Ken worked for seventeen years with Youth With A Mission, primarily Involved in discipleship training and evangelism. He is the author of The Chicken Farm and Other Sacred Places, published in 2011 by YWAM Publishing and Broken Vessels in 2021 through Kindle Direct Publishing. He holds a Masters Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University in Curriculum and Instruction. He currently is a freelance writer. He lives with his wife Sharon in Mechanicsville, VA. They have two daughters and six grandchildren.
THE GREATEST IN THE KINGDOM by Ken Barnes
“So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.” (Genesis 22:14 NIV) I worked with Youth With A Mission for seventeen years. We had a saying, where God leads, He feeds; where He guides, He provides. I once had an experience that proved this to be true. Oh, my goodness, I don’t have enough gas. I was on tour in the summer of 1983, recruiting shortterm missionaries for Youth With A Mission. I was traveling with my wife and our two girls. Sharon, my wife, and I had sought the Lord, and we felt we were to launch out by faith. I was traveling to thirty-five cities east of the Mississippi River, but there was one hitch. I had enough money to start the tour, but not enough to finish it. I was a bit apprehensive as I realized that my two daughters had these strange little habits—they liked to eat and regularly. About halfway through the tour, we were in Indianapolis, Indiana, in a home meeting with a couple who would host a meeting in their church we would call a Night of Missions. The couple would take care of the logistics of the meeting, and YWAM (short for Youth With A Mission) would come and do a presentation to recruit students for our short-term missions program.
When we arrived at this home in Indianapolis the day before, our cash was gone; we were broke. On a couple of other stops on our trip, when our funds were getting low, our hosts would give us a card with twenty or fifty dollars as we left. This morning in Indianapolis, the couple gave us a lunch bag and big hugs and sent us on our way. As I drove off and looked at my gas gauge, I felt a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. We had to drive from Indianapolis to my mother’s apartment in west Tennessee. I was monitoring my gas gauge closely. I was starting to be nervous in the service. About this time, there came to mind a famous story about Brother Andrew of God’s Smuggler fame. On one occasion, the communist authorities were chasing him in his little car full of Bibles. Allegedly, he drove for hours with his gas gauge not going down. I thought to myself; maybe God will do that for me. No such luck; the needle on my gas gauge seemed to go down faster than ever. We did not have GPS in those days, and I was unsure if I had enough gas to make it to Mother’s apartment. I stopped at a gas station to see if we could make it to Mom’s place. After speaking with the attendant about the travel time to my destination, I returned to the car, trying to mask my anxiety, too many miles and not enough gas.
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