didnt have to go anywhere or do anything this morning so slept in until 8 am. Worked all morning out in my shop cleaning it up, organizing, building shelves, and putting in some more lights. Ordered replacement parts for my fine Delta band saw that hasn’t worked in 5 years. Looks pretty good. Ordered some plans for a very attractive kennel for my Russel dog that looks like a nice piece of furniture. It can set beside my chair, I can put books on top of it and he can sleep in it. Went to my office at 2 pm and worked on my sermon and prayed a bunch for people in our church. Had a wonderful service tonight with guys in my leadership class sharing some of their goals for the year. They did super well. Seahawks won! Trail Blazers won! Didn’t run, or bike, or swim, or lift weights! Feeling pretty rested. I am praying that tomorrow is a really good day in our worship services and that my leadership class guys hit it out of the park like they did tonight. I think I will go to bed😄

I went swimming this morning, and I am now sitting in my chair thinking that I am just a whisker from death. I can’t believe how tired I am and I only swam for 40 minutes, but it was the first time I have been swimming for 2 years. I thought surely with all the biking and running I have been doing that swimming will be a piece of cake. Nope, I am feeling so old and so tired. It is at times like this when it is super hard to control my self talk, and not talk myself into just sitting in this chair the rest of my life. I have a full marathon on the calendar for the first weekend of May, a half Ironman Trithlon for the end of June, and a Leadman Triathlon which is longer than an Ironman scheduled for the end of September. Right now I am thinking that I am crazy, and that I should drop those and find a couple of 5K runs to do, and call that good. I am in the middle of this battle in my head as I write this, and I am not sure what the outcome will be. Sooner or later a guy has to face the fact that he can’t do this stuff anymore. I think I will go to bed.

As people we seem to have the ability to believe something to be true, but to live as if we don’t believe it to be true.  Various words come to mind to describe this phenomenon, hypocrite, double-minded, crazy. I personally believe with all my heart that Jesus Christ is God, that He is Almighty, omnipresent, all knowing, all powerful, that He loves me beyond comprehension, that He sees everything I do, that He hears everything I say, that He knows everything I think. So does that belief that I say I have influence the way I live my life? I want it to! But if I am honest I will have to admit that often the world around me has more influence on my behavior and choices than my belief in Jesus does. I want to be a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ, not weird, or obnoxious, but loving and forgiving and accepting. How do I do that? I think I will preach about that this weekend   at JBC. Maybe I will learn something. Why not join me, maybe you will learn something to, worth a shot anyway.

I got 110 fish because the guy I bought them from said about 10 would die in transport, but I have had them  for 5 days and only one has died and they are growing very fast. Here they are in my 300 gallon tank and they are all gathered around eating away on the food I just gave them.  You can see the hot water element at the top of the picture that keeps the water at 76 degrees. They like to hang around the warmer water near the element. I was afraid they might burn themselves on the hot element but they seem smart enough so far. About 4 more months I will start eating some Tilapia fillets. Funny how new hobbies give me a new spark that seems to influence all of my life. I wonder what my next one will be😄

Tuesday is when the Jefferson Baptist Prayer Letter comes out. There are a lot of prayer requests in it each week. There is a lot of pain, and hurt, and need expressed in all those requests. It gets emailed to my iPad.  I pray through it  on Tuesday evening and do a lot of “cutting and pasting” of prayer requests into my prayer journal where I have everybody who attends JBC and many who have visited. I try to get a picture of as many as I can get pasted in my journal as well so I can pray with more passion and remember names and faces in the process. Over the years of spending hours and hours praying through my prayer journal and recording requests, problems, and needs and then recording changes and answers I have grown very confident and strong in faith and believe with little doubt that many changes happen to the people I faithfully pray for each week as God works in their life and answers my prayers. My devotion to this time of praying through my prayer journal has grown and grown over the years, and I now consider that time the most important thing that I do each week. I won’t know until I get to heaven how much God has done in the lives of people as a result of my praying and the people I pray for have little awareness of the difference that God has accomplished because of my interceeding for them. They will find out in heaven as well.

