Sermon Transcript
Thanks, Laura. Well, here we are in week 6 of our summer series called This Is My Story, showing how God works the same today as he has always worked. The God of the Bible is the God of our lives today. Throughout this series, if you’ve been here, you know, we’ve heard stories and lessons from various leaders in our church community. And they’ve connected their stories to the principles of Scripture, demonstrating that the principles found in Scripture still relate to our lives today.
We heard a personal testimony from Fritz, a story with joys and great sorrows, but through it all, God was the one who provided the victories. And he related his testimony to Joshua, as he said that Joshua and the army had a role, but all they had to do was show up and do their part, and God would provide the victory. We heard from Mandy, who connected her story to James chapter 2, how service and serving the community had a role in bringing her back to church and has helped to deepen and enrich her faith. Then, after taking a look at Matthew 9, where Jesus performs miracles of healing, Dustin shared his own personal experience of miraculous healing. Showing that God still works in unexplainable, supernatural, and miraculous ways.
We heard Don’s story, how even through fearful situations in life, God reminds us in Isaiah 41 that we do not have to be afraid, not because we will not face fear, but because God is with us, upholding us through the challenges. And last week, we heard from Kay about how God speaks through his Word, instructing and guiding us, pointing us to the Word, the Word made flesh. And on the highest mountain peaks and in the lowest valleys, God is enough. Well, today, we will hear from Paul. Yes, that’s right, the one, the only, Paul Tokar, husband of last week’s speaker, Kay.
And as he makes his way up here, because he knew Kay was going to be a tough act to follow, he told me that he’s been questioning his sanity and his decision agreeing to speak this week. When I came to Bridges 11 years ago, Paul was serving as one of the elders. I quickly came to know Paul as a man of great faith and a man deeply connected to God’s Word. Throughout the years, Paul has served served in leadership in our church and in Bible study fellowship. And I am personally thankful that Paul continues to sing in our choir, adding those deep, rich bass tones.
Would you help me one more time welcome Mr. Paul Tokar?
Thank you, Paul. Let me pray for you, and then they’re all yours. Lord God, we thank you for all of your stories that we have been hearing, that we’ve been sharing with one another. God, we know ultimately it is your story. I thank you for Paul and for, uh, the example he has been in my life over the last several years.
I thank you for the ministry that he has had. And God, I thank you for this story that you have placed on his heart today that he is going to share with us. God, I pray that you speak through Paul today, that you encourage us, that you draw us in closer to you. Through Paul’s story, and ultimately through your story. God, we thank you for who you are.
We thank you for your Son Jesus. In his precious name I pray, amen. Thanks.
Well, good morning.
Last week, after my wife shared her story, One of my good friends at church came up to me and said, you’re going to follow Kay Tokar? What are you thinking? Well, I’d been following Kay Tokar for 67 years, so I guess I’m qualified. So here’s my story. I broke down my story basically into 3 parts: what God did through the early years of my life, what God did through the middle years, and what God did through Bible study fellowship— or maybe I should say more specifically, what God did through the study of His Word.
And although I am the chief protagonist in this story, I have to tell you that it’s more about what God did and not so much about me. And the amazing thing about it, for me especially, is that God was involved from the very beginning, long before I knew who he was. I’m gonna tell you something about me that not even members of my own family know.
When I was very young, maybe 4, 5, 6 years old, I used to hide out behind the house where we were living, and I would cry my heart out to God. And I remember saying, please, God, don’t let me die without knowing love.
Why did I feel so alone? It was because life for my parents was very hard. My father immigrated to America in 1930 during the height of the Depression. He never went to school a day in his life. In those days, there was one principle by which people lived.
You either work or you don’t eat. So my father worked 2 jobs just to put bread on the table. I ate a lot of bread. He was a factory laborer during the day, and at night he repaired shoes because he was a shoemaker. He had a little store.
So I only saw my dad at suppertime. Mom took care of the shoe repair shop during the day and did chores when she found time. I remember my wife— one of my vivid memories of my mother was her being on her knees for the first 15 years of my life washing clothes in the bathtub on a washboard by hand. She’d rinse the soap out of those clothes in the tub, and then she’d hang them out on the line. That was kind of fun because in the wintertime everything that came in was frozen solid.
