Your Journey Through God's Plan: Living, Trusting and Sharing from One Generation to Another

By Jeff Perkins

Life is full of meaningful questions, not the least being:

What will I accomplish?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeff Perkins Writes
• Release date: Jul 19, 2024
• ISBN: 9798330298358

Jeff Perkins

The author of "Reflective Leadership", Jeff or "Gadee" as his grandchildren affectionately call him, is waiting to connect....and someday wants to hear about your journey too!www.jeffperkinswrites.com

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Cover of Your Journey Through God's Plan: Living, Trusting and Sharing from One Generation to Another by Jeff Perkins

Your Journey Through God’s Plan

Living, Trusting and Sharing from One Generation to Another

Copyright © 2024 Jeff Perkins

Th is is a work of creative non-fi ction. All of the events in this book are true

to the best of the author’s memory. Some names and identifying features have

been changed to protect the identity of certain parties. Th e author in no way

represents any company, corporation, or brand, mentioned herein. Th e views

expressed in this book are solely those of the author.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

All scriptures/references that were written in this book are from the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB).

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

About the Author V

Welcome To My Time Machine IX

Beginning 3

Believing 9

Belonging 15

Becoming 25

My God (I Believe) 45

Who - I Believe 47

What - I Believe 51

When - I Believe 57

Where - I Believe 61

My Advice:

Find Right 69

Get Right 75

Do Right 81

Be Right 87

Your Journey Awaits 97

About the Author

Jeff is the son of a tennessee southern Baptist minister, which basically means he was attending church nine months before he was born. He grew up in a Bible-believing home that loved the Lord, and at the age of seven, he committed his life to Jesus Christ. Jeff has been the worship leader at Bethel Baptist Church in Greenfield, Tennessee, for over twenty five years; he was instrumental in transforming the morning corporate worship from traditional to contemporary-style while maintaining the integrity of focus on God in worship and praise. He also is an ordained deacon and teaches a Sunday school class. He is recently retired from a family-owned wholesale produce distributor called Akin and Porter Produce, where he was involved as Vice President and Chief Operations Officer. Jeff is serving in his tenth year at his alma mater, Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, as trustee. He also serves on the university’s Foundation Board. In addition, he is a member of the board of directors of Bank3 in Memphis, Tennessee. In his spare time, he enjoys hunting, St. Louis Cardinal Baseball and family. He has been married to his beautiful high school sweetheart, Tammy, for over thirty-five years, and they have four children and twelve grandchildren (and counting), all of whom he is madly in love. Jeff says, I want to be intentional about my service to Jesus in all I do! God is faithful, and I’m forgiven; what else is there?

Dedicated to each of my grandchildren:

To give you evidence of:

Your legacy of faith

Direction toward a decision of faith

Instructions concerning ways you can be a Christ follower in your generation; walking in faith

Following are the things I need you to know for the future, if I’m not here to share them with you in person.

Gadee loves you with all his heart!

God Is Faithful!

Welcome To My Time Machine

This Book is intended to transcend generations and act as a reminder of God’s goodness, God’s plan, and God’s expectations. I’m just an ordinary man trying to be obedient to a call on my life to speak forward into the lives of my grandchildren, their generation and beyond. This time warp hopes to span across time from what I experienced back then to what you are experiencing in your life over there, in the future. This book was written to challenge you to reflect on the experiences that molded you, consider your eternal destination, and to evaluate your daily relationship with God and how it affects your life. I invite you to sit back, settle in and enjoy the ride. I hope we can make a connection through time that ultimately connects you with the same source that I depend on now. That source has a name. His name is Jesus!

My Story (I Am)

Beginning, Believing, Belonging, Becoming

I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am.

John Newton

Everyone has a story…

Everyone’s story has a beginning; some time, some- where. I tell my story to you because it’s most likely very similar to yours. My story starts in a small rural hospital in a small rural town in Northwest Tennessee. No trumpets blaring, no angels proclaiming, no restless anticipation by the masses of my arrival. Just a baby boy born to a young couple with no experience and a world of dreams. A blank page, waiting to be written with no preconceived ideas or expectations. But God was watching and I suspect, as in your case too, there was a celebration of sorts in Heaven as God’s creation had once again rose victorious, beginning with the first gasp for oxygen from a little boy named Jef- frey Wayne Perkins.

As I sit and think, I wonder what will be going through your mind as you begin to read my story. I have been blessed beyond measure by a gracious God who saw fit to take a little preacher’s kid and mold his life into what I have come to call a real life fairy tale, with God in the lead role. As I write, you will get the perspective of only one, me. These recollections of stories will be perfectly accurate and based on my age; as I remember them in my mind. They will be wholly and completely as I saw and experienced them.

I write this because one day I realized that many of the stories of my life, while I had shared them with different people in various settings, had by the most part been left out of conversations that I have had with the people who would benefit from them the most, my children! In the early birth of this book, I actually put together this group of stories and presented them to my children as a Christmas gift. I called it My Story: Chronicles of an Imperfect Father to the Four Gifts Given to Him by a Perfect God Of course this is a version of my gift to them as many of the things I shared are privy to personal family experiences that would only be relevant to my children. Over time though, I begin to feel very strongly that God had put something into my heart to share to a larger audience. This first section, which comes from my gift to my children, is the result of that calling.

These stories are a combination of simple childhood, teenage, and adult memories with very complex, and defining moments in my life. While you may find some of these interesting, some funny, and some odd, my hope is that you will find many all-inspiring, as you, the reader, journey through the rest of your life. Fondly taking with you the understanding that as you take that journey; there may be times when you may not understand it all. My prayer is that in those times, while you lack understanding, you will trust in the Almighty God. He is the God of this author who experienced many firsthand accounts of God working in and through his own life when things didn’t always seem so clear. So sit back, get comfortable and take a stroll down the street in the life of a little preacher’s kid named Jeff. The little, simple, insignificant PK (preachers kid) who has seen God work in extraordinary ways.

Beginning

I am a part of all that I have met.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

I was born on November 10, 1966 in the hospital in Union City, TN, the first born of Wendell Wayne Perkins and Linda Kay Garner Perkins. The doctors had given the impression to Mom and Dad that they were to have a little girl, so to the surprise of most, when I arrived I was a feisty little boy. Of course this is a day and time when finding out prior to birth the gender of your baby with any certainty wasn’t an option yet. When the doctor came out from the delivery room he announced, Well, you have a little boy!, and from the alert mind of my grandmother whom I later would affectionately call Nanny, came the words, I thought we were going to have a little girl. What follows are famous words that have been hilariously repeated in our family, down through the years. The doctor replied, gesturing with his thumb and end of the index finger, Well Mrs. Garner there’s not but about that much difference! With that, I was welcomed into this brave new world. I had a few minor health issues as a baby, one being when I was about 18 months old they discovered that I had a small hernia on my right side so they had to do surgery. I still carry the battle scar from that one. Besides that I think I was fairly health as a baby.

If you have ever gone through the exercise of trying to think about your first memories, they seem to come, but in little tidbits and I would suppose quite random order. My earliest recollection of events in memory look like this. I can remember my first experience in church. Mr. Farmer would give me a quarter if I gave him a kiss on the cheek every Sunday at Adams Chapel Baptist Church where Dad was pastor from Oct 1967 until Oct 1970. As a small tootler I’m sure I received several quarters. Years later after I was grown, at a local associational meeting of churches, I saw Mr. Farmer, who by now was well up in years. I went up to him and shook his hand and asked him if I gave him a kiss could I still collect a quarter. He laughed and simply said, I think I’ll pass!

I was