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 Foundations
Mornin’ Folks! How are ya doin’ this blessed day? Best day of your life, right? Awww, now, don’t look at me in that tone of voice! Think of it this way: this is the day that the Lord has made – and God don’t make no junk days!
OK, then try this: this is the first day of the rest of your life. You can’t undo yesterday, and tomorrow hasn’t come. So take advantage of the day and walk in the blessings of the Lord!
Listen, if I was any better, I’d be dangerous! LOL
Oops….almost forgot. Grab your cup of Starbucks, or whatever you’re drinking today, and sit down for the next few minutes. Let’s talk about some foundations.
Hmmmm. Foundations. That’s what we talked about yesterday. The foundations of our forefathers that led to the Constitution of the United States, and the spiritual heritage that set in motions the blessings of the Lord we all get to enjoy as American citizens.
Let’s talk about some other kinds of foundations. These are the foundations that set the stage for folks like you and me to receive blessing after blessing after blessing. These are the foundations that are laid in order that people can live their lives in peace and prosperity. These are the foundations that get laid so that successive generations come to know the Lord Jesus Christ and walk in a personal relationship with Him.
These are the foundations that often cost people their lives.
I was having coffee earlier with Mike Lindquist, the senior pastor at World Center Church here in Mission, and we were talking about the foundations that were laid before us, and the foundations God has required us to lay for others. Mike was talking about the obstruction and opposition he had gone through when he began to share with some of his erstwhile “denominational” brethren a vision for ministry in Ireland.
After having shared with them his vision and obtaining promises from them to assist him in fulfilling his vision – provided that he would build and pastor a church for a year that they had been trying to get completed in a farming community – he kept his end of the bargain. When he went to them and said, “OK, guys, now it’s your turn to keep your end of the deal,” they waved him off with excuses, saying, “We can’t afford this. It’s too expensive. Besides, you’re not ready to do this. It isn’t a practical vision.”
Hmmmmm. Sounds familiar. I think I’ve heard these excuses before. They come from folks in leadership who lack vision, who lack purpose and who fulfill their positions simply as “jobs” that provide a paycheck.
Bet you’ve heard those kinds of excuses, too.
It doesn’t have to be the church world. It can be politics. It can be the world of science. Come to think of it, Della and I were talking about a friend of ours the other day, Dr. Joseph O’Neil, a scientist who ran into just about every conceivable obstacle you can think of.
Here was a guy who, before age eight, lost his father. His mother couldn’t afford to take care of him and his siblings, so he was forced to leave school and go to work in the fields in order to help bring home enough money to take care of the family. Joe wasn’t any ordinary guy, however. He was a certified genius, a young fellow with an I.Q. of more than 200.
He never let his lack of schooling interfere with his visionary abilities. Before his 9th birthday, Joe found himself in a meat packing plant in Atlanta, suffering in stifling heat and humidity with the rest of his co-workers.
Joe was working around mechanical equipment and – with his creative mind – he saw an opportunity to fix the situation. Never one to let his age get in the way of his creative genius, he sketched a design on paper, got some of the plant supervisors and foremen to help him put together what looked like a mechanical monstrosity, and wound up with the very first commercial air conditioning unit. He very quickly became everyone’s best friend in that plant. No longer did folks have to work in intolerable heat and humidity. The unit he designed kept the entire plant cool, drying the damp air in the process.
At 15, he was hired by Henry Ford to automate his assembly lines for the Model A. At 17, a shipbuilding company heard about his prowess at the Ford Motor Company, and hired him away. Joe wound up designing the Liberty Ships used during World War II.
I know. The general reaction to most of us when we begin to hear these stories about this incredible genius is, How can someone so young come up with so many incredible inventions? Joe’s age was an obstacle. His lack of even a cursory education was an obstacle. His growing up in poverty was an obstacle. Somehow or another, Joseph O’Neil never saw those things as obstacles. He only saw the vision of what he wanted to create, and looked for the ways to accomplish the vision.
That’s because he had a mother who laid the proper foundations in his childhood. “Son, I know you’re a smart kid. Don’t ever let anyone tell you something can’t be done, or that you can’t do it. Just do it, and show them.”
And he did. In the late 1940’s, someone recommended him to another genius – some guy by the name of Albert Einstein. Ever heard of him?
And Joe got to work with him for the last six years of Einstein’s working life. He developed his mathematical skills to a point that his predictive analysis equaled and even exceeded Einstein in some things. He was able to take what he learned working with Einstein and put it to use doing, as Joe says, “whatever it takes to help people in need.”
Joe has always been one of those really compassionate guys. In Houston one day to meet with Andy SoRelle (I talked about Andy in an earlier article), we were on our way to lunch with Joe. He saw a homeless guy standing at the corner who looked like the last rose of summer.
