To my wife, Joanne,
for her never-ending support and encouragement
(and for calling 9-1-1)

Also, a big "thank you" to everyone who played an important role in helping me write this book.  I have appreciated your valuable feedback throughout the editing process, and your prayers throughout my journey.

Most of all, eternal gratitude to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who, through His love and mercy, provided me a second chance at life in order to learn
The Most Important Lesson

Contents

Introduction – Life is Full of Lessons
Chapter 1 - Death is Not the End
Chapter 2- Death-to-Life Experiences
Chapter 3 - The Most Important Five Minutes of My Death
Chapter 4 - Dreams Do Come True
Chapter 5 - Death is Unpredictable Yet Inevitable
Chapter 6 - Meeting Someone Famous
Chapter 7 - It Takes a Leap of Faith to Get Anywhere in Life
Chapter 8 - Treasure Hunting
Chapter 9 - It’s All About Priorities
Chapter 10 - Forgiving and Forgetting is Foundational
Chapter 11 - Pay Attention to Red Flags
Chapter 12 - How Do We Get Attacked?
Chapter 13 - The Second Dream
Chapter 14 - So Where Do You Start?
Chapter 15 - Final Exam Study Sheet
Conclusion - Final Thoughts
Appendix
Heart Attack Symptoms
What To Do If You Experience Signs of a Heart Attack
Suggested Books

Introduction

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”
Albert Einstein

Life is full of lessons.

From the day we were born to the day we die, we are continually learning.  Everything is new to us as babies, so we must learn in order to grow, develop and survive. We learned to communicate even though we could not yet speak. We learned who the special people in our lives were. We learned that there were some things we liked and others that we didn’t.

Sometimes we learn our lessons the easy way and sometimes we learn them the hard way. Some lessons we learn quickly and some take longer before we finally understand. Some lessons we learn and forget. Some stay at the forefront of our minds. Some lessons we would love to forget.

There are some lessons that we wish we had learned earlier in life. How many times have you said to yourself, “I wish I’d known that sooner!” or “I wish I knew then what I know now!” If you’re like me, it’s easy to be hard on yourself for not learning important lessons earlier in your life.

That’s the point of this book.

It wasn’t until I was almost 57 years old that I learned The Most Important Lesson.  I have deep regret for taking so long to have learned it, but I am relieved to finally have learned the lesson.

My goal is now to fully implement this lesson into my life and to share it with others. Nothing would make me happier than to see other people’s lives positively changed by applying The Most Important Lesson.

Would my life look differently now had I learned this lesson when I was young?

Definitely!

If I can save you years of wasted time by sharing this lesson, then I will have accomplished my goal.

This book is also full of smaller lessons - ones that I will share with you to help you get the most from it. Please don’t ignore these. They are important as well, and will help to shape you as you strive to implement the Big Lesson.

I am not a theologian. I’m just a guy who wants to share with you the most important thing I have ever learned in hopes that it will help to better your life.

May God bless you on your journey.

Chapter 1 - Death is Not the End
“Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own
believing and his own dying.”
Martin Luther

February 3, 2019 was the day I died.

The night before was a bitterly cold evening in Calgary, Alberta. Temperatures were well below -20C (-4 F) accompanied by strong winds that would have made the “feels like” temperature reach an easy -30C (-22 F).

I had planned a very special evening with my wife, Joanne. Our birthdays bookend Valentine’s Day, so each year we usually have one night on the town during that week to celebrate all three special occasions. This evening’s events started with a delicious dinner at an Italian restaurant, followed by a concert.

Following dinner, I stood in line to pay for my ticket at the outdoor parking lot across from the Max Bell Theatre. I thought the line would never end as I shivered to keep warm while waiting for my turn to pay. It was going to be the end to a great evening seeing a “Legends of Motown” concert, so I tried to ignore the bitter cold.

As expected, we thoroughly enjoyed the concert. The talent was first-class as the impersonators sang popular songs from the past by some of the best musical artists to come out of Motown. People were singing and dancing in the aisles. Concerts don’t get much better than this.

Arriving home later that night, we prepared for bed as usual. It was midnight when we finally crawled into bed. Strangely, I felt some mild discomfort in my upper chest, right below my neck. I thought that I'd simply eaten too much at the restaurant (again), but I was sure the pain was probably as a result of a gas bubble and would subside by morning. I just needed to fall asleep and the discomfort would disappear on its own as it had many times before.

For the next two hours I could not get comfortable in bed. I tossed and turned, carefully, so as not to awaken Joanne, who was fast asleep next to me. There was no position that I could find where the pressure in my chest would diminish. The “gas bubble” in my upper chest was becoming more and more painful, to the point that I felt a more strategic change in body position was necessary if I was going to get any sleep at all that night. I had to get rid of that gas bubble!

At 2:00 a.m. I sat up on the side of bed thinking that the change to a vertical position would cause the bubble to rise and dissipate more quickly. My sitting up caused Joanne to wake up.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I’ve got some pain in my chest.”

That’s all I needed to say to get the alarm bells ringing at full volume! Joanne was on her feet in no time and quizzing me about all aspects of the pain that I was experiencing. She immediately Googled “heart attack symptoms” and was quickly moving down the list asking me questions about how I felt.

“It’s just gas, I think,” was my best amateur medical diagnosis. I truly believed I was just experiencing the consequences of stuffing down a few too many garlic bread sticks at the restaurant. I was so confident that it was NOT a heart attack because everything I had heard about heart attacks involved having feelings of heartburn, indigestion and pain down the left arm. I had none of those symptoms, so there was no way it could be a heart attack!  My pain was more like the feeling you sometimes have in your upper chest right before you burp - except it wouldn't go away.

After a minute or two sitting on the edge of the bed, the pain seemed to increase, rather than disappear like I had expected. I stood up thinking that if I moved around a bit, maybe that would dislodge the gas bubble and we could go back to sleep.

I made it as far as the bathroom.

Nausea suddenly hit me like a tidal wave! I was able to raise the toilet seat just as the waves of dry heaves started to hit. The most violent dry heaves, accompanied by uncontrollable loud shrieks, came upon me like I have never experienced! I was then reintroduced to my chicken parmesan.

By this time, Joanne had dialed 9-1-1 and was on the phone with Emergency Medical Services. The paramedics were on their way. EMS stayed on the phone with Joanne and they continued down the checklist of symptoms for heart attacks.

“Does he have cold sweats?”

“Gary, do you have cold sweats?” she asked standing just outside the bathroom door.

Just then the sweats hit me as if taking their cue from Joanne. Between the violent heaves and profuse sweating I was now experiencing, I decided this was no longer fun. The pain was also increasing in my chest - a lot!

My daughter, Rochelle, had now showed up after being woken up by my full volume heaving. She thought I was experiencing the effects of food poisoning and, seeing Joanne on the phone, surmised that she was calling the restaurant (at 2:00 a.m.) to notify them. When you’re woken up from a deep sleep, rational thoughts don’t often come to mind first. Joanne quickly explained to her that she was talking with EMS because Dad was possibly experiencing a heart attack and his condition was getting worse by the minute. Joanne asked her to unlock and open the door for the paramedics who were soon to arrive.

When the first break in my vomiting occurred, I thought it might be a good idea to go upstairs so that the paramedics would not have to carry me up if things got worse. Upon reaching the top of the stairs, the pain in my chest was unbearable. I have always considered myself to have a high pain tolerance. I had played contact sports of all kinds when I was younger and would often play through pain in order to stay in a game. I’ve had multiple broken bones including my nose - eight times to be exact. This chest pain I was experiencing now was some of the worst pain I had ever experienced! I thought that there was no way a heart attack could hurt this much!  I was still convinced it had to be something else that was making me sick. The paramedics arrived almost as soon as I reached the top of the stairs.

The first paramedic I encountered asked if I wanted to be examined in the ambulance, or in the living room on my couch. Still in my pajamas, I deferred to the

couch since it was closest and I did not want to feel the blast from the bitter cold outside.

I sat on the couch and watched as the paramedic placed a small bag on the couch beside me. In what seemed like slow motion, I watched as she reached into her bag and started to pull out the ECG machine to monitor my heart activity.

That’s all I remember.

Joanne informed me later on that I was still conscious as they hooked me up to the ECG machine and realized I was in cardiac arrest. They told her to get my boots and to put them on me in preparation to be transported to the hospital. At that point, Joanne said that my face went very pale, my skin went clammy and I began to vomit one more time. She turned my head to the side so that I would not aspirate on my vomit.

Then she said my eyes rolled back into my head and I was gone.

The paramedics quickly threw me onto the floor and began to perform CPR on me, interspersed with four shocks from the automated external defibrillator.

By this time, the firefighters had arrived and one of the firefighters dismantled our glass coffee table and moved it to allow the paramedics to work. As Joanne paced and prayed for God to be merciful and to save me, the firefighters suggested she sit on a chair in another room. Joanne watched as they administered CPR, but then ducked into a room to call someone to pray and didn’t see me being shocked by

the automated external defibrillator.  Unfortunately, no one noticed our daughter, Rochelle, on her knees at the end of the hallway watching everything that was happening to me.  Eventually Joanne got in touch with a good friend of ours and said, “Gary’s just had a heart attack and he’s gone. Please pray!” No sooner had she gotten that sentence out of her mouth, than she heard one of the paramedics say, “We have a pulse!”

I have faint memories, as I faded in and out of consciousness, of voices telling me that I’d had a heart attack and was being transported to the Foothills Medical Center.

Joanne and Rochelle followed the ambulance to the hospital. Upon arriving at the hospital, within 20 minutes I was undergoing surgery to have two stents placed into my main “widow maker” artery.

Results showed that I had a 70% blockage in one section of my main artery and a 100% blockage a little higher up in the same artery. One of the other arteries had a 40% blockage but that did not seem to concern the cardiologists.

My next memories were of waking up in a hospital bed later that morning. I couldn’t believe how painful my chest and ribs were. Apparently the paramedics had done a great job performing CPR as I was told that if it was done correctly, ribs would have to break.

They did a great job!

It hurt to breathe. Tears would come to my eyes as I would anticipate a sneeze coming, knowing the excruciating pain that it would deliver.  Every time I sneezed it felt like someone was hitting me in the chest with a baseball bat.  Fortunately, the medical staff had me on regular doses of morphine to help me cope with the pain. The next few months would be interesting, as I knew that broken ribs take a long time to heal.

In the morning, Joanne and Rochelle, wearing huge smiles on their faces, were by my bedside welcoming me back to the land of the living. It was good to see them! My son, Brett, was three hours away preparing for mid-term exams in his final year of studies at the University of Alberta. He was waiting to hear the results of my surgery before making arrangements to travel back to Calgary. I spoke with him on the phone to reassure him that I was fine and that there was no need for him to forego his exams and travel to be with me. There was nothing he could do for me at this point. I preferred that he stayed safe by not driving on the slippery winter roads and instead focus on his studies. I felt badly that I had become a distraction to him.

Doctors and nurses visited my bedside regularly for the next few days as they checked on my status, delivered medications and discussed my condition and prognosis with me.

I rested when I could, and enjoyed connecting with all the friends and relatives that visited. When I had a chance, I would attempt to process what had happened to me during the five minutes that I was dead.

It was the most important five minutes of my life - even though I was dead at the time!

Chapter 2 - Death-to-Life Experiences

"This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory
so that God's Son may be glorified through it."

John 11:4

I’d always wondered what death would be like…what my death would be like. Would I feel pain? Would I feel a sense of peace? Would there be angels singing as they escorted me through the gates of heaven? Would it be scary or would I think it was the coolest thing ever?

I've read books and seen movies where people described their death experiences and claimed they had seen glimpses of heaven, and even Jesus.  I’d heard stories about people who claimed they had returned from the dead with incredible tales of what they had seen on the other side.

To be honest, the skeptic in me always took those stories with a grain of salt. After all, people can make up anything they want - and they often do in order to gain  fame and fortune. I’ve always felt more comfortable if someone provided proof to back up their stories and make them more believable. Especially when it came to something as unbelievable as coming back from the dead.

I’ve only met two people who’ve come back from the dead. When my dad was about 65, he experienced an allergic reaction to the dye the doctors used during an angioplasty procedure. His heart stopped for about two minutes while he laid on the operating table. Fortunately, the doctors were able to revive him and he went

on to live a normal life well into his 90’s. I’ve asked him, more than once, if he remembered anything from those two minutes he was dead. He could never recall anything and had no memories of anything happening to him.  Bummer.  I was really hoping to hear some life-changing revelation from someone I knew I could trust.

The other account happened to the daughter of a pastor who serves with our ministry in Mexico. Miguel and Alicia have become good friends of ours over the years. We first met them at an underground cenote (a natural sinkhole, resulting from the collapse of limestone bedrock that exposes groundwater) in the Yucatan where two teens that were serving with us on a mission team were being baptized. God had arranged it for us to be there at the exact same time. They stood behind our group as the baptisms were being performed. They were praying and Alicia was crying and they celebrated along with us the entire time. Following the event, we met with them and discovered that they were pastors of a new church in the state's capital city, Merida. We exchanged contact information and quickly formed a strong relationship with them as we partnered on many ministry endeavors over the coming years.

Not long after meeting them, we were privileged to hear the story of how they became involved in full-time service as pastors.

Early in their marriage, they were at a family function when they discovered their three year-old daughter face down in a swimming pool. Unresponsive, they quickly transported her to a hospital and were told that she was dead. Refusing to accept this, they rushed her to another hospital for a second opinion. This hospital too, concurred that she had been dead for several hours, and they began preparing her

body for the morgue. Miguel was not a follower of Christ at the time and his mother told him that if ever he was to get serious about his relationship with God, now was the time. Miguel prayed to God and promised Him that if He revived his young daughter, he would serve Him every day for the rest of his life.

Fifteen minutes later, his daughter miraculously began to breathe. She was in a deep coma, and although the doctors had no explanation for what had just happened to her, they could not deny the fact that she had come back to life after being clinically dead for several hours. The doctors told Miguel and Alicia not to get their hopes up because, although she had begun breathing again, if she ever did regain consciousness, her brain had been starved of oxygen for so long that she would most likely be severely brain damaged.

