Merlin's Mustache

During the next year, my sophomore year in high school, my biological father came back into my life. My mother and I were staying with a different aunt this time, in a house that actually fronted on a street. One day a man drove up out front and parked his car halfway onto the curb in the yard. My mother called me to the door and said, “Come here, son. Joe Robison’s here . He’s your daddy.”

A tall man, about six feet two, got out of the car and started staggering toward the house. He came inside, smelling of booze and we visited for a while, and I can remember thinking, with the hopeful naivete of a boy who grown up without a dad, Maybe he can play catch with me sometime.

I soon found out he couldn’t even throw a ball to save his life. All he had ever done since he was nineteen years old was open whiskey bottles and beer cans.

When my mother got another in – home nursing assignment, we moved into the patient’s house, and my father came to live with us as well. I didn’t understand why my mother would allow a man who had raped her back into her life, but I had no say in the matter.

I has purchased a motor scooter with money from my job, so I now had transportation and I didn’t have to walk as much. I was really careful out on the roads, but one day a police car turned right in front of me, and I had a terrible wreck.

Just before the collision, the police officer saw me and instantly accelerated, and his car lurched forward so that I almost missed him altogether. If he braked instead, I would have hit the car broadside and would have certainly been killed.

With no time to react, all I could do was hit the brakes, lay my bike down and hope for the best. Like most people in those days, I wasn’t wearing a helmet. They weren’t required and were seldom worn by anyone. But though I miraculously avoided cracking my head apart, I took off the back part of the police car – the bumper and taillights – with my right thigh. To this day, my leg has a big indention where the muscles were compressed in toward the bone.

After radioing for an ambulance, which came pretty quickly, the officer came over, picked me up and moved me onto the grass median. He was really shaken.

“I’m so sorry, son,” he said more than once.

He followed the ambulance to the hospital and later visited me in the hospital and at home and became a real friend.

I got an insurance settlement from the scooter wreck, but I didn’t want to buy another scooter, so I , bought .30-06 rifle, a pre-64 Winchester model  70, hoping that one day I’d be able to go hunting with it.

One day my dad came in a drunken rage and choked my mother until she passed out. Thinking that he had killed her, he left the house and drove off. When I came home from School that day, my mother had marks on her neck. When she told me what happened, I became really angry.

“Son,” she said, “if I hadn’t passed out, he would have killed me.”

I don’t remember if it was later that day or sometime the next day, but when my father came in drunk again, and when he found out my mother wasn’t home, he started cursing me and threatened to kill me.

When he sat down in a chair still cursing me, I ran back toward my bedroom, where I had a baseball bat leaning up against the wall just inside the door. I grabbed the bat and looked to see if my dad was coming after me. If he’d been there, I would have hit him. That’s how scared I was.

When I saw he hadn’t followed me, I dove under my bed and grabbed my rifle. This was just a few days after I had shot an oil can filled with water and blew a hole in it the size of a softball, so I knew what it could do.

I chambered a bullet, went back to the front room, and sat down on a little stool by the telephone, which was mounted on the wall. Sitting maybe twenty feet from my father, and with the safety off, I pointed the rifle at him and said with all the firmness I could muster, “If you move so much as a finger, I’m going to blow a hole in you big enough for someone to crawl through.”

I reached for the phone, dialed 0, and asked the operator to send the police. “My father threatened to kill me,” I said, “but I’m going to shoot him.”

Within ten minutes, the sheriff’s deputy who had hit me with his car was standing at the front door. He had been to the house many times after the accident to visit me, so the minute he heard the address on the emergency call, he came right over.

Here’s the amazing part: although my father sat there cursing me and calling me every name under the sun, he never moved a finger. If he would have so much as raised his hand to scratch his cheek, I would have shot him. And I would not have missed. At age fourteen, my world would have been turned upside down. Who knows what would have happened? But I believe the prayers of the Memorial Baptist Church of Pasadena, and the people who had been praying for years for the little boy who had stayed with the Hales, froze my father and kept me from killing him.

