Are You Aware?: Vision into the Unseen

By Jimmy Stanford

I was 12 years old when an escaped convict chased me for more than a mile. He came to our porch where he looked into my eyes questioning whether I would use my gun if he continued his quest. His decision as well as other events in my life opened my spiritual vision into an unseen world wed best not ignore.

I pray the thoughts shared within these pages stir your soul. I pray the pages increase your awareness of the spiritual world we live within. I hope the thoughts shared help you find kindness, goodness, gentleness, peace, joy, and love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9781449096595

Jimmy Stanford

I am quite possibly the only farmer, cross country truck driver, diesel mechanic, CPA , Finance Director in America. If I'm not the only one, certainly Im on a short list. Years ago while working on the farm my Heavenly Father and I grew close to one another. I prayed for him to use my life to his benefit. My Father put my life on an evolutionary course where I would accumulate intellectual skills I never dreamed of having. Now, years later I find use for these skills documenting unusual events in my life using them to outline an unseen world many never consider. My Father took me from farmer barely capable of writing complete sentences to somewhat of an intellectual capable of writing a humble book. My friends hear my stories of farm life and other events and tell me I should write a book. Now, the book exists. The books existence answers my prayer many years ago. I pray you find blessing within these pages.

Book preview

Table of Contents

PREFACE

LOOK WHAT I BROUGHT HOME

I’D RATHER BE ON THE FARM

IN GOD’S IMAGE—

MY PERCEPTION OF THE WORLD

YOUR NATURE OR YOUR SOUL

BASEBALL CAN GROW YOUR SOUL’S INFLUENCE OVER MIND AND BODY

BECOME AN ATHLETE

THE RIDE OF MY LIFE

WOULD YOU LISTEN?

SUNDAY MORNING DRIVE

GOD’S LAW OR LAW OF YOUR NATURE

FROM FARM TO

INTERNATIONAL ACCOUNTING FIRM

THE LAST GENERATION

PAP, YOU PRAY THE HARD PRAYERS

LET’S GET THE TRACTOR

PASSAGES

PREFACE

I FARMED. I DROVE OVER a half-million miles in an eighteen-wheeler. I quit driving and went to school to become a diesel mechanic. I worked for Truck and Trailer rebuilding engines, transmissions, and rear ends for an international truck dealer. I dropped everything and went to college, completing a four-year degree in three years, graduating with a high GPA. I went to work for an international accounting firm, traveling and learning.

Writing a book was the last thing on my mind when I left our family farm in search of a living over twenty years ago. I don’t know how my Heavenly Father gave me the skills to create this book. My list of desires did not include writing one. Yet, it exists, and I find joy in sharing thoughts accumulated over the years. From my brush with a bank robber at age twelve to my first ambulance ride, I’ve experienced some rather unusual events I’d like to share.

I have always been a deep thinker. I have a hard time understanding how that mindset differs from others. For years, I thought everyone had in-depth reflections. I thought people just didn’t share their reflections with others.

I can’t help but study my actions as well as the actions of other people. I study these actions from what I perceive to be a biblical point of view. My biblical perspective isn’t the result of years of seminary, though I wish I would have made the time. My perspective is homegrown, based upon what my Father has chosen to reveal through the best education humble parents, grandparents, family, and country church family could provide, given their demanding lives coupled with their strengths and weaknesses. I make that statement with no intention of diminishing their efforts. I am truly thankful to them for what they enabled me to obtain.

I hope thoughts shared within these pages spark intrigue and question in your life. I encourage you to use that intrigue and question to search the pages from which our Lord speaks, the Bible, to find your own understanding. I hope the thoughts foster the ability to reflect on your life, giving vision into the unseen.

A few days ago I asked a seventy-four-year-old man still tilling the soil on our farm why we are so prone to do what we ought not do rather than follow our God’s laws. He started trying to explain his perspective verbally but found limits—limits I once had. Finally, he surrendered his attempt by saying he knew why but just couldn’t explain it in a few words. He had no idea I was testing him to see whether his answer lined up with the one documented within these pages. Had he found the words, I’m confident his answer would align with the answer I’ve found. His response struck me as, perhaps, a solution to my dilemma.

Why does this book exist? This book exists to benefit my children and their children with understanding gained during my various transitions in this life. This book is not an attempt at immortality. My goal is to provide a platform through which my Father might choose to use these events from my life to help those that follow foster constructive conversations through which information passes between parents and children … between one believer and another. This book exists to share the unseen spiritual world. It leverages events I’ve seen in life to show how our lack of vision drives love and joy from our lives.

Vision of the unseen enables you to avoid painful lessons that are best learned from reading rather than experience. Vision of these things enables you to grow love, joy, kindness, gentleness, and self-control in your life and in the lives of your children.

LOOK WHAT I BROUGHT HOME

I WAS TWELVE YEARS OLD, sitting on the couch watching TV. Mom was in the kitchen cooking. She called, Son, run over on the place and get your dad for lunch. I jumped up and went to the truck. Dad was cutting hay on the backside of the place. I would run over and pick him up.