Five hours later Miguel and Alicia left the hospital with a happy, healthy, perfectly normal child. The hospital staff had no explanation for what they had witnessed and for what had transpired over the past several hours, but they recognized that it was a miracle. Completely dumbfounded, the hospital administration had Miguel and Alicia sign special documents releasing them of any future repercussions regarding their daughter’s health.

Following her release and miraculous revival, their young daughter began to describe images of heaven and of Jesus to her parents. These were topics that had never previously been discussed with her, and her parents had no idea how she could have conjured them up. They took her to a local pastor for his advice and after the pastor met with her, he too was shocked at her understanding of heaven and the descriptions of what she said she had seen. She described seeing streets

made of gold, brilliant colors that she’d never seen before, and an amazing man who had rays of light emanating from his hands when he outstretched them.

Strangely, in the following weeks she seemed somewhat depressed. She commented that she did not want to be here (on earth) but rather, wanted to be where the “man” was. She talked of a secret that the man had told her, and she has yet to reveal to anyone here on earth the contents of that secret. Her desire to be with Jesus in heaven consumed her to the point that Miguel and Alicia prayed that God would remove the memories she had of her encounter in heaven, so that she would be content here on earth.

Today, their daughter has three beautiful children and leads a normal life. After this experience, Miguel stayed true to his promise to God and became a pastor.

My only other “death-to-life” experience was on the first mission trip that I led to Mexico in 2004. As our team prepared for a time of ministry in the local hospital in Tepic, we gathered on the sidewalk outside the main entrance to the hospital and I asked the leaders of the hospital ministry if they could share with us what we should expect once we went inside. The leader proceeded to tell us that their regular teams of prayer warriors would wander the hallways of the hospital and, when the Spirit prompted them, they would enter a room and pray for people. He said that they had seen people give their lives to God, get healed instantly, and even come back from the dead.

Whoa! I needed an explanation of that last point.

“What do you mean you’ve seen people come back from the dead?” I asked incredulously.

He replied, “One day when we were walking down a hallway, we saw an entire medical team exit a room. We asked what had happened and were told that the patient in the room had just passed away. We asked if it would be okay for us to go in and pray for the patient, and the medical staff granted us permission but told us we’d be wasting our time. We prayed for the person and he came back to life!”

How I wished I had been there! There are so many questions I would have asked. What had he seen on the other side?  What was heaven like?  Did he see Jesus?

Little did I know that I’d have my own death “encounter” someday - February 3, 2019 at 3:02 a.m., to be exact.

Chapter 3
The Most Important Five Minutes of My Death

“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well used brings happy death.” Leonardo da Vinci

Bright lights. Streets of gold. Brilliant colors. Peaceful surroundings. Reunions with loved ones.

These were the typical experiences I’d always heard about when people died and then came back to life.

Not me. Nothing could have been further from my experience!

One second I was on my couch about to get my heart checked by a paramedic and the next I was in total darkness. I remember how black it was and I remember how anxious I felt.

An overwhelming sense of anxiety consumed me!

Despite the blackness, I could see Jesus standing off to the left in front of me approximately 10 feet away. I could not see His features, but I could see His silhouette as though there was a dim light behind Him. Although I could not see His face, I knew it was Him. I knew that I was in His presence. I could feel it. He said nothing. He did not move. He just stood there and looked at me.

There was nothing else - but blackness and that overwhelming cloud of anxiety.

Then I spoke.

“So…is this it?”

“Because if it is, I’m not ready to go.”

“I need to know you better.”

“Please send me back.”

And then I kept repeating, “I need to know you better. Please send me back.”

As I spoke, my words were printed in white in front of me, as if on a stock market scrolling ticker.

It did not seem like five minutes, and yet, I had a sense that it was much longer than that. To this day, I cannot explain the degree of anxiety that I felt. It was frightening! It was like a dark, ominous cloud that surrounded me. I did not feel peace like I’d heard others experience. I did not have a sense that there was something greater that awaited me.

I felt that I was not ready to die. That I was not prepared. That I had missed the most important thing about life - getting to know Jesus intimately. I felt like it was final exam time and I had studied the wrong material! I did not want to be there. I had lots of work to do before I made my final exit. I had so much lost time to make up. I had priorities that needed to be rearranged as quickly as possible. I needed to return to life in order to do it all!

The only way to accomplish this would be if I had a second chance - if I could be sent back. So, I begged and pleaded to be sent back.

Mercifully, God allowed this to happen.

Although I didn’t feel ready to die, I do remember that I had a sense of “completion”. I remember feeling like I had tied up my loose ends. I remember feeling a sense of relief, as I knew there were no dirty deeds that needed to be dealt with. I remember feeling that I had ensured the relationships with the people closest to me were healthy. This was the only thing that provided me any semblance of peace during my encounter.

The anxiety and the self-condemnation that I felt was something I will never forget. How could I be so stupid as to miss the most important part of life - getting to know Jesus intimately!

Following my death (that’s a phrase I can't get used to saying!), I have vague recollections of voices informing me that I had gone into cardiac arrest and was on my way to the hospital. My body had some serious healing to do, and the next several hours were lost in a fog of semi-consciousness, an operation, sleep and medications.

I was not prepared for what I was about to encounter once the dust settled and I was lying, alone, in my hospital bed.

Chapter 4 - Dreams Do Come True

“It is only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth – and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up – that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.”
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

The next few days I was given incredible medical treatment by the staff at the hospital. They did their best to stabilize me physically and provide me with the best care for my condition. I rested when I had the chance. During these rest periods, what really got my attention was a recurring dream that I continued to have.

My dream would take place in different locations, but the exact same scenario repeated itself over and over, and the dream ended exactly the same each time.

In the dream, I was on my way to the arena to play ice hockey. Upon arriving at the arena with my equipment bag slung over my shoulder, I was shocked to find that I had forgotten my hockey stick. How could I be so forgetful and leave my hockey stick at home! I couldn’t get in the game without a stick! It was such an obvious part of my equipment - how could I forget it?

Following the mental beating I gave myself, I frantically searched the arena to find, borrow or purchase a hockey stick so I could get into the game. No success! All stores were closed and no one else was in the arena.

This dream probably had as much impact on me as my death encounter with God. I played a lot of ice hockey when I was younger. My parents always stressed the importance of mentally dressing myself while checking my equipment bag before heading to the arena. It didn’t take too many times when, as a young boy, my Mom or Dad had to make a trip home to retrieve a forgotten skate or shin pad, before I’d learned my lesson. I always checked my equipment twice when I packed my bag. Maybe that’s why I was so filled with condemnation in my dream, forgetting my hockey stick. It was the most obvious piece of equipment to remember!

A small skate or elbow pad can easily hide under a couch or other piece of furniture in the house and be overlooked, but it’s hard to lose sight of something as large and important as a hockey stick! It was equivalent to a baseball player stepping up to the plate without a bat.

When I reflect on this dream, I think it has a direct correlation to my death encounter. The feeling of not being prepared for an important event was something that made me feel very uncomfortable and anxious. It always has! When I died, I felt that I was not ready because I did not know Jesus to the degree that I felt was necessary. This feeling of unpreparedness directly paralleled my experience of showing up at the hockey arena without a stick, and not being able to get into the game because of it. In both situations, I was not prepared.

In Matthew 25:1-3, Jesus tells a parable about ten virgins waiting for their bridegroom.

“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.  Five of them were foolish, and five were wise.  For when

the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps.  As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept.  But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’  Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps.  And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’  But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’  And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut.  Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’  But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’  Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

Although the purpose of this parable is to encourage people to be ready and waiting for Christ’s return, by extension and with permission, I submit that it could also apply to the day we meet Christ when we die.

No doubt, I was just like those foolish virgins. I knew the bridegroom was coming, that my date with death would eventually arrive, but I was not preparing myself adequately for that fateful day. I knew better!

I had a lot to think about.

As friends and relatives visited me in the hospital during the next week, I could not stop sharing what I’d experienced. I’m sure the guy in the bed next to me got tired of hearing the same story over and over, but I could not contain myself. As I shared my death experience and my dream over and over, it served as a form of therapy for me and enabled me to begin the process of making sense of it all.

It was interesting to hear the responses from some of my closest friends.  A friend who is a pastor was quick to provide some valuable insight. He said, “Gary, you and I are very much alike. We are both “doers”. We like to get things done and take pride in doing a good job. We spend most of our lives doing things for God, hoping it will make Him happy.”

I nodded in agreement. That’s exactly what I was accustomed to doing!

He continued, “There is nothing we can do, or not do, that will make Jesus love us any more, or any less than He already does. He is not as concerned with our “performance” as He is with having a relationship with us. He cares about getting to know us, and us getting to know Him - not about how well we perform for Him.”

Wow. That was a revelation to me. It’s not that I hadn’t heard the exact same thing before - countless times. The timing of this revelation is what mattered and for the first time I truly understood it.

I continued to ponder this concept about not having to perform for God in order to gain His acceptance and love.

I began to think about my relationship with my own children. When I considered how I related to my two children, what is it about those relationships that I really desired?

When they were younger, had they brought a report card home from school that had straight “A’s” on it, or brought one home that had straight “F’s” on it, would it have caused me to love them any more or any less than I already did? Of course

not! I may have been pleased or not pleased with their performance, but it would not have affected the degree to which I loved them. What I am most concerned about is having a strong relationship with them - spending time with them - doing things with them - conversing with them - getting to know them better.

Our Heavenly Father is no different. He is concerned more with having a relationship with us than He is with how well we do things for Him. He wants to spend time with us. He wants to talk with us and He wants for us to talk to Him. He wants to do the things with us that are necessary for any relationship to grow and flourish!

The sad thing is that I have heard all this before - countless times and in many forms. I grew up in a Christian home. My parents were missionaries at one point in their lives. I invited Christ to come into my life when I was five years old. I went to a Christian high school and a Christian university. I served as a missionary for many years and eventually started my own Christian ministry. But none of this mattered because I never really understood what it meant to have a relationship with my Creator. Sure, I understood it from a head-knowledge perspective, but what I should have been focusing on, was understanding it from a heart perspective.

I know it’s necessary to do certain things in order to have a relationship with my wife, Joanne, and my kids. I know that spending time with them is important if I want to develop intimacy with them. Talking to them and listening to them is a necessary part of developing this relationship. But if I do not apply what I know, the relationships will go nowhere.  I need to invest myself in the relationships. It takes time, effort and commitment if my desire is to see these relationships flourish and

if true intimacy is the goal. All the head knowledge in the world will not help me improve my relationship with my family if I do not take action and apply it.

Our relationship with our Lord and Savior is no different. Too many of us think we have it all figured out and have the corner on how to have a close relationship with God, but never get to the point of actually making it happen. How pointless!

That’s exactly where I was! I had all the head knowledge I needed but failed to make the connection to putting it all into practice. I was too focused on doing things for the betterment of the Kingdom when I should have been focused on developing a deep relationship with Jesus.  Sure there were seasons where I felt close to God, but if I am to be completely honest, those seasons were too few and far between. There were periods of time, often several months long, where I studied the Bible, led small groups and tried to get deeper in my faith. These were great times but they weren't consistent. There seemed to be a disconnect between going through the motions and playing “Christian” and developing a friendship with Jesus where I truly thirsted for time spent with Him.

So how do we get to the point where, as the psalmist says, a close relationship with God is crucial to survival, “As the deer pants for water, so I long for you, O God. I thirst for God, the living God. Where can I find him to come and stand before him?” Psalm 42: 1-2

That’s where I want to be! That’s what I want my relationship with God to be like! That’s my new goal in life! That’s what I have been missing all these years.

My journey to implement The Most Important Lesson, began on February 3, 2019, when my heart stopped for five minutes.

The rest of this book is all about the “light bulb” moments that have propelled me on my journey to get to know Jesus intimately. Some of these revelations may seem trivial to you, but my goal is to simply share my journey in the hopes that it may resonate with others in some way. My history is proof that although I heard some important lessons throughout my life, some of them never sunk in like they should have. I ignored warning signs. I chose to turn a blind eye to the obvious.

I should state that this book is a result of a conversation I had with God roughly a month after I died of cardiac arrest. In that conversation during the middle of the night, God told me to write this book and tell my story. He told me that He would give me the words to say and tell me what to write. He countered every argument I put forth and eventually won the battle. I knew I needed to put my trust in Him for the words to say, so I conceded and, soon after, began the process of organizing my thoughts to begin the book.

Recently, I was awoken in the middle of the night and felt the strong urging from God to get this book finished as soon as I could, and to get it into the hands of as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.

A later conversation with God instructed me to do so by making it available in eBook form to allow people to access it completely free of charge.

Hearing from God

I should probably comment at this point about my “conversations” with God. This may seem very strange to some of you!

God speaks in a variety of ways to His people. After all, He is God and He can do anything He wants! I will touch on just a few ways that God communicates for the purpose of better explaining how I have heard God speak to me.

To some, God actually speaks in an audible voice. Adam and Eve heard God’s voice in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:8). He spoke audibly to Moses from the burning bush (Exodus 3:4-6) and to all Israel from Mount Sinai (Exodus 20:1-22). In the New Testament, He endorsed Jesus at His baptism and Jesus’ transfiguration with a literal voice. Following Jesus death and resurrection, Saul and his companions saw Him in a blinding light and heard His voice (Acts 9:3-7).

God sometimes speaks to us through His still small voice. An example in the Bible is when Elijah was camping in a cave on Mount Sinai and he heard God speak to him in a “still small voice,” also translated “a gentle whisper” (1 Kings 19:9-12).

Sometimes God speaks through visions and dreams. “I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh . . . your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams” (Acts 2:17). A vision is an inspired appearance (something you see literally with your eyes or in your mind or spirit). A dream is something seen in your sleep or something you imagine doing—a goal or an aspiration. God can insert images and ideas into our minds whether we are conscious or not.  It was a vision that God gave me about

what our current ministry, C-Quest, would look like that launched us on our biggest journey of faith with Him. He has continued to sustain and direct us in this ministry for many years.

