Once Burned Twice Shy's blog: "Is there anything God can't do?"

The 90's brought a new expectancy and excitement with them. My old life was on the way out and a new adventure was about to further my quest. I left prison after 1989 with a new direction.One that I was ready to jump into with both feet! You see, after I got to the jail after my promise to God, Something did happen. I was ther for about 2 weeks when my probation officer came to see me. She informs me that I am not there on serious offence { probation violation-failing to report 2 consecutive times} So when the court date comes, she is going to have me released. Hey! Alright ! I am outta here!!! I was ready to go home.But I had not opened the bible once and had fallen into the prison routine again and had forgotten the promise. My day in court soon arrived. I was feeling very fine. I was about to sink my teeth into home cooked meals again! Where would I eat first? I was being brought before the judge. I stood there in my assurance of freedom. The judge read the charge and asked me if I have anything to say for myself. Say? I thought. Why say anything? Its already been plea bargained out! I am going home! No,Sir. I said. I don;'t think that was what hewanted to hear.Maybe somebody pissed in his coffee.I don't know what had happened to my judge who was supposed to let me go home that day. All I know is He took his little hammer and hit his little pad and said" I sentence you to 12 months in the county jail. I did not hear any thing else. I am serious and swear to my death what happened next.Its like one of those movies when you don't hear what anybody is saying around you. Nothing! Like the shock has made you deaf.I was being led from the courtroom, through the doorway into the corridor, When I heard a small voice say" Remember what you promised me?"

At 18 with a new 1981 Pontiac Trans Am Nascar edition, What an awesome car!!! I met new friends.Life was lived a little faster. I had realities I was running from. I dated my best friends sister. She turned out to be different.My first girlfriend. In the 1980's, she was in the closet. Me? I met her at 15. I didn't know there were any other closets other than the one in my bedroom! At the same time my friend, my high school best friend ,secretly gets aliking for my mom. He gets her pregnant and that is when I find out about it.All at once!!! 18! The drama that was too great for my young mind to handle. I lost it! I whited out. I remember enough that I found myself standing on his porch with a double barrel staring him in the face while he begged me not to shoot him. His mother came out and joined in on the pleas. I lowered the gun and turned and walked away on a friendship forever for the first time in my life. I found Charlie. The next phase of my troubled path. Through him, I learned that life was just a party.The music of the time that you hear 25 years later was top hits!!! Cocaine,clapton. Bon Jovi,Def Leppard,seen em twice in Hotttlanta!!! Wow! What a RUSH, Tom Sawyer!!! Tom Cruise was Risky Business and the Young Guns Blazed in glory!!! I melted into the Rock n' Roll of that time.It was music to my sad cafe. But I was young and life was the long country road that is now a super highway. Cruising the streets at night to R.E.O Speedwagon and into Panama City with Van Halen blaring with the ttops off. My joyride would soon end with a sickening crash! We had one of our famous parties on a Friday night in june. We ran out of liquor and you had to go a county over in Ga at that time to get it. Normally,I would be the one sober enough to drive.Not that night. I was tripping and near passed out on the floor. My brother took my car and went after the drink. I was sober as a graveyard when a tow truck pulled in the yard with my demolished! Now i don't know if you have had the pleasure of seeing one of those beauties in person, but imagine riding in one or owning it.It was my bride and we were on our honeymoon! I loved that car. Losing it was the straw that broke the camel's back. I went into full blown escape mode. L.s.d {sunshine!} qualudes{7 foteen!} and canadian mist with sprite! I was in The Zone for months on end.There is about 6 months out of that year I can't even remember. Not long after,I was busted for supporting my habit. I went through detox in prison! Man. What a bummer that was.Now 6 years later I was reading a bible.

I can remember after the deputy sheriff led me away in handcuffs, the uncanny joy that I was experiencing! I was not high or drunk on any thing for once in my life. Drugs became the great escape that I used in my youth trying to escape the realities of a troubled youth. My daddy was killed when I was 2 yrs old. He was shot in the back of the head while riding in the back seat of a car being pursued by a local sherrif deputy. The driver was one of my dads friends.It was the 4th of July and he was supposed to be coming right back to take my mom and me to the parade. My mom tells me a an eerie feeling she got when he told her not to worry.He said that he did not intend on being someone who died on the highway that day. He was 19. I did not celebrate the 4th of July or see fireworks for 26 years.

