I'm Satisfied, Ardith Caissy

I received the Lord in 1983, on a train coming out of North Station in Boston. It was a terrifying thing for me.... I know a lot of people really enjoy a sweet time with the Lord in their initial salvation, but I was just terrified. Everything changed in my life; I lost every friend that I had that day, my living situation, everything. Of course, it all worked out, but at the time, I didn't know that it would.

In the year following my salvation, I started going to a Bible study where I worked. I will never forget the first meeting; a man from a group in the area had agreed to come to our company and do a Bible study with us, and a group of Christians that I knew at work went. He was speaking about Jesus coming to the wedding feast. It was a pretty average, and very boring, study. I had been through plenty of things like this before, reading the Word with other believers, and really trying to enjoy something of the Lord. But in my heart, I was never satisfied. Then, at the end of the meeting, with a few minutes left, another believer who sat quietly through the study, said a few words about the same topic...but what a difference! There was something so rich and satisfying about what he shared with us. It was so enjoyable that we asked the first brother, who started the study, not to come again, and the second brother agreed to meet with us. Year after year, we would come together once a week, and enjoy something of the Word...and I really mean, ENJOY. There was always something so refreshing and living when this brother spoke. He was just this ordinary brother, but something flowed from him that was so living.

During this time, the next few years following my salvation, I was very hungry for the Lord, and my pursuing brought me to some books by a brother named Watchman Nee. I lost count of how many times I read his book The Normal Christian Life. It turned out that the brother leading the study where I worked had access to many of Watchman Nee's books, and he gave me some-Christ, the Sum of All Spiritual Things and Precious are the Tears. They were so satisfying. Finally, something was matching my hunger for the Lord, and increasing it! It was funny, but I remember the Lord touching me every once in a while to ask this brother where he went to meetings, but I just felt he was so intensely in love with the Lord that I would never make it there, so I didn't ask him.

It was seven years before he lent us (I was married by this time) a book called The Orthodoxy of the Church by Watchman Nee, and that book changed my life (and my husband's) forever. Suddenly we were so clear about the church, and all we could think of was, where can we go to meet like this? Of course, this led to a phone call to the brother who lent us the book. I can't explain how excited we were to find out that there were actually believers who were meeting according to Watchman Nee's vision in that book, and that there was a brother, Witness Lee, who was carrying on with Watchman Nee's ministry.

We have been meeting with the local churches since that time, 1990, and the Lord has been more rich, and sweet and satisfying than I ever could have imagined in those dry years before we really touched the local church and His heart. We have enjoyed so much life and light and joy of the Lord in the local church.

I just praise the Lord that He was faithful to hear my prayers to give me more than the emptiness and dryness I had had, and bring me to a place of springs of living waters, where I can be satisfied at last!