She would have to thaw it on the radiator before she could iron every piece of clothing we owned. That’s the way my parents lived, and that’s the way I lived for the first 15 years of my life. When I was in junior high, I got my first job. My father, my brother, and I became cemetery caretakers. When I was not in school, I cut grass, I trimmed tombstones by hand— there were no power trimmers in those days— and I dug graves.
I was undoubtedly the youngest gravedigger in America. I was 14 years old. People often ask the question, did I grow up in a Christian home? Of course, we went to church twice a year, Christmas and Easter, and we went to an Orthodox church, a Ukrainian church. My father was Ukrainian, my mother was Russian.
There’s a combination for you. And we always got there too late on the holidays to get a seat, so I stood And I knelt. Those services lasted 2 hours. Not much fun for a little bitty kid. To make matters worse, it was a service where I couldn’t understand the language.
But whenever someone asked me what I was going to be when I grew up, I didn’t say I’m gonna be a policeman or a fireman, which was the average thing they said in my era. I said I wanted to be a priest. I always believed in God. I just didn’t know anything about him. Nate was right, I always liked to sing, so in high school I sang in the choir.
New Jersey choir in my high school was one of the best in the state. I sang in ensemble, and I even sang in New Jersey All-State Chorus. He’s right, I’m a lowlife. I have a bass voice. I was offered a job, interestingly enough, to sing in a Baptist church.
They were short of male singers. They paid me $12 a month to sing in the Baptist church choir. I’ve been meaning to talk to Nate about that.
The reason I mention it is because I think that was God’s way of exposing me to a faith other than the orthodox religion. From high school, I went to a Baptist-affiliated university in Ohio. In my junior year, I met a girl who was a Baptist minister’s daughter. Her name was Kay Parrott. I got thinking about that— Baptist church choir, a Baptist-affiliated college, and a Baptist minister’s daughter.
I didn’t know God had a plan for my life. I said it’s a conspiracy. I met Kay my junior year because she was dating some of my fraternity brothers. Then in my senior year, something happened that changed my life. In September 1959, I remember sitting in my room with my, my roommate one Sunday night, and he asked me, who are you going to invite to the big fraternity party coming up in a few weeks?
I said, I’m going to invite Kay Parrott. At that exact moment, within a second of my saying the name Kay Parrott, somebody yelled down the hall, hey, Tokar, you have a phone call. I picked up the phone and a little voice said, hi, I’m Kay Parrott. I was wondering if you would like to go to the sorority dance with me this weekend.
I was so stunned I don’t think I said anything for what must have seemed like 5 minutes. I must have said yes because we were married 2 years later. That phone call changed my life. I never dated another girl once Kay and I started dating. If there is such a thing as a marriage made in heaven, I think ours qualifies.
But several obstacles stood in our path. I was a senior and she was a sophomore. Also, I had joined Air Force ROTC to avoid the draft. I didn’t want to go into the Army in those days. The question was, where would the Air Force send me and when?
Also, Kay said, before we get married, I want to finish college. I said, no problem. I would have waited forever. But a strange thing happened. The Air Force wrote me a letter and said they wouldn’t have a slot in pilot training for nearly 2 years.
What was I going to do? I mentioned it to one of my college professors. He said, go to graduate school. I said, how can I go to get into graduate school with the kind of grades you gave me? He said, no, you can, you can get into graduate school.
So I went to the University of Michigan for a master’s degree. The good news was I was only 183 miles from Kay, but I had no money. In those days, there were no cell phones, so I wrote her a letter every night before I went to sleep.
I was only 183 miles from Kay, but I had no money. So I wrote her a letter every night, but I could tell after a few months that absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder. Our relationship was starting to drift. I longed to see her and rekindle our relationship, but I had no money and I was desperate. Then I got a great idea.
I went to the university hospital and I sold a pint of blood. They paid me $35, which was enough for gas and $5 a night at the fraternity house for room and board. Seeing each other fortified our relationship, and we never doubted our future together again. The blood saved our love.
But at that time, I didn’t know how important the shedding of blood was. I had a lot to learn. Then in June of 1962, 2 years later, Kay graduated and went to Cleveland to plan a wedding. I went to Craig Air Force Base to begin pilot training. The Air Force condescended.
What I mean by that is they decided 3 days before I was to get married that they would give me a weekend pass to get married. So I flew to Cleveland on Thursday night. We had the wedding rehearsal Friday night, got married Saturday night, flew back to Alabama on Sunday night, and 4 o’clock Monday morning I was right back in the training program again. Where was Craig Air Force Base? Selma, Alabama.
