Well, first and foremost you need to know that I have loved Jesus Christ for almost 68 years. He brought me to himself when I was 20 years of age. What of the first 20 years? I'll talk about that in a minute.

You should also know that I have been married to the greatest woman on the planet for more than 40 years. We are more in love today than when we first met.

I am also in love with a female canine. A tiny Maltese dog who can't seem to get more than 5 feet away from me at any given moment. She is my little shadow. She is also one of the greatest gifts God has given me.

But you didn't start reading this for all that stuff. Maybe . . . just maybe (or maybe not) you want to know who this guy is. What credentials does he have to think he can offer something to you in the way of spiritual fortification, knowledge, integrity and maybe just a little sass?

Ok, ok, I get it. I'll tell you about myself. But first, you need to know that this is not what I do for fun. I hate trying to convince people that I am not a fruitcake.

In the military, they used to tell us that the objective of Basic Training was to get us Trained, Organized and Equipped. 'T, O and E!' So, you want to know if I am ready, if I have the expertise or even the right to give you what you find on this website.

You decide, sir or madam (when it comes to gender, that's as high as I can count). You decide if you want to get interested in what I do.

The first 20 years? The first 20 years of my life might be described as an epileptic frog in the hot frying pan of life.

I was born in a Catholic hospital in the dusty town of Ponca City, Oklahoma. My dad, Roy Morris, was a Baptist minister, and my Mom's name was Addie.

I had lived all of 10 months when my father collapsed in his pulpit and died within the week of pancreatic cancer.

My Mom, two brothers and two sisters, moved to Atlanta, Georgia where they were taken in tow by my mother's family, and where I was raised.

Since I was an infant, I had no notion at all of what was going on, but my family told me later that Mom had to be hospitalized -- where she stayed for the rest of her life. I was raised by aunts, uncles, siblings, and a wonderful black nurse (Lizzie Mae), who was more of a Mother to me than anyone.

My oldest sister (17 years my senior) told me that I was a precocious child. I do remember running out of the bathroom stark naked to stand next to the stove in the living room to dry off. It was COLD in that bathroom. I backed my little butt up against that stove and got a sizzle the size of a silver dollar. I was inconsolable. My sister put butter (margarine) on it. She said it would make it feel better.

It didn't.

At East Lake grammar school I pooped in my knickers in first grade and was sent home. Hit a fifth-grade home run at recess, and stole Dorsey Herron's baseball glove. Had my first kiss in 9th grade at Murphy High School on the train coming back from the football state championship. Became a soda-jerk at the neighborhood drugstore where I knocked down some serious coin from the cash register. Got fired for that.

Volunteered for the draft and served as a scope dope in a radar outfit, and then manned a console to launch ground to air missiles. All I really cared about was raging hormones and booze. Climbed the post fence one night to have sex with the farmer's daughter next to the station.

In short, I was not a good kid.

In short, I was a mess!

After two years of military service, at age 20, I attended a community college. Two weeks later, I blew that off owing to the fact that understanding physics, for me, was like trying to speak Ugurtu. I had been told all my life until then that I wasn't "college material." I believed it to be absolsutely true. Left Georgia and drove my '54 Chevy Bel-Air to California to live with my sister -- the one that's so good with butter. Got a job as a copy boy with the Long Beach Press-Telegram. Had four bosses. One of them was a . . . Christian. 😖

The Christian walked out to my desk one day and used the word, "God." Unknown to him, the night before, I was a basket-case. Got up out of bed around midnight and walked out to the front porch. I was at the extreme end of miserable. I looked up into the night sky and said, "God, if you are there, I need help." So the next day this guy walks out to my desk and says something about God.

Go figure.

Long story short, he led me to Christ in his home the following Wednesday night. Now here is where it gets interesting.

Went to church with him and his family the next Sunday. Met a guy (one of the church ministers) who said, "You need to be discipled." Couple of weeks later he suborned (as incite to commit a crime) me to give a testimony along with others in the church. It was a big church. This meant that I had to get up in front of a lot of people and talk about God.