When I hear from God, it usually happens through His still, small voice, or through visions that He gives me.  At times, I have experienced such strong dialogue with Him that it is similar to having a normal conversation, although I have never heard Him speak to me audibly. There is no better way to explain it, than to say that I simply know it is God that is talking to me. Just like I knew I was in His presence when I died. I hope this helps to provide you with a clearer picture of what I mean when I refer to “hearing from God”.

I strongly believe that I have been hearing from God more frequently and more clearly than I did before my cardiac arrest because I am making an effort to listen to Him more than I did before. It’s hard to hear someone if you’re not listening. If our lives are filled with so much “noise” – so many distractions and diversions - than it’s no wonder we can’t hear God speak.

It also takes effort. Effort to create quiet times so that we can spend time simply listening. Asking God what He might want to say to you is a great place to start. It is so easy for us to fill our lives with noise. Turning the television, music or computer on to provide us with a sense of companionship or to serve as background noise when we’re alone can become addictive and can easily interfere with these times when God may want to speak to us. Before my death encounter, I was notorious for filling my life with distractions and noise. I always had to have something filling my mind.

Now, I make an effort to listen more intently and to ask Him what He wants to say to me. Sometimes I don't hear anything. Maybe this is why God tends to talk to me in the middle of the night. There is usually nothing to distract me at that time and I can solely focus on Him - I can be still and hear His voice just like He has asked me to be.

It is commonly known that animals can instantly recognize the voice of a familiar trusted person. Sheep recognize the voice of their shepherd. They follow him (or her). The shepherd protects his flock and would give his life for them.

Jesus said, “My sheep hear My voice” (John 10:27). The Greek word, ginō´skō means to know God or Christ in an intimate, spiritual sense, and, in turn, be known by them. Jesus, as the Good Shepherd knows  His own intimately, and they, in turn, know Him intimately.

In John 10:27, Jesus confirms that His sheep will keep hearing His voice, that He Himself keeps knowing them, and that they will keep following Him.

Like any skill, the more we practice good listening habits with God, the better we’ll be able to hear from Him.

Chapter 5 - Death is Unpredictable Yet Inevitable

“It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives."
Samuel Johnson

No one knows exactly when they are going to die. But it will happen to each of us some day. Guaranteed!

I’m always amazed at the crazy videos on YouTube and photos on the internet where people seem to challenge death. They do things like hang from the edge of skyscrapers by one hand while they take a selfie with the other. I’ve seen rock climbers scaling tall mountains with only their fingertips gripping an outcropping of rock as their sole source of security. The list goes on. This constant flirting with death is something that I could never really wrap my head around. Why do some people consciously put their lives in such precarious situations where a slight miscalculation or slip of the fingers would mean certain death? Is any adrenaline rush, photo or video worth that?

Sometimes we flirt with death and never know it.

Several years ago I was working for a mission organization that trained youth to use the arts to share the Gospel overseas on extended mission trips. One year I had the pleasure of escorting one of these teams to the Philippines and I stayed for several days to ensure they were acclimated and off to a good start in their ministry. During my time there, we traveled to an area of the Philippines that was known for its great scuba diving. I always look for good diving opportunities when I am traveling overseas.

On a day off, I arranged for a local guide to take me diving. With so many tropical islands to explore, I knew that the Philippines had some of the world’s best scuba diving. Spectacular reefs with whale sharks, manta rays and every other form of tropical fish you can imagine make it a paradise for divers and snorkelers.

In fact, I would have to say that this particular day of diving was probably the best day I’ve ever spent underwater. The colors, variety and quantity of marine life were unlike anything I had experienced before. On one of my two dives that day, I had the pleasure of being engulfed in a large school of jack fish that simply ignored my presence. For several minutes I was surrounded by thousands of these white, foot-long fish as they swam around me. Every direction I looked, all I could see was jack fish. After a while they simply moved on, I presume, to look for more food since that is what I think fish do most of their day. What a life!

At one point during one of the dives, I found myself in an area where there were large rocky patches of ground interspersed with sandy areas. In my search for something interesting to see, I had positioned my body into a neutrally buoyant horizontal position (like Tom Cruise in the first Mission Impossible movie) and lowered myself to a few inches above the bottom.

A few seconds later, my attention was caught by the distinct sound of metal rapidly tapping on something hard. Looking around to see where the sound was coming from, I saw my instructor frantically tapping a metal pointer stick on a rock to get my attention. Once he had it, he pointed out that just a few centimeters from my stomach was a fish that I had not noticed. It was camouflaged very well and at a glance just looked like part of the rocky bottom. He motioned for me to slowly pull

away from it. I promptly obeyed. I could tell that he breathed a huge sigh of relief once I was a safe distance from the fish. Not knowing the danger that I had inadvertently put myself in, I carried on with the dive as though nothing had happened.

When we eventually surfaced, my instructor took no time in informing me that I had nearly set myself on top of a stone fish – the most venomous fish in the sea. He told me that had I been stung by one of its poisonous spines, I would not have made it to the surface alive.

To satisfy my curiosity, sometime later I did some research on the stone fish, and he was correct in saying that it is the most venomous fish in the sea. Reports vary on exactly how life-threatening their venom is, but it is agreed upon by all the experts that, if stung, a person would need immediate medical attention. We were a long way from “immediate medical attention”. Thanks to the attentiveness and keen eyes of my dive guide, I lived to dive another day.

It’s near-death experiences like this that remind me of the fragility and unpredictability of life.

Any one of us can die at any minute.

I remember one summer day in 1999 being reminded again of how unexpected death can be. I even kept the front page of a local newspaper displaying the image of John F. Kennedy Jr..  He had been flying his own plane to the wedding of his cousin with his wife Carolyn and sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette, when it crashed into the ocean. At age 38, John was a handsome lawyer, journalist and magazine

publisher. He and his family were considered American “royalty” and he was destined, no doubt, for a career in politics, just like his famous presidential father, John F. Kennedy. For some reason, this particular death impacted me.

On April 6, 2018, the driver of a semi-trailer failed to yield at a flashing stop sign at the intersection of two highways in a remote area of the Canadian prairies. The semi was travelling at a speed of approximately 100 km/h (60 mph). Consequently, sixteen people were killed and thirteen were severely injured when the semi-trailer truck struck a northbound coach bus.

Most of the dead and injured were young hockey players from the Humboldt Broncos, a junior ice hockey team that played in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League (SJHL). These young men, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one, were in the prime of their lives. They were enjoying a sport they loved to play, when they were tragically and unexpectedly taken from us. None of these players woke up that morning expecting their lives to be cut short.

Anytime I see a person, often a celebrity or athlete, at the height of their career and family life, die “prematurely” it serves to remind me that life is fragile and its end cannot be predicted. If that is the case, then what can we learn from this?

What do we do with the time we’re alive, not knowing when it will end?

That’s what this book is all about. But for now, let’s summarize this lesson by understanding that:

- Life is short

- Life is precious

- Death is unpredictable

- Death is inevitable

I think most of us would agree that we’d like to get the most out of our time here on earth.

I’ve always been intrigued by the thoughts and final words of people lying on their deathbeds knowing that the end is very near. As they reflect on their lives in their final moments, their thoughts and words often reflect what is truly meaningful to them. Teen idol, actor and recording star, David Cassidy, passed away on November 21, 2017 of liver disease. He was an alcoholic and literally drank himself to a premature death.

Cassidy said, "You know, I did it to myself, man. I did it to myself to cover up the sadness and the emptiness."

I remember reading an article shortly after his death where his daughter said that his final words were, “So much wasted time.”

How sad! To live your whole life and at the end feel like it has been a big waste of time.

In contrast to this, Jesus said in John 10:10, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”  So what does that mean – “live it to the full?” Does this mean that if I believe in Jesus and choose to follow Him that He will make my life into one big Disneyland vacation? That all my problems will be solved? That my car will

never get a flat tire? That He will bless me with untold riches and perfect health for the rest of my days?

No.

Unfortunately, there are many false teachers out there that will tell you the opposite. Run from them! This is not what the Bible, God’s word, teaches.

Jesus said, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

The ONLY WAY to live a “fully abundant life” is to develop an intimate relationship with Jesus, and then experience all that He has to offer. This is THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON any of us will ever learn!

Developing an intimate relationship with Jesus is more than simply acknowledging that there is a God. “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that – and shudder!” (James 2:19). Too many people think that because they “believe” there is a God, than they’ve covered their bases, they are saved from hell and can go on living their lives as they please. This is not what God teaches in the Bible. We must live our lives in obedience to Him, loving Him and others as ourselves.

There are some that think that because they do “Christian” things like go to church, give to charities and respect those around them, that they are living good Christian lives. Jesus makes it very clear that these people are deceiving themselves and

living with a false sense of security. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’  And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness (Matthew 7: 21-23).

God knows our hearts. We can put on a “Christian show” outwardly so that we look good to those around us, but that means nothing to God. He cares about what’s in our hearts - what our true motivations are - what our real desires are.  He knows if we are serious about having a relationship with Him or not.

“For the Lord searches all hearts, and understands every intent of the thoughts. If you seek Him, He will let you find Him; but if you forsake Him, He will reject you forever” (1 Chronicles 28:9).

The big question, then, is how does someone develop intimacy with Jesus Christ and come to know Him like He wants us to?

Please continue reading with an open heart and mind and may Jesus reveal Himself to you and begin to shape your heart into one patterned after His.

In the meantime, don’t text while driving, take your selfies with both feet on the ground and avoid stone fish at all costs!

Chapter 6 - Meeting Someone Famous

“Life is beautiful not because of the things we see or do.
Life is beautiful because of the people we meet.”
Simon Sinek

Have you ever met someone famous?

Maybe you bumped into a movie star in a coffee shop, or sat beside a celebrity on an airplane. Maybe you walked by someone famous on a beach while on vacation, or shook hands with him or her in the lobby following one of their performances. Why is it we put so much value in meeting someone we consider to be famous?

During the summer months when I was in high school, I worked for a trucking company in Red Deer, Alberta, delivering chemicals and drilling mud to oil rigs. It was unusual to work on a Sunday, but one day I was called into the shop along with a co-worker to arrange for an emergency shipment on a Sunday afternoon. We were just wrapping up our job when a large, brightly coloured 18-wheeler pulled into our yard. The driver got out along with a man who looked strangely familiar.

It was Evel Knievel!

For those of you who don’t know who Evel Knievel is, let me enlighten you. Evel Knievel was one of the world’s greatest stunt performers and was famous for attempting over 75 death-defying ramp-to-ramp motorcycle jumps in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Key word – attempting! In reality, he became more famous for his bone-crushing crashes than for his successful jumps.

On December 31, 1967, he unsuccessfully attempted to jump his motorcycle over the fountains at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. He landed short of his landing ramp and as a result of the crash, Knievel suffered a crushed pelvis and femur, fractures to his hip, wrist, and both ankles, and a concussion that kept him in the hospital for an extended period of time. At the time, the Caesar’s Palace crash was Knievel's longest attempted motorcycle jump at 141 feet (43 m). This jump, although unsuccessful, launched him to stardom.

On September 8, 1974, he attempted to jump the Snake River Canyon in Idaho in his steam-powered, rocket-propelled Skycycle X-2. His parachute deployed early during the launch, however, he did make it across to the edge of the canyon successfully. Upon touchdown, the prevailing winds caught the parachute and dragged the Skycycle X-2 to the bottom of the canyon, narrowly missing the river below by just a few feet. His safety harness had malfunctioned and he admitted afterwards that had he landed in the river, he would have surely drowned.

On May 26, 1975, in front of 90,000 people at Wembley Stadium in London, England, Knievel broke his pelvis when he crashed while trying to land a jump over 13 "London buses".

You get the point. This guy was awesome!

Coming up from the USA, he was on his way to perform a show in Edmonton, Alberta and he desperately needed fuel for his rig. Back in the late 1970’s gas stations were not open on Sundays in Alberta and he and his driver had not known this when they crossed the Canada/USA border a few hours earlier. They figured that if the gas stations were not open, maybe a trucking company in the industrial

section of town would have fuel. They were in luck. We did.

While we were filling his rig with diesel fuel, he gave us a personal guided tour of the inside of his semi-trailer. It was like a museum of memories in tribute to his career. It contained the Skycycle X-2, other motorcycles that he’d used and some of his famous red, white and blue leather jump suits. We were in awe!

Before he left, his driver paid us for the fuel and he gave each of us an autographed photo and a vinyl record album containing his recorded biography.

As his fancy rig slowly pulled out of our yard, I remember standing there, waving and wondering if what I’d just experienced had really happened.

One more quick brush with fame…

I attended a university in southern British Columbia when I was just out of high school. While I was studying aviation there for three years (while working on my commercial pilot license), I played ice hockey for the school team. Each Spring Break we would travel to other Canadian provinces or to the USA to play other university teams.

One year we made a trip to southern California to play some of the major universities. On one of our days off, a friend who lived in the Los Angeles area offered to take a few of us sightseeing. We gladly accepted and I hopped in his car with a few of my teammates.

While driving down Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, we were amazed at the designer boutiques and the opulence that oozed from every storefront. At a stoplight we

pulled up behind a white Rolls Royce that had a customized license plate that read “ZZG”. I wondered if it could possibly belong to the famous actress, Zsa Zsa Gabor. When the light turned green, I asked my friend to quickly pull up beside the car so we could see who was driving.

Sure enough it was her; driving her own car! Without tinted windows! So much for her flying under the radar!

We stayed in the lane beside her for a few seconds, quickly took some photos and then she looked at us and hit the brakes.

We weren’t prepared for this sudden change in speed and this caused us to end up in front of her as she attempted to ditch us. We took the next right turn and pulled over to the curb. She proceeded straight. We then backed up and fell in behind her again. Hey, we were dumb kids looking for some excitement, not really thinking about the trauma we were undoubtedly causing this poor lady.

