My wife Patty has been having a lot of pain in her hip. She walks with a walker, limping around, grimacing the whole time. I pray for her all day long, especially when I see her in so much obvious pain. Many other people are praying for her as well. God has chosen not to heal Patty up to this point, and He may never heal her. We don’t know what God’s will is for her. One of the very clear teachings in the Bible is that suffering is part of life; there is no getting away from it. Jesus suffered, and we will all suffer trials in our lives. Five key things will help us in our suffering. 1. Do, indeed, pray and ask God to heal or remove the trial, but in case He doesn’t, ask for strength to endure it and for joy and peace despite the sufferings so that you can be a good witness to all who see you suffering. 2. Remind yourself constantly that suffering is what the Father used to perfect the character of Jesus, and trials are what He will use to make us like Jesus, but trials don’t work unless we rejoice in the midst of our trials. We may find it very difficult to rejoice when we are hurting, but we do need to work hard not to complain, grumble, or feel sorry for ourselves. 3. Don’t be grumpy to the people around you. It is easy to do. God gives his grace and strength to those who love those around them; the harder it is, the more God blesses us. 4. Set your mind on heaven and remind yourself that you are headed to heaven because of what Jesus did for you. Use your sufferings to remind yourself of the sufferings Jesus endured for you. When we get to heaven, we will get a glorified body that will never hurt again. 5. Look for people around you who are going through trials and encourage them. Don’t compare your problems to theirs; just encourage them. God bestows great blessings on anyone who puts others first. 

I wrote this blog after watching Patty suffer over the past several weeks. She is a champion. 

Things happen, and people’s words make me feel anger and resentment. I can’t stop that emotional response, but I can learn to keep the emotion from lasting very long or from controlling my thinking and behavior. When we let the emotion of anger or resentment stay with us, we allow our thinking to go round and round, replaying the event or words that caused it, and we become less and less in control of our own lives. Words or actions that follow an emotional experience of anger or resentment are almost always wrong, hurtful to others, and damaging to our relationships. What we want is for all of our words and actions to be pleasing to the Lord. That is possible, but it requires great self-control, gained through practice. The key for me is practicing three things. First, memorize key Bible verses on various areas of life, and review them often. As soon as I feel anger or resentment, I set my mind on one of these verses and begin to meditate on it, that is, repeat it mentally over and over. The second discipline I practice is writing down what I did and said after feeling angry or resentful, which displeased the Lord. I may have been good and done everything right, but that is rare. The third thing is that I confess to the Lord that I blew it, and I ask Him for the strength never to do that same thing again. The worst thing I can do is justify my responses based on what was done or said. I don’t want others to control my life by pushing my buttons. 

Several things have gradually changed in me as I have gotten older. Some good and others not so good. The change that irritates me the most is my indecisiveness. I used to think through situations quickly, make a decision, and go to work to carry it out. Even though I made decisions quickly, I rarely made a bad one. I wasn’t paralyzed by a fear of making a wrong choice or of failing. Now I think about a problem or situation forever, and when I finally decide what I am going to do, I sit in my chair, not moving, almost as if I am paralyzed. I don’t think I get stuck in limbo because of fear of failing or making a mistake. I just don’t have that crazy drive that I used to have to accomplish as much in a day, a week, a month, and a year as possible. I am not lazy, but I am content with a much slower pace of life than I once was. Almost everything on my to-do list can be postponed without a problem. This change in me occurred about the time I turned 70. At first, I felt a great deal of guilt and kept trying to figure out how to overcome it. But now I have gotten comfortable with my old man pace of life. I still preach and teach three or four times a week, have half a dozen meetings each week, read and write a bunch, I spend a fair amount of time with God in prayer every week, and I always have a building project going and a fishing or hunting trip scheduled soon. The main difference is that now I do things when I feel like it, and often what I feel like is taking a nap. 

