Patricia A. Truax

Patricia A. Truax was born in San Antonio, Texas where her father was stationed with the US Army. Because her father, step-father and husband were in the military, she has lived in 26 places so far, the most exotic being Bangkok, Thailand.

Patricia has had the privileged of being a member of several different Protestant denominations because of her many moves including Baptist, Lutheran Presbyterian, Methodist, Evangelical Free, Christian and Missionary Alliance, and non-denominational. She has sat under the teaching of many fine preachers such as Dr. John MacArthur, Dr. Tim LaHaye, Dr. Perry Alexander and Dr. J. Vernon McGee. Finding strong believers and fellowshipping with them throughout the world has been her joy.

She taught Sunday school, Vacation Bible School and, for seventeen years, she taught children using the material of Child Evangelism Fellowship. She currently attends an Evangelical Presbyterian Church where she teaches a Kay Arthur Precept Bible Study.

Patricia began her publishing experience by writing several family genealogy books. One was a gathering together of all her mother's biographical writings to form an autobiography. Her latest genealogy book was an update of The Lochner Family Chronicles, a genealogy that was started by her ancestor in 1808. This book won a 2010 Award of Commendation from the Concordia Historical Institute of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod.

History of the Booklet "Blessings From God's Word"

by Patricia Truax

October 30, 2010

May the Spirit of the Lord rest upon you,

"The Spirit of wisdom and understanding,

The Spirit of council and might,

The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord."

From Isaiah 11:2 (NASB)

On January 10, 2008, during the second full year of leading the Precept Bible study discussion at Myrtle Grove Evangelical Presbyterian Church, I added a blessing at the end of each lesson when we closed in prayer. This happened because I had been very struck by the blessing in Isaiah 11:2 (above) and wanted to give this blessing to all the ladies in the class. I realized that, as the class leader, God had put me in a position of authority that gave me the privilege of extending His blessings to them.

I continued to give God's blessing each week and was amazed by how eager the ladies were to receive it.

When I started, I used the blessings directly out of Scripture, with a few word changes as appropriate. I then looked for books with blessings in them because I didn't know how to fashion one. I found books that told me blessings were important and we should be giving them, but they had very few examples. Then I turned to the Lord and asked Him to help me write blessings. Each week I would look at the material we were covering, or look at needs in my life or the lives of my family members and think, "How do I/we want to be blessed?" Surely, I thought, the ladies would want to be blessed in the same way.

As I composed each blessing, leaning on the Holy Spirit for guidance, I tried to use verses from God's word to be sure I was in line with His desires for us. This process went on each week for nearly two years of Precept classes.

Then one Thursday, in October of 2010, after the Precept Bible study, my friend Connie asked me if I would gather together the blessings into one document. At this point, it was as if God put me on a roller coaster where I could neither turn to the right nor to the left, but was compelled to follow His track. His way led to not just putting together a page or two of the blessings, but to writing a booklet of them.

Gathering the blessings from the PowerPoint slides that I use when I teach, I rewrote some and polished others, and designed a format for the booklet. Not knowing where all this was leading, I told Connie what was happening. She began praising God and encouraging me, which I took as confirmation that this was not my idea, but His.

Two additional confirmations came. The first was when my husband saw the blessings and immediately said he wanted to start using them when he taught the Bible lesson for the Tuesday morning men's breakfast. The second was when my brother, a pastor, saw the booklet and said he planned to bless his congregation with the blessings during worship services.

Connie edited the booklet and made wonderful suggestions, which I implemented. We both thought that the project was finished but God had other ideas.

The next morning God prompted me to look up all His different names in Scripture and then to rewrite the blessings using His various names. I listed two pages, with two columns each, full of either His names as reflected in the Hebrew language, like Jehovah, or with the ways people in the Bible spoke about God, like "The Lord who is great and mighty". Once I made these changes Connie again checked over the material and again we were sure the booklet was finished.

During my quiet time the morning after we again "finished", it happened once more. We might be finished, but God wasn't. He impressed upon me that I needed to take the blessings and convert them into prayers so that, if someone was unable to give a blessing directly to a person, they could pray the blessings for them. This process took several days, but when it was completed, except for final editing, the booklet was really finished!

It is now November 4, 2010 and I am getting ready to take the booklet to be printed. Last night I was reading Bill Gothard's little book on blessing where he points out how powerful our words are - we can bless or we can curse. We need to be very careful not to say negative things to others because Scripture tells us that they can be cursed by our words; how much better to bless them instead.

As I was meditating on these truths, suddenly I put this together with the fact that the week when the books will be ready, we will be studying James and what he has to say about the power of the tongue. "With our tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness." (James 3:9) God's timing, as always, is perfect!

I am so grateful that God didn't tell me everything He wanted me to do at the beginning but revealed His desires little by little.