Soldier for God: One Man's Journey into the Faith Zone

Soldier

for God

One Man’s Journey into the Faith Zone

Copyright © James Jones

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isbn: 978-1-4497-0465-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-0488-9 (dj)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-0464-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010935772

Printed in the United States of America

WestBow Press rev. date: 9/24/2010

Contents

Prologue –

Chapter One –

My Life Before

Chapter Two –

Travelling Prayer

Chapter three –

It’s All Right to be Afraid

Chapter Four –

Accepting the Lord’s Will with an Open Heart

Chapter Five –

The Lord Works in Not-So-Mysterious Ways

Chapter Six –

A Meditation

Chapter Seven -

Detour

Chapter Eight –

The Lord Enlists Me

Chapter Nine –

The Test

Chapter Ten –

The Healing Ministry, Part II

Chapter Eleven –

A Call To Arms

Chapter Twelve –

The First Battle

Chapter Thirteen –

The More I Know, The Less I Understand

Chapter Fourteen –

Revelations

Chapter Fifteen –

Surviving The Second Battle

Chapter Sixteen –

The End of Doubt

Chapter Seventeen –

I Enlist Again

Closing

Prologue –

…Was blind, but now I see.

- Amazing Grace

It was September 1st 1995 when I was finally discharged from the hospital. I’d been there for 30 days. I was nervous about how changed I was. The man who was wheeled out of Mercy Hospital that day was not the same one who’d walked in a month earlier.

When Paula pulled the car up our wooded drive, it was comforting how much everything was the same as it had been the last time I saw it. Somehow it seemed even better. The blue paint that covered our shaker-style home was more cheerful, the red door more welcoming. My body was nowhere near the same as it was the last time I’d walked through that door. The doctors told me I was better too, but it was going to take a long time for me to feel that way.

The surgeon had removed a good length of my intestine along with the tumor. I was weak from eating my meals through a tube and spending so much time in bed. It was more than that though. I’d seen how it all ends. I’d witnessed how much better it is for some than others. I didn’t know yet that there was no recovering from that.

Everything happens for a reason.

When I stepped out of the car my body was met by a shock of warm air. Despite how dry and dusty it was, it still felt good. I’d become all too familiar with sterile hospital air – they process it so it can’t hurt you. It might be free of germs, but there isn’t much life left in it.

I looked up at the majestic trees that covered our property. I’d been surrounded by nothing but machines in the hospital, and sharp metal instruments. I thought about the metal wires they pierced my stomach with to save my life. I didn’t know pain like that existed. Now that I did, it seemed impossible to forget it.

But I’d lived. He’d seen me through. He doesn’t want me to forget.

I hadn’t been home in so long, but I didn’t want to go inside yet – being outdoors felt too healing. It can make a man feel very alive to be close to the earth the Lord created him from.

So I lay my ravaged body down on a patch of lawn, which had been scorched to straw by the sun. The ground beneath me was hard and dry. It had been an unusually hot summer, especially for Maine standards. I breathed in the smell of the burnt grass and dried leaves, and stared up at the Maple tree branches those leaves had fallen from. For the first time in 30 days, when I looked up I saw blue sky instead of the white ceiling of a hospital room. It was a miracle I was looking up at the Heavens instead of down from them.

Even though the sun was beginning to set, the air was still hot and what at first felt good soon became uncomfortable. I had to be careful not to overdo it. It was time to try out Paula’s handiwork – she had gone to a lot of trouble to turn our family room couch into a makeshift hospital bed. I had to sleep sitting up in order to avoid the drowning sensation caused by the food tube pumping its tasteless contents into my stomach, and the couch best accommodated that position.

Paula had been so strong and patient those past few weeks, even when things were at their worst. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, but I was no more comfortable in that bed than I was on the lawn.

It had little to do with physical comfort though. I was so exhausted I should’ve been able to sleep on a bed of nails. Instead, I just watched the sky get darker and darker out the window of the family room. It matched my darkening spirit. The few moments of peace I’d managed to find outside were long gone. I knew the tumor was gone too, but there was something within me that wasn’t right. So much had happened in the hospital. I had seen things that were not of this earth.

The visions I’d had overwhelmed and confused me. I was unable to explain them away, or release myself from their powerful grip. I decided I had no choice but to accept my situation. Still, a single question turned itself over in mind.

Why did He choose to show me?

•

In the space between then and now, God has continued to make his presence known in my life. Through my experiences with the Lord I’ve come to understand the meaning of what happened during those 30 days in the late summer of 1995. And I now know with absolute certainty the answer to why me?

The Lord wants me to share what He showed me and has been showing me for a long time.

The story I’m telling here is mine. But make no mistake, the message is His. What I couldn’t figure out before – what it’s taken me all these years to be able to fully understand – is that the message was meant just as much for you as it was for me.

My faith in God has been affirmed and reaffirmed many times. I needed to stop doubting the faith He has in me.

It’s the same faith He has in all of us, if we only truly open our eyes to it.

Chapter One –

My Life Before

I am a man who is in almost every respect just like you. An ordinary man. Some might even say a simple man. Paula, my beautiful wife, has been by my side for more than 40 years. We have raised two amazing children – Jennifer and Jamey – who are now focused on raising their own families. My six grandchildren are my pride and joy. Yes, I am one of those guys whose license plate cover proclaims him a happy grandpa! Nothing out of the ordinary. No different than any one of you.

