I had an engagement in Madison Square Garden. We had to go — we were under contract. We stopped off in Texas to visit my mother just to get away from things. So Roy said, "Why don't we go to Hope Cottage and see the babies?" I said, "I don't want to think about another child. I want Robin." I was in the throes of "I don't want to talk about another baby." Eventually I said, "Okay, if you want me to go, I'll go."
When we got to the cottage steps, I said, "I wonder if they still have that little Indian baby." They had told me that she was Choctaw Indian, and Roy is part
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Choctaw. I rushed in to the nurse and asked her, "Is she still here?" The nurse said, "Yes, she is, Mrs. Rogers. She has just finished all her tests, and she's a winner. She's the pet of this place."
I left Roy and ran to where the babies were. I saw her and picked her up, and she jumped around in my arms. Roy came in, and I turned to him, "This is our child." He said, "Are you sure?" I said, "I'm sure." He responded, "If you're sure, I'm sure."
When we talked to the matron, we discovered that the baby had been promised to a women of influence in Dallas who had Indian blood. She was also coming to see the baby. I said impulsively, "She doesn't need her. We need her. She's never had a child, so she does not know what it is like to lose a child. We need a child. And she needs us. We have a family she will fit into." The matron said, "We'll see."
Success!
When we got to Madison Square Garden we received a phone call from the matron: "Mary is yours. We decided to let you have her."
We let out a war whoop — you could have heard us on Madison Avenue. I was so thrilled. Mary became Dodie when she joined us.
Remember, this was 1952, before all kinds of rules were established that make it almost impossible for families to adopt children. So you'll understand what happened on our way home from New York.
We had stopped in Cincinnati to do another show. There was a note at the motel to call such and such a phone number. For some reason Roy called the number, and the director of an orphanage answered. Roy
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asked, "You wouldn't have a boy four or five years old, or two or three, would you?" Roy was concerned that Dusty had no brothers — he had all those girls coming at him.
"Well," the director said, "we do have this little boy, but he has a number of things wrong with him, and I don't know if you would be interested."
Sandy had been terribly neglected and abused as a baby. He'd had rickets and had been abandoned three times before he was eight months old. Both parents were alcoholics and felons, and their three children had been placed in different homes.
Roy said, "Can you bring him to the show tonight? I'll have a guy waiting for you."
The director answered, "I'll be glad to." This woman had a daughter paralyzed from her waist down, and she had started the home because of her. Her little girl had watched us on television and wanted to see us. So her mother agreed to bring the little boy.
Howdy, Pardner
Roy came off the show that night, and there stood this little boy with the smile of an angel beside the little girl. The little boy stuck out his hand and said, "Howdy, pardner." Roy was overwhelmed.
We talked about that little boy for three hours that night. He had spent eight months with braces on his legs because of the rickets. The director said he was all right mentally, but a little slow in his reflexes. His walking and running were still not quite free or normal. So we wondered if we could really help him become a normal little boy. Would it be fair to the other
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children to bring another "special child" into our home after the experience with Robin, and with Cheryl about to enter adolescence, Linda Lou about eight or nine, and Dusty six?
Roy said in a dreamy voice, "Anybody can take a kid that's healthy, but who will take him? We'll take him if we can get him."
The next morning at nine we stood before a judge, signed the papers, and walked out of the courtroom with a brand-new son.
We drove out of Cincinnati with him. Then we picked up Dodie in Dallas and flew into Los Angeles with two new children in our arms. Talk about having the Master Potter change your family priorities!
We've got pictures of the expression on Dusty's face when we came down the airplane steps with this little boy whom we had named Sandy. He seems to be saying, "I don't know if I am going to like him. Does he want to take my place?"
Becoming Brothers
That summer Roy took them both on a fishing and hunting trip. For two weeks they roughed it. They washed their clothes on the banks of the river, went swimming, and slept in the same sleeping bag. When they came home after two weeks, they were brothers. If someone said something bad about one, he got a whipping from both of them.
Life was not all roses with Sandy. He had a hard time trying to ride a tricycle. He was afraid to climb any high place. He had periodic spells of dizziness and vomiting. He also had enuresis, involuntary bedwetting, which was extremely trying for all of us. He
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was quite unable to awaken to go to the bathroom during the night, and we had to put on fresh bed linens every day. Many times I wept in shame over losing my temper with Sandy, especially when I remembered his unfailing good humor and sweet disposition. Yet Dusty and he had great fun together. Dusty made allowances for him, for he had been conditioned by Robin to understand handicaps.
Dodie was prone to croup. Remembering Robin, I watched Dodie like an old mother hen watches her one chick. There was a history of tuberculosis in her background, and I did not want to get that started.
When do you stop growing as a family? God had changed our priorities by having us add a native American girl and a physically disabled boy to our family. Going to Great Britain to help Billy Graham with his campaign brought us in contact with another future member of our family.
In Edinburgh we met Chief Constable William Merilees, who was the queen's personal guard in Scotland. He had read my book, Angel Unaware, and came to see us. He thanked us for writing the book, since his first grandson was a Down's syndrome child. He said in his broad Scots brogue, "I want you to see my children." He was active in the Church of Scotland orphanage called Dunforth and told us, "I want to take you out there to see my kiddies, and then we'll have an ice cream." So on Sunday afternoon we went to the home.