We followed right behind her as she entered the exclusive neighbourhood of Bel Air. Winding through the huge mansions and exquisitely groomed foliage, we were giddy with excitement as we wondered how this adventure might end. Maybe she would invite us in for afternoon tea!

Eventually, her car pulled up in front of a beautiful mansion with some large wrought iron gates and stopped. The gates slowly opened and she drove into, I presume, her home. Once her car had safely entered the property, a large black sedan with tinted windows pulled out to the entrance and sat there.

This was our exit cue! We took that as a warning and quickly drove away.

It took a while for the smiles to leave our faces and for our hearts to stop pounding. We had some precious photos to remember our adventure by and a fun story to share with our other teammates.

I apologize to Ms. Gabor for our youthful indiscretion.

Meeting someone famous is exciting! There’s no doubt about it. To meet someone who possesses skills and abilities that we admire or who has accomplished something special in their lives is a thrilling experience. Is it a life-changing experience? Probably not. But these experiences do serve to add excitement to our lives while creating some good stories at the same time.

What kind of person could actually change our lives for the better just by meeting them?

The Bible is filled with stories of people whose lives were changed by meeting Jesus. One of my favourites is the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-10.

Zacchaeus was a tax collector. Tax collectors were among the most unpopular people in Israel at the time. To finance their great world empire, the Romans levied taxes against the Jews, and all nations under their control. Tax collectors were Jews that worked for the Roman government and were considered traitors. They would make themselves rich by extorting their fellow Jews. Zacchaeus was no different. He was despised by his fellow countrymen for his dishonesty and extortion.

One day Jesus was passing through the town where Zacchaeus lived. Crowds of people came out to meet Jesus, because by this time, he had become very popular. Zacchaeus tried to squeeze through the crowds to get a look at Jesus, but because of his small stature and unpopularity, no one would let him. He decided to run ahead and climb a tree so that he could see over the crowd when Jesus walked by. When Jesus reached his location he looked up into the tree and said to Zacchaeus, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.”

Whoa! The people couldn’t believe what they had just seen and heard! They were blown away by the fact that Jesus would acknowledge someone like Zacchaeus, let alone ask to go to his home!

After he met Jesus, probably over a meal in his home, Zacchaeus realized that his life needed straightening out. He said to Jesus, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

For a guy whose priority in life was getting rich, this was quite the change! Suddenly, after meeting Jesus, this priority paled in comparison to following Jesus and doing what was right.

Jesus replied, “Today salvation has come to this house!”

This is a great example of the life-changing transformation that can occur in people’s lives when they meet Jesus. Getting to know Jesus intimately is the key to salvation and eternal life!  He is the most important person to have ever walked on earth and He wants to have a relationship with you!

Chapter 7
It Takes a Leap of Faith to Get Anywhere in Life

“Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.”
Helen Keller

I’ve always been somewhat of an adrenaline junkie. I can remember doing things as a child that seemed like good ideas at the time, but often turned into regretful experiences. My parents would tell stories of me doing stupid things as a child like getting my head stuck between the metal bars on the stairway of the Legislature Building, and riding my tricycle almost eight kilometers (five miles) outside of town to see some family friends when I was four years old.

One of my all-time bucket-list goals was to try skydiving. I would often imagine what it would be like to fall freely through the air and float gently down to earth like a dying leaf from a tree in Autumn. Okay, maybe not the best analogy. This had to be one of the ultimate adrenaline rushes anyone could experience, I thought. The sense of freedom and rush of adrenaline would be euphoric, undoubtedly! I’d seen countless video clips of skydivers masterfully controlling their bodies and conducting amazing feats of athleticism and acrobatics in the sky, piloting their bodies with pinpoint accuracy to their landing zones and then gracefully touching down with huge smiles on their faces. I was destined for this!

In my early thirties, Joanne finally gave in to my petitions and, for my birthday one year she gave me a gift certificate for a skydiving experience. I soon discovered how easy it is to talk about how much fun it would be to conquer something daring

and death-defying before the opportunity actually presented itself! My dream, or perhaps my nightmare, was becoming a reality.

Since my birthday was in February, I had to wait until Spring to redeem my gift certificate. Mid-winter is not the best time to skydive in Canada where the temperatures can plummet to face-numbing digits and are even colder at higher altitudes. After waiting a few months for the temperature to warm up, the day finally arrived and I reserved a spot for my first jump.

There are two ways to skydive for first-timers like myself. Successfully and unsuccessfully would be one answer, but not the one I’m referring to at this time. The first way, one that I learned about after the fact, was that you could go “tandem”. This is where the novice attaches himself to the front of an experienced skydiving instructor and they jump from the airplane joined together as though they are one. Soaring through the air, as the instructor whispers reassuring words of affirmation into the ears of the novice, while they float nonchalantly to earth would be the ultimate, stress-free first-dive experience.

The other way to skydive for the first time is to jump from the plane by yourself as you look up to see your instructor fly away in the airplane you just exited. This method involves the instructor pulling the novice’s “pilot chute” from the knapsack that contains the parachute and then throwing it into the air so that it, hopefully, catches the air and then pulls out the main canopy. If all goes well and the canopy opens like it should, the novice is then given instructions, through a one-way radio, by another instructor on the ground who directs him to the landing zone. The novice is taught in ground school, which toggles on the parachute to pull in order to steer himself to the drop zone successfully.

This is the method that I chose for my first skydive.

It was a cool Monday morning when I arrived at the skydive center located about an hour outside of Calgary. I entered a building that contained the ground school and was surprised to see the room full of about 20 young British soldiers. I was not aware that this particular skydiving school was responsible for training all of the British military in how to skydive. I was impressed.

The teacher stepped up to the front of the classroom and informed us that we would first be required to watch a video - from their lawyer. In the video, the lawyer explained to all of us that it was our choice to be there and that no one was forcing us to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. He further explained that we would soon be handed some legal documents to sign that released the skydiving school of any liability should something go wrong during our dive. I get nervous signing any legal document, but this one was a doozy! Nevertheless, I signed the document, because I saw everyone else doing so, and figured it would be pointless to resist.

I had given myself a pep talk during the drive out to the skydive center and convinced myself that the only way I would return home would be as a successful skydiver! If signing this legal document meant I had cleared the first obstacle, then full speed ahead!

Following the signing of the legal documents, we sat through a morning of instruction. This mostly consisted of learning routines and procedures for what to do if something went wrong. Near the end of the morning, we were escorted out to

the fuselage of a small aircraft. I wondered if this was from one of their previous trips that had not gone as planned!

We practiced getting in and out of the aircraft. Nothing to it. We were a whole 12 inches off the ground so it was not the least bit scary. Meanwhile, other young British soldiers were coming in from their morning jumps. The landing zone was not far from where we were and it was entertaining to watch some of their landings as we waited for our turn in the practice fuselage. The winds were picking up quite a bit and this appeared to cause some of them difficulty. In fact, before we were finished with our simulated airplane exits, during his descent, one of the more advanced students floated into the side of one of the buildings while he was aiming for the “drop zone”. Oops! I figured this was just another day in the life of a soldier and paid it little attention.

Much to my dismay, once we had completed our practice “fuselage exits” we were told by our instructor that it was too windy for us to proceed with our first jump that day. Disappointed but somewhat relieved, I drove home and had to wait until Wednesday to return and complete my jump. Unfortunately, due to a prior commitment, I was unable to return on Tuesday when my classmates were scheduled to complete their first jump.

Wednesday morning rolled around and I made the return drive to the skydive center, once again pep talking myself all the way. Upon my arrival, I was greeted by a young, friendly soldier, who recognized me from our ground school class two days prior. As we walked to the hangar to get into our skydiving suits and pick up our parachutes, he said to me, “So did you hear about the guy yesterday?”

“What do you mean?” I replied.

“One of our guys plummeted!” he said.

“What do you mean he “plummeted”?” I asked incredulously.

Surely this conversation wasn’t going where I thought it might!

“One of our guys panicked when he got out onto the wing,” he continued. “He wouldn’t let go of the strut and when he finally did, he only released his right hand. This caused him to spin around and when he finally let go of the airplane, the pilot chute got wrapped around his arm.”

“What happened next?”

“We watched as he plummeted,” he replied as if he were ordering a decaf latte at the local coffee shop.

“What happened next?” my voice got higher as my curiosity peaked.

“We watched him fall and just before he hit the ground, he finally pulled his reserve chute. But it didn’t open all the way. Not enough time.”

“Soooo…is he dead?” I had to ask.

“No, he’s in the hospital with almost every bone in his body broken. He landed about two kilometers from the drop zone. Crushed his legs and his spine. But he’s still alive.” He continued as we walked to the hangar, “You’re gonna crap your pants!”

No kidding! His language was a little more colourful than I have described here.

All the way out to the hangar, which seemed like a million miles away, he kept repeating, “You’re gonna crap your pants!” I must have heard it a dozen times enroute. I guess that was his way of reassuring me, or maybe he was trying to justify the state of his own shorts at the time.

Upon arrival at the hangar, everyone got busy locating a parachute that had already been packed for us and began suiting up. I felt at a distinct disadvantage because the day prior, my fellow ground school compatriots had gone through the drill and had accomplished their first two dives. This was all routine to them by now. I tried my best to look like I knew what I was doing and imitated what everyone else was doing. Arms go here, this strap connects here, etc, etc.

After suiting up, we lined up in preparation to board the airplane with me at the front of the line. This was not good!  I had no one to mimic if I was at the front of the line. I soon figured out that this was because they wanted me to be the last to jump, so I had to get into the airplane first.

When someone is new to skydiving, the “greenest” divers are arranged in the airplane so that they are the last to jump. This is so that in the event they chicken out and refuse to leave the airplane, the other divers would not have to awkwardly crawl over them in order to exit the airplane.

Apparently this is a frequent occurrence.

Lucky for me, my buddy was right behind me. Close enough to continue his motivational pep talk in my ear! “You’re gonna crap your pants!” Somehow I found comfort in this! Knowing that I was probably not the most fearful diver on board gave me a strange sense of courage.

Since the other divers already had two successful dives under their belts, they were now at the next stage of becoming a certified free-fall skydiver. The next stage involved completing three successful “paper pulls”.

They each entered the airplane with a page of newsprint rolled tightly into a tube. This tube of newsprint was stuffed into a strap that was attached to one of their thighs. After exiting the airplane, their mission was to reach down and grab the tube of newsprint and then simply throw it into the air. This would indicate to the instructor that they had the clarity of mind to eventually pull their own ripcord and release their own parachute.

We lined up on our knees in a horseshoe pattern inside the airplane. An appropriate position I thought! This positioned me right by the door, just behind the instructor and the next jumper. The instructor warned me that when we reached the appropriate altitude there would be a lot of noise and wind once the door to the airplane was opened. Due to my previous experience flying small airplanes, this was no surprise to me and I accepted the warning with relative calmness.

What was a surprise to me, was that as soon as the aircraft door was opened, every single rolled up paper tube was sucked from each diver’s thigh and flew out the open door! I think I chuckled.

The airplane eventually slowed down and levelled off and I watched as the instructor had the first diver bend over so that he could remove the pilot chute from his backpack. This is what catches the air and then pulls out the main canopy. Next, the diver reached up through the open door and took hold of the strut of the wing (the diagonal piece that supports the wing and connects to the fuselage of the airplane) just like we practiced in our training in ground school. He then inched his feet out onto a thin metal bar extending from the aircraft about 24 inches.

Once in place outside of the airplane, the diver looked at the instructor, got the go ahead to release his grip from the strut of the airplane, then fell away while forming an “X” with his body. Roughly five seconds after beginning his fall, the pilot chute pulled out the main canopy and the diver then reached up and grabbed the toggles on each side of the canopy that helped to steer him towards the drop zone.

One by one I watched as each diver in front of me exited the plane successfully. My anticipation and anxiety grew just a bit more as I knew that my turn was getting closer each time I saw someone leave the airplane. With only one jumper left in front of me, I watched more intently as my buddy was about to jump. He grabbed the strut and worked his feet carefully out onto the metal bar. He looked at the instructor and was given the go ahead to release.

Then he froze.

The instructor continued to yell at him over the wind and engine noise to release, but he just stood there with a look of terror on his face, gripping the wing strut with all his might and did nothing.

This got awkward really quick!

I remember thinking to myself that this guy already had at least two dives under his belt so why was he freaking out now?

We waited. For what seemed like an eternity.

I’m sure it was no more than 30 seconds in real time, but it seemed like much longer. Finally, with the instructor yelling at him I watched as he closed his eyes tightly and released his death grip on the strut. Approximately five seconds later his main canopy opened and he began his graceful descent to the ground.

The instructor turned to me and motioned me to move forward and bend over so he could remove the pilot chute from my pack. My mind was going a million miles an hour. I looked up and positioned my hands on the strut, then looked down and carefully placed my right foot onto the bar. This all went as planned. I kept telling myself that I had been in countless small airplanes and this was no big deal. I could do this!

The gravity of the situation (pun totally intended!) never really hit me until I looked down and saw my feet standing on this tiny metal bar - then saw nothing between my feet and the ground 3500 feet below. I will never forget that picture! The rush of wind and engine noise was deafening. I was hanging onto the outside of an airplane in mid flight. I kept reminding myself of the promise I made to myself that I would only return to the ground by parachute. I could do this!

I looked at the instructor just like I was taught to do. He seemed so safe and comfortable inside the airplane! He looked me in the eye and gave me the go ahead to release. I took a deep breath and let go.

I put my body into the “X” position as quickly as possible. This was no time to experiment with other letters of the alphabet!

One one thousand. Two one thousand. Three one thousand. Four one thousand. Five one thousand.

This is the time that my main canopy should be opening according to what I learned in ground school. The rush of wind was all I could hear, but then I remember hearing something that I hadn’t heard before. Looking up, I could see the glorious unfolding of my main canopy as it was pulled from my pack and positioned itself above my head right where it was supposed to be. I think I may have heard violins playing and angels singing at that moment!

