secondtimearound

My Dad had seen some hard times in the past, and it drove him to smoke, and to smoke usually more than one pack a day for years. In the late '50s evidence mounted on the media about the heavy risks involved in smoking, and he decided to quit about 1960. It was difficult to do, but he was determined, and he did it. He quit cold turkey, and I never saw him smoke again. And he lived until 2002. I am certain that if he had not quit he would not have lived any where as long as that. He was also baptized just a few years before his death. His quitting also helped to stop me from ever having my first smoke. Thank you Jesus!

Yes, I understand that it is safer to buy them food, not just give them money because we do not know them, and they may just use the money for some evil purpose if we just do that. For someone mostly in need of food, I plan on giving them money to buy a large fast food meal, but not enough to misuse it. Like maybe $20-$30. Does this sound OK? Yes, we have to use wisdom so our gift will not do more harm than good.

Yes, I was in a hurry to help my wife in a nearby store, and there was no fast food place nearby, so I was sorry, but I felt I could not help him at that time. I was also sort of in shock because it had been a long time since anyone asked me for money.

Yesterday, I was parking my car in a public parking lot, and as I walked towards one of the stores, a stranger came up to me. He was perhaps close to my age and he looked sincere when he talked to me. He said something like the following... Please help me, I need some help. I need some money. I have nothing, and I am very hungry, and in need of a meal. Please help me! As I said he looked very sincere. The problem was I had my charge card on me, but I had no cash of any kind on me. Not even a dime. There was no way I could help him. Christians should try to help people in trouble, but this time I could think of no way to help so I said the following. "Oh, no! I have no money at all on me and so I can not help you. But if you see me again, ask me again to help you, and I will help you if I have some money then." He did not reply, but I was sorry that I could not help him. I pray that he will be OK. I hope he found some one near by who could help me. Maybe I should try to always have some money on my in case I meet some one like this again? May the Lord guide us all.

I collect old photos of the 19th century. There are some paper photos, and a few old tintypes, and ambrotypes, and even one daguerretype. I hope I spelled that last one right! The one I want to mention today is an old paper cabinet card from the 1890s era. It pictures two old couples, all perhaps about 75-80 years old, and it is marked as being from Central Pennsylvania. The thing is they are all happy and smiling. The two ladies are sitting on chairs, and the men are behind them standing. Some people might wonder why they all look so centent. None of them have more than a few years more to live on this earth surely! Perhaps not that long. But now that I am almost as old probably as some of these people I think I know why they are smiling. My feeling is that they are saved in God through the Lord Jesus Christ. They are past the prime of life on earth, but there is more life on the way. On the way to Heaven. If I am right about them...then I say "God bless them!!"

To SObG, Praise God. Praise Jesus. Something tells me that the Lord loves you very much, and that there is rejoicing in Heaven over your salvation.

Everyone was afraid of COVID and at our church they were having assembly, but most people saw it online on their PC rather than in person. I went and I sat over on the left side of the church, and the pastor greeted me. There were only about 5-6 others in the pews there in person. I saw sitting there a few rows in front of me an older married couple and I knew that they were long time faithful members. They were old but they were not afraid of COVID or of what might happen to them. They were maybe in their upper 80s. We sang hymns there and we prayed and then it was time to go. It was some months until most people came back to church in person. Recently church was held to a near packed church, and the old couple were in the church again. She had to be wheeled in to the church in a wheel chair, but God bless them for their wonderful faith!

There are others here who have also been close to death. Praise God that we were all given more time, and praise Him more that we all have faith that the future is all in the hands of the Lord, not blind chance! Praise Jesus!

It was early 2002, and I had collapsed down to the floor after arriving back home from work one evening. My wife was still on the way home from work, but our oldest daughter came into the house and found me, and called an ambulance for me, I am told. They later found that I had an"AVM", like an exploding blood vessel in my head, caused by a long ago birth injury I am told. I had later an 8 hour long operation by surgeons working over my brain. I was in the hospital for two months, and even after that they were not sure if I would recover completely or what. I recently found what I had wrote in my notebook when I had finally arrived back at home. This is what I wrote..."What is it like to be close to death? It is like hearing the angels calling and knowing very well that there is far more out there than any of those perfectly healthy people could imagine." Yes, the Lord is out there, and the angels calling are out there also. Thank you, God! Thank you Jesus! When you need Him, dear reader, I hope that you will hear them calling also. God bless you! He wants us to come to Him to be saved. God bless you!