That story is part of the miracle of my life, and that’s why I tell people “Don’t ever give up on your prayers, and don’t ever give up on the people you’re praying for.” We don’t always see our prayers answered, or answered in the way we would choose, but prayer is like love – it doesn’t fail. And it’s an amazing privilege to be able to pray for people.  

MLE now:

 I find it interesting that this Sunday’s Utmost reading focuses in on personality. Personality, Chamber’s reminds us in the Dec 12 Utmost reading, is the unique, limitlessness part of our life that makes us distinct from everyone else. Such perhaps is too vast for us to  comprehend when examining our seemingly mundane lives, but when we read wisdom books such as scripture or  like this boy’s future life being spared possible devastation as portrayed in “Living Amazed,” we suddenly realize the visible portion of our island of our personality is merely the top of a large mountain, and similarly, our personality is much like that island. We really have no idea of the great depths of our being, expressed as our personality, as neither we or anyone can measure ourselves. We may start out life off thinking we can, but if we’re honest, we soon realize there is only one Being who fully understands us, and that is our Creator.

Personality is the characteristic mark of the inner, spiritual man, just as individuality in the Dec 11 reading is described as the characteristic of the outer, natural man. Folks, don’t worry if you’re struggling with all this, I’ve been reading Utmost for fifteen plus years (not continuously though) and I’m just beginning now to grasp its truths.

Our Lord can never be described by individuality and independence, but only in terms of His total Person – “I and My Father are one”(John 10:30). Personality merges, and you only realize your true identity once you are merged with another person. Consider the chemistry activated when love or the Spirit of God comes upon you or another person; you or they are transformed! You or they will no longer insist on maintaining your or their individuality or the isolating portions of your personality. Our Lord always spoke in terms of the total person – “. . that they may be one just as We are one. .” Love is always the overflowing result of one person in true fellowship with another.

I’d be remiss now not to tell you this truth forms the basis of the best book on marriage I’ve found to date. Tim Keller’s book of accumulated sermons titled “The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment With the Wisdom of God” is essential reading for anyone who wants to know God and love more deeply in this life during this culture’s chaos! Consider reading it in 2022. Such wisdom books change lives. Perhaps enjoying self – centered  entertainment for Christ followers will soon no longer be so enjoyed? Perspective?

Consider how even before James reached fifteen years of age and the necessary understanding of the dangers described in Ephesians 6:12 “ For we wrestle not merely against flesh and blood , but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world , against spiritual wickedness in high places,” God reached down and protected this child once again by the earlier prayers of his intercessors. They no doubt were quite limited in assessing or acknowledging the magnitude of the darkness about James, but they chose to concentrate on the provision of God’s abundant light far surpassing James momentary present darkness. These intercessors possessed an opportunity to intercede for James, it was not merely a job or an assignment!

And as James matured spiritually, his book explains his love for David starting off as a shepherd boy through his entire life. James understood he who is forgiven much, loves much, as well as the inverse. It is also evident throughout the book that James fully appreciated God’s continual demonstration of protection.

The question begging an answer now, is do we? Or do I?

Listen to the Kidron Mennonite Church 12/12/21 sermon by Pastor Craig about receiving and dispensing Joy in a dark world. May we be found “pulling” people in, rather than “pushing” them either out or away!

Blessings as YOU GO FORTH TRUSTING IN OUR GOD OF PROMISE>>>>> mle

Taken verbatim from Pages 26-29 in James Robison’s book “Living Amazed.” and then, in Part Two followed by 15 paragraphs quoting from an article from theyeoftheneedle.com from Archbishop Vigano, before in Part Three, my personal comments.  But first the story, then onto real life today!

During my years in Austin, TX, I didn’t have much money or many material things, but I made the best of what I had. I did look forward to Christmas gifts and birthday presents from my aunt and my foster parents. But starting when I turned nine, all the way up until I was fourteen, I didn’t hear from my aunt or the Hales at all. That was very traumatic for me – and, if not for the grace of God, it might have destroyed me – because I thought that the people who had said they loved me had forgotten me.