Now that the pressure was off, I could relax and enjoy the ride the rest of the way. I was going to live after all! I reached up and grabbed the toggles and tried some turns. This was pretty cool! I could see other divers below me at various stages of their descent, as they got closer to the drop zone. I could now also hear a voice coming from the radio attached to my chest.

The voice was giving instructions to each diver by number. “Diver number five turn 90 degrees right and hold course. Diver number six you’re doing fine. Diver number seven turn 45 degrees left. Diver number eight turn 180 degrees. Diver number five

turn 45 degrees left. Diver number six 45 degrees right and hold. Diver number eight turn 90 degrees right. Diver number five hold course…aaannndddd….flare. Congratulations!”

This narrative continued through my entire descent.

About half way down, I realized I had been following the instructions being given to one of the other divers. It finally dawned on me that I was jumper number eight.

From then on I quickly obeyed the instructions for “Jumper number eight” and was successfully brought closer and closer to the drop zone.

“Jumper number eight correct course 45 degrees left and hold.
Aaannnnnddddd….flare, flare, flare!”

With that, I turned the little I needed to in order to line myself up with my future landing site and thrust both hands down in order to flare the parachute so that I could touch down at a slower speed. There was quite a bit of wind that day so my landing was not quite as picture-perfect as I would have liked. My feet touched the ground with a thud and the wind carried my canopy to the left, which caused me to fall over to the side. But, I was on the ground safely! I quickly got up and began to gather my canopy and clear the drop zone, not that it mattered since I was the last jumper to land.

I made it! I was alive! No smell of soiled shorts to contend with! The euphoria and feeling of accomplishment was incredible. Another check off the old bucket list.

It’s been many years now since that first skydiving experience.

I’ve often used this experience to talk to others about conquering fear, setting goals, and taking risks. But what I really take as my greatest lesson from this experience is that without faith we accomplish very little in life. In order to skydive successfully, I was required to put faith in my instructors, in the guy who packed my parachute, in the pilot who flew the airplane and most importantly in the parachute itself.

We all exercise faith in order to live our lives. We have faith that the water we drink and the food we eat will not make us sick. We have faith that the drivers coming towards us will stay in their lanes and not cross over into ours. We have faith that the roof over our heads will stay strong and upright throughout the night as we sleep below it. We have faith that the sun won’t blow up today.

Faith is a choice we make - sometimes consciously and sometimes without realizing it. Without faith, we would be paralyzed by fear. Maybe this is why God talks so much about fear and faith in the Bible. He tells us that we are not to live our lives in fear, and that in order to please Him, we need to exercise our faith - in Him.

“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6).

All of us have faith in something or someone. Whether we are a devout follower of Jesus Christ or someone who claims to be an atheist, we all exercise faith. The concept of faith is understood to involve believing in something without a certain kind or amount of evidence – the kind or amount that would give us certain proof.

The atheist exercises an immense amount of faith in choosing to believe that everything we see and experience came about by accident. That everything was created from nothing. That “design” happened from chaos – totally contradicting the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  Trusting in science, yet denying it at the same time!

Faith is a fundamental aspect of the human condition. All relationships require faith. Because we are incapable of fully knowing other people and God, to some degree, faith (trust) is an integral ingredient in all of our relationships.

Got Questions Ministries describes it well when they say, “If we cannot know our fellow, finite beings fully, how can we expect to fully know an infinite God? Even if He should desire to fully reveal Himself, it is impossible for us to fully know Him. It is like trying to pour the ocean, seemingly infinite in quantity, into a finite, quart -measuring jar - impossible!"

"Nonetheless, even as we can have meaningful relationships with others that we have grown to trust because of our knowledge of them and their character, so God has revealed enough about Himself through His creation (Romans 1:18-21), through His written Word, the Bible (2 Timothy 3:16-17, 2 Peter 1:16-21), and through His Son (John 14:9), that we can enter into a meaningful relationship with Him. But this is only possible when the barrier of one’s sin has been removed by trusting in Christ’s person and work on the cross as payment for one’s sin."

"This is necessary because, as it is impossible for both light and darkness to dwell together, so it is impossible for a holy God to have fellowship with sinful man unless

his sin has been paid for and removed. Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God, died on the cross to take our punishment and change us so that the one who believes in Him can become a child of God and live eternally in His presence (John 1:12. 2 Corinthians 5:21, 2 Peter 3:18, Romans 3:10-26).”

So, as you can clearly see, this decision to take a step of faith and have a relationship with our Creator and His son, Jesus Christ, is foundational to learning The Most Important Lesson.

Without faith, it is equivalent to jumping out of an airplane and flapping our arms to try and save ourselves. God has given us a parachute to save us. His name is Jesus. He was sent, by God, to save us from spending eternity in hell.

Trust the parachute!

More on this later on in the book.

Chapter 8 -Treasure Hunting

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” Jim Elliot (martyred missionary to the Auca Indians in Ecuador)

I’ve always been fascinated by stories of finding treasure. Whether it is buried, sunken or purchased in a garage sale, the thought of finding something extremely valuable, even life-changing, never fails to capture my interest!

I’d always wondered what it would feel like to find a “treasure”. Then one day I did!

I taught school for 15 years, and for most of my teaching career I taught sixth graders. I loved teaching this age because the kids were always eager to engage in topics that interested them. I discovered that I had the most success as a teacher when I could immerse my students in an experience and make a topic as relevant to them as possible. If I could make school not feel like “school”, then learning became fun for everyone - including me!

One year I developed a unit on treasure. As a class, we read books on treasure and used these treasure locations to study geography, science and English. We wrote about treasure and learned about pirates. It was a blast!

Each week I would record a television show that the A&E channel was airing at the time called, “The Hunt for Amazing Treasures”.  Each hour-long episode contained four fifteen-minute segments on people who had discovered treasure somewhere around the world.

One particular episode contained a segment about some fishermen from Mississippi who discovered a sunken treasure accidentally. One day they were reeling the huge commercial fishing net onto their boat when they realized that it was ripped and that clumps of debris were caught in it and falling to the deck of their ship. Upon closer examination, these clumps of debris turned out to be clumps of silver coins. Following further research, they laid claim to the wreck site and discovered that the ship these coins came from was the El Cazador (The Hunter) – a Spanish galleon that was enroute from Veracuz, Mexico to New Orleans in 1783.

The El Cazador had a cargo hold full of silver coins that was intended to pay salaries for soldiers and assist in fuelling the Spanish war efforts against the French, under Napoleon’s command. Some historians believe that had the El Cazador made it to New Orleans with its precious cargo, Spain might not have given the territory back to France in 1801. And, in turn, the United States would not have been able to acquire it for 15 million dollars in 1803 (60 million francs) from the French in the Louisiana Purchase. This incident has since been called, “The Shipwreck That Changed the History of the World”.

The television camera panned a large vault filled with silver coins that the fishermen had retrieved from the wreck site - thousands of them! I thought that perhaps if they had that many coins in their possession, they might be selling some of them. Upon searching the internet for information on the El Cazador, I discovered that in fact they were selling some of the coins. Prices for the coins varied depending on their size and condition.

I sent a quick email to the owners and explained who I was. I asked if they would be interested in a partnership of sorts, where my students would collect “treasure” from their neighborhood in the form of recyclable cans and bottles, and then redeem them for paper replicas of the coins from the El Cazador. We would then use the money from the recycled cans and bottles to purchase coins from the El Cazador. The students would write their names on the paper coins and these paper replicas would then go into a treasure chest in our classroom. At the end of the contest a few weeks later, coins would be drawn from the chest and students would win real sunken treasure from the El Cazador.

A few days later I received a reply.

The family-owned fishing company who now owned the rights to the El Cazador treasure said that they had met as a family to discuss my proposal. They said they liked my idea so much that they were willing to sell me Spanish reales (pieces of eight) for an incredibly low price!

I was overjoyed at their response and proceeded to run this contest with my students for several years, until I finally retired from teaching.

One weekend I went to some garage sales with my two kids, Brett and Rochelle. They loved garage sales because they never walked away empty-handed!

Just around the corner from our home an entire street had organized a garage sale. I was immediately drawn to one house in particular. I noticed a large table full of sports cards. Really full! I had collected sports cards off and on since I was a kid. I always thought that my collection would eventually become my “retirement plan”

when I got old. Hopefully by then the cards will have appreciated so much in value that I could sell them and live comfortably on the proceeds for the rest of my life. Hey, dreams are free!

I began looking with interest at the cards on the table and asked the young man, who was still in the process of arranging them, how many cards he had. He replied that he had almost 13,000 cards! All of them were in mint condition and were NHL hockey cards from the early 1990’s.

I asked him how much he wanted for them and was surprised by his answer.

“Make me an offer,” he said.

I had no idea what such a sizeable collection was worth, so I threw out a number, fully expecting to be laughed at. I offered him a price that I didn’t think he’d accept, but to my delight and surprise, he did!

I noticed the boy’s parents standing a few feet behind him watching our negotiations with interest.

He increased the price slightly and then added that he would throw in five oak boxes that his dad had made to store the cards.

“Deal!” I blurted out as I reached out to shake his hand.

I had to go home to get some money but told him I’d return in a few minutes. He said that he would start packing up the cards for me in the meantime. I fully expected to return and have the entire deal collapse. To my delight, upon my

return, most of the cards had been packed into boxes and the table was emptying quickly. As I helped him box up the remaining cards, I asked why he was selling such a large card collection. He replied that he was soon heading off to university and that he simply no longer had any interest in them. They were taking up valuable space and he wanted the money instead.

After loading the last boxes into my car, I immediately drove to a nearby convenience store and purchased a magazine that listed current values of specific sports cards so that I could get an idea of the value of the collection. When I arrived home, I pulled out hundreds of rookie cards from some of the best players in the National Hockey League. These rookie cards alone were worth several hundred dollars. Including the remainder of the cards, I estimated the value, at that time, to be in the thousands. I was ecstatic to say the least!

As I reflect on that whole experience, two things stand out in my mind. I remember the feeling I had as I drove away from his house with a trunkful of mint-condition hockey cards. I felt that I had just found an amazing treasure! The feeling of euphoria and the adrenaline rush was unbelievable!

Secondly, I remember how fleeting the feeling of it all was. I remember how quickly life got back to normal. Those cards are still sitting in boxes, collecting dust - hopefully rising in value the older they get - probably not.

Maybe someday I’ll cash them in for actual money or sell them to someone who wants them worse than I do - just the way I purchased them!  Maybe not.

I’ve had this feeling before. Usually it’s after I purchased something I’ve had my eye on for quite some time. All the dreaming and planning that goes into making a big purchase often ends in “buyer’s regret” or a quickly-fading reality that this “thing” never quite met my expectations. Never quite made me feel as good as I thought it was going to feel. Disappointment. Hollow dreams. Wasted money.

Is it any wonder why Jesus talked about treasure the way He did?

Jesus knows what a “god” money and possessions can be to us. He knows how difficult it is for us to serve God and place Him first in our lives when our money and our possessions can so easily take first place on our priority scale. In fact, 15% of all that Jesus talked about in the Bible was related to money and possessions!

Basically, the gist of what Jesus said regarding this topic could be summarized in just a few verses. He tells a story about a traveller who stumbles upon an amazing treasure while on a journey. “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all that he had and bought that field” (Matthew 13:44).

This traveler knew how important this newfound treasure was. He knew that it was worthy of him risking everything he owned in order to possess it. Nothing was more important to him than pursuing the Kingdom of Heaven – his relationship with his Creator!

In another example, a rich man once asked Jesus how to inherit eternal life. Jesus responded to him by saying, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then, come follow me”(Matthew 19:21). Jesus knew

how important money and possessions were to the man. He knew that the man would not be able to serve God unless he dethroned his money idol. Giving his money to the poor was not the point. It was not how he was going to earn his salvation. Sadly, the man walked away dejected because he was unwilling to place God above his money and possessions. He had priority issues!

Lastly, Jesus reminds us where our treasure should be stored. “Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19-21).

So what is this treasure that we need to store in heaven? If the pursuit of money and earthly possessions are not important in the big scheme of things, then what is important?

When Jesus talks about the kind of treasure we should be storing in heaven, He refers to things that will last for eternity. He knows that everything on earth is only temporary, and will ultimately fade into dust. After all, we can’t take our possessions with us when we die. The only thing that will last for eternity is our relationship with Him! The closer our relationship is with Him, the more our treasure grows in heaven. God wants us to serve Him and to serve others.

It’s that simple!

Jesus made this clear when he was asked what the greatest commandment is. He replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with

all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment” (Matthew 22:37-38).

I had to honestly ask myself where Jesus sat on my priority list. Were there “treasures” in my life (money, possessions, family, friends, entertainment, work, etc.) that took priority over my relationship with Him? If so, what did I need to do to rearrange my list so that my priorities were in the correct order?

I discovered that this process begins in the heart. After realizing what is really important in the Big Picture, it was time for me to start putting my priorities in order. Without taking action towards developing my relationship with Jesus, nothing would change. I needed to make conscious choices to implement a plan of action and to focus on growing my treasures in heaven for eternity and moving towards building a close relationship with Him.

This has now become my number one priority!

Is it yours? Where does your relationship with our Creator rank on your list of priorities? Where on your list are money and possessions?  What is your top priority?

Chapter 9 - It’s All About Priorities

“To change your life, you need to change your priorities.”
Mark Twain

So, I’ve got a new goal in life. I've got a new list of priorities.  I’ve been given a second chance and I don’t want to waste it. That would be more foolish than missing the goal the first time! It always amazes me when I see people do things, or avoid doing things, that they know could benefit them tremendously. Why do some people continue with self-destructive behaviors when they know better? By making a change, often a very minor change to the way they do things, they could live so much better.  But they make the choice not to for some reason.

Considering the resources that we have available to us, through the internet or libraries as examples, we have no excuse to go through life uneducated and blaming ignorance for our problems.

Knowing this, my first course of action towards getting to know Jesus better, was to talk to friends of mine, many of them church pastors, and get their recom-mendations for which books I should be reading to start me on my journey. The list became very long, very quickly.

