Three Hugs from Adrian Rogers

I believe God puts his special servants in our path for his specific purposes. If God has your path crossed with one of his choice servants, you better believe, friend, there is both a reason and a purpose behind it in the sovereign plan of the Almighty. Usually, it's because God wants to bless you and use you.

I'll give you an example out of my own life. If you don't mind, I'll share this personal story with you. Even though I lived in Memphis, and although I was a member of Bellevue Baptist Church for about 20 years, I didn't know its pastor, Adrian Rogers, and he didn't know me from Adam, and our paths had never crossed on a personal level.

Then a day came that changed all that. God had called me to write the biography of J. Sidlow Baxter. Well, you say, how do you know that, preacher? A lot of people think God's talking to them, and they're just deceived.

How can you make a statement like that? Well, I know God called me to write it because, first, he had given me a writing gift, and he had spent years honing that gift in me, so I was a ready writer. Secondly, he opened up all the necessary doors to make this a reality. J. Sidlow Baxter's widow, Isa, gave me permission to do an authorized biography on his life.

I went out to Santa Barbara several times and spent time in the Baxter's home, and she gave me access to all his personal papers and all his personal friends. Plus, God gave me encouragement and enablement throughout it all, and he placed a seal of approval upon it by having Adrian Rogers write the foreword, and Stephen Offord write the preface, and having the prestigious Christian publisher, Baker Books, accept the manuscript and publish it. Need I say more? But I'm getting ahead of myself here in this story.

This story is about hugs. This story is about three hugs I received from Adrian Rogers. Each hug had a special blessing and a sovereign purpose behind it, and I'll preface this little story with this fact, friends.

All the time I spent at Bellevue Baptist Church, I never once saw Adrian Rogers hug anybody publicly. He shook a lot of hands. He patted people on the back a lot, but I never ever saw anybody hug someone publicly.

Oh, I know in private settings like funerals and weddings, he gave out hugs all the time to those who needed hugs. I'm just saying he didn't go around hugging everybody he came in contact with, but there are three instances in my life where Adrian Rogers hugged me, and there was a specific reason behind each one of those hugs, and I hope you're encouraged by this message, friends. The first hug occurred the very first time I met him.

His son David, who was a missionary to Spain, was a member of the Sunday school class I taught at Bellevue when at times he was back in America on furlough, and it was on one of these occasions, one of these furlough trips, that David invited me to a private get-together at a person's home to pray corporately for he and his family, his missionaries to Spain. It was a beautiful home owned by a wealthy Bellevue member, and there was lots of good food and games and fun and fellowship before we went to prayer, and Adrian Rogers was there with his wife Joyce to honor and pray for their son, and when I first got there, David introduced me to his dad by saying, Daddy, do you know Ernest Johnston? And Adrian boomed out in a loud voice, of course I know Ernest Johnston. He's one of my best friends.

Well, there was just a politician and Adrian talking because he didn't know me from nuts. At the end of the party, there was a long line of people standing who wanted to shake hands with Dr. Rogers and have some one-on-one time with him, and I stood in the shadows, and I waited for my opportunity to talk to him because I needed to ask him a question about J. Sidlow Baxter, who often spoke at Bellevue, and I knew he was friends with Dr. Rogers, and it was his biography I had just started to research so I could write it, and I wanted to find out what Adrian had to say about Sidlow on a certain thing. So after about 45 minutes of people getting in front of Adrian Rogers and shaking his hand and talking to him, I literally was the last person in line.

I approached Dr. Rogers and again reintroduced myself, and I told him I was writing a biography on J. Sidlow Baxter and could I ask him a question, and I asked Dr. Rogers a question about Sidlow Baxter, and he answered it, and then I said, gee, Dr. Rogers, I didn't know that, and shockingly, Adrian Rogers put his big arms around me and grabbed me, and he pulled me close to him, and he put his two big hands on each side of my face, and he squeezed my cheeks. He squeezed me up to where my eyes were two inches from his eyes, and as he held me there in that vice grip, hugging me, he exclaimed in a loud booming voice, there's a lot you don't know, young man. Then he put me back on the ground.

Well, he scared me half to death, but he was right. I was still a young man, and there was a lot I didn't know. Now, I'm an old man, and there's still a lot I don't know, but I know more than I did then, but Adrian Rogers' first public hug of me shocked me, but God had a purpose behind it.

After that, Adrian Rogers and I got to know each other personally as I began to write my book on Sidlo Baxter, and Dr. Rogers was involved with the process from the get-go. He'd read each chapter as soon as I typed it, and dropped it off at his office. He would give me advice on things.

He'd call me in to talk to him in his study about certain aspects of the book, and he ended up writing the foreword to it, and during this process in time, that's when I got my second hug from Adrian Rogers. I had just dropped my family off at a local restaurant, and it was nighttime, and it was raining hard as I parked the car and made my way in the rain beneath an umbrella on the way to the entrance of the restaurant, and I opened the door, and I just stepped in out of the darkness of night into a lit lobby with a solitary figure standing there with his arms outstretched, and as I came near him, he threw his arms around me and hugged me and exclaimed, Ernesto. That's what Dr. Rogers called me, Ernesto, and the hug he gave me was a hug of affection, and as he hugged me, I felt I had left this earth and was standing in heaven, and Jesus was hugging me.

I'm not lying to you, friends. I'm telling you the truth. I literally felt as if I had died and gone to glory, and I was home in heaven and in the arms of Jesus because every time I was with Adrian Rogers, every time I spent time with him, I felt I was in the presence of Jesus.

Adrian made me think of Jesus. Do you know people like that, Christians who are so full of the Lord that they make you think of Jesus? They make you thirsty for Jesus. Well, Dr. Rogers was like that for me, so the first hug I received from Adrian Rogers was a hug of challenge.

The second hug was a hug of affection. Now, let me go on, friends, to describe the third and final hug I received from him. It was after he had announced to his congregation that he had cancer and he was in poor physical health.

He had previously agreed to dedicate the Ted Randall Library at the Stephen Offord Center in Memphis, and we had a little ceremony there where Adrian came and prayed for the library, and he dedicated the library to the use and glory of God. Adrian was so weak physically and eaten up with cancer, he could barely walk across the room without great effort. I'd never seen him so weak before in my life.

It was time to say goodbye, and as I was standing with him in a room with two other men, I was standing with him with Dr. Ted Randall and Dr. Henry Blackaby. Dr. Rogers said goodbye to Henry Blackaby and shook his hand. Then he turned to Ted Randall and he shook his hand goodbye.

Then he turned to me, and I don't know how he was able to do it physically, but he mustered up all his strength and he pulled me closely to him, and with all his might, he pulled me up on my toes so that my chin was on his right shoulder to where I was staring Ted Randall in the face, and the longest hug a human being ever gave me on this earth commenced, and Adrian hugged me and hugged me and hugged me to the point I became embarrassed as a man standing in front of other men. Then he slowly put me back down and gave me a big grin, and the next time I saw him he was laying in his coffin. But that third and final hug from Adrian Rogers was both a parting hug in the same vein of the Apostle Paul having the Ephesian elders weep on his neck knowing they would see him no more, and that last hug from Adrian Rogers was also an importation of passing a blessing upon me for my usefulness to God.

I'll believe that till the day I die friends. God does not place someone special like that in your life without his purpose. Do you believe that friend? Oh I hope you do.

It is my prayer that God will make you a blessing to others that God when they spend time with you they go away from you go away from that encounter with you with the feeling that they had just spent time with Jesus. In the book of Acts we see this very principle in reality from the word of God. Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men they marveled and took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus.

Let us pray.