Melvin Hiatt

Surely there is appreciation in my heart that God gave me the privilege of being brought up in this Gospel. When I was a child, I was taught the right way to go. My parents were Christian people. They taught me the Word, taught me how to pray, and took me to Sunday school. I was brought to church at Front and Burnside as an infant. I don’t remember that, but I remember being in the nursery section at Sixth and Burnside, and hearing beautiful testimonies—true stories of people whose lives had been changed. Those stories got close to me. God used them to talk to my heart and convict me when I was very young. I can still remember things I did at that age for which God condemned me.

I was sick one day, and I knew I wanted to go to Heaven if I died. I didn’t want to go to Hell. That day conviction gripped my heart.  I realized that it was not only my mother’s prayers or my father’s prayers, or the fact that I went to Sunday school that was going to get me into Heaven; I was going to have to make a decision to fully surrender to God myself. I said, “Mother, I want to pray.” I knelt at her knee and the Lord saved me.

I was five years old that day when I got down on my two knees and prayed my way through to victory. God came into my life and made just as great a change as if I had been a drunkard or a dope fiend. When God takes sin out of a life, you can’t help but know it, and everybody else knows it, too. It means something to be a real Christian, to have the Lord fill your heart. When that happens, you don’t have a problem with the world anymore, because the things you wanted before, you don’t want anymore. You have new desires and new hopes. That is what God planted in my heart. I’m so glad He talked to me and drew me to Him when I was young.

God took care of me as I grew. He led me along. He sanctified me and baptized me with His Holy Spirit. I thank God for the power in prayer, and I thank God for the altar of prayer. One thing has stood out to me over the years: there is an altar; there is a place to pray. The altar was a blessing to me during my teen years. I spent time there, and I found out that it was a great place to be. The Lord blessed me and He blessed others around, and I learned that the altar is where the Lord really comes down and visits His people.

God gave us back our oldest son when he was about six or seven years old.

At thirteen years of age I was at the altar praying and I said, “Lord, You’ve been so good to me. What can I do for You?” That very morning, right at the prayer bench, I was tapped on the shoulder by a brother in the church who said, “Would you like to be a book boy?” Praise God; He answered my prayer, and I was able to serve God in my teen years by picking up hymn books after the services.

During World War II, I spent three-and-a-half years in the Navy—out where there was sin, wickedness, and vileness on every hand. God can keep a person; He was there with me. Though I was thousands of miles away from home, I could feel the prayers of God’s people. One Sunday night during camp meeting time, I was on guard duty. Out there on the deck alone in the dark, I heard the notes of a hymn, “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” float out over the air. It must have come from the drill hall. I thought about all the saints at camp meeting praying for the boys in the war. I knew they had me in their prayers, too. How those words went home to my heart! The tears rolled down my cheeks.    

I have proved that God can keep a person in the business world, too. I worked among the engineers in Seattle, and on the job I didn’t have to back down for my religion. When the cigarettes and the parties came around I didn’t have to say, “Yes, I am coming,” but I had something that said, “No,” and stayed with it.

The Lord has been good to me. He actually preserved my life. When I was about thirty-eight years old, I lay in bed with a heart problem that was very severe. It had been going on for a previous twenty years. The doctor told me I better not put myself in any stressful situations. The people of God prayed, and God healed me. Thank God I haven’t had one serious incident since.

God has also given me back my wife three different times when she was so low she could have passed. Now we’ve had sixty-three years together. God is good.

God gave us back our oldest son when he was about six or seven years old. He had a fever of 107 degrees. We had him anointed and prayed for, and it seemed that he got worse. That evening, the doctor was there. As we stood in his room, we saw that his eyes were blank; he was dying. I took my wife’s arm as she cried out, and we went into the bedroom and knelt and prayed. We had committed our son to the Lord, so we said, “Lord, You gave him to us and You can have him if You want him, but the neighbors around here know that we believe You can heal him.” Twenty minutes later, his fever broke. God healed that young man, and that was a measured record temperature. God gave him back to us, and not only that, he was back to school in one week with no ill effects.

I have never seen one day that I wanted to go back into sin, not one day that I wanted to turn away from the Lord. It is the desire of my heart to keep marching on. There is a fire burning in my soul today, and I don’t think there is anything that can put it out. With God’s help it will be there until Jesus comes.