I am building a camper for my Ford F-150. I have been looking at campers for the last year to buy, but they were too expensive and too heavy. So I bought some plans from the same company that I buy boat plans from. They build everything using lightweight plywood and fiberglass. I worked on it all day today and got most of the roof fiberglassed. Tomorrow, after church, my goal is to get all of the sides glassed as well, and then it will be ready for the rain on Monday. The plans don’t give much detail on the interior, so I am figuring that out as I go. There is the toilet, the shower, the hot water heater, the water tank, the water pump, the fridge, the air conditioning, the stove, the microwave, the heater, the sink, the holding tank for the used water and poop, the propane tank, the drawers and cupboards, the table, the seating area, and the bed. How do you get all of that in an area that is 7 feet wide and 12 feet long?

There are also two lithium batteries, a battery charger, a generator, 2 roof vents, 4 roof-mounted solar panels, and all the wiring that connects everything. I have 12V wiring from the lithium batteries that powers the camper’s lights and most of the appliances. I have 110 V wiring that comes from the generator or from an extension cord plugged into an outside source at campgrounds or at home (shore power), powering the battery charger, the microwave, and the air conditioning unit. I also have the 12V wiring from the pickup that powers the taillights, turn signals, clearance lights, and brake lights. My lithium batteries are charged by the pickup alternator, by the solar panels, and by the battery charger when we have 110V. I often go out and sit in the camper for an hour, visualizing where everything will go and how it will hook together. I draw pictures and diagrams as I do that. I am enjoying the entire process very much, and I can’t wait until the first time I drive down the road with it pulling my trailer with my quad in it, or my boat trailer. Life is good. The Lord is good who lets me do such things. 

As I grew up on the farm, I used to argue with my Dad a lot. My Dad was a very wise man, and I have no clue why I felt the need to be right about some of the most unimportant things. I carried that argumentative spirit through much of my life, and it embarrasses me to remember some of the verbal sparring matches I got into with people. Socrates was quoted as saying, “Those who win most of the debates they get into with people, lose a few, but they tend to lose the ones that matter.” He also said, ” Wise people ask good questions during a debate and learn from their opponent. They consider that more virtuous than winning.” ”Wise people resist the urge to be right, they resist the urge to be in charge, they resist the urge to win, and they resist the urge to be thought of as wise.“ It is sad to think about all the conversations I had in the past when I was a fool. 

I was reading some writings by Marcus Aurelius, a Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 AD, and he wrote,” We need to stop monkeying around.” My Dad used to say that to us boys as we grew up on the farm. It is interesting that a phrase as weird as “monkeying around” could persevere in use for over 2,000 years. I read one chapter of the book of Proverbs by Solomon every day, and it was written over 1000 years before Marcus Aurelius. Almost every chapter has words and phrases still used today as we communicate. Communication is a fascinating topic to think about. The ability to communicate varies tremendously from person to person.

My ministry, my job, my responsibility is to communicate the truth about God and His message to us in a way that is clear and understandable. Almost everything I teach or speak aloud, I write down. Writing is the most effective way to make what I want to say clear. I don’t read what I wrote when I speak, but I do have a condensed set of notes to help keep me on track. In everyday conversations, I hear a lot of people who are poor communicators; it is very hard to understand what they are trying to say. I also hear people who are exceptionally good at communicating. I try to learn from both, and as I listen to them, I try to identify practices and methods that help or hurt their communication. Probably the number one problem in clear communication is talking too much. I am sure the reason people talk too much is that they are trying to explain what they mean more clearly, but it has the opposite effect. There is a built-in result of being concise: we become clearer. 