Yesterday wife and I went to the local Emergency room for my health problem. There was a waiting room with maybe 15-20 waiting for help, and after a few minutes I got to go in, and the man there directed me to an RN who was later able to help me some. But before I went in, I told the man who first spoke to me that I was a person who prayed for people, and I had prayed for myself there, and I had also prayed for all those seeking help in that waiting room. He looked at me and told me that those people who had been there that day...needed all the help they could get! I liked his answer. Praise the Lord!

Last week, early in the morning all of a sudden I was grasping the morning paper in my left hand when I had pain in my hand, and it froze up on me. I am an older person and my lower leg will freeze up like this occasionally at night when I am trying to sleep. I have to get out of bed, and stomp around for a minute or so until it gets back to normal. The same thing happens to my wife, and she has some meds to apply to her leg to help her. Well, my hand was like froze up, and it hurt, and so I quickly prayed to the Lord, and asked for healing. I heard an answer, not out loud, but like I heard it in my head, and it was something like this, Put some water on your hand quickly to return it to normal. Well, I had no idea if this was from the Lord or what, but I went to the water faucet in the kitchen, and turned it on my hurt hand for about 30 seconds. When I turned it off, I tried to move my hand and it was back close to normal, and was 100% back to normal in a very few seconds. Then I prayed "Thank you, Jesus". I am not the only one who calls on the name of the Lord when I need help, but he has a way of helping when we ask for help. Thank you God.

I was in this hospital and I was in a type of coma. There were times when I would hear, and times when I could not, and times when I could speak, and many times when I could not do that. I heard one day, from my neighbor's TV that in the early days after Christ was resurrected...when the disciples prayed for the healing of others, that often there was quite a time between the prayer for healing, and the actual complete healing arriving. I had been prayed over yes, but I also would see a considerable time between the prayers, until the complete healing, but it would arrive in the correct time. This is what I was told. And for me this was very true. When I was allowed to return home, I was half dead, but slowly I improved. It was years before I was back to normal. I had something that I was told to do, but it had to be done in the right time, and in the right way. I was told to accept no gift for healing, and to never accept any thanks. I was not the one dong the healing, but the one asking for it. By about a year and a half after going home I was told to start. The first opportunity was from an email message from another member of the online site for those suffering from the same illness I had. An AVM near death cerebral bleed. The email was from a mother whose daughter had got an AVM, and she was near death. I sent the mother my prayer for daughter's recovery, and she could see how I prayed, and she sent back her own prayer. She could see that I prayed to God in the name of the Son, while she prayed to the Saints. But she needed my prayers, and I needed to pray for her daughter, so we accepted each other, and she seemed to see some benefit from my first prayer. She told me of daughter's trip to the super-physician, and how he gave her some hope if she could stay alive. It was interesting to me, and I could feel my prayers were going to the Lord. After weeks of this she asked if I thought that she should pray the way I did? I would have liked that, but I first prayed about it, and the Lord seemed to say that I should advise her to pray the way she was taught, and I told her I would also pray the way I was taught. So I sent her that message, and we continued to pray. She told me that her daughter was the person she loved more than any on earth, and she had to see her die a little bit each day. So I told her I would pray at least once a day for her healing, but I would probably forget and miss it when very busy. She thanked me. After about 2 years of this she sent me the message that the Dr. told her the illness was gone, and she would recover 100%. She was awe struck, and grateful to God, and Christ, and so was I. Many other were helped. Thank you, God!!!! Thank you Jesus. Does He answer prayer? Yes, if we have faith! I had some real faith then, because I had just been healed my self! Thank you for your healings, Lord!!!!!!!!!! The time came after about 4 years when I was told my prayers for healing would cease, at least for the time being. But what a ride it was. Thank you, Jesus!

