“A Consecrated Life is a Lonely Life”

I have always been enamored by the life of Katherine Kuhlman. She was so filled with the Holy Spirit and overwhelmingly anointed that miracles happened and people lay ‘slain in the Spirit.’ She was an evangelist, a lady at that, a first in many matters. Let us go through her life and ministry.

Katherine Kuhlman was born to German parents in 1907 in a small place called Concordia, in Missouri, USA. She was one of the four children and strangely her father was a Baptist and her mother a Methodist. Her father rose to be the Mayor of the town, but died early in an accident. Katherine was very fond of her father whom she called ‘papa,’ and when young clung to his legs and not let go when he returned from work. It is that love that she transferred to the heavenly Father later on in her life.

When she was just 14 years old as she was attending the service with her mother in the small Methodist church, she came under the experience of being born again. As the last song was being sung, her hands holding the hymnal book began to shake; that she was a sinner came clearly to her and leaving the hymnal at the pew, she went to the front row and sat there weeping and involuntarily shaking and trembling. Something had happened to her; she was born again. Though she did not recognize the Holy Spirit that time, she never forgot the moment when the Holy Spirit came upon her and she had the experience of the new birth.

Katherine’s sister and brother in law were in the itinerant healing ministry and wanted her to come along with them to help with their children as they traveled from place to place preaching. Katherine became a nanny to her sister’s children for the next five years and traveled with them all over USA. When her brother in law brought the message, people were slain in the Spirit, a new experience then. All these must have given her a background in itinerant ministry and when her sister wanted her to return home, she started her own ministry.

She preached only about salvation, her own experience of being born again. In 1933, she started her ministry in Denver and held meetings in abandoned truck garages and paper company’s warehouses and in such small places. Her ministry was doing well and she had started radio ministry and was travelling around the country. In 1937 she met another itinerant preacher Waltrip, who was married with two boys. But he divorced his wife and abandoned his children and proposed to Katherine. She took the plunge in 1938 in spite of people warning her not to. Very soon she realized that it was a mistake and did not know how to correct it. Evangelic ministry along with her husband was not fulfilling, for her husband would not let her preach. It was his show.

One day as she was weeping and walking in a dead end street in California, Los Angeles, she took the decision and gave herself fully to the Lord. She would say later that Katherine Kuhlman died that day to herself. She cried to the Lord to take her and use her, though she was without any talent and any merit on her own. She would tell her Lord, she had nothing to give Him, except her love, which she gave with all her heart and her body she offered to Him as a living sacrifice. She filed for divorce in 1947 and started her own ministry. She was divorced by 1948.

Though it was a turning point in her life and ministry, it was not all a bed of roses after that. She was not accepted in the Christian circles. In one of the meetings as she was preaching, the Pastor having learned that she was a divorcee, came to the stage, took the microphone from her hand and made her leave the stage and the very town itself. She met with such treatments in many places and was shattered, but she continued her ministry. A small church in Ohio, where she was conducting meetings desired to make her their pastor; she objected saying she is a divorcee but they told her that her past was not of interest to them and that in the present people are coming to the Lord, are being healed by her ministry and so they would like her to be their pastor. She became their pastor in 1948.

The last 10-15 years of her life were a blessing to many. It is said that nearly two million people got healed during her services. She started and ran a Television ministry called “I believe in miracles,” from 1966 to 1975, which became very popular throughout America and Canada. She was a charismatic evangelist, and embraced all denominations including the Catholic church. People thronged to her meetings and many were healed. Katherine developed a heart condition, but she would not rest or slow down her ministry. She died in 1976 following an open heart surgery, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA.

Katherine resented being called ‘faith-healer,’ for she was not doing anything by her own power. She said that she had no healing power, but it was God who acted through her. She made it clear that she was not a psychic healer, who mastered the art of mind over matter. Her case was simple for she was a yielded vessel, which God used mightily to manifest His power through the Holy Spirit to heal people. 

A consecrated life is a life set apart for God; such people are married to the Lord, and place themselves at the disposal of His Will and pleasure to be used as He would wish. She lived in the world but had consecrated her life to her Lord. She would say that such a life was not easy and that it had a price tag on its head. A consecrated life could be lonely for she had no social life, and no personal life. Her life was entirely devoted to the Lord, her Master. She would remind her audience that she was human and she was a woman, but her life was totally devoted to her God, who is a jealous Husband!

God bless such people and multiply such devoted lives for His glory.