There are times when I wake up at 2:00 or 3:00 and an idea for a blog comes to my mind. This is one of those mornings. As a young man in college I had a number of blessings occur yet, did not recognize them as blessings. I either thought I was very lucky or just took it for granted that special things just happen in life. I had been a Christian for approximately three years and had just been married. It seemed life could not have been any better.

This morning, being Veterans Day, as I was thinking about all of the special things that took place in my early walk with Christ, I was led to wonder how many people receive God’s blessing and dismiss it as if nothing special really took place. Or, we just happened to be at the right place at the right time. Why at those times was I not conscience of the Holy Spirit being constantly active in my live? Probably because I was not aware or I had not been taught of the power of the Holy Spirit in a believer’s life. This morning as I was in bed with these thoughts being raised it was like, why not write about the many times you did not recognize a blessing because you did not expect to be blessed?

There was a possibility that I would be married a year or two after graduating from high school. Upon graduation, jobs were hard to find. A very close friend suggested we join the Navy. I was not at all interested. After six weeks of looking for work and not finding anything I agreed to join. I was accepted and for medical reasons he was rejected. Enlisting in the Navy turned out to be a positive fluke. Going overseas for three years broke off my relationship with a girl I had dated for almost a year. However, after four years of serving I was eligible for four years of college paid by the government.

When I wasn’t playing basketball or baseball I always could find work and never encountered a financial problem. After we were married, my wife was asked to be head resident of a girl’s dorm. We received free room and board. My senior year I was asked to coach at a Christian high school on campus. All of my tuition was free. We received free room and board, my wife was the high school secretary, my education was free and the government was paying me money to go to school. In the summer I was night supervisor for Birds’ Eye frozen foods. After my senior year I was audited by the IRS and had to prove that I had actually given what I claimed to the church. How could we have not recognized how God was blessing us? I look back now and wonder how could I have been so unaware of what God was doing in our lives.

It was fortunate that we had saved prior to joining Montgomery Ward’s management training program on $85 a week or we could not have made it financially. I worked in nine stores and was transferred eight times. Everywhere we went we were active in the church. By now we were starting to realize how God was blessing us. My first store as a store manager was Nampa, Idaho where my wife and I attended college. We knew hundreds of people and the store became very successful compared to what it had been doing. Later we were transferred to Kalispell, Montana. After three years a rumor had it that I was going to Klamath Falls, Oregon. It was a store that had been opened two years and was losing considerable amounts of money. The gossip was that it was a store that no one could make profitable. Anyone taking that job could lose his job. If they offer me a certain amount I will know that is where God wants us to go otherwise I will turn it down. When they offered the job to me and said they would pay me much more than I had expected I believed I should accept. I told my wife that they must be building a church in Klamath Falls. With what they offered we will be able to support it financially. The first Sunday we walked into the Klamath Falls church, there was a huge thermometer indicating how much had been pledged for the new church building. We looked at each other and said, “This is where God wants us”. After four and a half years it became one of Ward’s more profitable stores.

It wasn’t until I became an elder in 1983 that I witnessed so many supernatural events take place. Watching Central Christian Church grow and seeing thousands converted and baptized is when we just started calling everything: “It’s a God thing”. As I observe our church’s message going world-wide I look back and wonder why it took me so long to recognize what God does in our lives almost daily. I guess if you are not expecting to be blessed, when you are, you may fail to recognize it. The point of this story is to look every day for what the Holy Spirit is doing in your life. It will build your faith and trust. You will become a more positive person and you will certainly overcome the times you feel so unworthy.