                One October, when my birthday came and I didn’t get gifts from anybody, I remember thinking, Anybody can forget a birthday, but they won’t forget me at Christmas.

                That December, I painted a watercolor picture on a sheet of paper and hung it on the wall, and that was our Christmas tree and our decorations, because we couldn’t afford to buy a tree or ornaments. When Christmas arrived, and nothing came from my aunt or the Hales, I remembered thinking, They said they loved me, but they don’t.

                That really put a big hole in my heart, made me feel as if I couldn’t trust anyone, and caused me to doubt people’s word. Even after I got into ministry, only the grace of God was able to lift me beyond the trauma of feeling forgotten.

                When I was about fourteen, during a time when my mother was having some sort of trouble, she told me I could call the Hales and go stay with them for a week or so. I was afraid to call them, because I didn’t know if they’d want me. But they sounded so happy to hear from me and said they would come get me the very next day.

                During that visit with the Hales, I had a lot of fun with the kids at their church. On Sunday night, which was right before the Monday or Tuesday when I would be going home, Pastor Hale asked the young people in the church to share what Jesus meant to them. Five or six kids stood up and gave testimonies that were really moving.

                Then Pastor Hale gave the invitation, and when he said, “Would you come and put your hand in my hand, indicating that you want to give your life to the same Jesus that these kids have talked about?” all I could do was grip the chair in front of me. I was so shy, and so terrified, that I just hung on.

                Then I saw Mrs. Hale walking toward me, with tears flowing so freely down her face that she had to hold her glasses in place with one hand. She put her other hand on my shoulder and said, “James, don’t you want to go to Jesus?”

I said, “Yes, ma’am, but I’m afraid.”

“I’ll go with you,” she said. “Could we go together?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I stepped out into the aisle and went forward with her, and in the best way I knew how, I trusted Jesus. As I’ve said many times since that night, I put my faith in the pastor’s hand but I put my life in the Mater’s hand.

                I found out years later that, during the week I was visiting, Mrs. Hale had gone to all the training Union groups – which were discipleship classes focused on missions and Baptist doctrine – and she had told them, “We have James with us, the boy who lived with us when he was a young child up until he was five, and now he’s fourteen, and he’s going back to his mother’s place in the next day or two. Would you pray that tonight he’ll give his life to Christ?” And sure enough, I gave my life to Christ that night.

                That being a Baptist church, they took me right up and baptized me that night – right in my clothes because they didn’t have a robe. And a few years later, when I first started preaching and gave that testimony, somebody asked me, “If they baptized you in your clothes, what did you do when you came out of the water? If your clothes were all wet, what did you wear?”

                The question caught me off guard, because I couldn’t remember. The next time I saw Mrs. Hale, I asked her, “Didn’t y’all take me right back and baptize me after I trusted Christ?” When she said yes, I asked, “Well, what did I do about clothes?”

                Mrs. Hale started crying and said, “James, before I ever left for church that night, I took a change of clothes and put them back by the baptistery. That way, if you got saved, we’d have clothes for you.”

                That’s how much faith, hope, and confidence my foster mother had. In later years, when I was preaching my crusades, Mrs. Hale would come to me after a service where hundreds of people had come to Christ, and she would say, “You know, my son, when I watched all those people come forward, I remembered the night I came and put my hand on your shoulder, and I’m so glad I did.” Here was one lady who touched the life of a boy, and he went on to touched the lives of millions. But it likely wouldn’t have happened if not for her love and prayer and faith. And don’t ever give up on the people you’re praying for. God may have a miracle in the wings.

I briefly debated whether this segment was worthy, or even of significant interest – until I realized how most of my readers are, were, or are about to be parents – whether by birth or adoption – not to mention grands and even the great-grands. And regardless of our “time stamp” as kingdom citizens, or even the origin or the quality of our spiritual parental engagement, the ever absorbing and under-girding interest of we parents is that we enjoy our posterity’s fulfilling their earthly destiny followed then by a family reunion in eternity.