The year? 1962. Some of you who are my age understand what I’m talking about. It was the worst place to begin marriage and military life. I thought if Kay could survive this, We can survive anything.
After pilot training, we moved to Altus, Oklahoma. It was a SAC base, a Strategic Air Command base. I flew KC-135 refueling tankers, and I was on alert a week and then off a week. In other words, I lived on base every week, and Kay lived by herself. We lived like that for 5 and a half years in the Air Force.
Some wives couldn’t handle the separation. But Kay was determined that our marriage would survive and thrive. Then in 1967, I went on a mission. No, I didn’t go to Mexico to build houses. I went to Southeast Asia.
I went to war. The mission was to refuel F-105 fighter-bombers on their way to targets in North Vietnam. I refueled them on their way to the targets. And I refueled those that came back. When I was home, my daughter Tiffany was a baby.
When I came home, she was walking and talking. She didn’t know who I was. I said to Kay, if I stay in and make the Air Force a career, we’re going to have many years of separation. I have a feeling, I have a feeling I’m supposed to leave the military. When Kay asked me what I was going to do, I said, well, I think I’ll apply to some of the airlines.
Maybe I can get a job. Well, I was offered a class date with National Airlines, Continental Airlines, and Western Airlines, which ultimately became Delta in ’87 with a merger. I didn’t pray about the decision because prayer wasn’t part of my life in those days. I chose Western because we wanted to stay on the West Coast. When you come from New Jersey, the West Coast looks pretty good.
After training in Los Angeles with Western, we moved to Santa Clara. We moved to the Bay Area in 1969. Kay said we should find a church, so we consulted the Yellow Pages and joined the Santa Clara First Baptist Church.
We were very involved. We helped form a young marriage group. Yeah, we were young marrieds once. We sang in the church choir, and I served on some committees. In 1971, we decided it was time to buy a house, but we never wanted to live here— too many people.
So we looked in Danville, Walnut Creek, Nevada, even Napa Valley. Yeah, we like Napa Valley. We found a house we liked in Napa, so we put a bid in, but it was rejected. So I hired a contractor and had plans drawn up to build our home, but it— that too fell apart. Then we found the home of our dreams.
It was a fantastic home, but the doctor, the owner, wanted $58,000, and we couldn’t afford anything like that. The doctor who owned this place said, you know, if you wait a couple weeks, I’ll be out from under the realtor contract, and I’ll sell it to you for $54,000. That— well, that was better, but it was way out of our range. Then I thought, if I use the GI Bill, we could get in for around $50,000, but the seller has to pay the points. He said, how much is that?
I said, $4,000. He said, no problem, I’ll be happy to pay it. We had a deal. We had a deal. We were moving to Napa Valley.
But one night I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking, if we move We’re going to lose all our friends, all our involvement with the church. It’s going to mean a whole new beginning, a whole new direction in life. So for the first time, for the first time in my life, I prayed. I said to the Lord, here’s the deal.
If we are not meant to move to Napa Valley, I want you to show me some sign. I want you to make it abundantly clear that we are not meant to move to Napa Valley. The next day after breakfast, I said, okay, you know, I’m gonna call the doctor and give him an update on the loan. So I called him. I said, how are things going?
He said to me, how are things going? I said, fine. I made application for the loan. I said to him, how are you doing? He said, the realtor came by last night and bought the house.
I went, yes, yes! There is a God. He answered my prayer. I literally leaped for joy. I was so excited.
We had just lost the home of our dreams, and I could not have been happier. I hung up the phone and I said to Kay, you know, Kay, I get the impression we’re not meant to move to Napa Valley. God had closed the door 3 times. I said, why don’t we look around here? 2 weeks later, we bought a home in Saratoga at a price, $57,500.
Think of the irony. $58,000 seemed like a bridge too far in Napa, but $57,500 seemed to be just fine in Saratoga. We moved in ’71 into our home in Saratoga, and then God showed us why. Kay mentioned this last week. We enrolled Tiffany in kindergarten and Keith in preschool.
We soon learned that Keith had learning disabilities, some developmental problems. We also learned, amazingly, that Saratoga was one of only 2 school districts in Northern California with a program for kids with developmental and learning disabilities. They had a developmental kindergarten and a developmental first grade. Grade. With the special help that he received, which he needed to do all his life, he went on not only to graduate from college, but he graduated not only from high school but also college.
