INFLUENTIAL WOMEN

A SAINTLY MOTHER 

SD: In what way, Bill, was God's hand evident upon you and your mother before your birth?

BB: I was born in Oklahoma, the 7th of a large family of eight children and my mother was a saint. My father was not a believer, but a son born to them prior to my birth died in infancy. My mother was not healthy. She carried me for nine months and was at the point of death on many occasions. Always she would pray, as she related to me later, "Lord, please let this child be born before I die." So, she dedicated me to Christ before I was born, though she never told me, which was wise. I would have carried around all my youth. She told me after I received the Lord and that was very, very meaningful to me at that time,

SD: Oh, sure it was. Talking about being willing even to give her life for you, I think that's very moving.

BB: Yes. She was a saint. She was the greatest influence of my life. Her prayers, her godly life all my youth and until she died at the age of 93.

MEETING VONETTE 

SD: Bill let's turn to your family. Tell us, how did you meet Vonette?

BB: I met Vonette when she was a little girl, maybe three or four years old. I attended church at a little Methodist church in Coweta, Oklahoma, which was five miles from my ranch. My mother was a Sunday School teacher and this little Zachary girl was always exuberant and attractive, in the center of everything. She just caught my eye. Obviously, there was no interest. I was too young to have an interest myself. But the years passed and we both grew up and I observed her in high school and later I discovered she knew everything I was doing, though I was five years older than she. When I went away to college she was very conscious. I gave to what amounted to the commencement messages when I graduated from high school, and she tells how she sat there in the 8th grade saying, "Oh, he's the kind the man I want to marry. He could be president of the United States."

SD: Then you left town. As a matter of fact you were on the West Coast. Now, what made you think of her again?

BB: My sister who was her same age in the same class in high school was visiting me in California and we were having dinner to celebrate her birthday at the Coconut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel, which was the center of all the famous Hollywood stars where they all came together and I just wanted my sister, Jo, to have that experience. Well, as we sat there, a young starlet came by who reminded me of Vonette, and I said to my sister Jo, "She reminds me of Vonette Zachary; what ever happened to her?" And she said, "Well, she's studying at Texas Women's University and she's home for the summer." So, the next day I scribbled a little note on my business letterhead, which was pretty elegant, Bright's Brandied Foods, had a big "B".

SD: It was going to make a good impression on a college girl. Yes, I got the picture.

BB: I wanted to impress her. So, here I wrote her a letter that said, "I was having dinner last night with Jo at the Ambassador Hotel, Coconut Grove and we saw this beautiful starlet; she reminded me of you. Hope you're having a good summer, signed Bill."

SD: Bill, you are a genius.

BB: No, no.

SD: You are absolutely a romantic. I saw this beautiful woman that reminded me of you. I've got to hand it to you. That's a great starting line.

BB: It was a beginning. Anyway, her father came home for lunch, showed him the letter and he said, "Oh, oh, small town boy goes to Hollywood, makes good. He is coming home for his bride." Well, that turned her off. So, she didn't write me.

SD: Thanks a lot.

BB: Yeah, thanks a lot. So, it was about three or four months later, she had a free evening and she and her roommate were talking about different boyfriends and she told her friend about me, and she said you ought to write him. She wrote me a ten-page letter.

SD: Ten pages?

BB: Telling me what had happened since we had last met, and I responded and she responded. It wasn't long until we had a regular correspondence going and I had a business trip to Dallas selling my merchandise, and on the way I stopped at different stores and sold my merchandise, and one of my accounts was Neiman Marcus in Dallas and her campus was about 30 miles away. So, I made an appointment to see her and take her to what is called the Red Bud Ball.

SD: Sounds pretty classy.

BB: It was very classy, and here were all these beautiful women because it was several thousand women in the school, the largest women's school in the world. So, we were at the ball and Vonette and I spent a little private time having a meal, and on the way to Texas the Lord told me Vonette was to be my wife.

SD: On the way to Texas?

BB: Yes. I never dated her.

SD: And you hadn't seen her in years?

BB: Hadn't dated her ever and hadn't seen her in years.

SD: Well, that has to be a little bit of an unusual story, wouldn't you say?

BB: So, when I met her for the first time in years, the Holy Spirit seemed to encourage me to propose. I proposed on the first date.

SD: Ha, ha. Forgive me for laughing, but that's really bold. So, she just responded all positive or what?

BB: Well, as I say, there is such a thing as non-verbal communication, because --

SD: Well, we won't go into that, but anyway she responded positively.

BB: We took a couple of days to think and talk and plan. I thought she was a very devout Christian because she grew up in the church.

SD: Why sure.

BB: Her home as next door to the church, the Methodist church. So, she agreed that I should ask her parents for her hand. So, I drove the next day to Coweta, Oklahoma, which was some distance from Denton, Texas, and we had written a letter Sunday evening and I was to see them Monday. Would you believe in those days the postal service was so efficient the letter arrived before I did overnight, and they had read the letter and they were a little confused because they didn't even know we were dating. 