You should know, right off the bat, that I am not an avid reader. If I can watch something on YouTube that tells me the same thing, I’ll choose YouTube over a book every time!  So, the concept of reading a huge list of books was not an attractive option to me.

I recently read that the average book contains 64,000 words. The average person reads about 200-250 words per minute, therefore, it should take about 320 minutes to read a book cover-to-cover. If you break that down and divide it by 7 (days in a week), that’s approximately 45 minutes per day to read a book in a week.

That little bit of mathematical motivation helped me create a new target. If I read at least 20 - 30 minutes per day, I would complete a book every two weeks. This would mean that in a year, I could get through 26 books that were all geared to helping me learn how to get closer to Jesus. That may seem like a lot to some of you, and not nearly enough to many of you, but for me that’s approximately 26 more books per year more than I was reading before on this topic!

I’ve also discovered YouTube in a new way. I have discovered that there are TONS of valuable resources available on any topic you can imagine, including how to get close to Jesus. The problem with YouTube, and the internet in general, is that you need to be careful about filtering the good from the bad. And there is a lot of really bad stuff out there! After searching for, and then vetting, some reliable Christian sources online, I have found this to be a constant source of encouragement and education for me in this area. To better protect myself, and assist with the vetting process, I often compare what these sources are teaching to the Bible, to ensure that their teaching measures up to the truth of God’s Word.

My biggest revelation, however, may come as a no-brainer. One day I asked myself the question, “How do you get to know someone better?” The first thing that popped into my head was to simply to learn more about them. So how do you learn about Jesus? Well, why not start by going straight to the source – the New Testament. After all, this text contains the story of Jesus. It contains the lessons He

taught and the testimonials of those who interacted personally with Him. It contains the words He actually spoke!

Everything else outside the Bible is simply commentary on, and supplemental to what has already been said in scripture.

The Bible is full of references to cultural nuances that make a big difference when trying to understand lessons that Jesus taught. Jesus was a master at making his lessons relevant to the people with whom He communicated. Many of these people were not highly educated and needed to hear lessons in simple, relatable forms so that they could understand them.  Jesus knew this. For us, living in the 21st century, small history lessons can assist us in learning these same lessons.

Something I have always struggled with is finding time to “do devotions”. I hate that phrase!  It takes a meaningful time spent with Jesus and turns it into a task that I simply check off on my "To Do" list each day.  Is this how I treat my other relationships?

Too often I have reduced my quiet time with God to a five-minute ritual in order to ease my conscience. After all, it is what all good Christians should do, right?  How would your kids or your spouse feel if you squeezed in a five-minute conversation with them each day because you felt you had to?  How well would your relationships develop with them? Would you even have a relationship with any of them?

So why do we do this to God - our Creator, Protector, and Savior?

If getting to know Jesus is The Most Important Lesson I will ever learn, then why is this not my first priority in life?

Another HUGE revelation to me following my death experience, was why I did not make time on a daily basis for something so important?  Why would this priority not be right up there with breathing and eating?  Why did I let so many trivial things in life get in the way of my pursuit of Jesus?

It was time to shake things up and get some priorities in order.  It was time to take an accounting of my life and reorder priorities so that I put the most important ones right at the top in the “non-negotiable” category.  If this is what I truly believed to be the most important thing in life, then it should get moved right to the top!

Now, each day I start by spending time with Jesus, following the making of a cup of freshly brewed coffee!  Coffee time with Jesus each morning - reading His Word, learning about Him and talking to Him through prayer has now become my normal daily routine and something I truly look forward to with anticipation!

In reading the Bible one of the things I have learned from the apostle Paul is to read by asking the Holy Spirit to 1) open my eyes that I might see the truth of His Word, 2) open my ears that I might hear His voice speaking to me through His Word, 3) open my mind that I might understand what I am reading and 4) open my heart that I might be open to His transforming power in my life through His Word.

Not to sound too cliché, but my days usually go better when I start them with Jesus!

Another big change I’ve made, is to talk to Jesus as much as possible throughout the day.  Prayer, talking to Jesus, is not just something we should do for a few minutes before we drift off to sleep at night.  It’s not simply repeating a memorized ditty before we eat each meal.  It’s an actual conversation with God, our Creator!

Again, liken it to a human relationship with someone you love. You talk to them throughout the day. You talk to them about important stuff in your life. You talk to them about problems you may be having, and celebrate with them when things go great.  Some conversations are longer than others. Sometimes you talk. Sometimes you listen.  It should be no different with Jesus.

The apostle Paul reminds us in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 that we are to “pray continuously.”  Not just before meals, or just before bed, or when we are in trouble. Continuously!

I’ve found this to be a huge step in the right direction with Jesus.  I often find myself praying without even realizing it.  As someone comes to mind, I’ll often just talk to Jesus about him or her.  As I wake up in the middle of the night, I’ll go to prayer and talk about whatever has been keeping me awake, or whatever pops into my mind. Sometimes I’ll simply say, “What do you want to say to me Lord?”  Prayer has an amazing way of calming and soothing the racing mind.

Prayer is powerful!  James 5:16-18 declares, "…the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective".  The Bible is full of accounts describing the power of prayer in various situations. The power of prayer has overcome enemies (Psalm 6:9-10), conquered death (2 Kings 4:3-36), brought healing (James 5:14-15), and defeated

demons (Mark 9:29). God, through prayer, opens eyes, changes hearts, heals wounds, and grants wisdom (James 1:5). The power of prayer should never be underestimated because it draws on the glory and might of the infinitely powerful God of the universe!

There are many books on the topic of prayer written by far wiser people than myself.  I’d encourage you to read some of them to help you fully understand the benefits of a vibrant prayer life. It will help you in becoming closer to Jesus.

One of the biggest revelations that I have experienced since beginning this new relationship with Jesus, is that the Bible has become alive to me.  I understand things now that I never understood before.  Passages I have read many times in the past now take on a whole new meaning to me.  I comprehend and retain what I read better than I ever have.  I truly thirst for my time in the Word and enjoy it. The Bible is not just a book.  It is a living text that comes straight from God. It is like food to a starving person.

Bon appetit!

Chapter 10 - Forgiving and Forgetting is Foundational

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”
Lewis B. Smedes

I love taking personality tests!

Mainly, I think because my curiosity wants to see how accurate they are.  It often becomes more of a competition to me than an exercise in self-realization.  Can answering a few questions accurately define my personality and describe who I really am?  We’ll see!

I did one not long ago that analyzed my personality based on what colors I liked and what colors I disliked. I was surprised at how accurate it was. Who knew that you could learn things about people by the colors they like!  Sometimes I get the feeling that some tests simply appear to be successful by giving ambiguous results, similar to how a fake psychic reads people’s palms. Yes, someone close to me is ill, and yes, I am planning on taking a trip in the not-too-distant future.

Most of the tests that I have taken, however, I will admit, are pretty accurate at describing me and how I think. A few years ago I took a personality test by Gallup called StrengthsFinder. The test was designed to help me become “more engaged at work, more productive in my roles, happier and healthier”. It’s a great test to help you get to know yourself better by identifying your top strengths. Knowing how you think and react in certain situations can help you to better handle yourself in the future. There is much more to this program that I do not have the knowledge or expertise to even comment on, but I would recommend it if this sort of thing

interests you.

What I did learn through taking the StrengthsFinder test is that my number one “strength” is Competition. This was no surprise to me - or anyone that knows me well, for that matter! I tell you this to help you better understand the lens through which I view life in general.

Competition, and the desire to win, has always been part of my DNA ever since I can remember. This particular strength is good to have if you are into sports, flying fighter jets or wrestling alligators for a living. One of the problems with possessing a “strength” like this, is that everything in life becomes a competition where you view yourself as either winning or losing. People, even loved ones, are often viewed as competitors even though there is no “competition” to compete over. Unfortunately, I have found myself, over the years, unintentionally hurting people or damaging relationships, because of my desire to always come out on top.

This has eventually led me to issues with forgiveness. When we think of “forgiveness” we most commonly think of it as an action involving someone else. Maybe someone harmed or offended you in some way and they have now put you in a position of choosing whether or not to forgive them. This is not an easy task. As humans, our first reaction is often bent towards revenge and retribution rather than forgiveness.

The Bible is pretty clear on how it views forgiveness. The foundation of our belief system as Christians, is based on the fact that Jesus Christ died for the forgiveness of our sins. God forgives freely and He expects His children to do likewise. We should not feel condemnation (a feeling of strong disapproval) of any kind. If we

belong to Christ, we are free. Romans 8: 1-2 states, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.”  Christ will convict us of sin, but will not condemn us once we have asked for His forgiveness.  We’re not condemned but we do need Jesus, because “through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.”

Unfortunately, strong feelings of self-condemnation can manifest themselves when we struggle with blaming and forgiving ourselves.  Feelings often arise such as, “I am not good enough. I should have done better. I should have known better.”

Please know that these thoughts are not from God. They come from a place of pain, hurt or fear that often stays buried deep inside of us.  It goes against God’s nature to make us feel guilty or ashamed of our past mistakes. The sacrifice of His son, Jesus, was made so that the entire world could be forgiven and restored in relationship back to Him. We deserve punishment because of our sin, but Jesus paid our debt and took the punishment for us.

The enemy, satan, loves nothing more than to attack our minds with feelings of inadequacy, guilt and condemnation.  Our minds are a battleground.  This is why the apostle Paul encourages us to think about good things in Philippians 4:8, "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things."  How we perceive things starts in the mind, so we must guard our minds and thoughts.

When God forgives each of us, the Bible says He forgets our sins. Period. He chooses not to hold our sins against us, or bring up our sins in a negative way in the

future.  So if He makes this promise to us, then why do we so often have difficulty forgiving ourselves?

This is an issue I have struggled with most of my life!  This is an issue that has prevented me from moving ahead positively, the way God designed.

The first step in the process of forgiving ourselves is realizing that God wants us to become all that He created us to be. We cannot change the past. We may not be able to fix the problem or undo what we have done, but we can begin the process of change immediately by making better choices.  God has blessed us with a free will and the ability to make our own choices.

We need to make the choice to forgive in order to begin the process of healing. Healing is important to God and it begins with forgiveness. When we start by accepting Christ’s forgiveness we can begin the journey of bringing real change to our lives, and forgiving ourselves.

One of my favourite verses in scripture is Matthew 22:39 which tells us to love our neighbours as ourselves. Jesus meant for this verse to help us gain a better perspective on treating others with the same love, mercy and forgiveness that we extend to ourselves. The problem with this is that if we harbor negative feelings and emotions toward ourselves, then it is likely that we will do the same toward others.

We are required to forgive others. This is not an option. This is a command from God.

“If you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:14-15).

God does not tell us to forgive others because He wants to make our lives miserable.  He does so because He wants us to experience freedom - His freedom. A wise person once said that not forgiving someone is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.  Only a fool would do this!  Harboring unforgiveness hurts us more than it hurts the other person.

One of the best books I’ve ever read on the topic of forgiveness is R.T. Kendall’s, Total Forgiveness (Charisma House, ISBN 978-1-59979-176-0).  On page 87, R.T. says, “When Jesus said, “If you forgive men when they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you,” He was not talking about how to achieve salvation. He was referring to receiving the anointing of God and participating in an intimate relationship with the Father. Unless we are walking in a state of forgiveness toward others, we cannot be in an intimate relationship with God.”

So what exactly is forgiveness?

Forgiveness is an action or a choice to release an offender from our punishment and entrust it all to God.  The dictionary defines forgiveness as “debt cancellation”. As Christians, we are forgiven for our offenses through Christ taking the punishment for our sin by dying on the cross.  Christ paid our fine in the courts of heaven and His work on the cross cancels our debt.

Forgiveness is also unconditional. We need to forgive regardless of whether or not

the offender apologizes or takes responsibility.  In other words, our ability to forgive is not dependent on the actions of others.  It is a choice that we make!

There are many benefits to forgiveness; far too many for me to get into in this chapter.

Let’s suffice it to say that the person who gains the most from forgiveness is the person who does the forgiving. God commands us to forgive and He only makes commandments for His people’s sake. He wants the best for us! The benefits of forgiveness include blessings, freedom, and better relationships.  Forgiveness improves physical and mental health.  It also starts us on the road to healing and living in the present.

It is no accident that when Jesus taught us how to pray on a daily basis, through the Lord’s Prayer, he said, “Forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors.”

In order to develop an intimacy with Jesus, forgiveness needs to be a priority in your life.  If you have issues of unforgiveness, I urge you to do what is necessary to take care of them.  The sooner you deal with these issues the healthier and happier you will be!

Ask for God's help and He'll show you how.

Chapter 11 - Pay Attention to Red Flags

“Recognize warning signs or prepare to be blindsided.”
Frank Sonnenberg

Joanne and I got our first professional jobs as teachers in 1987 at a school for ex-patriots in Tripoli, Libya.

It was not an easy time to live in Libya. The year prior to our arrival, the USA had conducted bombing missions in Tripoli in retaliation for Libya’s leader, Muammar Ghadafi, sending his country’s jets into an international no-fly zone. Consequently, all the American teachers vacated Libya, which created openings for us to fill.  Worldwide economic sanctions had been placed against Libya and trade with other countries had ceased. This limited the quantity and quality of food and other products available in the country, making it a difficult place to live at the time.

There was, however, an ex-pat scuba diving club in Tripoli that met on a weekly basis as a social outlet. The club even had some instructor-level dive masters from other countries around the world. They conducted lessons to help advance club members in their diving skills.  Each weekend we would gather as a group and go for a dive in the Mediterranean Sea.

This was certainly one of the highlights of my time in Libya.  I looked forward to the meetings and especially towards the weekend dives.  Locations for the dives would change each week, and we were able to explore different areas of the Mediterranean Sea and Libyan coastline. Some of the dive sites were near some ancient Roman ruins, which made the adventures even more enjoyable!

The land where Libya currently sits was once part of the vast Roman Empire and it contains some of the best-preserved Roman ruins in the world.