It was a miracle. But the best part was about to happen. She told you that her friends hounded her about going to something, some women’s Bible study, something called Bible Study Fellowship. She really didn’t want to go but wanted to get the ladies off her back, so she asked me, hoping for an out. She asked me if it was okay if she went to Bible study.
I said, go for it. If you want to go to a women’s Bible study, go for it. How life-threatening can a Bible study be? Well, I soon found out. She couldn’t stop talking about Bible study.
She hounded me. All the time. She kept saying, you should go to the men’s class. It’s fantastic. You would love it.
I’m learning so much. You should go. I said, I’m too busy. I’m too busy for God. I’m too busy to go to a Bible study.
That’s the excuse most people give for not being willing to serve in the church. I soon became angry and resentful of the time she spent, especially when she became a discussion leader. She’d be on the phone talking, encouraging, mentoring women, helping them understand the scriptures that they were studying. The truth was I was in competition with Bible study, and I resented it. But after 2 years, I stopped being angry and I became envious.
Kay was on fire for the Lord. And I knew she had something I didn’t have— the joy of a personal relationship with Jesus. Then in August of ’75, something happened. I resigned from the deacon board. I was no longer too busy.
I said— Kay said, what are you going to do? I said, I’m going to go to the men’s BSF class. The study, ironically, was the same one that she started in— the history Israel and the Minor Prophets. I loved it. She was right.
It’s a great study, especially for men. I devoured every chapter, every lesson. I tell people you could see the teeth marks on the pages of my Old Testament because I chewed on every word. It was fantastic. It was wonderful.
It was wonderful. And then in the spring of ’76, something happened that changed the course of my life. The pastor of the church called me into his office, and he asked me if I would promote the Chuck Colson movie, something called Born Again. I knew who Chuck Colson was. Colson was one of President Nixon’s staff who got caught up in the Watergate scandal and went to prison for 5 years.
He went from the White House to the big house. You can’t have a bigger fall in life. Than that as a man. A broken man, he gave his life to Jesus while he was in prison. He was born again.
I didn’t have a clue what being born again was all about, so I thought before I promote it in church, maybe I should read the book.
It’s about a God who redeemed a man who needed to be reborn to a new way of life. I finished the book Easter week. By coincidence, the lesson in BSF that week was chapter 1 of the book of Haggai. This is what I read: This is what the Lord Almighty says: These people say the time has not yet come for the Lord’s house to be built. Then the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: Is it time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled house while this house remains a ruin?
Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: Give careful thought to your ways. You’ve planted much but have harvested little. You eat but never have enough. You drink but never have your fill. You put on clothes but are not warm.
You earn wages only to put them in a purse with holes in it. This is what the Lord Almighty says: Give careful thought to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down the timber and build the house so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored, says the Lord. You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home I blew away.
Why? declares the Lord Almighty. Because of my house, which remains a ruin while each of you is busy with your own house. Therefore Because of you the heavens have withheld their dew, and the earth its crops. I call for a drought on the fields and the mountains, and on the grain and new wine, the oil and whatever the ground produces, on men and cattle, and on the labor of your hands.
I knew that God was talking to Haggai about rebuilding God’s house, the temple, but the Holy Spirit was talking to me. About rebuilding God’s dwelling place in my own heart. The words of Haggai described my life. I was living in a paneled house in Saratoga. Ironically, in 1976, California was in a severe drought.
Even worse, my spiritual life was in a drought. I planted much but harvested little. The harder I tried, the less I had to show for it. I wasn’t satisfied because I had been preoccupied with self and not honoring God. I expected much, but it turned out to be little.
My house, my life, my life was a purse with holes in it. What I brought home, God blew away. The truth was God wanted to build a new relationship with me. And I wanted that too. And then something happened that changed my life once again.
The Wednesday before Easter, after just reading this, the Wednesday before Easter, I had a 2-day trip. I took off from San Francisco and I flew to Denver. From Denver, I flew north towards Calgary, Canada, layover. We leveled off at 37,000 feet. It was a routine flight, but somewhere en route, tears started flowing down my face.
I wasn’t upset. I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t crying in the true sense of the word. I didn’t hear a voice and I didn’t see a burning bush, but God was getting my attention. It was the strangest feeling.
It felt like God was peeling me like a banana, tearing down walls of separation, barriers of opposition. What are the things that separate us from God? It’s sin. Sin is the thing that separates us from God. God was saying to me, give careful thought to your ways.