. . . Are you kidding me?

When I finished my "testimony," a little old lady got up out of her seat and came to meet me as I stepped off the dais. The pews in this church were like theater seats. Meaning that when you stand up out of one, it had springs that made it slap back against itself and make a loud noise. Thinking it was applause, everybody stood up and gave me a standing ovation.

Then, this little old lady came up to me and said, "Oh, that was so wonderful. You sounded just like Billy Graham!"

That did it. Two weeks into this Christian stuff, I felt the "call to ministry."

So I went to a Christian college where I majored in Biblical Studies. I was a part of the "Preacher Boy" class, the purpose of which was to train people to become pastors. With their Bachelor's degree, many of the Preacher Boys did exactly that.

Instead, I went back to school -- to seminary for even more training. I somehow managed to cram my three-year seminary program into seven, owing to the fact that I spent my final year in seminary pastoring my first church. I was after my "Master of Divinity" degree. That is a three-year program, but I did an additional 30 hours more than required, before I actually graduated.

In the process of pastoring my second congregation, I decided to go for my Ph.D. As I stepped across the stage to receive my degree and move my golden tassel to the left side (or was it the right?), I said to myself, "Well, I'll never have to look for a job again."

When you stop laughing, I'll continue.

You done? Ok . . .

Following his doctoral studies in 1972, Paul labored for over 23 years in the mental health profession. He served as Clinical Director of Thesis 96 Inc., a Christian Counseling ministry in Fairfax, Virginia, and as Program Director for two chronic and acute level psychiatric hospitals in San Bernardino, California. Over this time he developed his own approach to Christian psychotherapy called, Redemptive Therapy.

During this time in Fairfax, Dr. Paul and his wife, Bonnie, produced a live, call-in radio talk show entitled, Linked with Love, for the Washington, D.C. metroplex. This was in the pre-cellphone days and listeners would often stop their cars and use pay phones to call in.

In 1978, Charles W. Colson, Special Counsel to President Nixon and founder of Prison Fellowship, tapped him to head the training program for that organization.

"I had read Colson's book. After a couple of twists and truly miraculous turns, before I knew it, I was doing seminars in prisons around the country for Prison Fellowship, a ministry to inmates and their families. Then again, the next thing I knew, I had been hired to head up all the seminars, both in all the prisons and in a seminar in Washington, DC. All of this as Prison Fellowship's newly minted National Training Director. It is now the largest ministry of its kind in the world (not that I had anything to do with that)."

Shortly after his new birth in Christ, Paul discovered he had a gift:

Writing.

Paul has written poems, short stories, and stories for children, published The Journal of Redemptive Therapy, and authored two non-fiction books: Love Therapy. explaining his approach to psychotherapy, and Shadow of Sodom, a work addressing the social and moral issue of homosexuality and a meaningful Christian response to it.

His most recent, and to date, what he believes is his most significant work is a volume of historical fiction, THE JUSTUS SCROLLS, Recollections of an Almost Apostle, the story of Jesus as seen through the eyes of the disciple NOT selected to replace Judas Iscariot, Joseph bar Sabbas, called Justus. This work details the incredible experience of Justus as he daily witnessed events surrounding Jesus; events that would shape the world, and generate more than 2 billion followers.

Dr. Morris has ministered to Churches, colleges and universities, youth camps and conferences, prisons throughout the continental United States and Canada, to people from every walk of life: the homeless, rescue missions, sufferers of chronic and acute mental illness, housewives, students, scholars, theologians, Congressmen, Senators, clergy, the State Department, the Defense Department, the FBI, the CIA, numerous state prisons, the Federal Bureau of Prisons; all of these have been touched by God through his life and ministry. Although retired professionally, Dr. Paul stays very active with Social Media and Internet ministries.

Paul and his wife, Bonnie, now live in Marietta, a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, and worship at Peachtree Church in Atlanta. They have six children between them, and ten grandchildren.

("Retired? Well, I'm a little slower now, but how does one retire from God's call to the work of ministry? Sorry, but I will serve him the best I can until my last breath." -- PDM)