One particular weekend, we had gathered to follow each other out to a new dive location. I was disappointed that none of the dive leaders were able to join us that day, but there were several of us so I felt we had safety in numbers. We drove approximately an hour to the dive site, unloaded all our dive equipment and prepared for the dive.  As usual, it was going to be a shore dive, which meant that we would enter the water from the shore, walk out with our dive buddy far enough to get into deep water and then submerge to start our dive.

The weather that day was sunny, but windy. The temperature was rising steadily as it was getting close to noon by the time we arrived at our dive site. It was not uncommon for temperatures to reach well into the 40’s Celsius (over 104 F) in Libya.

Joanne decided not to dive that day, so she hung out on the beach while I buddied up with another diver. After suiting up and checking each other’s equipment, we began our trek into the water. The rest of the divers in the club did likewise.

The first thing I noticed as soon as we arrived at the beach was that there were whitecaps on the water. This was not a good sign. Whitecaps can make the entry and exit on shore dives precarious, but I felt that we had driven too far to be turned back by some mildly rough seas. I thought, as soon as I get underwater, the whitecaps will become a non-issue.

As we trudged into the water, I was surprised to see how shallow the water was and how far we had to trek in order to find water that was deep enough for us to

submerge. Carrying a tank on my back and 30 extra pounds of weights around my waist, in the hot mid-day sun, made the walk out to deeper water difficult.  I struggled to stay upright as the wind and waves played havoc with my top-heavy body.

The next “red flag” that caught my attention were the globs of heavy crude oil that we started to encounter the further out we waded.  It was obvious that there had been an oil spill from one of the oil freighters offshore.  Libya was one of the world’s leading oil producers so large oil freighters were a common sight to see. These globs of oil were approximately 2-4 cm in length and stuck to us like glue when they touched us.  My dive buddy and I felt that the oil globs were just floating on the top of the water, so we reasoned together that if we could get under the surface, they would no longer be an issue.

By the time we had reached water that was deep enough for us to begin our dive, we had trudged about 350 meters from shore. I paused to put my dive mask on and noticed that the front glass was covered with oil.  I took it off and tried to clean it, but that was futile.  The salt water was not sufficient to clean the sticky crude oil and by rubbing the mask this only smeared the oil across the glass and made it completely unusable.

I told my dive buddy that I would not be able to continue with the dive because I could not see out of my mask.  I would need to head back to shore immediately.  He informed me that he was going to continue with his dive, then promptly donned his mask and disappeared underwater.

I turned and started my long solo trek back to shore.  By now I was getting pretty tired and the heat combined with the extra weight that I was carrying was beginning to take a toll on me.  The wind was causing the waves to push me to and fro and I continued my struggle to stay upright.  Realizing that fighting the waves while standing on my feet was only wasting my energy, I inflated my buoyancy compensator, turned over on my back and started kicking with my fins toward shore.  Periodically I would turn to reference the shore and see what kind of progress I was making.  For some reason, I was not getting any closer to shore.

Seconds turned into minutes and with each kick my energy level decreased.  The wind and the waves were picking up and sea water, mixed with crude oil, was now splashing onto my face and into my nose, eyes and mouth.  I began to swallow water as I realized that I was fighting to keep my head above the water.  I tried to put my regulator in my mouth so that I would have a source of air to breathe, but my regulator was clogged with crude oil and was unusable.

I turned again to see how close I was to shore.  No progress.  Just then I surmised that I was in an undertow current and that, despite my efforts over the past 15 minutes, the currents were actually taking me out to sea.  Things were getting dire very quickly!

On the verge of panic, I realized that my situation was becoming life threatening. I knew that if I panicked, it would be the end of me so I tried my best to stay calm and tried to think of any options that I may still have.  I spat out sea water as it entered my mouth and nose.  By now my head was about to go under for possibly the last time.  I struggled to get my breath.

Suddenly, a small voice inside my head said, “Drop your weight belt.”

I quickly reached down and flipped the buckle that secured my weight belt around my waist. It fell off immediately.  The release of the additional 30 pounds of weights instantly caused me to become more buoyant.

I now had hope.

My head thrust above the water and I sucked in a deep breath of air.  I kicked with all I had for the next few minutes, and then turned to measure my progress.  The shore looked a bit closer!

This small progress served as a source of encouragement and I reached deep down to tap into the last bit of adrenaline I could muster.  I continued kicking with everything I had for another minute, then turned to look again.  Each time I did so, the shore got a little closer.

I just might make it!

Covered in crude oil, I eventually reached water shallow enough that I could kneel for a while and gain a bit more strength.  Eventually I made it to shore completely and totally exhausted.  I laid on the sand for quite some time before I was able to gather enough strength to walk down the beach to where Joanne was waiting for me.

She could see me walking towards her slowly, having no idea what had just happened. When I finally reached her, she had a worried look on her face and she could tell that I’d been through a rough experience.  I sat beside her on the beach

and began telling her what I’d just gone through.

Part way into my story, we were both alerted to another situation at the water’s edge directly in front of us.  Several of our dive club members were assisting a middle-aged woman from our club, out of the water.  We rushed over to see if we could help. We were told that she had gotten some crude oil into her regulator and when she was approximately 75 feet down her air supply cut off.  Fortunately, she survived the incident, but things could easily have turned out disastrous if not for the quick thinking of her fellow divers.  Praise God!

I know that all of us in the dive club learned some valuable lessons that day.  As a group of novice divers, we became overconfident thinking that we automatically had safety in numbers. We ignored many of the warning signs that we encountered. Despite being adults, I know that we felt a sense of peer pressure from each other to proceed with the dive.

In retrospect, any one of those red flags that we initially encountered should have prevented us from carrying on with the dive. The lack of an experienced dive instructor.  The unfamiliar dive site.  The high winds and whitecaps on the water.  The crude oil floating on the sea.  Separating from my dive buddy.  None of these warning signs stopped us from barreling headfirst into a dangerous situation and it almost cost the lives of two of our club members.

As I reflect on this incident many years later, I can look back with 20/20 vision.  I ask myself how I could have been so naïve.  How could I not have seen the dangers that were right in front of me!  Why did I press on when I knew that things were becoming riskier?  Why was I not willing to sacrifice my useless air tank and

buoyancy compensator for the sake of saving my own life?  How much easier would it have been to move forward if I had dropped them and then proceeded with just my fins!  Hindsight is always 20/20!

I have no doubt that it was God that was whispering to me the life-saving advice to drop my weight belt. He was watching the whole thing unfold step-by-step.

How often do we ignore red flags and warning signs that impede the progress of our relationship with Jesus?

Satan wants nothing more than to mess up our lives and especially our relationship with Jesus. We have a real enemy whose aim is to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10).  He whispers lies to us and looks for opportunities to deceive us any chance he gets (John 8:44).

The Bible makes it clear that satan makes war against us when we keep God’s commands and when we set our eyes on Jesus.

The Bible also instructs us how to defeat the enemy.

Revelation 12:11 says, that we defeat satan through worshiping with our mouths and having a close relationship with Jesus.  By following Jesus and doing what He says, no attack from satan is ever too strong to knock us down.  “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).

Chapter 12 - How Do We Get Attacked?

“The enemy wouldn’t be attacking you if something very valuable wasn’t inside of you. Thieves don’t break into empty houses.”
Kimberly Jones-Pothier

Following the attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, Japan desired a single battle that would completely eradicate the fighting ability of the Allies.  Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto had no intention of fighting a prolonged war.  He intended for the Pacific War to last no more than 150 days, fearing that the longer the war in the Pacific went on, the less chance the Japanese had for victory.

His intention was to attack Midway Atoll, located in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean, with a deceptively large force that would surprise the United States Pacific Fleet and destroy them as they arrived.

However, the US Navy was prepared for the attack.

Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Admiral Chester Nimitz, was able to deduce quite accurately the size of the Japanese fleet, as well as their intentions. As a result, the Allies were able to inflict devastating losses to Japan who had committed four aircraft carriers, with 248 aircraft on them, to the battle.  They lost all of them.

The battle at Midway forced the Japanese to then assume a defensive position for the remainder of the war. They were forced to fight battles that were incrementally closer to the Japanese homeland, and they lacked the resources to stage a

large scale counter-offensive that would have repelled the U.S. forces.

British historian, John Keegan, stated, "within exactly five minutes, the whole course of the war in the Pacific had been reversed."

It’s always a good idea when heading into a battle of any kind to know how the enemy operates. If you know the enemy’s battle strategies and tactics ahead of time, you will be better prepared to face them head on. We should be aware of the various ways in which satan works and when he is prone to attack us.  Satan attacks believers when he thinks it will be to his advantage.  This includes the time after a great spiritual experience (Matthew 3:16, 17; 4:1), or right before someone is going to begin a new spiritual venture (Matthew 4:17).  He also attacks when believers are vulnerable either physically and/or mentally (Matthew 4:2-3).  Satan also likes to attack believers when they are alone (Matthew 4:1). Knowing this, means we must always be on guard (Luke 4:13).

Satan’s main form of attack is to get us to destroy ourselves from within!  By planting “seeds” in our thoughts, he can grow these into destructive weeds when we provide the fertilizer.

Here’s how he does it…

- Thoughts first enter our minds. Usually we have no control over these initial thoughts. These seeds then take root when the enemy makes the thoughts personal.

- Once we dwell on a sinful thought instead of rejecting it immediately, we give the seed roots. We buy into satan’s ideas and believe they’re our own (Romans 7:15).

- The longer we dwell on it, the deeper the roots grow. We consider how it would feel to act on the idea; we decide we “have the right” to take that step. We justify our beliefs: “Everyone has faults and secret sin.”  We get comfort-able with it. We may even start to question whether God’s Word is true.

- We act on what was previously only a thought, and the destructive process begins. Satan disguises the full extent of our sin and the spiritual erosion it causes, so we’re often deceived about the devastation that our sin is causing.

- We justify the action, behaviour, and/or thinking. We’re swallowed up by sin and don’t intend to change, no matter how painful the consequences.

- Over time, we’re consumed by guilt, resentment, bitterness, and anxiety.  Sin’s destructiveness takes its toll.

So, do you need a better reason to get close to Jesus?  If you knew that someone was bent on harming you to the point of death, then would it not be prudent to do everything in your power to protect yourself?

“Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).

Getting close to Jesus is the best way to protect ourselves from satan’s attacks. God makes it clear that He has prepared us for this spiritual battle.  As our Commander-in-Chief, He would never send His soldiers into battle unprepared or ill-equipped.

He has given us a battle plan through His Word and protective armour to wear proudly.

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.  Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.  Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.  Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God” (Ephesians 6:10-17).

God is asking each one of us to put on the whole armor that He has provided for us. This is a metaphor, where we see the symbolic representation of a soldier wearing armor for battle to protect himself.  Similarly, the Apostle Paul is pointing to the fact that every person on this earth is under spiritual attack from the evil one. Therefore, we are encouraged to wear the armor of God to protect ourselves.

We need to put it on every day before we do anything, whether at home, school, work or any other activity.  Just like the armor protects the soldier, this armor of God protects all who believe in Jesus from the spiritual forces of darkness and their attacks on us, our daily problems, issues, trials, temptations and tribulations.

God has won the war, but we still have some battles to fight along the way.  The closer you get to Jesus, the better prepared you’ll be to enter battle.

Chapter 13 - The Second Dream

Approximately three months after my heart attack, I had a second dream. Just like the first dream, it had to do with hockey.

Like before, I was on my way to the arena to play hockey.  Upon arriving at the city’s big, professional arena I entered the dressing room and, once again, realized I did not have my hockey stick with me.  Following my self-condemnation routine about not being prepared and forgetting such an essential part of my equipment, I began to calculate how long it would take me to drive home, get my stick and return to the arena.

I figured that if I left right away and drove quickly, I could get my stick from home and be back by the end of the first period.

I ran quickly up the long staircase to the exit doors.  Once I passed through the doors to the arena parking lot, all I could see were broken hockey sticks beside every vehicle.  There were hundreds of them!  As I ran to my car, everywhere I looked I was surrounded by broken hockey sticks.

I arrived at my car eventually and much to my surprise, as I opened my trunk, I noticed my two hockey sticks lying on the ground beside my driver’s door.  They were not broken and were in perfect condition. I did not have to drive home after all!

I quickly grabbed the sticks and ran back to the arena.  I started the long trip back down the stairway to the dressing room and could already see my fellow

teammates warming up on the ice.  I put on my equipment as quickly as I could and entered the game just as it started.

I had the best game of my life!  I was able to score at will, but I was surprised to see that all of my teammates, as well as my opponents, were young children.  No wonder I played so much better than them!

It took me a long time to process this dream, over a year in fact.  I had no idea what it meant, if anything.  I am not one to try and interpret dreams just for the sake of satisfying my curiosity.  But this one was different.  I felt, after talking with many close friends and pastors about it, that it required some effort to discern what meaning it could have.

I decided there was no better source to seek clarification than from God.

God has used dreams to communicate to His people for centuries.  Why could He not do the same for me?

In fact, there are 21 dreams recorded in the Bible.  God not only provided dreams in order to direct people, but He also gave some the ability to interpret dreams.

A good example of this is found in Genesis 37-50 in the story of Joseph. This is one of my favorite stories in the Bible and demonstrates how God used six different dreams to accomplish His purposes through Joseph.  It tells of how Joseph was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, and rose to become the second most powerful man in Egypt next to Pharaoh.  Joseph’s presence and powerful position saved his entire family by causing his father, Jacob to eventually leave Canaan and settle in Egypt.

So, I prayed that God would reveal to me the significance and meaning of this second dream that I had.

A few days later, I was, again, awakened in the middle of the night.  It seems that 4:00 a.m. is the time when God likes to talk to me!  This is usually the time I hear from Him.

Here is what I was shown.

As in previous dreams, the hockey sticks that I forgot to bring to the arena represented my state of unpreparedness for my death (or Christ’s return).