God says that twice in Haggai. In verse 5 and in verse 7, give careful thought to your ways. I don’t remember how long that event took place, but when I got to the hotel in Calgary, I got out my Bible, I got on my knees, I reread the words, and I confessed my sins to God. I asked him to forgive me and to take over my life. I asked God to save me from myself and to rebuild my life.
That was 50 years ago this past Easter.
When God raised me up in that hotel room, I was a new person. I knew what Colson meant when he talked about the joy of being born again. I was truly born again. I couldn’t wait to get home to tell Kay what had happened to me. The next day was Good Friday.
That’s interesting timing, isn’t it? I went to the church and I told the pastor what had happened. I thought he would throw me out of the church for being such a hypocrite. Instead, he did what Jesus did, in essence. He put his arms around me, And he said, Sunday night I’ll baptize you.
Easter 1976. From that day on, everything in my life changed. I was a different person. The next year in BSF, they asked me if I would be a discussion leader. I had said to Kay many times, I am never going to be a discussion leader.
But that time I prayed about it, and it seemed like the right thing to do. So I said to the Lord, here’s the deal. You’re gonna have to work out my schedule if this is what you want me to do. That first year, I missed one class because we decided to go on vacation for a week. I was the discussion leader for 7 years.
Then a strange thing happened. One night I was listening to the lecture in class, and all of a sudden I started critiquing the lecture. I had never done that before. The next week it happened again. When it happened a 3rd time, I said to the Lord, no way.
I am never going to be a teaching leader. My flying schedule takes me out of town 3 days a week, 3, 4 days. Besides, I don’t have enough knowledge of the Bible to even think about it. One of the reasons I said I was so adamant about doing it is because I lived with a teaching leader. Kay was a teaching leader at this point, and I saw her many a late Tuesday night, sometimes up to 2 o’clock in the morning, typing out her lectures so she could give them to the women’s class on Wednesday morning.
She would come home a spent bullet, totally exhausted. And then I gave him the ultimate excuse: I can’t type. I can’t type. I wrestled with that, literally wrestled with that issue day and night for a couple weeks. I couldn’t sleep.
I was exhausted. It was on my mind all the time. I had no rest, no peace. Finally, I threw in the towel. I threw in the towel.
I said, okay, okay, if they ask me to be a teaching leader, I’ll do it. Finally, I had peace. I could sleep. But I’m thinking the whole time, I’m safe. They haven’t asked me to be a teaching leader.
They’re never going to ask me to be a teaching leader. I’m the last person they’re ever going to ask. A few days later, The teaching leader called me and said, why don’t we get together for lunch? I went, oh, I said, okay. But the whole time I’m thinking, this cannot be happening.
This cannot be happening. Well, we had lunch. We small talked for 20, 30 minutes. And then he said, I was wondering if you would be willing to be the substitute teaching leader of our class. I said, okay, I’ll do it.
He said, well, I know you’ll want to pray about it and you’ll want to talk it over with Kay. I said, Tom, you don’t understand. God won. God always wins. I became the substitute teaching leader of the Los Altos Evening Men’s Class.
I lectured once in a while, and believe it or not, I discovered I could teach. Then in 1984, BSF decided they wanted to open or start a new class in the South Bay Area, somewhere near Los Gatos. And they asked me if I would be willing to be the teaching leader. Oh my goodness, this now was the biggest decision in my life. You know, it’s one thing to lecture once in a while, once or twice a year, but every week?
How is that possible, what with being out of town 3 or 4 days a week? I would have to not only lecture, I would have to be available for the leaders, leaders meeting on Saturday morning. Besides, it takes me 8 to 10 hours to put a lecture together. How could I possibly do it for 32 weeks a year? It seemed like mission impossible.
Well, I had been in BSF for 9 years, and I remembered Ms. Johnson, the first executive director of BSF, saying, if you want to know God’s will for your life, 3 things have to happen. You have to pray and seek God’s guidance and direction. 2, you have to search the scriptures for confirmation. And having done those 2 things, if you have perfect peace, the kind of peace that only Jesus can give, not as the world gives, then you could be assured that it’s God’s will. So I prayed and I prayed.
I was reading the Bible. I was doing my BSF lessons, but no verse leaped out at me. I was desperate. I had to give BSF an answer. Now it’s the 11th hour for a decision.
