Chapter 6
6 The Anointing To Preach..............................................................................
I remember how it shocked my Grandma when I announced,
"I'm going to be a preacher."
Grandma said, "Why, son, you can't preach—you can't talk!"
It was true. Because my heart didn't beat right and I would
pass out if I tried to exert myself, I had learned in my younger
years to sit around and keep my mouth shut.
In fact, the year before I became bedfast, Grandpa Drake
said one night at the supper table, "I saw your teacher Miss
Bessie Mae Hamilton today, and I asked, 'How is Kenneth
doing?'
"'Oh,' she said, 'Mr. Drake, he's just like he always was. If
you waited on him to say anything, he'd never say anything. In
fact, he could miss the class and nobody would ever know it.'"
That put an idea in my mind! I decided to try that out. I had
only two classes in the afternoon—Miss Bessie Mae's and
another—so two or three times a week I'd play hooky and go to
the show.
You know, they never did miss me. They never counted me
absent. Of course, after I got saved, I quit doing that. When I
went back to high school after my healing, I never missed a day.
But that's how quiet I was.
After I was saved and healed, I began to preach as a young
Baptist boy preacher. I knew I was called to preach, and the
anointing to preach would come upon me. I didn't have any
anointing to teach, and I didn't like teaching.
I'd pray, study, and prepare sermon outlines—and I've got
nearly all of them still. I don't preach some of them anymore, but
they represent all the light I had then. (God will bless you