When I was 22, I borrowed $40,000 and started my own small dairy. My goal was to grow it and to become a very successful dairy farmer. My cows picked up a disease when they were being trucked to my dairy, and in less than one year, half of them died, and I had to sell the remaining ones. I was left with a huge debt, which seemed impossible to pay off. I found a well-paying job, worked very hard, and, in two years, I was debt-free. Over the years, most of the hard circumstances that came into my life were like that, very hard, but ones I could conquer and solve with hard work, wisdom, godly counsel, and God’s strength. I enjoyed the challenge of being an overcomer and recognized the character growth I experienced as I faced and solved problems that God brought into my life. As I have gotten older, I have faced more and more difficult circumstances and trials that I can’t solve or fix. My brother-in-law has pancreatic cancer, my son-in-law has colon cancer, my sister has a severe depression and anxiety disorder, another son-in-law is in a wheelchair, Patty came home from the hospital today with some kind of infection in her hip that is causing her great pain that has the doctors baffled, many of my really good friends have cancer, many others have already died, and the circumstances in the world around me are getting crazier by the day. I can pray, and I do, but I am always careful to end my prayer with, “not my will but yours be done.” Everybody is going to die sooner or later, and there is nothing I can do about that. Now the challenge of my life is to trust God, to rejoice always, to grumble and complain about nothing, to be anxious about nothing, and to be a very attractive advertisement for Jesus as Savior because of my overflowing joy. The old problems were like climbing a mountain; they were done, conquered, and then we moved on to bigger problems to solve. Now the problems stay, get bigger, and the great challenge in life is not letting what I used to conquer conquer me. Now I live in the midst of giants that I used to kill and drive out of my life. But now they don’t go away. The great daily challenge of my life now is to laugh at the giants, shake my fist in their face, and not let them intimidate me. 

What do people want more than anything else? They want personal freedom, happiness, and the respect of their peers. Most people who responded to the survey said these were desires, but their responses made these hopes seem more like wishful thinking than very probable. They believe that what controls their personal freedom, happiness, and their peers’ respect is beyond their control. The truth, according to the Bible, is that our personal freedom is a result of our choices in life, that our happiness is a result of our personal choices in life, and that the respect we receive from the people in our lives is a result of our choices. It is easier to blame circumstances and others for our misery and failure than to own the responsibility, but that is what we have been doing since Adam. We choose how we think and talk about our circumstances. We can’t usually control circumstances, but we can control our response, and it is that response that determines most of what we really desire in life. Circumstances don’t determine my feelings; my response to my circumstances determines my emotions. 

All over the world, there is fighting. There are wars, boxing, martial arts, wrestling, and life. To live is to fight. God made it that way. I fight to accomplish my goals. I fight against my flesh, the devil, and the world. On our way back from Sierra Leone, we had a layover in Paris, so we added a day and toured Paris and Normandy. The Normandy tour was very moving, as we saw the story of D-Day and the casualties of war. I can’t imagine what it was like to be a soldier storming the enemy on Omaha Beach with all that gunfire happening all around you. But one thing I am sure of is that each of those soldiers was not complacent or apathetic about their role and responsibility. I sometimes get lazy, complacent, and apathetic in my responsibility as a Christian, given the responsibility to build God’s church. I want to be full of fire and passion to conquer the kingdom of darkness and to accomplish as much with my life as is possible before I die. 

There are two kinds of people in this world. The first looks at others who have accomplished significant things in their lives and thinks, “Why them?” Why not me? The other looks at those same people and thinks: If they can do it, why can’t I? He sees the success of others as an inspiration, not as intimidation. Which attitude will propel you onward and upward? Which will drive you to bitterness and despair?

I read a lot, and I like to read biographies of successful people. I especially enjoy reading about successful pastors and leaders. As I read about these people, I try to learn from their story and believe that I can be like them. One of my favorite biographies is “George Mueller of Bristol.” He accomplished an unbelievable amount simply by praying for it. All through the book, I am saying to myself, “I can do that, I can do that, and I will, help me, Lord. 

I picked this up from my mother. Whenever I would talk about someone’s great accomplishment, usually in sports, Mom would say to me, “You can do that if you try hard.” If you hear something often enough, you begin to believe it, and I did. Thank you, Mom.