After my last year in prison,I was never the same.While I was ther, I took several bible courses and led bible studies an eventually earned several bible course commendations. But I made a lot of enemies. Its not too advantageous in prison society to be a christian. In prison society its a different world. I experienced a culture shock in my first stint in there. You fight or you get punked. Well, I wasn't no punk.At 19, I weighed 270 lbs of redneck attitude. I wss in shape.I worked out, studied some in martial arts for protection.More because I prided myself in being the best physically that I could. so, I fit in very quickly in my new home. The reality that hits you in your first night there and the steel door slams behind you as you are pushed wearing into a cell. I had the top bunk. I lay there staring at the ceiling. My freedom was gone. I grew meaner in my first year. Survival is an instinct that is not taught by man's society. Oh, you say what about the military? Well, a soldier only survives as a soldier in the military.How does he do in the every day life after he comes home? I was in my military.Prison is not much different as the military.Just the reasons that you are there. We had 3 meals a day. I had to shower with 4 other guys at once! Hey, that was not cool! I befriended more black men than white men. Because this white boy could jump and play basketball. The court was there's. They chose whether or not you got a chance to play. And if you did get the chance you had to impress or you don't get a second one. I scored 12 points and was 3 of 3 shooting. I won their respect. I was the only white man allowed to play after that. I had black friends who were in the same condition that I was. Forgotten. My friends forgot me.The one that I was arrested with was the kinda friend you have that you get into trouble with. He was in another cell block in the same prison. I got tougher and wiser faster than I normally in the course of a natural life a normal man would. Prison hardened at 23. At 25 I met Jesus Christ. Forward now in time to my last year in prison. I made a promise. A promise that would change my life forever. Standing in my friends living room holding a King James Holy Bible in my hand, I cried and said " God, I don't know if you really exist. All I know is what I have been told by men. But if I ever needed something else in my life, now is the time. I am about to go to prison again. But if you will do something to make me believe you exist, then I will spend the whole time I am in there reading this book. I paused, hearing what I had just said, and said aloud "yeah, that's what I 'll do. The next day,I turned myself in.

Hello. My friends. I say that with all sincerity. Friends are the most valuable commodity in the harsdest of times. I am one,if you have taken anytime in getting to know me you should know, who believes in Truth. Truth is the most valuable trait that I tend to look for in people I let be my friend. I say let because I have been hurt severely,to the point of death,by people that I have met on my journey for the truth. Along the way, I have learned hard lessons. Truth respects no one. We as men think that we have earned some kind of respect from God because of what we have accomplished. God is what caused me at age age of 25, to question everything I had ever been taught by the institutions that our society has set up for us to teach us their account of the truth. But their account makes you a servant of it and not God. I have become by consequence, a servant of God. I have become that because truth,no matter how insane ith sounds, has given me peace in the most tumultous times in my life. It has become like a lighthouse in my soul. It keeps me on a path that I have come to believe is the first path in my future.Not just this life. Yes. I believe in God. Not just some concept that is taught by the christian church in America. Because in my quest for truth, I have found falsehood that led to dishonesty. Hypocrisy is living a dishonest life. I have learned that to be honest with yourself is the first condition you must be in when you begin the quest. That takes time. Time will surely bring trial and error your way. On this quest there are many roads. These roads are much like ours. They are given names that help guide us to a destination we are traveling to. The choice is yours and mine. That is one great responsibility. Living your own life.You can keep it to yourself our share it with others. Codition#2 then you must be honest with them. That is where true friendships are made. The kind of friend that stands with us through the turbulent times on our way. The time we live in today is so much different than the way they were when I began my journey. I loved my teen years. They were a time when I experienced freedom for the first time in my life.The power to choose and live my life by finally my choices. I had my own car at 16 that I bought and paid for. I had a job making 6.75 an hour when minimum wage was 3.15 an hour. By the time I was 18, I made alot of bad choices. You know, the kind if you could you would Butterfly Effect back to if you could to change what you had done. I turned 21 in prison. Thanks to a life of drugs and crime. I was in there from 1984, 87, 89. 1989 is the year my quest began. I was saved in my cell accompanied in prayer by a "backslidden Jehovah Witness? Lol. He was the greatest blessed friend I had at that time. You see a few weeks before this, I was standing in my best friends living room.His wife had just went insane. She was clinically insane. I know because I tried to talk with her. After they took her away,there I stood in this living room in my mid twenties crisis.

