God has my trust & faith that has brought me Peace.

I believe that we all have Eternal life & that it’s a matter of where we will spend it & it is my belief in God/Jesus Christ that dictates that I will spend it with Him in Heaven.

I had always been raised to know God/Jesus Christ. From days when I was a toddler, I remember my mother’s mother taking me to church in a white-painted concrete block building with loud music & me crawling underneath the pews. As a little child, I would jump out of a tree house that was 13 feet above the ground & I would say to myself that God would protect me. I would always run Time backwards in my head to the beginning of Creation to the point of there being nothing in the universe by my soul & God as I pondered where He must have come from. My mother would send me to my Uncle & Aunt’s home that was about 80 miles away for the summer. He was a preacher. I learned some from him & at the age of 12, I was baptized in the Church’s baptismal tank at the front of the Church. Almost every summer I would go out to Fall River, Ks. to stay with this Uncle & Aunt, & therefore, I would get my annual dosage of teachings about God/Jesus Christ from this end of the family. They even gave me a New Testament called: The Way Home & encouraged me to memorize the books of the New Testament & read the Book of Matthew. It was my Uncle John that told me, “If you’re ever going to be a knowledgeable CHRISTian, you need to read the Holy Bible.” There was a time that I went to stay with my step-grandmother that was my Mom’s step-mother in Clinton, Mo. & she took me to her Pentecostal Church. It was there that I learned to be afraid of God. They gave Hellfire & Brimstone. sermons that scared me. They always offered invitations at the end of each sermon that resulted in people weeping & speaking in tongues. I saw people running around the church with their arms up & not looking where they were going & not hit anything. I asked God/Jesus Christ to save me. I didn’t want to be left behind when He came back. I also attended my parent’s church, which was a Methodist church. I took classes for God & Family, God & Church, & God & Country. As a child, I’m not sure how much I learned, but it did keep me believing in the existence of God. I eventually had friends in high School that attended a Pentecostal Church at the south side of Wichita, Ks. that had invited me to attend with them. The sermons were something special. I remember the pastor speaking about someone fitting another person & his guts spilled out like spaghetti all over the ground (it must’ve been the story of Ehud). Eventually, I had joined the Marine Corps & had attended a few services while in the Corps, but they were pretty dry & uninformational to me. Something was missing. Perhaps it was that the government was involved in it. What I’ve learned over time was that the chaplain would run the Catholic services & the Protestant services. It would surprise me if he also did islam, buddhist, & hindu services as well. That would be a compromise made in Hell... I had been invited to a service off of the base that was something different from the chapel services. I’m not sure what they were, but it was something like a Pentecostal Church, but more toned down. These people had a mild-mannered personality, got along great & were always respectful. After I got out of the Marine Corps, I had began to start my family. I had a job, a wife & a son. My son was born 5 days before I began school to become a licensed aircraft mechanic. The schooling, plus my job left me with about 4-hours of sleep a day for 5 days out of the week. It was when I was about a year into the schooling that 9/11 had occurred. We had 2 Iranians in the school & on 9/12, these 2 Iranians had brought a big beautiful koran in to the cafeteria & were pointing at verses in the koran, laughing & speaking in Farsi. I walked over there & pointed at their koran & told them that their religion was wrong. They said, “How do you know Tony? We have read our noble koran. Have you read your Holy Bible?” I had to walk away. I had never read the Holy Bible. Oh, how I’d love to talk to those guys now! I had eventually finished my schooling, got licensed to work on aircraft. It was when I was driving home from work, I would see men outside their homes either working in their yards or on their cars. I felt as if I was missing something. I didn’t have peace or the knowledge that I thought I needed to get on in life. I thought that there was some secret to life that I didn’t have. I had long imagined stopping & asking one of these men to give me some piece of knowledge that I could use in life to help me along. It was eventually at the point in time of my life that I had transferred to a different department at Cessna Aircraft to do the job that I was licensed for that I had met a Southern Baptist preacher that worked within that new department at the Service Center that I had transferred to. He would have conversations with me that eventually directed my steps to the path that I am on today. One day, he was going to throw a worn out Bible away when I asked him if I could have it & read it everyday while I was at work. He obliged me & I began to read the Bible on my breaks. I began attending his church & learned more & more about God/Jesus Christ. It was the last 2 verses of Ecclesiastes that I discovered my purpose in life while doing my daily Bible reading... It was to serve God/Jesus Christ. This gave me the peace & knowledge that I was looking for. It’s been about 15 years now, & I still have the peace & knowledge I sought when driving home from work. I have long since completed the Holy Bible that took me 3 years to complete on my 1st trip through. I am on my 12th trip through it right now.

It comes with a trust in the Holy Bible. 1John 1:9 sums this up for me, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” If I cant trust the Holy Bible, what am I going to put my trust in? I trust that God exists & with my reading the Holy Bible I believe that I can trust in everything it says, including 1John 1:9. If not, what am I going to trust in? Myself?! Phhhhfffft...!!!