And then I got a brilliant idea. So I said to the Lord, okay, here’s the deal. I’m going to take my Bible, I’m going to hold it up and let it fall open. And then I’m going to take my finger and I’m going to I’m going to stab a verse and that’s going to be my answer. So I took the Bible, I closed my eyes, I literally held it up.
It’s wonderful to hold God’s word. I held up the Bible and I let it fall open. And I went, and I took a peek. Oh, it opened to the Psalms. What Psalm?
Psalm 45. Where’s my finger? Verse 1. Psalm 45, verse 1, and this is what it said: My heart is stirred by a noble theme as I recite my verses for the king. My tongue is the pen of a skillful writer.
Whoa, what an incredible verse! Was my heart stirred by a noble theme? Of course. The gospel, the good news, the greatest story ever told. The birth, the life, the death, and resurrection of Jesus.
There is no greater theme in all of history than the gospel. As I recite my verses for the king, I knew what God was saying. He was saying, the work I’m calling you to do is not about Bible study fellowship. It’s not about the men who might come to my class. The words I was going to recite, the verses I was going to recite, are for the King.
All ministry is for the King. Dan preaches for the King. Nate and Laura lead worship for the King. All service is for the King. But the part of that verse that spoke to my heart was, my tongue is the pen of a skillful writer.
Who’s a skillful writer? The Holy Spirit. Jesus says in John chapter 14, verse 26, the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have said to you. When I read that verse, all my doubts, all my fears, all my concerns, all my anxiety disappeared. My tongue was going to be an instrument in God’s hands.
God would make a way. What did Jesus say? I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. Trust in God, trust also in me. So I took a step of faith.
I had no idea where I was going or how I would get there. I was the teaching leader. Of the Los Gatos Evening Men’s Class for 17 years. I never— I wish I had time to tell you all the miraculous ways God got me to a class on a Monday night or a leaders meeting on Saturday morning. Those are unbelievable stories in themselves.
In addition to that, I never missed a class on a Monday night or a leaders meeting on Saturday morning because of ill health. You mean to say you had perfect health for 17 years? No, I got sick. I would get sick every Christmas break. I would get a serious sinus infection.
I would have blocked ear canals. I would be on antibiotics. I would be unable to fly. But when January came and BSF started up again, I would be right back to flying and right back to teaching. God knew I needed the rest, and He provided for my every need.
I wish I had kept a record of how many times that happened. But God taught me a lesson. He taught me a lesson in every one of those issues, that He can use anything, even adversity, to accomplish His purpose. Kay talked about a little bit about adversity last week. So what did I learn in 50 years since I have been a believer, since I have been born again?
First of all, that God answers prayer. He answered the prayer of a little bitty kid who said, please God, don’t let me die without knowing love.
Sitting out there is the one person who showed me what love was all about and pointed me in the direction of Jesus’s love. The amazing thing to me in our time we’ve been married is that she loves me in spite of my failures, my faults, and my limitations. But even more important, I learned that Jesus loves me. Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. I love John chapter 14.
It’s been quoted many times. It says the Holy Spirit causes believers to live by his life. Jesus says specifically, because I live, you will also live. What kind of— so let me ask you, what kind of life are you living? Are you existing or really living in Christ?
Maybe it’s time for someone out there to give careful thought to your ways.
One thing I’ll always be grateful for is the satisfying and joyous life I have lived in Christ. God’s word has given me a whole new meaning to life in ways I never imagined. On a more personal note, people often ask me, do you miss flying? I always say no, but in truth, I still look up when I see a contrail in the sky and wonder, did I ever do that? I think the same thing about being a teacher leader.
Did I ever do that? But now at my age, when I woke up, I woke up with expectation for one day Jesus will come. Jesus will come for me. Any pilot will tell you flying was fun, exciting, even at times life-threatening, but it’s nothing in comparison to living and serving in the power of the Holy Spirit. God made a way when there seemed to be no way, and I’m living proof that God can do much with little.
Let’s pray.
Oh God, you are my God. I want to thank you for giving me an opportunity to tell my story. It’s a love story. Of how You loved me and went to the cross in my place. I thank You for the life I have lived in You, and I look forward to being with You in eternity.
I also want to thank You for guiding Kay and me to this church 42 years ago and enabling us to be a part of this church fellowship. I ask Your blessing on everyone here who helped and supported us in our journey. To God be the glory. Amen. Amen.
Thank you so much, Paul, for sharing what Jesus has done in your life.
