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Body of Christ Discovered: A Scripture-based guide for revitalizing a failing or struggling local church.
Blog: Choose Whom You Will Serve. Part one of our series on life's choices.
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Full-length Hymn Midis These are distinct from the midis included with the hymn lyrics files, which are quite short.
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Personal Testimony
Gary W Cavendish, Jesus Is the Bridge Ministries
Gary with sister Pat and niece Diana, 2006
Life for me began in a run-down house in the hills of West Virginia. My father was a farmer and some-time timber man, a hard-working man afflicted by addiction to alcohol. Mother was a Christian, and my early exposure to the Christian faith came about largely because of her influence. Ours was a large family, altogether with seven girls and four boys, one of whom died at age four, and another at age 30. Our diet was basic and simple, consisting largely of potatoes, beans, biscuits, and such vegetables and meat as our little farm provided from time to time. Life was hard, and food was often scarce. In winter, we slept in unheated bedrooms under mounds of quilts and coats. Running water was unheard of; we carried what we needed in buckets from a near-by spring.
I attended church at a little Methodist church across a hollow, about half a mile from where we lived. In the early days, I remember a full church, but as the years went on the numbers declined. Part of this was because many people moved away from our rural area, but part was because of a cooling of religious fervor. A part of life in our country church was the yearly revival, several days of services featuring an invited evangelist. In October 1962, the preacher was a white-haired evangelist named Rev. Pennington. One night during the revival, during the invitation after the sermon, I gave my life to Christ. Since then, the story of that life has been the story of my relationship to the Lord.
It has been far from a smooth path. For many years, my relationship was a formal one, a ritualistic one, of pro-forma worship, rote prayers, and meaningless Bible reading. During my college years, I became convinced that I should become a preacher, a minister of the Word, a thought that dated back to my childhood. I actually attended seminary after college for six weeks, but left after the presumed pillars of my faith collapsed. For the next two years, I doubted the very existence of God, and questioned all the truths I once accepted without question. When I finally came out of that period, it was with a stronger faith, one I came to accept on my own terms, not based on copying the faith of others. What I also carried with me, though, was a deep sense of guilt of having missed my calling.
As a result, I spent the nest thirty years and more of my life searching for that great ministry that would prove my worth to God. Along with this endless search for the ministry I never found, I carried over from my childhood the belief that I had to work to gain God's love. That was an extension of the sense I had as a child that I had to work to win my father's love, something I was never quite able to do despite excelling in school. Only within the last year (it is now 2006) have I been freed from that particular form of bondage, The Holy Spirit very clearly and specifically revealed to me what I had been doing. After being set free from the bonds of the past, I was able to see more clearly exactly what the Lord has in mind for me.
