Who is this guy….
Filed in Devotions & Studies, General | Comments (4)
Journal,
Ok, let’s get started. Seems some folk miss the stories on my personal life adventures. I’ll just begin with some off-the-wall jabbering.
So, who is this guy??? Rather handsome I’d say.
After all this is possibly one of my fore-bearers. Just can’t figure out which one. We have a number of Billy Martins in my lineage. And I have over 6500 Martin-kin in my data files. Plenty nu-ff good looking Martins to go around.
We call that the curse of the Martins. We have been struck with exceptionally good looks. 
Anyway, this picture was posted on our family genealogy forum, ‘The Martins of Sabine Territory,’ with the caption, ‘William Martin - Soldier.’
I’ve been unable to get a response from anyone on the picture.
Well, since you are showing such interest in this gentleman, let me simply add that the first William (Billy) Martin to come to Louisiana, was a Revolutionary Soldier. He was born circa 1766, and died in 1840. Billy arrived with his Indian wife to settle in the Anacoco, Louisiana, area, around 1804. Most of we Martin clan have remained in this area ever since.
But is this gentleman our first William Martin? I don’t know.
To bring this forward, our first Billy Martin also had a son named ‘William Martin’. And William’s son was possibly a soldier during the Civil War. A William Martin is listed on the roll of POWs, paroled in Natchitoches, June 16, 1865. (This is near Anacoco.) If this is the William Martin in the picture, then he is my g-g-grandfather.
The problem is that I have twenty William Martins listed in my genealogy, with ten of them having lived during the 1800s. Oh well, mystery unsolved.
And now that I’ve thrilled you with this wonderful information concerning the Martins, let’s move on to other things. Just one more point — My kids have been known so say that I say this — “If you aren’t a Martin, you ought to be one.”
Well, that comes across fair to middling. What I actually tell my kids is to be careful who they talk about, because they are kin to most everyone from here to the Sabine River.
OK, enough already. Good place to stop….
This morning I purged my prayer journal…
What’s that mean you say?
Well, I’ve kept a prayer journal of sorts for a number of years. In the journal I number each prayer. As a prayer is answered, I place a check mark over the prayer. As time progresses I’ll remove pages of my journal that have been checked. Don’t care to have folk know about my ’secret’ prayer life. After all Jesus told us to make our personal prayers to be secret prayers between us and the heavenly Father. 
Now I don’t record everything that I pray, just those kinds of prayers that I am intensely concerned with on a personal level.
Did you know that Jesus had His own secret prayer life?
You see, a secret prayer life is very, very personal. It is about intimate interchanges between the believer and their heavenly Father. In fact a secret prayer life should always be ordered under the auspices of the Holy Spirit.
Listen:
“But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.”(Mt6:6 nasb)
Anyway, for me my secret prayers are heavenly interchanges.
To continue, in my present prayer journal (which was a gift to me from Warren and Lori Spurgeon) my latest prayer is numbered #404. And of the over four hundred secret recorded prayers, I have eight prayers that have not been checked off. They are yet before the throne of God. The rest of my prayers have been checked off in one way or another.
If you feel that I am placing too great an emphasis on my prayers being answered, or that I simply wish to draw attention to myself, I will have to leave that with you. That is not my intent in the least. My point in sharing this is two-fold. First I want to encourage my readers that the Lord meant exactly what He said in this statement:
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” (Mt7:7,8)
The second reason I wanted to share this is that I’ve not been as faithful to my prayer journal of late as I ought to have been. Just this morning the Lord began placing in my heart that it was time again to conduct some important secret family business. Don’t you love it when the Lord puts on your heart to come to the throne of grace!
OK, so confession is good for the soul. There, I confessed it. And I’ve brought my journal up-to-date by removing the checked pages.
Have you ever heard of the stairway to heaven… 
When Jacob had his dream, he saw a stairway that was set on the earth and ascended right into heaven.
It is interesting that in Jacob’s dream, the angels of God were ascending and descending on the stairway.
(Cf. Gen28:12 - The Hebrew translated as ladder is equally translated as a stairway.)
When Jacob awoke, he was filled with awe. It says…
“Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.’ He was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’” (Gen28:16,17)
Jacob’s stairway had to do with God’s Messiah. The Lord was at the top of the stairway. Jesus explained to Nathanael, that He Himself was God’s stairway from heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven.
It is not as though we have to climb a stairway to enjoy heavenly things. The truth of the stairway is that Jesus Himself is our heavenly life. We ascend and descend through Him or with Him. We meet the Father in and through Him.
It is like Jesus is saying to all believers, ‘Welcome to My world. Won’t you come on in. Come right to the throne room. My Father and I would like to fellowship with you.’
Did you know that when Elvis, Jim Reeves, and others sang the song ‘Welcome to My World,’ they were singing the very heart of Jesus. Listen to this song and hear the gospel:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=r_sU0pAE-fE&feature=related
Time to sign out.
Love and blessings are coming your way,
Buddy
