Born in Scotland, a dual citizen, British and American. Grew up without my parents for 10 years. Raised by relatives. Had a Life-changing encounter with God the Father at age 8 because I was seeking a safe source of love.

My relationship with God the Father is the foundation of my life. I love Jesus and the Holy Spirit, who have made that relationship possible.

I became a jet pilot with the Marines during the Vietnam War, and after that, a protestant pastor for 35 years.

I have been married for 57 years to Beth. We have four children who all love the Lord with all their hearts, and 13 grandchildren who are in the process of getting saved.

I'm retired now at age 79. I've written a couple of books about the Jamestown colony to encourage the church in our region and in America to confess the end of our Christian forefathers in the colony, so God will remember the land according to the promise of Leviticus 26:39-42. The first book is a history book, and the second book is a novel based on that.

The first book is called Healing America's Soul; the second book is called Angel 24.

I'm writing a sequel to Angel 24 in which God uses Islamic jihadists to awaken the sleeping giant of the American church to repentance and holiness, leading to a great national awakening that alone can heal America.

Besides writing books and serving as a communicator to the regional church, I am a chaplain with the local police force.

Hi, I'm Angel.

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So I was a young Catholic boy, and I told one of my nuns that I missed my father.

He was my hero, but he was in the army, and he was usually out of the country, and my mom didn't have custody.

So the nun told me that God was a father, and I was really surprised to hear that.

But somehow, shortly after that, I began a secret, intimate relationship with God the Father, and I felt loved by him as a son.

All I can say is that I experienced it.

I can't really tell you how it happened, but God met me.

He heard my cry for a father, and he revealed himself to me as a father.

Sometime in the next year, as I was walking down the street where I lived in South Philadelphia on my way to school at St. Gabriel's Catholic Church, I looked up to the between the row houses, and I told God that his love felt so real to me that it felt like he adopted me.

Now, I didn't even touch a Bible for the next 12 years.

I had never touched the Bible, because back in those days, Catholics weren't supposed to read the Bible, not even in Catholic schools.

So when I finally got to college and owned my first Bible, I was totally shocked.

I was floored when I read Romans 8, 15, and 16, where basically it says that God gives us a spirit of adoption as sons, by which we cry out, Abba, Father.

The Spirit himself witnesses to our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then an heir of God, and a joint heir with Jesus.

So you can imagine how astounded I was to learn that what I had experienced when I was eight was actually in the Bible.

So that relationship with God that I began then has become the foundation of my life.

I know you can only come to the Father through Jesus.

I like to describe it like I shook hands with Jesus at the door, but I ran to the Father, because I came to God not because I felt like a sinner, but I just wanted somebody to love me.

I wanted a safe source of love, and that's what the Father gave me.

Hmm.

Do you think that the absence of one thing is necessary to appreciate the presence of the other?

The absence of my parents made me hungry for love, especially my father.

If I had had a normal family, let's say, I would not have been so desperate for love.

Yeah, I counted a blessing that I became desperate as a young boy for love, because it drove me.

I wasn't seeking God because I was religious.

I was in survival mode, emotional survival mode, and I needed love from somebody, and fortunately, I found it in God the Father.

I'm intrigued, though.

Do you think that the development of who you were at that point is responsible for the choices you've made or the choices you made at that junction?

What contributed to that at eight years old?

I think it was the Holy Spirit.

I can't explain why an eight-year-old boy who'd never read a Bible touched the Bible, but he went to Catholic church, and he went to Catholic school and probably heard this stuff, although I can't really remember what they said, but I knew that there was a God, and I felt drawn to him because he was a God of love.

I always say that the desperate get the most from God.

The fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much, and so God allowed me to be desperate, and in that desperation, it drove me into his arms.

Whatever makes you desperate for God is really your friend ultimately because you get more from God.

Johnny Erickson is a famous person.

Do you know that name?

Yeah, definitely.

She said, it's very famous, of course, that she would rather

know God the way that she does than to have had a normal body because the fact that she broke

her neck when she dove into the Chesapeake Bay at age 17 had forced her onto a journey of seeking

a source of love and a source of truth in her life that led her into this wonderful

relationship with God, so her physical handicap became the source of her greatest blessing,

and I would say that about my emotional handicap as a kid.

It became the source of my greatest blessing.

Yeah, it's beautiful.

It's interesting, again, it's not formulaic because I'm saying to those listening, it's not the formula where you go seeking after desperation so that you could get the most out of the relationship, but it is really an amazing opportunity to reframe the past, isn't it?

The key of what you did is reframing.

I mean, you're not suggesting someone dives in the Chesapeake River and, you know, but it's the capacity she has to reframe the memory that's really beautiful, isn't it?