As I compare the Sunday School picnic turbulence of both Robison’s childhood and mine during the ’50’s, over and against the explosive rampant “polarizing fracturing” in our world today, especially in our nations’ institutions, homes included, we are left literally speechless. In fact, speechless is too often our apparent default position as I look around the neighborhood, church included, and listen in on the conversations. I seldom hear anything significant from Christ followers or even general humanity that we  are already or soon will be in the cross-hairs of an extermination/depopulation/effort/attempt against humanity as proposed by the New World Order (NWO).…. mle

Taken verbatim from James Robison’s book “Living Amazed: How Divine Encounters Can Change Your Life.” Pages 20-23.

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked. Luke 4:22 NIV

It’s a miracle I was ever born. In fact, if the laws we have today were in effect back then, I’m 99.99 percent certain I would have been aborted.

My mother worked as a practical nurse, giving hospice care to home bound individuals. She had been married at a young age, but by the time she was forty, she was long divorced and working in the home of an elderly man in Houston. The man had an alcoholic son, about ten years younger than my mother, who one day forced himself on her and raped her.

My mother lacked the wherewithal to press charges, and when she became pregnant, as a result of the assault, she went to get an abortion, for all the reasons you would hear today- product of rape, no father or family in the picture, mother living in poverty and unable to care for the child. But when she went in to see the doctor, he refused to perform the abortion.

I don’t know why. Did he see possibilities and potential in that unborn child? Or did he simply believe all life was precious? Whatever the reason, and whatever you might think about it, he refused to perform the abortion.

 When I was old enough to understand, my mother told me the circumstances of my birth and that the Lord had told her, “Have the baby; it will bring joy to the world.” (Interesting prediction, LO!)

As a result, my mother as convinced that I would be a good girl, and she was going to name me Joy. In the delivery room, when the doctor told her she had a son, she said, “No, I have a little girl and her name is Joy.”   

You can call him anything you want,” the doctor replied but you’ve got a boy.”

I was born in the charity ward at the hospital, and my mother immediately placed a newspaper ad seeking foster care for me. This was 1943. Doyle and Katie Hale, a Baptist pastor and his wife from nearby Pasadena responded to the ad and took me in. They raised me for the first five years and were hoping to adopt me. In fact at one time, they had paperwork drawn up, but my mother would never sign it.

When I was five, my mother showed up one day and announced that she was moving from Houston up to Austin and that I was going with her. I clearly remember running away from her and crawling under the pastor’s bed. And I can remember my fingernails dragging across the hardwood floor as my mother dragged me out from under the bed by my foot. I remember that desperate clawing like it were yesterday. It was quite traumatic.

Mrs. Hale was crying so hard that she was convulsing. She had to go lie down. And Brother Hale was saying to my mother, “Please don’t do this, Myra. Don’t do this.”

But my mother insisted. “No, we’re going.”

Brother Hale tried to give her a handful of money to help her out, but she wouldn’t take it.

“We ‘ll be all right,” she said.

But the fact was, she had only enough money for us to get on a bus in Pasadena, on the southeast side of Houston, and ride to somewhere just on the other side of the city. That’s where we got off and hitchhiked the 165 miles or so to Austin. I clearly remember sitting on a little cardboard suitcase with all my belongings in it, and my mother had a bag. I still have that little beat-up suitcase in my office today.

When we got to Austin, we moved in with one of my aunts, and my mother began to look for work. When she found a job, she needed something for me to do during the day, so when school started, my aunt, who was a teacher, paid for me to go to a private school. I was only five, but I went into first grade and got a pretty good kick start on my education. All the way through, then, I was a year younger than everyone else in my class.

