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Norm Miller, founder of I Am Second Leadership, told TwoTen about how his desires became less about him and more about Him. Part of that journey is included below...

One of the most well known of Jesus’ parables is the Parable of the Prodigal Son. A father has two sons, one of which asked for an advance on his inheritance. He then ventures out into the wicked world to indulge in all sorts of worldly pleasures until he runs out of money. With nowhere else to go and head hung low, he returns home to beg for his father’s mercy.

As the parable goes, his father is overjoyed at his son’s return and orders the boy’s brother to get him cleaned up with new clothes and to prepare a feast for him. Understandably, the brother can’t believe that his father was not only allowing the prodigal, or reckless, son to return to him after wasting all of his inheritance, but was celebrating him! There are three points of view to this parable; that of the prodigal son, the brother and the father.

It’s clear to see that the father represents God and the brothers represent mankind. Many of us may think that we are the “good” brother, but in reality, we are all reckless with the inheritance that we’re given and require the mercy of a loving Father. For Norm Miller, he was all too eager to indulge in the pleasures of the world.

Norm was born and raised in Galveston, Texas, and his father owned a successful gas/service station in the middle of town. Although he was a hard–working, industrious man, he had a weakness for alcohol. Norm was a mischievous young man whose primary focus was when and where the next party was. Norm wasn’t really interested in school but realized that if he wanted to avoid being drafted into military service, he would have to go to college: the lesser of two evils in his mind. He enrolled in North Texas State in Denton, Texas after a friend of his told him what a great party school it was.

North Texas State was located in a “dry” county (selling alcohol was prohibited), so he and some of his buddies had the brainstorm that they could make money by buying alcohol in the neighboring county and reselling it in Denton for a premium. Norm had a keen eye for seeing lucrative business opportunities.

Their operation was an immediate success and soon grew to the point that they needed to expand. They rented the local armory hall for “dances” to front their burgeoning business named the “Hi- Low Club”. It eventually grew too large and was forced to shut down. It was during his college years that he met his future wife Anne. She was also from Galveston, and they immediately hit it off.

Norm graduated from college without much of a plan for his future and wound up selling encyclopedias door-to-door. His father sold his service station and asked if he would join him in opening a battery distributorship in Memphis for Interstate Batteries, that had just started their national distributorship program. Norm jumped at the chance and moved to Memphis.

Norm and Anne were married and settled down in Memphis,and she began to realize the extent of his drinking problem. He would travel extensively as part of his job as a salesman for Interstate, and his nights were spent partying. His daughter Tracey was born in 1964 and Anne was practically raising her on her own. His life was starting to tick, unfortunately, just like a time bomb...

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