That really creates the seed that then creates the tree that creates the fruit.

Would you agree?

Oh, I would totally agree, yeah, and the reason it all happened, for me, would go back to Ephesians chapter 1 verses 3 to 5, you know, it starts off talking about God the Father, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places, and then verses 4 and 5 explain to me why this all happened.

Just as he chose us in him before the foundations of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him.

So, Christians are chosen before the foundations of the world.

There you go.

And verse 5, in love he predestined us to adoption as sons.

There's the adoption according to the kinds, through Jesus Christ, according to the kinds intentions of his will.

So, ultimately, in spite whatever circumstances there may be, people become Christians because God chooses them.

Romans 8, 29 and 30 says that real clearly too.

I very much believe in that my salvation began in the mind of God before it began in my mind.

He loved me first before I loved him, and that I'll never get over the awe of knowing that he chose me before the world was made, and that's why I know him, not because I've ever done anything to deserve it.

I don't even understand how good he is.

He's so good, or how bad I've been.

I don't really understand at all.

I just know that he made a choice that I could never back away from.

He is my life.

I wouldn't want to exist without him.

So, I've been given a great gift to know God the way I do.

Yeah.

So, for those that are listening, how old are you today?

Because we're talking about eight, so everyone's seeing you through the eyes of, yeah, that eight-year-old.

How old are you today?

79, almost 80.

Wow.

So, we're talking about almost 79 years later.

So, 71 years later, you're still talking with this love.

Wow.

So, were there down times throughout the process where the relationship was capped, or did the relationship remain constant?

Well, let me just say, as a young boy, I asked God many times, Lord, I know you love me, but why am I in so much pain?

So, for those 10 years, it was a very unhappy childhood.

It would take a while to describe it, but it was very unhappy.

It destroyed my brother.

He became an alcoholic, and it would have destroyed me had I not had God in my life.

And then it took me decades to get well emotionally from the damage done to me in my childhood because of the way I grew up.

And I've struggled with depression.

I've fought off lust because lust is one way of trying to find love.

In college, I was looking at pornography for a while.

I had a hard time connecting with people and that sort of thing.

It was sort of emotionally backwards in many ways.

So, yeah, there were a lot of struggles, but I never gave up on God except when I went to Catholic seminary after high school, and I went to the wrong seminary where they taught that the Bible is not really true.

It's just a bunch of moral lessons.

It was a Catholic seminary, and I felt tricked, and I felt by the Catholic church.

So, I left God for about a year and a half and just lived like a nonbeliever, but came back to God through a high school ministry called Young Life, actually, that my wife was working with, my girlfriend then, and rededicated my life to the Lord.

But I left him because I felt so hurt and tricked that I believed everything the Catholic church taught me.

And then when I went to seminary, they flipped it on its head and said, Oh, no, the Bible is not literally true.

It's just a bunch of stories.

They teach you moral lessons.

And that seminary, that Maryknoll Seminary, still sends their priest overseas now telling Muslims and Hindus they can get to heaven without Jesus because they're good Muslims and good Hindus.

So, it was awful, and I had to get past that, but I missed God.

I was just so hurt that I had to pull away for a while, and then after about a year and a half, I came back.

If you could imagine life at the age of 84 or even 85, right, because you're on the cusp of 80, right?

What would you leave as a message for your future self if you're listening back to this conversation?

Worship more, pray more, and love the people around you well, family, friends, because you never know when God's going to call you home.

I mean, I think I'm going to live for a long time, but who knows?

Yeah, love God and love people really as well as you can.

If you do those things well, the other things kind of fall in place.

God takes care of the rest of the things, but he's mainly concerned that you love him totally and that you love people well.

The other things are really not as important to God.

If you don't do that, it's like 1 Corinthians 13.

You can give your body to be burned and all that, but without love, it doesn't mean much to God.

Very powerful.

Oh, I love this conversation.

All right, children and grandchildren.

Yeah, four children, 13 grandchildren.

Wow, good seeds.

Yeah, it's really interesting to see the life of an individual being transformed at the age of eight and having the testimonies that you have living in truth, and of course, displacing love throughout the entirety of your life.

Very, very cool.

Well done, Bob.

It's been an honor speaking with you.

In closing, is there anything else you'd like to share?

Well, thank you for the opportunity, and all I can say is I am what I am by the grace of God, because I know better than anybody who I could have been except for his grace and his love.

Bob Fox, links in the show notes.

Amazing audience.

Bob, a pleasure.

I treasure it.

Thank you for being on What Is Inspired.

Thanks for having the conference.