Our Family Goes International
There we met Marion, thirteen at the time. Her parents were divorced when she was a little girl. The
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children had been split up, and she had been put in this home. At fifteen she would be able to decide which parent to stay with. Marion had a husky voice and sang for us in a thick Scottish burr, "Who will buy my pretty flowers?"
I was overcome and started bawling and crying. It was Dodie's first birthday, and I was not home to be with her. Roy was moved as well. So we asked if we could take Marion to the U.S. for just a goodwill tour, as a child who had impressed us the most as an orphan. She came over the following summer.
Once in America, she asked if she could stay and go to school for a semester. So we got permission to keep her until Christmas. Then she wanted to stay until June. Finally we received permission to be her foster parents until she was twenty-one.
Then we heard about Korean orphans, so we contacted Bob Pierce of World Vision. We were filling an engagement at the Houston Fat Stock Show when a letter came from Bob Pierce, with a picture of a little Korean orphan he thought might fit into our multi-cultural home. She was named In Ai Lee, and had a Dutch bob, soft brown eyes, and a very, very solemn expression. We wanted her! She could be a good companion for Dodie.
We met Bob at the airport to welcome our new little girl. We learned that racially mixed children were treated horribly in her home country because they were of mixed races. But In Ai Lee nestled quickly into Roy's arms when he took her.
Again it would take time. Initially Debbie, as we had decided to call her, looked at people with an uninterested expression that never changed. No one could make her smile. Dodie and she looked each
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other over in sullen silence, with inscrutable eyes. A balloon changed that. At the studio set we had stopped off at on the way home a man gave her a balloon, and Debbie grinned as wide as the Mississippi River. She could smile!
In time Debbie learned to sleep in a bed, and not on the floor, as she had in Korea. She knew very few words of English when she came, and our communication was limited until the day she suddenly stopped speaking Korean and burst forth in fluent English.
Life priorities, family priorities. The Master Potter was shaping us for a truly unique ministry. But He also helped us to gain a new priority in our entertaining. Although Roy and I had always insisted on being part of clean entertainment, giving our life to the Master Potter changed that focus for us as well. We decided to add a "God and Country" number to our program, a song that was clearly inspirational and expressed our faith while not being overbearing in its message.
A major network asked us to do a variety show. They told us we could do whatever we wanted on it; they would not question what we did. We did the first show of the thirteen-week series at the Seattle World's Fair. It was beautiful, with "How Great Thou Art" as our closing number. The Ralph Carmichael orchestra performed with an incredibly blue sky with billowing clouds as background.
Taking a Stand
After the dress rehearsal the phone call from the network in New York fairly sizzled. Art Rush, our manager, got the call. He came and said to us, "You're
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going to have to take the word Christ out of the song. New York says it has to come out."
I said, "I am not deleting Christ. I am not doing it! Sorry. Tell them that. That's like tampering with "Rock of Ages'".
We left it in. But it really set us off on the wrong note with the network. So on every show that was just a little long they would try to chop out the Christian bit in the closing, but Roy would adamantly refuse to let them do it. When our thirteen weeks were up, they refused to renew our option for another thirteen weeks.
We had a similar experience in New York's Madison Square Garden. I'll let Roy tell what happened there:
"In that show I had a spot where I blacked out the turf and then threw a cross with lights on it while I sang 'Peace in the Valley.' The head of Madison Square Garden came into the dressing room and said, 'You can't put that cross in here. We have a lot of Jewish people here.'
"I said, 'We're not preaching. We're just telling how we feel. It's in the song, and we thought it would be effective.'
"He responded, 'We don't think you should put it in there.'
"I said, 'Well, either we put it in there, or we go home. If you don't want to use our show, we'll go home.'
"Grudgingly the manager said, "Well, go ahead and try it.'
"Half of the Catholics in New York must have shown up for that matinee. When the cross hit the
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floor, they nearly tore the house down. So then they said to leave it."
Making the Master our first priority let us experience some of the persecution Christians who give Him first place have always had. Look what the Lord paid for our salvation. For me the cost was never too much. We also discovered that the Master Potter was not only shaping us — He also took care of us.
Priorities. Before I gave myself wholeheartedly to the Master Potter, my priority was achieving my goals. Yet nothing ever quite satisfied me. It seemed like I was always not doing what I should do and doing what I shouldn't do. That all changed when Jesus Christ changed my priorities to living for Him, doing His will. And the rewards over the past forty-six years have been incredible. But that's for another chapter, where I'll let you see what happened with the children God entrusted to our care. Absolutely amazing!
We've briefly hinted at what the changed priorities meant for my professional ambitions. In the next chapter we'll look at how letting the Master Potter take over can change our personal ambitions.
Reflecting on the Shaping
1. Using the reshaping of priorities in the apostle Paul's life as an example, what priorities have been, or need to be, changed in your life?
2. In what area have you resisted the priorities you know the Master Potter is setting for you?
3. If you were to treat your spouse as a higher priority, how might it change your relationship?
4. If you love children and are childless, how might the Master Potter want to change your priorities?
5. How can you show your priorities as a believer in your work environment?