‘STOP! STOP!” he shouted. We pulled over to the side of the street, he jumped out of the vehicle and ran over to the homeless fellow and stuffed a hundred dollar bill in his hand. The look on that guy’s face was one of pure astonishment. When Joe got back in the car, he saw our questioning look and said, “I remember what it was like for me when I was poor. I know what it meant to have some money to buy food with.” Andy told us later that in all the years he had known Joe, he could never go past a homeless person without stopping to help.
Joe O’Neil’s genius brought him to the attention of President Truman. When the Roswell UFO incident first gained public attention, Truman put together a team of crack scientists to serve as science advisors and form a group then known as MJ-12 to investigate such phenomena. Joe was one of the original members of that team. He eventually wound up serving as a science advisor to every president from Truman to George H.W. Bush.
In one of my earlier pieces, I mentioned a device that Joe developed that was being tested in a Houston medical clinic. It scans the human blood and turns the data into musical sounds. “Human blood,” Joe said, “gives off very distinctive sounds. I can tell you the medical history of a person by listening to the sound of their blood. I can tell you whether they have, or will have cancer, and what their life expectancy should be by listening to their blood.”
Della and I sat with him one day over lunch talking about his inventive genius and some of the things he had been working on for the Department of Defense. When I expressed my admiration for him and the many products he had invented or designed to help humanity, tears came to his eyes. “I’d gladly give it all up for just one experience like you have had with Jesus Christ.”
It astounded me. I said to him, “Joe, there is nothing I’ve experienced with the Lord that isn’t available to you.” He got a faraway look in his eyes and paused before saying, “Yeah, but you don’t understand. My mind gets in the way. It’s always thinking, designing, working on something, trying to solve some mathematical problem, or whatever. I can’t get it to shut down long enough to get myself quieted so I can listen to the Lord.”
Della reached across the table and took Joe’s hand and began to pray out loud, “Father, in the name of Jesus, quiet Joe’s mind and his spirit. Reveal yourself to him in a way that is tangible. Allow him to come to know your love and your presence in the way you have revealed yourself to us.”
It was some time before Joe was able to dry his eyes and regain his composure. “Thank you,” he said. “I love the world of science, math, doing new things, designing and all of that, but it’s all child’s play to me. The realm of the spirit – now that’s different! That’s where there are challenges, where you can see and experience the supernatural, the unknown. My mother laid some foundations for me so that I would never put limits on my mental abilities, but someone laid foundations in your life so that you would never put limits on your spiritual abilities. Of the two, I’d a whole lot sooner have your foundations.”
And that’s true. As I’ve shared before, my father used to say to me, “Son, get the word impossible out of your vocabulary. Nothing is impossible for you when you walk with the Lord.”
Haven’t seen Joe or talked to him in the past few years, but the last time Della and I saw him he was on his knees before the Lord, asking the Lord to pierce the veil of human wisdom and intelligence that often gets in the way of walking with the Lord in the realm of the spirit, and reveal Himself in a way that would surpass his thinking and imagination. I pray that Joe has received that revelation by now.
Foundations. That’s what you build a home on. That’s what you build a large commercial skyscraper on. It’s what you build a life with. It’s what our nation was founded upon. The kind of foundations that get laid determine the height and strength of a building. The kind of foundations that were laid by our founding fathers determined a spiritual heritage for each of us.
The foundations that were laid in my life have been a blessing and have provided a heritage that cannot be measured with dollars and cents. My oldest son, Christian, looks to the day when he will be pastoring a church. He went through some years of tough sledding because he thought he could ignore some of the foundations laid in his early life; and the building he thought he was going to build got torn down. The foundations were there, and a new building has been being built.
My youngest son, Joshua, also looks to the day when he will be able to minister to young people. He had some foundations laid in his life, too; and like his older brother, ignored those foundations for a few years. His building got torn down, and the rebuilding is still under way.
Danielle, the daughter I told you about that was born deaf whom the Lord healed, has repeatedly thanked us for the foundations we laid in her life. She is working hard to lay those same foundations in the lives of her two sons, Anthony and Joseph.
The foundations we lay in the lives of our children pay dividends if they are the proper foundations. What was it Solomon said? “Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
What are your foundations? What kind of foundations are you laying in the lives of your children? What kind of foundations are you laying in the lives of the folks you touch on a daily basis? Hmmmmmm???
Well, that’s our coffee break for this day. Enjoy the rest of your cup, and we’ll talk some more tomorrow, Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise.
Like I said yesterday, be blessed today. Be blessed in the city, blessed in the field, blessed coming in and blessed going out.
--Regner
Regner A. Capener
EKKLESIA HOUSE
RR-15, Box 6180
Mission, TX 78574-9589
(956) 583-5355
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