Though school always came easy for me – boringly easy – I was so shy and so afraid of everyone during my childhood that I would not even stand in front of a class to give a report. For the first ten years of school, I was so withdrawn that I wouldn’t mingle with the other kids. I carried a brown bag lunch every day, and I ate alone. When they picked teams in gym, I was the kid who was never chosen – because nobody knew me. My mother and I moved so often that I was always the new kid.

We lived in Austin for the next ten years, and over that time we moved so often – fifteen or sixteen times – that the words home and family were meaningless to me. Most of the places we lived did not face a  street or have a street address, and we would get our mail at someone else’s house. I’ve said that our only address during those years was an alley, a creek, or a dump. If it had an address at all, it would be some number and a half. They were typically little one room houses with the living area and kitchen all together with a bathroom attached to it. We lived the longest in the back of a junk yard, with auto parts, wrecks, and other debris lying around. That was the yard I played in.

In junior high, I walked three miles each way to school every day because mother didn’t have a car and no school bus ran anywhere near our house. During the entire ten years I lived in Austin, we never once had a car. And nobody around us had a car.

To be continued tomorrow…  Although none of us likely experienced the material scarcity above as children, we indeed may have suffered far more devastating trauma and abuse, either as a child or in a marriage, for which we’re still seeking healing, deliverance, and reconciliation. Keep reading. The next segment is titled “To the least of these.” I am one of them! Are you?

Continued Blessings as YOU GO FORTH, NOW encouraged and relishing in the fact you possess great hope>>>>> merlin

As told by James Robison on pages 12-19 in “Living Amazed: How Divine Encounters Can Change Your Life.”

When Betty and I had been married about seven years, we leased a hunting property with some friends about sixty miles northwest of Austin TX. We planned to use it as a retreat from the pace and pressures of my preaching ministry, which at the time had me on the road more than 275 days a year.

That summer we drove up to see the property and do some maintenance work. WE took our daughter Rhonda, who was five years old, and my former foster parents, the Rev. and Mrs. Hale. After a full day of work in the hot Texan sun, we still had a four-hour drive ahead of us to back home to the Ft. Worth area, and by then evening had fallen. As we drove through a little town called Marble Falls, I said to Betty, “I gotta have some chocolate milk.”

I was still sweaty from the work, I hadn’t shaved in a couple days, and I was dressed in coveralls and boots, and a big craving for chocolate milk, so we pulled into the first quick-stop market along the way.

As I got out of the car, I noticed thirty or forty high-school age kids hanging around in small groups in the parking lot. Some had their heads down, and I sensed they were troubled about something. Inside the store, I passed a couple of girls who were wiping tears from their eyes, on my way back to the dairy case. I sensed the Holy Spirit saying to me, James, you need to talk to these kids.

When I got to the check-out, I said, ”I’ve seen some folks who are crying. What’s going on here?”

“These kids are really, really  sad,” she said. “One of the most popular students, a football player, was in a car accident, and broke his neck. The kids have been here today praying that he would recover, be healed, but they just got word that he died.”

Again, I sensed the Holy Spirit say, Go talk to these boys and girls. They need to her how much Jesus loves them. The message was as clear as if it had been audible. Here’s a good example of how the enemy gets in and tries to distract us. No sooner had I heard the Lord speak than a second voice – my own voice – began to enumerate all the reasons why talking to these kids was not a good idea.

You need to look out for your family, James. You still have a four hour drive ahead of you. Betty’s tired, Rhonda’s tired, the Hales are tired. You’re wearing coveralls, and you haven’t showered or shaved. And besides, these kids are all over the place out there. How would you ever get them together to talk to them?

When the enemy goes to work on us, it’s not like Cupid shooting arrows of love. He fires suggestions, doubts, and distractions. But when God speaks, He speaks the truth.

James, these kids need to hear how much I love them.

I paid for my chocolate milk and walked toward the exit. As soon as I touched the door handle, I saw all the kids in the parking suddenly come together in a circle right out front.

Okay, Lord, that is just too obvious.

