I am ever struck by the profound reality that I looked death in the eye on Sunday morning, June 16, 2019. I had just returned home from The Mayo Clinic and successful cardiac surgery by the one doctor in the entirety of the western world who could treat me. But even he could not deliver me from a twice-unfolding reaction to the trauma of the surgery upon my heart, the first erupting the very evening of my return home on Friday the 14th, a hideous experience lasting four hours, between 9pm and 1am, replete with the inward knowledge that I would not live to see the interior of an ER if taken, and the second proving to be quadruply horrific, for five hours on the Sunday morning, between 4:30 and 9am, with several hours thereafter of hellish residuals. It was as if a jackhammer situated at my heart’s deepest core went off, “hammering away.” Having had an aunt who experienced the complete collapse of her cardiac backwall, one can begin to imagine my rather aggravated concern.

This second, far more insidious attack brought me literally to death’s door. I stared into its eyes as if I were looking down the barrel of a shotgun. In classic Davidic-style, as my dear wife prayerfully interceded on my behalf for the duration, I “cried aloud to the Lord,” and in comparable divine-manner, “He answered me from His holy hill.” It was 6am and, but for His delivering hand, I wouldn’t be here by 7am, the countdown having commenced it ticking. He did deliver me, replete with an angelic manifestation and a Book of Revelation-like vision, by way of an indefatigble and irrefutable power. He did, and I live, both to tell the tale by way of testimony and to give Him all of me in service for the rest of my days. “I know the plans I have for you, plans not to fail you but to prosper you and to give you a future.”

Prosperity for me is faithful service to my Lord, who gave me life in 1961, new life through Christ in 1975, and a miraculous deliverance unto new life and ministry in 2019. He has my body & He has my mind & He has my heart – Literally; He has all of me, and may all of me be to His praise, I do ever trust!