From the time I returned from a tour of duty in Vietnam, I have worked steady and have come to enjoy the fruits of my labor. I started out driving a tractor trailer and grew the business into a well-established trucking company, a company that I have been proud to pass along to my son and son-in-law.

I have enjoyed many ordinary blessings. A wonderful family. A successful business. The pleasure of the Maine countryside. I would have been more than satisfied with those gifts alone. But in some ways, I am not such an ordinary man nor have my blessings been ordinary. That I am putting these words to paper is nothing shy of a miracle.

Or maybe, just maybe, what we call miracles are really very ordinary if we open our eyes and hearts to them. Which is why I am sharing my story; so that you might open yourself up to experiencing miracles in your own life, that you might believe that such miracles are possible.

They are.

I promise you that.

I am not a fancy preacher. The faith I have today didn’t come to me by way of my upbringing or divinity school, but through experience and hard challenge. I know life. It can be hard. There are hurdles we all have to confront and even the best and strongest of us need help from time to time.

We all know loss. We’ve all been lonely and afraid. We struggle, Lord how we struggle. Financial challenges. Marital troubles. Worries about children. Whatever. My own body bears the scars of multiple surgeries. I have felt pain I didn’t think I would survive. Pain I didn’t deserve to survive. But I did. Not because I’m special. I’m not.

I survived because I asked for help. Ask and ye shall receive.

I survived because my prayers and those of my family and friends were answered.

Having been blessed by answered prayer, it is not enough that I just go back to my ordinary life and blessings. I have an obligation to tell others that prayer is answered; that when things are darkest, there is still light; that things are never as bad as they seem to be. I have an obligation to tell you that if you just put your faith in the Lord and trust in Him, He will provide.

I know.

I have seen the other side; lying with my stomach gutted open on an operating table, I saw clearly the dark, terrifying place where the alternative leads.

If you don’t think it’s possible to have this kind of faith yourself, you should know that my belief was not always as strong as it is now. It took me almost two decades to fully understand how the Lord was at work in my life. What I learned in that time is that Divine Intervention is present in our lives all the time whether we recognize it or not. That everything – good and bad – really does happen for a reason. And that if we are able to recognize the Lord’s voice speaking to us, we can cause more good to come into our lives than bad.

Some of the experiences that led me to this place are just as ordinary as I am. They’re what you probably write off in your own life as coincidence. Your best friend calls just when you really need someone to talk to, but for whatever reason hadn’t been able to reach out yourself. You’re out of work and the woman you strike up a conversation with at the market just happens to have a promising lead on a new job.

You have a need, and it seems that by simple coincidence it is filled.

But what my story shows is that there are no coincidences – God’s fingerprints are on everything. All you have to do is trust in Him, and then even when things are at their toughest you’ll know in your heart that everything will be okay. And you won’t be afraid.

There’s no getting around the fact that the Lord gives us what we need, not necessarily what we think we want. A lot of people use never getting what they want as a reason not to believe in God. My story will show you that He really does know best.

It can be scary to relinquish yourself to a higher power – or anyone – so completely. But once you do, there’s not much out there that can take a toll on you if you don’t want it to. I’m living proof that faith is the end of fear. If you need a reason to believe, look no further than my story.

Now, I understand that parts of it may seem unbelievable to those without the faith I found. I think in order to believe my story you need to know all of it. Like I said, I wasn’t always the man I am now.

Life is a journey. Like the Maine mountains I love so much it has its peaks, its ups and downs. Some hills are harder to climb than others. Some paths seem too steep, or too intimidating. Sometimes you find you’ve gotten to a place where you can just look around and enjoy the view. But there’s always a path to that place.

My journey began in 1945. That’s when I arrived in this world – in Miami, Florida. It’s nice to be born in such a sunny climate, but we didn’t stay long. When I was five we moved up north to Pennsylvania, where I learned what winter was like for the first time. My parents grew up, met and married in Pennsylvania. That’s where their roots were, and I guess where mine are too. My mother and father, Mary and Robert Jones, were hard-working people who taught their children the value of hard work. Like so many others, life hadn’t given them a choice.

My mother came here from Hungary when she was a child, and grew up without anything that wasn’t necessary. The Depression made frugality a reality for all but the very fortunate. My father worked in a mill and on the water when he found himself near enough to it. He’d taken a liking to boats during the war, during which I’m very proud to tell you he was a commander of a fleet of 16 PT boats (that’s patrol torpedo for those who are too young to be acquainted with the details of World War II).

My father saw a lot of this amazing country of ours during his patrols, travelling up to Maine, and along the St. Lawrence and Mississippi rivers, and down to the Gulf of Mexico. Something a working-class man with responsibilities might not have gotten to do otherwise. Motion is in the Jones’ blood I suppose – my dad on his boats, me travelling the highways in my trucks. Ordinary men. My father’s life also had its extraordinary moments though, as most of ours do when we stop and think about it.

Robert Jones from Lewistown, PA, who at one time earned his living as a silk mill inspector, had under his command on those PT boats none other than