The Man Who Listened Through a Doorway

In 1905, William Seymour sat outside a classroom in Houston, Texas. The Bible school's founder, Charles Parham, refused to allow a Black student inside, so Seymour pressed his ear against the cracked door, drinking in every word about the Holy Spirit's power.

Seymour knew what it meant to be excluded. Born to formerly enslaved parents in Centerville, Louisiana, he had spent his life on the margins — unwelcome at the wells where others freely gathered. Yet something in him thirsted for more than the world had offered.

When Seymour traveled to Los Angeles in 1906 and began preaching in a converted stable on Azusa Street, something extraordinary happened. Black and white, rich and poor, men and women knelt shoulder to shoulder at the same altar. A reporter from the Los Angeles Times was scandalized. But Seymour understood what Jesus told the Samaritan woman — that true worship is not bound by geography or social convention. It happens in spirit and in truth.

The woman at Jacob's well came carrying her water jar and her shame. She left carrying the gospel. Seymour came to that Houston doorway carrying nothing but hunger. He left carrying a fire that burned through every wall the world had built.

The Almighty has always done His deepest work through the people the respectable world overlooks.