I am 67 years young and have been writing poetry since I was a teenager, with many years in between.  My poetry was very carnal and scary, as I was, in my late teens and early 20’s.  After getting saved in 1976 at 24, I started to write Christian poetry sporadically.   When I got married to a wonderful Christian girl in 1978  (and still married to), I stopped writing and worked on a family.  I became a worship leader, Sunday School teacher, lay minister, and eventually a licensed minister.

In 2010, I was driving one day and the Lord dropped a song in my heart.  I often heard melodies in my head, or words of praise with no melodies, but this was both at the same time.  I quickly wrote the words down, recorded them on my cell phone, and shared the song with my Pastor.  He said keep listening, so I did.  This resulted in over 250 songs and worship choruses between 2010 and 2014, all to the glory of God.

But then the focus changed back to poetry, and in 2014 the Lord challenged me to start blogging poems and songs that He would give me.  It went in spurts for a while.  I would wake up in the middle of the night with a few words, and as I typed, the whole poem would just flow out.  Through 2014 and most of 2015, the consistency of my listening, and the frequency of my writing was sporadic.

In 2016, God started flooding my heart with poems and songs, daily if not more often.  This occurred as I battled Multiple Myeloma, a form of blood cancer in the Leukemia family.  I would lay in my hospital bed, and songs would arrive at all times, usually at night.  The nurses would come in often and I would be typing a new poem or song, giving me the opportunity to share the gospel with them.  I was amazed at what God was doing.

In this blog I share most of these words.   I have only shared a few of the ones from 2010-summer of 2014, so most of these are the current ones. They are truly God given and Holy Spirit inspired, and therefor belong to the Church, not to me.  I encourage my readers to share, to comment and to enjoy.  My aim is to glorify God every day, and if these minister to your heart, I am blessed that God has touched you today.

I have one other blog I update almost daily as well.  It is a bible study blog called God’s Maintenance Man.  I started through the Psalms in September of 2016, and did not finish up until October of 2017, blogging almost daily with my reflections on what r=the Psalmist was saying to my soul.  What an amazing journey it was, and how much I learned about myself, and about our loving God.  I have grown in Him tremendously during this time, and have enjoyed the comments from so many of you.  Then James was the study, and then an intense study into all aspects of prayer, which has now a book called “The ASK Principle.”  I recently finished a study on the Sermon on the Mount  and now I am doing a study on the pastoral books of Paul to Timothy and Titus.

I have also just launched a new web site which is a hub for all the various projects God has me involved in.  Many times I will reblog posts from other websites of mine, but there will also be content exclusively on this site.  There is also a link to my YouTube channel where I have recorded a few choruses and songs I have written.  All in all, God has me busy!  This new site is petegardner.net

I hope you’ll stop by and check it out someday.

Be blessed!