In my dirty coveralls, unshaven, and looking like a bum, I stepped into the middle of the circle, looked around at all the grieving faces, and said, “Excuse me, I was just passing through town, and the lady inside told me you just lost a friend. I’m so sorry to hear that. But I feel impressed to tell you that if your friend was a Christian, he’s in heaven right now, and he’s looking down at you and saying, ‘Whatever you do, don’t miss this! Don’t miss heaven.’ And he wants you to know that Jesus is the way to heaven.”

Now, if your friend was not a Christian, he’s saying, ‘I don’t want you to come where I am right now.’ And if you yourself are a Christian, he’s saying, ‘Why didn’t you tell me about Jesus! Why didn’t you tell me so I didn’t end up here?’

“If you didn’t tell him about Jesus, you have to honestly ask yourself why? And if you know Jesus, you need to understand that your friends here could leave at any moment, like this boy did, and you need to be a witness.

“Those of you who don’t know Christ, your friend wants to make sure that you don’t miss heaven.”

I concluded by saying, “Whatever you might think about what I just said, remember this: on the day your friend died, a stranger who was just driving through town stopped long enough to point you to Jesus and recommend Jesus to you.

Then I walked back to the van, got in, and we resumed our drive home.

That sounds like the end of the story, right? I hadn’t told the kids my name, where I was from, or what I did. Nothing.

Several weeks later. We were doing an area-wide crusade in Austin. That was the crusade where eleven members of the 1969 national champion Texas Longhorn football team came to Christ, including quarterback James Street and receiver Randy Peschel, who would later connect on an amazing fourth-down pass to set up the winning touchdown against Arkansas that sealed the national championship.

After the service one night, several high school kids came up to me and said, “Sir, you’re him. You don’t look like him, but you’re him. You’re the one.”

“I’m the one who what?”

“The one who stopped in the parking lot and told us about Jesus. Sir, that changed our lives.” One of the girls started crying and said, “My dad was an alcoholic and I went home and led him to the Lord. He was  killed just a short time later, but he went to heaven because you stopped at that store.”

“That’s amazing!” I said.

But the story doesn’t stop there.

To be continued in Wednesday AM blog.  Blessings as YOU GO FORTH>>>>>merlin

By James Robison

My Call to Preach…

I was a support person on the platform at a Friday night revival when I heard the Lord say to me very clearly, “I’m going to use you to preach My Truth to the world.”

I’ve often said that when the Lord speaks to me, I hear Him louder than if He were speaking out loud. This was the first time I had ever heard Him speak to me like this, but His word to me was loud and clear: “I want you to be an evangelist.”

This was a mind-blowing prospect for an illegitimate child whose father had deserted him before he was ever born; whose mother had given him away by placing an ad in the newspaper; who had grown up feeling overlooked, unloved, totally rejected, and almost invisible. And now God was saying to me, “Son, I see you. I choose you. And I want to use you.”

“God, how?” I asked. “How would I ever make a living as an evangelist?”

“Where is your faith?” the Lord replied.

I said, “It’s all in you.” And I meant it. At that moment, I yielded my life into the Master Potter’s hand; I gave Him the whole lump of clay.

As I sat there on the platform, it truly was a Holy Spirit-infilling moment. It was as if the Spirit of God swept me up and began to shape something in me – I wouldn’t call it self-confidence but God – confidence –and the kind of boldness revealed in the book of Acts. I felt the power of that boldness and a legitimate compassion for others that just seemed to communicate and resonate with people. And it started instantly.  

Preaching At Petro – Tex

On the following Monday morning after my call, I went back to my summer job at the Petro-Tex chemical plant in Pasadena. I had been working as a painter’s helper in town, but when a job opened at Petro-Tex, I moved over there because of more money. I worked as a pipe fitter’s assistant on a construction site, helping the men who were assembling all the pipes for a big plant addition. I had been there about three weeks after my high school graduation prior to college when God had called me to preach.

