If I had known back then what I know now, then would have been much easier. One of the highlights of each year back then, was spending a week, sometimes two weeks at Palacios Baptist Encampment on the Texas Gulf Coast.\u00a0 It was there that I first sensed God\u2019s call on my life and responded positively.\u00a0 It was also there that I began to switch my response to negative.\u00a0 Back then, if you were called to the ministry, the options were limited.\u00a0 That call meant you were either going to be a Pastor, a Minister of Music or a Missionary. \u00a0My Dad was my Pastor, and as much as I loved him and respected him, I had no desire to be him.\u00a0 Each week at Palacios there was a guest missionary speaker who always tried to impress us by using some of their foreign language on us.\u00a0 I knew, or at least believed, that I could never learn a foreign language (Later confirmed by my grades in Greek and Hebrew).\u00a0 As far as music was concerned, well let\u2019s just say I felt God would have to be desperately in need of musicians to call me to that.\u00a0 So, I had to start trying to figure out what God was calling me to do, so as to assist Him in the process. That process puts major stress on teenage life. I spent many a night talking to God like, \u201cGod how about this, missionary to major league baseball.\u201d\u00a0 Later, I discovered Psalm 2:4, \u201cGod who sits in the heavens, laughs . . .\u201d \u00a0If I had only known the multiple dimensions of my future.\u00a0 Of course, had I known all of it back then, I probably would have jumped in the Gulf of Mexico and swam east. Looking back, I have been so greatly blessed with the diversity of God\u2019s call on my life \u2013 Pastor, Collegiate Minister, Bible Instructor, Interim Pastor, Missionary, Seminary Professor, Consultant, Author, Chair of Prayer Occupant, National Prayer Committee Participant, Guest Teacher, Etc.\u00a0 Wow! No wonder, I\u2019m tired.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If I had known back then what I know now, then would have been much easier. One of the highlights of each year back then, was spending a week, sometimes two weeks at Palacios Baptist Encampment on the Texas Gulf Coast.\u00a0 It was there that I first sensed God\u2019s call on my life and responded…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"default","_kad_post_title":"default","_kad_post_layout":"default","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"default","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"default","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4047"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4048,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4047\/revisions\/4048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}