SD: Oh, really?

BB: Not because of me, but they had arranged for her to go to college and they were making tremendous investment in her and they didn't want her to marry until she finished, and I understood that. So, we agreed that we would not be married until after she graduated, which was three years away.

SD: Oh, my. So, that's a long engagement.

BB: So, I went off to Princeton Seminary and later Fuller Seminary, started in 1947 I enrolled there. I was running my business and going to seminary, and we continued to correspond and make telephone calls and on holidays we'd be together. Our dating was largely through correspondence, telephone calls, and occasional visits. In the process I became aware that she was not a true believer. She was a church member and nothing more and she began to view me as a fanatic. Here I am saying you need to read this scripture and I had this wonderful answer to prayer. All of this was new. She had never heard anything like this.

SD: So, what did you do, Bill? I mean this is a serious problem?

BB: I had already made a commitment to the Lordship of Christ. He was my Lord, and I couldn't marry her and nor did she want to marry me.

SD: Well, I don't suppose she did. So, did you break the engagement?

BB: So, we didn't break the engagement but I asked her to come for one final opportunity to get together to a college briefing conference at Forrest Home in California, which is a place where millions of people have gone through the years. There were about a thousand college young people there, post college, and we had this phenomenal list of speakers and it was just a marvelous place for her to meet the Lord. So, I arranged for Dr. Henrietta Mears, who had played such an important role in my spiritual birth and my life to talk to her, and she was very skeptical, but she went. She had come to the conclusion that she probably should go back home and take a teaching job because she had finished her teaching credentials and we should go our separate ways. And I said you've got to talk to Dr. Mears before you leave, and I paced the grounds while she was talking to Dr. Mears.

SD: Probably dug a hole.

BB: The hour passed and then two hours and finally she came out of the little lodge where Dr. Mears lived at Forrest Home, and she was obviously radiant and we embraced with great joy.

SD: I'm sure you did. That's when it was sort of official that you were going to go on and marry her. How long after that did you get married?

BB: So, December 30th of that year, about three months later we were married in Coweta, Oklahoma, the little First Methodist Church where my mother and later my father were active after I had the privilege of leading him to the Lord.

LIFETIME CONTRACT 

SD: But then you went to a higher level when you signed a contract of your lives for the Lord. Tell us a little about that. What lead up to that?

BB: We'd been married a couple of years and I was involved in all kinds of things. I was president of the college and post college group of several hundred, six, seven hundred, young people in the church and I was going to seminary and running my business and I was not a very sensitive husband. I just brought Vonette into my life and she became a part of everything, and I assumed too much. Well, on this one occasion there was a young woman in the college department who had become pregnant without marriage and her father was one of the famous evangelists of his time and here I am the president and an older couple sponsoring the group came and we talked and we talked and we met with the young woman to try to avoid heartache for the parents and scandal for the church. Time passed quickly. Vonette went onto church while I was talking with them. An hour passed, then two hours, then three hours.

SD: Church must be long over.

BB: Long, long over, and then finally I realized that I had left Vonette.

SD: Steaming so to speak in the car.

BB: So, I found her in the car, hot. Church had been over for an hour or two and she was not exactly happy about the situation.

SD: I won't ask for any quotes, but I think I got the picture.

BB: And of course I couldn't blame her. It was all my fault because I was not sensitive, but I was-- I thought I was doing the right thing but I was not very sensitive to her feelings. So, we had a little discussion.

SD: Ha, ha. Okay. A little discussion. All right.

BB: By the time we got home we got on our knees together and said, Lord you know what I did was wrong and I ask you to forgive me and we want our marriage to be centered on You and we don't want to -- I don't want to go on being the insensitive husband that I was. Vonette tells me that I wasn't so insensitive, but in retrospect, I just included her along with everything else. But that afternoon we decided that we would truly surrender everything to Jesus because this little crisis brought us to the place where we saw we needed to make another commitment. So, we wrote out a contract to be Slaves of Jesus. He of course was our model. God who created the heavens and the earth, Philippians 2:7, reminds us that He came as a salve, the God-man. Paul and Peter and the others refer to themselves as slaves. So, we just felt God wanted us to take that step to be Slaves of Jesus, which means to surrender everything; everything we owned, ever would own, our past, present, future, laid it all on the alter, and we went to bed in love, in peace. And about 24 hours later while I was studying for one of my exams in seminary, God met with me in a supernatural way and gave me the vision, which we've already discussed, Campus Crusade for Christ.

SD: So, you don't think those two events are unrelated do you?

BB: Absolutely impossible to think that He would have entrusted me with the vision had I not first made the contract and signed it. And even through the years people have asked me like when I received the Templeton Prize of over a millions, what are you going to do with that? Are you going to buy a house, or cars, or whatever? And I said, "I gave it away in 1951." So, as you know that never reached my bank account. It was given directly to help reach the world for Christ through special emphasis on fasting and prayer.

