Jimmy Clayton

Rebuilding Your House Jimmy Clayton

Former Championship Bodybuilder Tells All in New Book

LONGWOOD, FL?From trials to triumph, one jock learned that having it all wasn?t enough. A new book details the life of former championship bodybuilder Jimmy Clayton. Clayton paints the picture of a meager and handicapped beginning for himself and his family. He grew up in the Depression years, when poverty was a way of life in the South. We are drawn into a very poignant moment, back in 1949, when his mother escaped with her four boys, leaving their moonshine-selling father behind. Clayton includes those and other memorable stories of his journey from boyhood to manhood. Even though this athlete reached worldly heights, he realized all his successes only left him yearning for more. Looking back, he?d overcome the odds, but now he was on a search for the ultimate. Could he attain it? Rebuilding Your House is Clayton?s inspirational story. His mission? To get others to go the distance. Real winners, he says, rebuild their inner "house"?themselves?inviting Christ?s transforming! power into their lives.

In Rebuilding Your House, Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places (October, $15.99, 1-59781-680-9, $25.99, 1-59781-692-2) author Jimmy Clayton chronicles both his good years and the heart-breaking years. "When someone tells you there is no hope, do not believe that person," Clayton says. "When my brothers and I lived in Georgia, no one thought we would ever amount to anything. God proved them wrong." Follow his family in their journeys from Georgia, to Ohio, to Tennessee, to the Midwest, to California. The author nostalgically recounts one after another of his personal stories, including this poignant one?a black man, living in the repressive South, who risks his life to save a white boy from a burning house. The little boy took over fifty years to thank his rescuer. It is not long before we join Clayton in realizing his athletic abilities, which garner him both high school state wrestling champ and all American honors in football (state of Illinois), several scholarships, and one of AAU?s wrestling championships (Northwest Missouri University). When the family moves to California, Clayton really comes into his own as a championship bodybuilder.

Looking back at his life, he truly believed that being a winner in athletics would bring him all the love and satisfaction he ever yearned for. "I put my hope and love in athletics, and the pleasures of this world, but the satisfaction that I found in those were only for a season," Clayton says. "The only complete satisfaction was returning to the God that knew me in love before I was conceived in my mother?s womb. Being a Christian doesn't mean you will not suffer and have problems. We can be confident that He will make it all work for the good. The sufferings only come to make us strong. We can know that Jesus is a good shepherd and He will always be the ?fourth man in the furnace.?" Some of his stories will make readers laugh and some will bring a tear to their eyes, but readers will be moved to gain hold of the message Clayton is sending "that there is hope in Jesus Christ." Jimmy Clayton was ordained in the Garden Of Prayers in 1978. His biggest ministry has been to feed and clothe the poor on the streets of Los Angeles for the last thirty years. Clayton has a love and passion for teaching and preaching wherever he goes. He now attends Mercy Store House in Azusa, California. The church is led by Pastors Dan and Sharon Spangler. Jimmy and his gift from the Lord, wife Denise, are happily married with two sons, Jaime and Joey, and two daughters, Melanie and Michele. He has four grandchildren?Cody, Jessie, Avery, and Andrew. Jimmy and Denise live in San Dimas, California. Xulon Press is the world?s largest Christian publisher, with more than 2,500 titles published to date. Retailers may order Rebuilding Your House through Ingram Book Company and/or Spring Arbor Book Distributors.

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