I’m speaking today in the civic center downtown Tallahassee. The audience will be professional people and the gist of my talk will be how I was able to succeed. I have about 30 minutes to sum up a lifetime that has been a wild ride.
I’ve slept on the side of the road under bridges through the freezing rainy, snowy nights and I’ve slept in comfort in luxury deluxe beds in the finest of mansions and hotels. I’ve hitch-hiked and hopped freights across country eating pork and beans (if I was lucky), and I’ve cruised at 50,000 feet in the fastest of private jets, the X-10, eating smoked salmon, and when I arrived I was picked up by a limousine that seemed as though it was fifty feet long.
I’ve received tattered but warm second hand clothes in Salvation Army mission stores from saintly volunteers, and I’ve been fitted with custom made suits handmade by Italian tailors who couldn’t speak a word of English.
I’ve had two operations to straighten a nose battered by fights, and four operations to rebuild bone and replace all of my teeth with implants due to constriction of blood vessels caused by amphetamine use and years of neglect.
I’ve been shot at, beaten, threatened with knives, OD’d twice (one time causing my liver to quit functioning), had two head on collisions, been in three cars that rolled multiple times, caught in three storms offshore in boats that nearly sank, and otherwise narrowly escaped death so many times a cat would be jealous. Today I live with Hepatitis C and am told that if I don’t die from something else it will likely get me.
I’ve lived through tragedy that seemingly knew no bounds, not the least of which was the suicide of my only brother Jim. I’ve seen death first hand so many times I don’t like to think about it including people shot, stabbed, beaten to death, OD’s, suicides, and one homeless man who froze to death.
My first job coming to Atlanta at 24 years old was cleaning the mortar off bricks with a hatchet in order that they might be reused for $15 a day; next job was $300/month, two years later I was at $30,000 per year, then I opened a business and moved up to $30,000 per week, then to $300,000 per week.
I had to lie about my past to get my first job and not that long ago was selected as Business Person of the Year by Gwinnet County Georgia in the Atlanta suburbs, (the 3rd largest Chamber of Commerce in the country) and also became a finalist for Ernst and Young’s prestigious Entrepreneur of the year won by none other than Michael Dell of Dell computers. I was asked to speak at the Inc. 500/5000 conference in Washington D.C. and went on stage right after the Secretary of Commerce.
I started smoking cigarettes and drinking at 12, was an alcoholic by 14, a drug addict by 17, in and out of jail numerous times, in prison, kicked out of the military as a diagnosed psychopath, married at 19 divorced 11 months later, and didn’t have a friend until I was 30 years old. Today I’ve been married for 41 years, have 3 sons, and 7 grandkids, and have friends literally all over the world. Today I don’t drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, or take drugs.
I was a warlock practicing black magic and despising God and now I love Jesus with my entire being and spread His evangelistic message of God’s saving grace through the blood of Christ to prisons, churches, businesses, organizations, and literally anywhere I have an opportunity through speeches, my book, personal testimony, and Words for the Day.
Whew! I think I’ll go back to bed.
I received a letter from some guy who was venting about Words for the Day while I was on my last trip. He was upset because I am too political and wanted me to unsubscribe him. He said I couldn’t relate to the middle class and that I was just another of those rich guys who cannot relate to his man Obama, “the poor man’s advocate”.
I responded that the only thing his man Obama is “advocating” is policy that makes people poor and he has been successful in doing just that with more people entering poverty and receiving food stamps in his administration than at any other time in the history of our country. Mark my words, if he is re-elected he will make many more people poor and even poorer than ever before in the history of this country.
It burns me up to hear someone say I cannot relate to the middle class; I’ve been homeless for crying out loud. I don’t like Obama because he is inept and has never even had a real job. He’s not qualified to manage a hot dog stand, much less the most powerful and largest economy in the world.
This pseudo-intellectual has the audacity to tell me that I didn’t build my businesses, because taxes paid for roads and my education. I don’t have any education except the school of hard knocks. Aren’t roads used by everyone? If these roads were for my private use I might logically buy into that idiotic theory. Where were all his government bureaucrats when I was risking everything and working 20 hours a day seven days a week? I tell you where they were they were, they were either sleeping or maybe marching and protesting with their union buddies for bigger pensions than anyone else in the country gets.
Bahhh! Even if he knew a tremendous amount about running a country, and his tax and spend policies worked, and even if he quit lying about everything, I’d still never vote for him because he has an anti-Christian belief system that stinks to high heaven, (regardless of what he and his liberal media henchmen say). He is someone who believes in partial birth abortion and preventing doctors from caring for babies that survive abortion. He promotes homosexuality and same sex marriage, and undermines freedom of religion at every turn. This is indisputable.
Hmmm… Sorry I got distracted there. I will tell this audience today that I owe all my success to accepting Christ as my Savior. Yes I worked hard and yes I used my brain to work smart, but if it had not been for Christ I would be dead, in prison on death row, or in an insane asylum. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. “I” have to do my part, and “all things” means all things within God’s will for my life which is pretty much anything wholesome and good and righteous.
Success is taking your eye off yourself and putting it on Jesus. When one does that, a spirit of serving will be incumbent upon those of us who truly believe. Jesus showed the way and we should follow.
Now if you don’t like this message, unsubscribe yourself and don’t bother me with it. I’m too busy campaigning for Romney.
John 13:3-5
Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.