Part 3 of Elder Cleveland’s inspirint personal testimony

Hartland Spring Convocation 2017

<p>Part 3 of Elder Cleveland’s inspirint personal testimony</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Hartland Institute of Health and Education

Charles Cleveland

The Life of a Rich Man without Money

So nice we can be together again for this final meeting.

What's it like to be a rich man without money?

I'd been in Self-Supporting Ministries for a few years.

When this lady came to see me on the campus of 1 of our institutions.

We came into Self-Supporting Ministries with a savings account, and at this time, we still had some.

This lady came up to me and she was from a Scandinavian country.

Her husband was an accountant at the institution.

The family had struggled all the time I ever knew them, to kind of make things work.

But she came up to me, and I don't know what her motive was, why she picked on me, But she came and she said to me, do you know what it's like to live without a penny in reserve?

And she just looked at me in a penetrating way as if I was to reveal my bank account.

But it got me thinking, what is it like to serve in a ministry when you don't have any reserves.

I was an entrepreneur before I was ever even a teenager.

I had a paper route when I was 9 years old until I was 15 and left home.

I was always building and selling things.

I was a mistletoe expert in the neighborhood.

And when I was married, I had learned to use my hands.

I had a little, all the way through college, I supported myself and my family.

A little Cleveland Custom Builders, a remodeling service.

When I left the seminary, I had a new car and a motorhome, and no debt.

So I didn't know what it might be like someday to not have a savings account, but I knew this, and it gave me peace not to worry about it.

I knew I was where God called me, and the rest was his problem.

I've always found a way to make it myself.

But you get in a situation sometimes you have no other choice but to rely on God.

And my wife, my family, and I could only focus we were where we believed God called us.

When I became an Adventist, I had made 1 pledge to the Lord, willingly.

I've mentioned it to you before, and it's a safe 1 if you trust God.

Lord, I'm willing to go wherever you call me.

I only ask that you make it clear through your providence that it is your will.

That's been our goal, that's been our motto.

And it's not a crazy commitment, And it didn't take me a year here and a year there.

We never, when we had a call to a certain location, we never looked left or right.

We never thought of leaving until we were called to leave.

You can't afford to look around when you've been called to ministry.

You need to focus on what you've been called to do.

As I became a new Adventist, and I had my dental technician background, and eventually by working in our hospital, surgical technician background.

My mother was a nurse, my sisters became nurses, and as you know, I married a nurse eventually.

In the 60s, when I became an Adventist, there were about 3 categories of what Adventist young people did.

Well, for me it was clear, I want to go into medicine.

I scrubbed on everything from tonsillectomies to appendectomies to C-sections to hysterectomies to heart surgery and brain surgery.

I could just picture somebody following in their footsteps.

We had some godly physicians in our hospital.

They were inspiring to me in many different ways.

But when Phoebe and I got married, we had 1 more year for her to finish her nursing degree at Paradise Valley.

But when she graduated, it was our plan to go back to Andrews University and I would take pre-medicine.

But during that year of her studies, I quietly went through some struggles.

In my prayer time with the Lord, we were happily married, we were meeting our budget, I was enjoying my work, We had much to be thankful for.

We were helping to pioneer a new church Outside of the Paradise Valley area in Imperial Beach, we were busy and happy.

But when I prayed, I often didn't have peace.

And the problem was that God was reminding me that he might have a different call for me.

And I had a hard time accepting that, because I thought I had it figured out.

And as I would pray, he would say in my mind, yes, medicine can be good.

We need medical missionaries, but for you, I have something different.

And that was a hard message to hear, because I was so sure I was doing this as an offering.

He said, if you really want to serve me, I want you to be a minister.

Why don't you get these nice Adventist boys that grew up that way?

Of course the Lord looked at me differently.

6 months I allowed this struggle to go on.

Finally, I had to try a few things to get this thing settled.

I decided I would take a piece of paper and I was going to put down all the reasons to go into medicine.

And I would be fair and put down the reasons to go into the ministry.

I would try to be as objective as possible.

So I got the paper out, I put 2 columns, and with my prejudice I put medicine first column, ministry second column, and then begin to write.

I took the easy part, I put why I was interested in medicine, and then I seriously tried to think, what were the reasons that I could go into ministry?

I couldn't tell you what they even were today, except that I was surprised that when I got done, I had as many for 1 as the other.

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The Life of a Rich Man without Money

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