In the 1920s, Mr Ira Yates purchased a farm in West Texas in the United States. In many ways he was like a lot of other ranchers and farmers. He had a lot of land, and a lot of debt. He wasn't able to make enough on his ranching operation to keep up with his monthly mortgage payments and taxes, so he was in danger of losing his ranch. With little money for clothes or food, his family (like many others) had to live on a government subsidy. Day after day, as he grazed his sheep over those rolling West Texas hills, he was no doubt greatly troubled about how he would pay his bills. In 1926, on a hunch, he invited a seismographic crew from an oil company to investigate whether there might be oil on his land. They asked permission to drill a wildcat well, and Ira Yates signed a lease contract. At a depth of 340 metres they struck a huge oil reserve. The first well produced 80,000 barrels a day. Many subsequent wells were twice as large and 30 years later the government tested one of the wells.
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It still had the potential flow of 125,000 barrels of oil a day. Sixty years later in 1985 the one billionth barrel of oil was produced; and as at 2009 it was estimated that there are another 1 billion recoverable barrels of oil available; and Mr Ira Yates owned it all. The day he purchased the land he received the oil and mineral rights. Yet, he'd been living on government hand-outs. He had been a multimillionaire living in poverty. The problem was that he didn't know the oil was there even though he owned it.
Are we anything like Mr Yates pre-1926? Do you know that God’s oil - God’s fuel - God’s Holy Spirit is available to you, ready to flow through you?