Farm life gives you an opportunity to learn to drive early. I started driving when I was nine years old. I would sit on the front of our truck seat so my feet could reach the gas and brake pedals. At age twelve, I’d sit up straight and look between the dashboard and the top of my steering wheel to drive. Sitting perfectly straight, I could barely see over the steering wheel. My size restricted my speed. I drove slowly.

This trip over on the place was nothing unusual. I did this all the time. However, this quick trip would be anything but usual. God’s hand would draw near on this trip. This trip would create a lifetime memory for me. Images would burn into my mind, never to leave.

Over the years, I’ve wondered why this happened. Recently, I came to understand Christ has taken many opportunities to show me how close to death we live. In doing so, He shows how close to each of us He walks. As He exposes me to these events, He shows that nothing happens by chance. He is always near. There is a plan for us all. As that plan evolves, we need to pray for insight … live and learn. I would do just that on this day. I would learn. I would reflect on this day for the remainder of my life, learning.

I rounded the curve on our old dirt road. Just ahead in the next curve was a two-toned orange and white Volkswagen van stuck in the bank. The driver straightened the curve driving into a bank. The van’s front left wheel was in the ditch with the front of the van smashed up against the bank. The driver was frantically trying to crank the van. I coasted to a stop about ten yards from the van’s bumper. The driver acted as if I were not there. I wondered why he ignored me.

As the driver tried to crank the van, the engine backfired. Fire shot out of the exhaust pipe toward my truck. I was too young to know there was no danger. The fire made me think the van was going to blow up. I bumped my truck into reverse and backed up another ten yards or so. I sat up straight to see over the steering wheel. When I stopped, I left the truck in reverse and held my foot on the brake. Leaving the truck in reverse was one of many events on this day that would save my life.

A second or two later, the van cranked and an image was burned into my mind forever. The creature driving this van ran his arm down the top of the bench seat when he turned his head and looked at me through the back glass. Then he broke a wicked smile. This was no human glaring at me. I had seen the eyes of crazed animals many times on the farm. I was in trouble.

He floored the van. The rear wheels began slinging rocks as they dug into our gravel road. The van bounced up and down. The rear wheels slid from side to side as the van fought to pull from the bank. Suddenly, the bank released the van. The orange and white vehicle launched from the bank toward my truck. I was too close. This man was going to hit me.

Immediately, I stood on the accelerator, and rocks from the mud grips on our 2500 Chevy flew past my door. I was so small I had to stand on the accelerator in order to raise my head high enough to look out the back glass to see where I was going. My heart raced as rocks pinged underneath on the frame of my truck.

Engines roared.

I had gone no more than a few yards when I sat down on the seat to look forward at the van. In an instant, another image burned into my mind for life. The man was much closer. He had quickly closed the twenty-five or thirty yard gap between our vehicles as he continued to accelerate towards my truck. The rear bumper of the van was within one or two feet of my truck. The man so near it looked like he could reach out and touch me. Now I could see the crazed animal’s eyes clearly. Filled with wickedness, concerned only with self-interest, his eyes were full of satisfaction as if he had me. The wild smile remained. The creature wanted me. I cared not to gain an understanding of why.

Instinctively, I stood on the accelerator, looked out the back glass, and braced for impact. Somehow, my mud grips grabbed enough to allow me to outrun this creature and avoid impact. I don’t know how that happened. I don’t know what I would have done had this adult bumped into my truck. I probably would have stopped and broken down, crying. Nevertheless, that was not in my Heavenly Father’s plan for me on that day.

I was about a half mile from home around two curves and a long straightaway that ran up alongside our house before turning down a hill into the drive of our home.

I knew I was in a race for my life. I had to get home, away from this wild-eyed predator. The truck would lunge and spray rocks when I stomped the accelerator to rise up and look out. When the truck gained so much speed I could tell I was about to lose control, I’d coast. Then, I’d stomp the gas again. Several times, the front end of the truck began lunging back and forth as I struggled to steer around the curves. Somehow, I managed to keep the truck on the road moving at a high rate of speed. When I was about halfway down the long straightaway, I looked back just as the van’s front end swung heavily back and forth. The van stopped so he could straighten it out. That gave me time. I continued in my quest to return home.

A second or two later I reached the end of the straightaway that ran up alongside our home. I stomped the gas two or three times along the straightaway. By the time I reached where our driveway turned off the main road, I was flying in reverse.

I steered into the final curve that leads into our driveway. The front end jumped from left to right violently. Then, the front of my truck flew around as I lost control. The steering wheel jerked from my small hands and spun to the end of its turn radius, where it made a loud bang and stopped spinning. The truck spun in circles as it moved across the last fifty yards down the driveway. On the last spin, the truck lunged over our sidewalk up into our yard. Just before it stopped, I pulled on the door handle. Another memory burned into my mind. Centrifugal force launched me from the truck. I can still see the steering wheel fly by as the door opened, ejecting me into the grass.

I was home, but I knew we were not safe. An animal was coming. He was still on the hunt. The van