MARRIAGE ADVICE 

SD: Bill, looking back at the experience that you had and being engaged to Vonette and then discovering that she didn't know the Lord, what lesson did you learn and that you would share with people?

BB: Never marry a non-believer if you are a believer. The scripture teaches very clearly, "Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers." And as much as I loved her, and as much as she loved me, I knew that our marriage would not succeed unless God was in it. And it was not until she received Christ that we could make definite plans for marriage, and I would encourage every young person if you're thinking of marriage, or older adults, don't marry a non-believer if you really want a happy marriage, because Christ must be at the center of that marriage.

SD: Well, Bill, it sounds like you've got some kind of marriage where something that really precipitated an argument led to a contract, which led to the original vision for Campus Crusade for Christ and I'm sure an intensity increased in the love between you and Vonette.

Could you describe maybe some differences, some further differences in your marriage from what you've observed in other people?

BB: Well, I'm not a good judge of other people.

SD: Bill, I think what you just shared is phenomenal. Here what started as a potential disaster in a marriage, I’m sure in some cases might have led up to a divorce, serious disagreement led instead to a reconciliation, to a contract with God and really to a vision with Campus Crusade for Christ. That's some different kind of marriage.

BB: That's a Romans 8:28 marriage situation.

SD: That's right.

BB: "All things work together for good to those who love Him."

SD: They did. They did. Are there any other things that you consider real distinctives of your marriage?

BB: Well, when I proposed to Vonette and we said I do, were married, I told her I wanted her to be my partner, that everything I did she would be a part of. I was in business, of course, and I began to describe her role in the business and of course I was going to seminary and she taught school in Los Angeles system for a period of time the first year Crusade began. But I tried to make her my partner after that fiasco that led up to the contract. I tried to be more sensitive even though I had already proposed that on our honeymoon. I've tried to work at that ever since. The scripture clearly teaches that a man must love his wife as Christ loved the church, and we know that Christ died for the Church. So, a man's love for his wife involves sacrifice even as Christ died, and I have not been a perfect husband by any stretch of the imagination, but that's been my goal now for all these 52 years of marriage, that Vonette would be the most important person in my life apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, representing of course the Trinity. Because if everything is happy at home, it works out in everything you do, and if there's discord in the home it affects everything you do.

SD: You've done a great job. I have observed how well you love Vonette and you have made her the most important person in your life.

BB: And she's made an incredible contribution to this movement, and I'm sure God is the one who is responsible for giving us rapport and love and harmony and unity, and I can't say that we've always agreed on everything. Someone has said if two people agree on everything, one of them's not necessary.

SD: Absolutely.

BB: But we talk together, we reason together and God has graciously blessed our marriage. To Him be all the praise. A thousand things could have gone wrong and God has protected us.

RESOLVING DIFFERENCES 

SD: Bill, if a couple came to you that was struggling with their marriage, what would you advise them?

BB: And a few hundred have, if not thousands, in groups and individually. But first of all, each individual husband and wife need to surrender their lives fully to Christ. He's the architect of the universe. He's the one who ordained marriage, and unless He is Lord of the wife and Lord of the husband, there will always be discord because each ego demands its rights, and until each ego is surrendered to the Lordship of Christ, there can be no peace, no harmony. So, we start there, and each one needs to be honest to confess their weaknesses, their sin to the other and to desire to be reconciled and put aside, because the scripture stays, "If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." So, you deal with love for God, deal with confession of sin and you deal with encouraging them to surrender to the Lordship not only of Christ, but to be filled with the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is the comforter. He is the God of peace. He orchestrates everything in the life of the believer. Everything including our new birth is a result of the Holy Spirit. He inspired holy men of old to record the Holy Bible and the fruit of the spirit is a result of His control in our lives, and He empowers us to witness. So, no marriage can be really successful that is ignorant of the role of the Holy Spirit. So, in the word it's so important that each individual of the marriage spend time in the scripture. You can't live in the spirit for long unless you're in the word of God daily. I liken it to two wings of an airplane. A plane won’t fly with one wing, and the Christian life won't fly with an understanding of the scripture only or being filled with the Holy Spirit only. There is a wedding of the two. There has to be a blending, and of course marriage requires openness, honesty and there are 12 words which come to mind that will guarantee a successful marriage. I'm sorry. I was wrong. Please forgive me. I love you.

SD: Oh, those are key words.

BB: Aren’t they key?

SD: Let's go through it one more time, make sure everybody catches it.

BB: I'm sorry. I was wrong. Please forgive me. I love you.

SD: That's great.

BB: And sometimes I advise people to say it when they may not feel it, but if their desire is to feel it, God will give them the desire of their hearts.
 

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