The broken hockey sticks that I saw in the parking lot as I ran to my car were wasted opportunities and time.  These represented squandered opportunities and time that I wasted by not preparing myself for eternity by growing closer to Jesus. Not only did they represent my wasted opportunities, but they also represented the wasted opportunities of those around me - those who have heard the message of salvation and have ignored it, or have chosen to reject it.

The hockey sticks that I found lying beside my car represented my new-found hope and revelation.  They represented the fact that I have discovered what I need to do to best prepare for eternity.  The fact that I now know the importance of developing a close relationship with Jesus.  That I now know the urgency of developing that relationship as quickly as possible.

And finally, the success I experienced once I got in the game was confirmation that I had found the secret to what is really important in life.  God has now given me the

ability to soar and to thrive through knowing Him intimately.

Once more God spoke to me through a dream, and confirmed that I was on the right track.  Just like Jesus used parables to communicate to people in His day, in language that they could understand, so too God spoke to me through a dream that I could relate to.

Chapter 14 - So Where Do You Start?

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have
passed away; behold, all things have become new.”
2 Corinthians 5:17

If you’ve made it this far in the book, awesome!  Something has caught your attention.

You may be reading this and still have some questions about what it means to be a Christian, or more accurately, a Follower of Christ.  I’ve hinted throughout the book about what it takes to ensure that your sins are forgiven and you have a right standing with our Creator, guaranteeing you a place in heaven when you die.

Let me take a few moments to share with you exactly what the Gospel is, so that there is no confusion.  It is critical that everyone understands the Gospel clearly and fully comprehends the consequences of accepting it, or doing nothing, and thereby rejecting it.

What is the Gospel?

The word gospel literally means “good news” and occurs exclusively in the New Testament. The gospel is, broadly speaking, the whole of Scripture; more specifically, the gospel is the good news concerning Christ and the way of salvation.

The key to understanding the gospel is to know why it’s good news. To do that, we must first start with the bad news.

The Old Testament Law (The Ten Commandments) was given to Israel during the time of Moses (Deuteronomy 5:1-22).  The Law can be thought of as a measuring stick, and sin is anything that falls short of “perfect” according to that standard. The Law is so stringent that no human being could possibly follow it perfectly, in letter or in spirit.  Despite how “good” (or bad) we think we are, we are all in the same spiritual boat—we have sinned, and the punishment for sin is death, i.e. separation from God (Romans 3:23, 6:23) and we are destined for an eternal punishment in hell.

In order for us to go to heaven, sin must be somehow removed or paid for. God’s Law established the fact that cleansing from sin can only happen through the bloody sacrifice of an innocent life (Hebrews 9:22).

The gospel involves Jesus’ death on the cross as the sin offering to fulfill the Law’s righteous requirement (Romans 8:3–4; Hebrews 10:5–10). Under the Law, animal sacrifices were offered year after year as a reminder of sin and a symbol of the coming sacrifice of Christ (Hebrews 10:3–4). When Jesus offered Himself as a sacrifice for our sins, that symbol became a reality for all who would believe (Hebrews 10:11–18).  The work of atonement (paying the debt) for our sins is finished now, and that’s good news.  Our debt has been paid by Him.

The gospel also involves Jesus’ resurrection on the third day. “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (Romans 4:25). The fact that Jesus conquered sin and death (sin’s penalty) is great news.  The fact

that He offers to share that victory with us is the greatest news of all (John 14:19).

To reject the Gospel is to embrace the bad news.  Condemnation by God is the result of a lack of faith in the Son of God, God’s only provision for salvation. “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son” (John 3:17–18).

God has given a doomed world, good news: the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

To sum everything up - it is tough to admit that we are wrong.  Most of us feel we are basically good, and we would like to think we are never as bad as some.  The truth is we are all sinners and can never be good enough to earn our way to heaven. God’s Word, the Bible, clearly states that all have sinned – we’ve all done things that are wrong and we’ve all broken God’s Law (Romans 3:23).  God is holy and just.  Sins against a Holy God deserve punishment.  We are told in the Bible that the wages or payment for sin is death—eternal death in hell (Romans 6:23).

So, what do we have to do to be saved?

God made it so simple. Here are three easy steps.

Step #1 - Admit that we are sinners (Romans 3:23; Romans 6:23; Acts 3:19; and 1 John 1:9).

Both John the Baptist and Jesus himself began their preaching with the word, ‘Repent’. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”  (Matthew 4:17). To repent

means ‘change one’s mind’ or to turn—to go in another direction.  The first step toward repentance is having true sorrow for what we’ve done wrong. “For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death” (2 Corinthians 7:10).  Worldly sorrow is more like the regret of a criminal who’s just been caught whereas godly sorrow is the deep remorse or conviction that produces a change in direction.  Have you ever felt convicted after doing something wrong? The Bible says that the Holy Spirit is the one that convicts us of our sin (John 16:7-8).  He gave us a conscience so that we can know when we have sinned.  Our conscience is our friend!

Step # 2 – Believe that Jesus is God's Son and that God sent Jesus to pay the penalty for sin. (John 14:6).

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).

Step #3 – Confess your faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.

“If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved” (Romans 10:9-10).

If this is the first time that you have learned about the Gospel, I would encourage you to accept it immediately.  Tomorrow may never come for you, so there is no better time than the present!

God knows your heart. He knows if you are sincere and truly desire a change in your life. There are no magical words to say, no money to pay, no contracts to sign. It is a free gift from our Creator.  All we need to do is accept it.

It’ll be the best decision you’ll ever make!

If you'd like to accept Christ into your life right now, the following is a sample prayer that expresses your desire to make that change...

"Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, and I ask for Your forgiveness. I believe You died for my sins and rose from the dead. I turn from my sins and invite You to come into my life. I want to trust and follow You as my Lord and Savior."

Amen!

Chapter 15 - Final Exam Study Sheet

When I was in school, I loved to use summary sheets to help me study for exams.  These sheets were a brief summary of the important points that I could use to help me remember what was really important.

I thought, for the purpose of helping you to remember the important points that I've talked about, that I would provide you with a "cheat sheet".  Imagine how quickly you could have gotten through this book had you come straight to this chapter!

Step # 1 - Accept the free gift of salvation - Ensure that you understand the Gospel and that you have repented and accepted Jesus as your Savior.

Step #2 - Begin your journey immediately - Realize that death (or Jesus' return!) could come at any time and that there is no better time to begin your journey toward a close relationship with Jesus than NOW!  Putting off getting to know Him intimately will result in spending eternity separated from Him in a place that is horrendous. Not making a decision to follow Him is in fact making a decision not to follow Him. It’s catastrophic to die without a relationship with Jesus.

Step #3 - Get to know Jesus - Read about Him in the Bible - particularly in the New Testament.  Read other books about Him. Watch videos, talk to others, etc. to really understand who Jesus is.  Study Jesus like you're preparing for final exams!

Step #4 - Take time to listen - Carve out times during your day when you can simply listen to what God might want to say to you.

Step #5 - Talk to Jesus - Pray as often as you can throughout your day.  Talk to Jesus about the good stuff and the bad.  Talk to Him when you're driving, brushing your teeth or walking your dog.

Step #6 - Exercise your faith - God loves it when we fully trust in Him.  Ask Him to guide you in everything you do.

Step #7 - Store your treasure in heaven - Focus on eternity not just the present.  The pursuit of money and possessions is not the way to true happiness.  What will matter to you in a million years?

Step #8 - Prioritize - Rearrange your priorities if necessary.  Let your life and your time management reflect what is REALLY important.  Is your relationship with Jesus the number one priority in your life?

Step #9 - Forgive and forget - Deal with unforgiveness in your life.  Forgive others as Christ forgave you.

Step #10 - Pay attention to red flags - Are there things in your life that are hindering your relationship with Jesus?  If so, deal with them as soon as possible. Let nothing stand in your way of developing a closeness with your Creator.

Step #11 - Protect yourself from the enemy's attacks - Be aware of your weaknesses and seek God's help in strengthening your life in these areas.  Look to Him for your strength and support.

Conclusion - Final Thoughts

"Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things."
Philippians 4:8

This book has been about my story and how I came to the realization that I had my priorities mixed up most of my life.  It’s about how I learned The Most Important Lesson and how I have changed my life so that I can now focus on what is really important with the time I have left.  It took me almost 57 years to learn this lesson, unfortunately, but I consider myself the luckiest guy in the world to have finally learned it!

I hope I can save you precious time and effort by sharing my story.

God was gracious and merciful in giving me a second chance by bringing me back from the dead.  He showed me mercy that I did not deserve. That’s just who He is. He had every right to leave me dead on the floor of my living room.  But He chose to give me a second chance to finally get things right with Him.  He gave me a second chance so that I could start studying the right material for the Final Exam.

I now realize that there is nothing more important than developing a close relationship with Jesus.

Also important, is the fact that He has asked me to share my experience and what I have learned with others.

It has been an interesting journey since that fateful day. Since my death experience, life has not been one big happy fairy tale. We live in a fallen world.  We live in a world where God’s enemy works overtime to attack those who want to make a difference for His kingdom while they are still here on earth.  During the two years, it took me to write this book, I have encountered obstacles where I have been unmotivated and have struggled with what to write.  I’ve had “mountaintop” experiences with God where I have felt closer than ever to Him, and other times where I have felt that He was nowhere around and that someone had built a huge wall between us.

It was in times such as this that I simply had to rely on what I knew about God. The Christian faith is not a religion based on feelings or rules. It’s a relationship with the God who created us, loves us and wants the best for us because He knows us best. Hebrews 13:5 confirms this, “because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

I know this to be true.  I rested on this promise when the times were tough.  I know that my salvation and my eternal destiny depends upon my choice to follow Him - no matter how bumpy the road gets.  I have learned to trust the Parachute and not in my own ability to save myself.

I also know that my timing is not always God’s timing.  He works things out according to His timing, despite how impatient I may be.  His plans are always better than my plans!

My journey is not over yet.  It’s not over until God calls me home for the final time, or better yet, returns in a cloud of glory like He has promised He’ll do one day.  It could be soon!  Read Revelation – the last book of the Bible to learn more.

My prayer is that I will be ready for that day. My prayer is that you will be ready for that day as well.

Only you can know for certain whether or not you’ll be ready.

Read God’s Word!  Cover to cover.  See what He has to say about getting your priorities straight with Him and take His advice on how to build a close relationship with Jesus.

If the information in this book makes sense to you, share it with someone you love. As followers of Jesus, we are tasked with sharing His truth with as many people as possible.  Would you throw a life preserver to a drowning loved one?  Would you push them out from in front of an oncoming bus?  Of course you would!  It is a life and death decision. Their eternity is at stake!

Send them a copy of this book or share with them the link to the video.

Drop me an email if you’d like at mostimportantlesson@gmail.com.

I’d love to hear from you and hear how your journey is going! In the meantime, I’ll be praying for you!  Go with God,

Gary

Appendix

Heart Attack Symptoms

The following information has been taken from WebMD and the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

Symptoms of a heart attack include:
- Discomfort, pressure, heaviness, tightness, squeezing, or pain in your chest or
arm or below your breastbone
- Discomfort that goes into your back, jaw, throat, or arm
- Fullness, indigestion, or a choking feeling (it may feel like heartburn)
- Sweating, upset stomach, vomiting, or dizziness
- Severe weakness, anxiety, fatigue, or shortness of breath
- Fast or uneven heartbeat

Symptoms can be different from person to person or from one heart attack to another. Women are more likely to have symptoms like an upset stomach, shortness of breath, or back or jaw pain. With some heart attacks, you won’t notice any symptoms (a "silent" myocardial infarction). This is more common in people who have diabetes.

What To Do If You Experience Signs
of a Heart Attack

Thousands of people die from heart attacks each year.  In the USA someone has a heart attack every 40 seconds.  Recognize the signs.  Act quickly.  You could save a life.

1. Call 9-1-1 or your local emergency number Immediately.
Emergency personnel can start treatment enroute to the hospital.
2. Stop all activity.
Sit or lie down, in whatever position is most comfortable.
3. Take your nitroglycerin.
If you take nitroglycerin, take your normal dosage.
4. Take ASA (Aspirin).
Chew and swallow ASA (Aspirin), if you are not allergic or intolerant (either one          325 mg tablet or two 81 mg tablets).
5. Rest and wait.
Stay calm while waiting for help to arrive.
6. Keep a list of your medications in your wallet and by the phone.
Emergency personnel will want this information.

Suggested Books

The following is a list of some books that you may find helpful in developing your relationship with Jesus.  They are listed in no particular order.

The Bible - especially the New Testament

A Work of Heart: Understanding How God Shapes Spiritual Leaders by Reggie McNeal

Crazy Love : Overwhelmed by a Relentless God by Francis Chan

Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit by Francis Chan

Total Forgiveness by R.T. Kendall

Kill the Spider: Getting Rid of What's Really Holding You Back by Carlos Whittaker

Connecting: Healing for Ourselves and Our Relationships by Larry Crabb

Soul Care: Seven Transformational Principles for a Healthy Soul by Dr. Rob Reimer

One Minute After You Die: A Preview of Your Final Destination by Dr. Erwin Lutzer

Deeper: Heart to Heart with Holy Spirit by Deanna Oelke

Ordering Your Private World by Gordon MacDonald

Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God by Dallas Willard

With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God by Skye Jethani

God Chasers by Tommy Tenney

The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God by Dallas Willard

Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ by Dallas Willard

The Treasure Principle by Randy Alcorn

The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer

The Walk: Steps for New and Renewed Followers of Jesus by Stephen Smallman

A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society by Eugene H. Peterson

The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan

The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence

The Life You've Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines For Ordinary People by John Ortberg

Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World by Bob Goff

Walking with God: How to Hear His Voice by John Eldredge

Leap Over a Wall: Earthy Spirituality for Everyday Christians by Eugene H. Peterson

The Reason for God by Timothy Keller

Who Is This Man?: The Unpredictable Impact of the Inescapable Jesus by John Ortberg

Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

Knowing God by J.I. Packer

None Like Him: 10 Ways God Is Different from Us (and Why That's a Good Thing) by Jen Wilkin

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