RUN LIKE A CHAMPION

Sammy Tippit: I want to welcome you to this last session. Now we began this whole process with prayer, and we’re going to end this whole process with prayer. That’s vitally important. As we talk about being a co-laborer… Of course, we’ve talked about family in this last period, this last group of sessions. The reason is that we know that when you begin to serve the Lord, probably the first area of attack is going to be on your family.
On the flipside, I believe that when we pray for our families, God can do things that are so incredible. He will take and use us in ways in which we never dreamed or imagined, and he will use our families, use that prayer for our families. I want to share with you a personal story of what happened that I think will be a blessing to you. It’s something I discovered about my own life and prayer that I hadn’t known anything about.
For many years, I shared my testimony and said I did not grow up going to church, having a Christian background, or anything like that. But about 10 years ago, I discovered that it wasn’t true. I discovered it was totally wrong. I was just blown away by what I learned. You see, one day my sister called me and said to me, “Sammy, I received a letter from a man who said he has evidence he’s our brother.” I said, “What?”
The said, “Yes! He wants to talk to you!” I asked, “Well, where is he?” She said, “In Portugal.” I said, “What? I’m in the United States, and most people who lose their long-lost brother… He’s somewhere in Dallas or Fort Worth or somewhere in the United States. Here they’re saying he’s in Portugal?” I contacted him. We began some discussions, and he knew more about my family than I knew. You see, I grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Baton Rouge is the capital city of the state of Louisiana. It’s a fairly nice-sized city. My father, though, grew up in the rural areas of that state, way out in the country. When I was a little boy… I can remember going and visiting his family, but when I was young, about 10 or 11 years old, my dad became very ill. Then we quit traveling, so I really didn’t get to know his family that much. My grandparents had died before I was born, so I didn’t know them at all.
In fact, I’m named after my grandfather, Sam Tippit. I didn’t know my grandparents. I knew very little about my dad’s family. Then my dad died when I was in college, so I really didn’t know much about that. Then I became a Christian during this time and began preaching. Of course, as I said, I had never gone to church or had very seldom gone to church.
I didn’t have a real Christian background. I started preaching and ministering. Then here I was, nearly 60 years old, and this man contacted me and said, “Sammy, I have evidence that you’re my brother.” I said, “What?” As we talked about this, I found that one of his evidences was that he said he had done DNA testing and discovered that he came from the same Native American background I came from.
Well, as you can imagine, I said, “Look at me. Look at my skin. Look at my eyes. You’ve obviously never met me, because I’m not dark-skinned. I don’t have brown eyes. I don’t have those features of a Native American.” He asked, “Sammy, you don’t know your cousins and your aunt are members of the Nansemond Indian tribe?”
I said, “Mister, I don’t even know who the Nansemond Indian tribe is. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Well, this threw me into a position where I had to find out about my heritage, who I was. I began to research who I was, and I discovered a couple of things. The first thing was that this guy was not my brother, but everything else he said about my family was true.
I discovered that I came from this Native American background, and what was really interesting about this was that my fourth great-grandmother, gave the property for the first Baptist church west of the Mississippi River. I also discovered that my third great-grandmother and great- grandfather were part of starting that church. It was started among the people who were from this mixed-race background. As I learned this, I was just overwhelmed.
I had no idea I had any kind of heritage like that, but there was something even more important to me that I learned. I learned that my grandmother, my dad’s mother, was a descendent of these people. Eliza Bass Tippit was her name. The only thing written about her life was that she was a woman of prayer and that she prayed.
In fact, my aunt wrote a poem about her when she was a little girl. She was working in the barn, and she heard my grandmother talking to someone about things so intimate that she ought not to have been telling anybody about them. So she peeked around the door, and she saw my grandmother talking to Jesus, sharing with Jesus the burdens of her heart.
She was a woman of prayer. Sam Tippit was a man who loved God, and he loved to go to revival meetings. He had put the family into wagons and carried them to hear preachers preach. They just loved Jesus. I couldn’t believe it, because my dad really didn’t go to church much at all. I can’t remember more than maybe a couple of times after I became a Christian that he came to hear me, and that was it. So I don’t remember.
I thought, “What happened? What happened to my dad?” I thought, “I wonder what my grandmother was thinking.” Here she was… My dad went away to World War II, and right before he went away, she died of cancer. I was thinking, “What was she thinking when she died? Here my dad had walked away from everything, turned his back on everything and walked away from it all.” Then the Lord spoke to my heart. This is what he said.
“She died not having seen but having believed.” She died not having seen my dad turn back to him but having believed he would. Because, you see, what happened was that 23 years after my grandmother died, I went to a church. I wasn’t searching for God that night, but God was searching for me. God spoke to my heart, and that night Jesus Christ came into my life.
Then just within a couple of years after that, some men from my church came to our home and sat down at my dad’s bedside. He was dying. They led him to faith in Jesus Christ, and he gave his heart to Christ. My grandmother died not having seen the answer to her prayers but having believed, and God saved my dad. Not only did he save my dad, but he saved a grandson she never met, a grandson she never had any contact with.
Now that grandson has gone to more than 80 countries, preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. You know what’s amazing? The very heartbeat of our ministry has been in prayer. I wanted to go and find that place where my grandmother had prayed, so I called some of my cousins. They told me they knew where it was. They brought me out to that spot where my grandmother would go to seek the face of God. That was a very special spot for her.
We went out there, and I’ll never forget one of my cousins telling me he had met an old preacher one time who had talked about our grandmother and said that when she would pray at church, she would pray with such fervor that the doors would rattle. Man, when he told me that, God spoke to me and said, “Sammy, your prayers for your children, your grandchildren, and the generations to come will impact the nations.”
My grandmother has never written a book. She has no big name. Nobody knew her. This poor little mixed-race woman who loved God, loved her family, prayed, wept, and cried out to God for her family… God used her to touch my life 23 years later, and here I am 50 years after that. I’m talking to you 73 years later about what God did in my life.
Oh, there is power in prayer. Don’t give up. I don’t care if you don’t see the answer to your prayer right now. Don’t give up. Keep praying. Don’t be discouraged. God will hear, and God will answer. Make prayer the centerpiece of what you do. Pray for your family. Pray for those who you’re helping to grow in Christ. God bless you, and keep praying.