My Family's Christian Roots!

Growing up in West Texas Mama and my godfather “Daddy” took my family to church when occasion permitted. Ours was a Baptist family where Mama kept the Bible read. Daddy worked the oil fields in order to feed our family. I remember when I was 5, Mama took us to church where Grandma.taught Sunday school and she taught us to sing “Jesus Loves The Little Children” 2 years later the pastor taught us kids in vacation Bible school to sing “ Jesus loves me.” in fact, he used to hold me in his lap as we were singing it. I felt a special bond with that pastor.. The next time I was involved in anyway, church wise was the summer when I was nine years old and my mother put me in vacation Bible school at a Baptist Church about a block and a half from our house. I felt. like a fish out of water. I knew who Jesus was, but our family at that point was uncharged and worldly. I’m a go to church with my parents and some of the friends at times when they couldn’t make it and often I could not understand the words that the pastor was saying. Then when I was 11 on December 6, 1981 I remember the pastor brother Jim talking about the conviction that you need to be saved and from a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through the Holy Ghost. Five days later, daddy who would like the pastor very much invited him to our home and I asked him to lead me through salvation where I said the center is prayer and will saved. The next morning, my mother gave me a stern warning that in retrospect, without even knowing, let me down the road to spiritual and eternal progression . “ Now, James because you got saved in our Christian. It doesn’t mean that you don’t sin, never forget that!” The next summer, I went to vacation Bible school and threw the help of my mother. I discovered in her coffee table and old family Bible that she had received when she married my birth father.. it was a large print king James Bible, and I took the reading it right away both old and New Testament devouring it like you wouldn’t believe.. of course that age of 12 in NBN between third and fourth grade because I was declared a slow loner in Ector county Texas. I still was a very voracious reader which surprised daddy.. I went to vacation Bible school for the summer of 1982 and 1983 and a 1984. My parents went to a few revivals, but by the time I hit my teams, even though I read the Bible occasionally I was becoming Whirley again Things begin to change in the spring of 1989. My brother was being baptized in church, but at the same time I was in turmoil, warning to gang back my first high school, sweetheart.. “ I’ll tell you one thing that could work .” Grandma told me.. “ your uncle Butch went to church when he was in high school to keep your aunt Gail. Maybe you should do the same thing with this girl. .” In April 1989, I begin attending church having regained my girlfriend and though I love the Lord, there were still a little bit of the whirly for me. For a year I kept going to church, hoping to keep my girl but overtime the relationship ended.. After graduation from high school I was doing my first stent at Cross Cole rehabilitation center for the blind in Austin, Texas, and one day I walked into their chapel. I felt a powerful spirit there, but I was still not totally right with the Lord. I was not progressing in a good way.. When I started attending college at Odessa college, my second high school sweetheart, broke up with me and some of my friends in college one of them I will give the pseudonym. Brad suggested that I get back with having once again a personal close relationship with Jesus Christ.. a part of me wanted to but my time in Austin both at the rehab center, and the school for the blind was causing me to be more carnal. By July 1993 I was on a downhill slope my friends in college Nangle with a pseudonym Brad and Jim Bob didn’t want to hang out with me that much so I began to consider hanging out with some of the losers I knew in high school. One of them with the synonym pike offered to have someone pick me up to take take me to his house like one night to smoke some marijuana.. my best friend Keith laid down the law and told me I had to get in church and my friend with another pseudonym. Kim Bob suggested that I go to church with this girl that I was close with.. What can I say? I got that close to the Lord, but then I begin to have problems with the girl and with Brad so after a period of five months I dropped out of church.. I didn’t attend church and begin hanging out with some losers who were hanging out with a distant cousin. In December of 1994 I had the sixth Sense that my grandmother was dying. She was having tough muscle cramps and a hard time breathing. Sensing some of the conduct and dysfunctions in my family I grew angry and very rebellious, I was angry at God for making my grandmother that sick. I was angry at my parents for certain behaviors they had so much I will discuss him all of your chapter. But sadly I grew very angry at God In January 1995 when I went back to campus at Texas Tech I chose to room with a college buddy of mine named Charlie Nation a freshman engineering student that I had met several years before at the Texas School for the blind and the previous summer at Xriss Cole weird application center for the blind. I stopped going to church although I read my Bible education permit. In February I developed a quick long-distance love relationship with an ex-girlfriend of Charlie's by the name of Nicole. It was a long distance relationship but what I should have known was that she didn't want to marry a Christian but yet she wanted to marry me. That was until she heard from Charlie that an ex-girlfriend of mine from high school, Olivia was still in love with me. Notice after December 1994 that the name side give in this scenario are pseudonyms because they're people that I wish to keep their identity secret to protect the guilty. That semester my grades suffered. Charlie wanted to couch potato and party all night long which made it hard sometimes to attend my classes. It was a miracle that they let me pass my junior year by the seat of my pants. When I came back to Midland Odessa in May of 1995 I vented to all to my grandmother all my anger at Charlie at Nicole and God. Family Grandma snapped. “Damn it that's enough! At least Charlie said you when housing shut off your meals. And my condition is not God's fault, honey you don't blame him for something that I did to myself.” It was her along with some of the friends that I had at the time that I once again got right back with God and started going to church again. Church became a part of my buoyancy and I noticed Sundays when I didn't go it was not the same I was miserable. I do remember some of the last words of wisdom that my grandma gave me. The first one was this “I want you to stay right with God James you hear me. And don't you go acting like a show off damn hypocrite! *Life is too short for you to go poking around! Make something of it and keep your chin up!” Grandma died the Saturday before Thanksgiving 1995. Although I was crushed a few weeks later I knelt in my room in desperation and rededicated my life to Christ and for a full year my relationship with God was sweet and he began to open new doors in my life