The plant workers ate lunch out in the yard every day, where there were a number of large flatbed trucks parked and as many as a hundred men would gather on them to eat their lunches. To a shy kid, they were a huge crowd.

The conversations I heard during these lunchtimes were obscene and degrading. On top of all the cursing, the primary things these men talked about were all the bars and parties they were going to, all the women they were having sex with, and whatever else they were doing on the weekends. It was just awful, nothing but filth.

So there I was , having just received the call to preach, and I was surrounded by some of the vilest and most depraved talk you could ever hear – and it made me sick. I couldn’t eat my lunch. As I looked around at all these men laughing and talking about how “we went to this party . . . and everyone was getting drunk and carrying on. . . ,” I suddenly felt compelled to jump up onto one of the flatbeds and shout with the authority of a coach or a drill sergeant, “Listen! Listen to me!”

The men all turned and stared in my direction.

“Listen!” I said. “I’m just a boy trying to learn how to be a man, and all I’m hearing from you all is how to think filthy, talk filthy, and live filthy. Men, I wouldn’t talk about a dog the way most of you talk about your wives.”

The minute I said that, hot tears started cutting a course down my cheeks, which were covered in dust from the morning’s work. I reached into the back pocket of my Levi’s, where I had a little Soul Winner’s New Testament. I held it up, with those tears in my eyes, and said, “But God loves you so much. He gave Jesus to die for you and to give you life, to show you how to live and how to love your wife and your family. I just want you to know that if I can help you, I’m a helper. If you will just call me, I will tell you how you can know Jesus.”

With that, I jumped down off the trailer. Without question, within me was a zeal and a fire that only can be described as the work of the Holy Spirit. I knew I had been caught up in a powerful force unlike anything I had ever experienced.

Now, with that many hardened souls standing around, you can imagine the kind of feedback I might have received. But there was none of that – no catcalls, no shouting, and no mockery. Only dead silence and a yard full of men, their mouths crammed with entire halves of sandwiches, staring at me in disbelief.

For the next three weeks, before I left for college, I led men to Christ all over that plant.

I mean, it was nonstop, every day praying with those men. I don’t recall doing one lick of pipe fitting work. Instead, all day long, I would hear shouts of , “Helper! Helper!” and I would climb up onto the steel catwalks of the storage tanks they were working on, and the men would say, “You hit me, son. That’s me. You were right. I don’t love my wife like I should. I don’t even love my kids like I should.” And I would pray with them. I was seventeen years old, and I was catching my first glimpse. Of what it means to live amazed.

Years later, when we held crusades in the greater Houston area, men would come up to me after I had preached and say, ”Five years ago . . . eight years ago . . .  ten years ago, you led me to the Lord out there at the chemical plant. We were way up on a catwalk and we got down on our knees.” I met four who were then deacons in their church.

That’s the way my ministry started. And the amazing results never stopped.

I first met James Robison maybe six years ago having never seen or heard of him prior to reading this book, Living Amazed. Actually, I now consider this book as one of the most inspirational recently written books I’ve encountered and am encouraging Christ Followers (CF’s) regardless of age or spiritual maturity to consider reading it. Today I began listening to it again on Audible while exercising on my antique Dyne Aire . . . and am already into Chapter Eight wondering why I ever waited so long to revisit How Divine Encounters Really Will Change Your Life! (Rather, All our lives!)

I personally live by the belief “the ball” is always in our court! Not a popular assumption any longer!

Each morning when I awake, I only have 1 choice to make from 6 options as to how I’ll live out my day and they are 1.) being bad; 2.) being mediocre; 3.) being average; 4.) being good (there’s that word again); 5.) being world-class; and 6.) being Jesus – centered!  

Moreover, our culture today pushes us to be either Ego driven or Victim centered! If you’re struggling with either, inhale the freshness of the Proverbs. Read a chapter every day to enhance your personal clarity! Humbleness of heart is the option of choice for CF’s. Be vigilant in all things by being Jesus – centered. Blessing AS YOU GO FORTH>>>> merlin