The Jews rest on Saturday, most Christians rest on Sunday, but I rest on Monday. Today was a good rest day. Slept in until 9 am, ate a nice breakfast with my beautiful wife, and took a nap around 2 pm. Most of the day I piddled around outside doing odd jobs for my wife and daughter Sherri. Came in for a coffe break about every 30 minutes and read my Bible, memorized some verses for about 15 minutes and then went back outside to cross off another “honey do”. It was a very relaxing day. I can tell if I had a good rest day if at the end of it I am excited about the next day and getting a lot done. I will read the passage in John 5 about a dozen times that I will preach about this next week this evening and probably get some good ideas and direction while I am sleeping on how to teach it. Looking forward to next Monday and the National Championship game between Oregon and Ohio State. Most people even on a day off from work don’t really rest. Most can’t rest from everything, but even back in the days when I milked cows 7 days a week I got in a good rest day. Rest is So important to keeping a good attitude  when life gets tough.

Tuesday I start my swimming lessons. I don’t like to swim. I don’t swim very well, but June 25th I am going to do a half Ironman Triathlon and I will need to swim 1.5 miles in an hour. On Sept 20th I am going to do a “Leadman” Triathlon and I will need to swim 3.1 miles in 2 hours. The farthest I have swam is 1 mile and it took me an hour so I have a lot of progress I need to make in the next 6 months to accomplish these goals. A lot of my big goals I anticipate with great excitement. This one I am dreading. I am thinking this swimming thing is going to involve a lot of frustration, and probably a lot of weariness and even pain, and for sure intimidation and embarrassment as I swim with others that will probably make me look like a pollywog. I am working hard on my self talk and repeating often to myself, “enjoy the challenge, enjoy the challenge, enjoy the challenge”.  Tomorrow I am going to buy my swimming suit and goggles and officially sign up and pay my dues, then comes Tuesday. O Lord, please help me!

i got my little fishes today. 110 little 1 inch tilapia are in my 300 gallon plastic tank that is half buried in the ground in my greenhose. The water from the fish tank gets pumped my 4 grow beds that are filled with 3/4 inch gravel and then drains out and goes back to the fish tank. I am planting all kinds of vegetables in my grow beds that will use the nutrients from the fish poop and will grow fast. I will soon be eating fish and vegetables from my little 10×14 foot greenhouse. I have so much fun researching all the components and details on how to do aquaponics. Learning new things is very exilerating.  I wonder how it will be in heaven with all the new sights and revelations and a mind that is not cluttered with sin and will be perfect. Now that is going to be fun!!

i heard a speaker a year ago say we shouldn’t worry about trying to please  the Lord because He has accepted us just as we are. I thought to myself, “Everything I do is an attempt to please the Lord”. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:9 “it is my ambition whether in this life or the next to please the Lord in all that I do”.  I don’t work at pleasing the Lord to be accepted, but because I love Him with all my heart and that is what a person who loves someone does. Over the years I ask the question more and more, “What really pleases the Lord a lot?” That question probably guides my decision making more than anything else. I have come to the conclusion that I can sense the Lord’s pleasure in me more than anything else. When Jesus was baptized the Father spoke from heaven, “this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased”. God communicates His pleasure in us. If we don’t have pleasing Him at the top of our mind you won’t even know why you are feeling joy, you will think it is because of an event or something that you ate. “Entering into the joy of our master” is the main reward for faithfulness Matthew 25:21.

as I have asked that question over and over every day I have come to the conclusion that right at the top of the list of activities that please the Lord with me is when I love my wife sacrificially and unconditionally. That means I work hard at making her very happy with my words, my actions, and my attentiveness. That means that I work hard at making my wife the happiest person on the earth even when she is grumpy, or not feeling good, or distracted with grandkids. I am to love my wife the way Jesus loved the Church and gave Himself up for her.

So many men blame their wife for the quality of their marriage and nag at them and get upset at them. It not only doesn’t change anything they a. re very displeasing to the Lord, and will feel it. That inner sense of failure they often blame on their wives as well.

it is January 2nd. It would be a good to change our attitude by making some measurable goals that focus on making our wife the happiest person on the planet. If you don’t know what that is ask her.

I had a blast watching the Oregon Duck football team soundly beat Florida State. The last years Heisman trophy winner the quarter back for Florida State playing this years Heisman’s winner, quarter back for Oregon. There was lots of drama as last years National Champion that was unbeaten this year played Oregon. I also watched a game before the Rose Bowl and then watched the Sugar bowl with the second half of the national championship being determined. Looks like Oregon and Ohio State are going to play for the right to be the National Champion January 12th. It was one of those fun, lazy days of sitting around most of the day watching football and eating to much but not really feeling to guilty about it. Tomorrow I will get back after it. A day like today is very effective in filling up my gas tank and giving me renewed energy. I have learned that If I am going to run with endurance the race God has set before me that I need to systematically rest. Today was a nice rest day.