Easter is a day that is supposed to be a christian observance celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. But Jesus said you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.Free from traditions of men that they hold to and make the word of God of no effect. Traditions that make the truth a lie. Easter makes the bible and God a liar. How? Well the bible says that Jesus was crucified and in the tomb for 3 days and 3 nights and he rose early on the morning of the 4th day. Good friday is supposedly the day that he was crucified.So,if he was crucified on friday and rose on sunday,does that equal 3days and 3 nights? NO. Not even 2 days.Its a lie. A biblical day begins at 6 pm and ends at 6 pm the next day. By those standards,Jesus would have had to have been crucified on wednesday and add 3 days and nights to that would bring you to sunday morning. So, the foundational truth that establishes this holiday is a lie.You can't build truth on a lie.

The greatest conspiracy theory that exist. Satan trying to become God. The Bible calls Satan a liar and the father of lies.Period. Satans only chance of winning this war is to catch God in a lie. God is so just that if he does tell a lie, then he would step down from his throne and hand it to lucifer. But sorry,its not going to end that way. So what other option does satan have? His plan is to get God's creation to make him a liar. Perfect example in the old testament is Job.Job was a perfect and upright man who loved righteousness and hated evil.God loved him and blessed him with riches and honor{reputation with men}. One day satan came to God and God asked him if he had considered the man job.How he was perfect. Satan accused job of loving God only because of the blessings he had received.Take all that away and he will curse you to your face,satan said.So God said no, I will let you take it all and then see how he still loves me.The story goes on and describes the sorrow and pain that was inflicted on Job by taking away all his earthly material blessings and even his health.Thru it all he held to his belief in God.Yes,he questioned God and wondered why the things that were happening to him were happening.Even his friends and wife accused him of doing something wrong.But in the end God blessed him with twice as much as he had before! Satan lost the bet. An example of the sorrow and contradiction that christians face today. The final test that we are experiencing now. The bible says that when Jesus returns he will take up all those that are alive and remain at his return.That means there will be those left who still testify that He is God. Satan knows this.He knows he has a short time.God has put a time limit on the game of life.Sorry. Time is not forever. So satan is making war against those who still believe in God. In order to win,Satan must make every man,woman,child deny the testimony of Christ. So he uses technology and desensitization to cause people to not think about the issues of life.Denial is the deadly state of unbelief. The mark of the beast and the idol worshipping of man gives glory to satan and is a testimony of those who do it. Lukewarmness is a step towards being cold. If there is no one left alive at christ' second coming that believe in him,Satan wins. He has a short time to destroy those who still believe in God and the Bible. Do you hold fast to your integrity or are you being defeated by the deceitfulness of riches and the cares of this life. Is this life and the existence of it all that you think about and all the hope you have? I am not so.If we in this life only have hope in Christ Jesus we are of all men most miserable.Truth will set you free and give us hope. I hold to truth because its really all that I have. Its all that I desire.Even if I have to give all that I have in this life to possess it, it is well worth the price to attain eternal life. Amen.

I have been a believer for quite a while now. In my experiences I have come across much that has helped me to continue believing. When I meet someone else who says they are believers too. I relish their fellowship.I will then musingly ask them this question. According to the knowledge that you have about God, whether read in scripture or received elsewhere, is there anything God cannot do? I then sit back and listen to " oh no he can do anything.There is nothing to hard for Him.He created everything,he heals,he saves,he kills,he makes alive.He is all powerful.He can do anything. Then I interject.But there is 1 thing he can't do. What??? What is that. It says in Hebrews "it is impossible for God to lie! God can't lie. It is one of the first things he warned Adam about in the garden of eden.Adam,If you disobey me you will die.I can't lie.The day you eat thereof you shall surely die.Well ignorant man will say he did not die. Not physically no.But he was banished from the garden of life and his divine fellowship with God and became a laborer outside of God's presence.Death is separation.He was separated from the garden of eden! Lucifer knows this.He tried to use eve to get God to lie.After all it was she who seduced adam into eating.Maybe he could get God to change his mind.