It was several years ago, and a few years after I had lived through my 8 hour cerebral operation. Wife had prayed, and prayed for my recovery, and had enlisted many fine Christians to pray for my recovery even though my doctor said that it was likely that I soon would be totally brain dead. When I was allowed to go home he told me I had done much better than they had expected. Well, that was true, but I would say that I had been helped by those prayers to the wonderful Lord. My faith was high as you would expect! Couple years later we traveled a hundred miles or so to see one of my wife's favorite preachers, and it was a joy. It lasted 3 or 4 nights and the last night the subject was the Holy Spirit. It was like an old high school auditorium, and we sat on the fold out seats attached to the right side of the gym. We looked down on the speaker's platform from the side. When it started I looked down and saw an odd sight. There were a few people behind the speaker's platform, and I saw one very tall person standing there watching the speakers. He was twice the height of any of the other men, and to my mind he must have been 12 feet in height. WHAT? Who was he? He seemed to be guarding the assembly, and I soon figured out he must be an angel, but why didn't any one else seem to see him. Much later I surmised that one must have some real faith to be able to see him, and I had it only because I had been healed only a couple years before. Was it a thank you to me? Don't think so. I am the one who needed to say thank you, not the Lord! Another reason is you had to be in just right place to see this angel, and I was in a place where I could. Said it before, and I will say it here again.....Thank you wonderful God!! Thank you Jesus!! I didn't tell wife what I saw, people would have heard me, and thought I was bonkers! But it did happen, and later that night I asked wife what she felt there that night, and she said that she felt the power of God's angels in that room. Well put!

It was several years ago, and wife and I were leaving in my car to drive about 5o miles to go to a shop that we wanted to visit. But before we left I decided to pray for a safe little trip for wife and myself, and I also prayed for our fellow travelers. At the end of it I prayed these things to God in the name of Jesus. That was how I was taught to pray. We left then in the later morning, and we had gone maybe six or seven miles when we went around a curve, and I saw a truck heading from the opposite direction with four cars right behind it, coming to go by my left side. Then I saw a sedan speeding in the lane I occupied right towards my car, and it was passing them in my lane. There was no where for me to go but forward, but I slowed down. The sedan was coming towards me very fast, but it tried to go some to it's right so to try to miss me and also the vehicles it was passing. I heard the sound of it hitting the left side of my vehicle, mostly hitting my left fender, and my tire. It also hit one of the vehicles it was passing. It zoomed on and was soon out of sight. Wife and I wondered if we were hurt, and also how badly our car was hurt. My car was stopped on the road in our correct lane. Then people stopped and asked if we were OK. Our car was damaged and was going nowhere until it was fixed up. Wife and I seemed to be OK, but I had for a few minutes this pain in my back, which I thought must be from the accident. I called the police telephone number and reported what happened and we awaited them. In a few minutes the lady came to us from the car that hit us. She was OK, but her car was not. We thought she had run from the scene, but her car was not able to run off even if she had intended to do so. I told the officer just what happened, and so did a fine witness who saw it all and stayed to tell the officer. Our car was taken to the car dealer where in time it was totally restored. Wife and I had no lasting health issues. In court, our insurance people told the owner of the car that hit us that they would sue if they did not pay to have my car fixed up, and so they did that. Thank you God! Thank you Jesus! We resumed our life giving thanks.

It was just a very few days ago, and I was driving through a neighborhood in our home town. There to the right was a fairly nice home with a sign out in front of it. This sign did not say "Home for Sale" or advertise something for sale. It just said "Thank you Jesus!". Wow, courageous I thought to myself. I thought about this sign, and wondered what they were thanking Him for. Did they have a new baby? Was one of their children newly saved in the Lord? Many possibilities entered my head. I thought of what I would like to thank the Lord for. I survived my near death illness in 2002, and the Dr. considered it an unlikely event. Also I am still around 21 years later. Yes if I had such a sign in my yard that is what I would thank Him for, and I bet this family who put up their sign also had an excellent reason to thank Him! Yes, Thank you Jesus!