I’ve dropped the ball on writing. I’m busy with so many other things. Driving a school bus for the summer reading program finished up last Thursday. My wife and I are building a huge deck. It is a major project. It is 24x16ft. It is almost half the size of our small home.

My wife wanted it as big as possible. She and I are building it ourselves. On the trailer to the left of the picture is a trailer with a sliding glass door that will be installed by a contractor I know. As you can see the deck has not yet gotten handrails. That is for next week. We’re taking a break for a few days. My wife is going to her cousin’s home at the lake upstate for a visit with some other ladies for something of a retreat. Perhaps this is just as much for me as it is for her. I will likely build the steps on the deck. It’s not a difficult task. It is supposed to rain tomorrow, which will keep me inside anyway.

God is still at the forefront of life here. He’s been speaking to me. It is a calming understanding of things in life. I once wondering as a young man how older people nearing the end of life dealt with the knowledge of the imminent end.

I read a lot and I’ve heard both sides of the story concerning what men think is after this life. . . or not. I thought way back then that I could likely lose my mental state from the impending end. However, now that I’m going on 73 yrs old I find myself not so concerned any more. I’ve got a contentment about the end of my life. I don’t suspect it to be any time soon, but I feel when it is time I will rest in what God has been showing me.

I don’t understand people who revel is declaring there is no God. There is an empty place in all of us that gives us cause to want something we know we need. These unbelievers have only to take on God to prove Himself to them. How do I know God is real?

When I was about 12 years old I heard God tell me I would be a mnister. More directly I would be an evangelist. Over the next several decades I came and went like the tide in my faith. My definition of an evangelist shifted several times. What brought me to this day was the school I attended for certification as a Chaplain. I was already an ordained minister under my church an the state in which I live. The more I studied to become a Chaplain I found that the truest form of a Chaplain is best defined as an evangelist. God slipped that over on me. I had no idea the culmination of my calling would be revealed at this late time in my life.

How do I know God exists in other ways. He met me with the Upper Room experience with the evidence of tongues. There have been times I’ve heard other speak in tongues and knew what they were saying as confirmed by another in the setting.

God told me when I was 31 to sell my home and move my family to a little town, which is where I still live decades later. I had nighmares about selling my little brick home that I bought in 1973. The amazing thing is the home my wife and I live in that I bought eight years ago was built in 1973. It’s brick as well with a huge detacted garage. God practically gave us this home. We looked at, made and offer over another possible buyer, got approved the next morning. The next day my home at the time sold that day and the buyer paid me by check and said I had to be out that day. So we looked at, bought a home, and sold another home and moved in. That was done in 3 days.

If I go back to 1989 I got a call to an interview for a job with civil service. I really didn’t want it because I would lose one half my pay. Even so, God told me to take the job. In fact He told me at the time I would suffer two things of which the evident one was finances, but the other was sickness. After about the fourth month I had attorneys and collection agencies calling for money and I ending up in the hospital for the first time ever in my life. By the way, God told me this endurance would last five years, but at that time I would be restored to my original state. On the fifth anniversary to the very week, I got a promotion at work and restored my pay to a liveable level. My grandmother’s estate, which I thought had been settled at least two years before came to bear. I got a check from her estate that paid up all my debts to that date. You can’t beat God for having the best for yourself

Even through my divorce He was with me. I collapsed, but God picked me up and restored me from that. Right after my first wife and I separated God promoted me at work again with a very sizeable increase in rank and pay. The woman I had begun a relationship at the time became my help both mentally and physically. She became my wife five years after we met. We’ve been married eight years now and she became ordained as a minister a couple of years ago and is very active in ministry. There is so much to share, yet not enough space here to write about. I love this woman beyond measure. She is my compliment.

In all these years God has never left me without a roof over my head, a vehicle or vehicles to drive and food on our table. My former wife has never thrived. She’s had mutiple issues with one being cancer. She lives in bitterness and I cannot make that change for her.

But most of all I’ve told this many times. My dad said my family did not have longevity. All the men of my family died before or by age 60. I’m the oldest of five sons. Three are decease in their fifties. My dad, granddad and great-granddad all died on or before sixty. I told my dad I was not buying this family curse. God has seen me through. In October I will be seventy-three and my last check ups with my docs were all good. All tests within limits. My heart is strong, My only misgiving is I am 72. Some days I feel old, but I still put in a busy day. God is good. I have a strong mind and my soul belongs to a loving Father in Heaven and I might have to say heart as well.

The recent revelations God has allowed for me to see have further bolstered my faith. People that can’t understand that will never know WHY till they stop being so unbelieving and give time to searching their hearts for why they are so hardened to the fact that Jesus died on a cross for them as well as me. We all have that in common. WHY not seek Him?