One of the The most emphasized commands in the Bible repeated over and over is to honor our mother and father. This Sunday is Mother’s Day to help remind us to honor our mothers. My Mom, Bernice Duke, has been a super mom. I am a pastor of a great church, and my personal walk and love for God that brought me into ministry was a result of the influence of my Mom over the years. I don’t remember hardly ever not going to church, Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, Summer Bible Camp because of Mom’s encouragement. Many of the character strengths that I have came because of Mom’s example. I just finished bicycling 3,000 miles to the Atlantic Ocean in Florida. So many said to me when we got back home, “you made it, you didn’t quit”. I nod my head and smile and say “Yep, I made it”, but I think to myself,  “quitting never entered my mind”, and the reason is because my Mom never quit what she started and she was always encouraging us to keep at what we were doing and not quit, “We could do it”!  As I review my life and think abound who I am I know that I am a product of the people God sovereignly put into my life, and by far  the most influential person in my life spiritually was my Mom.

God is perfectly organized and His creation is as well, but most of us are not naturally organized at all. The purpose of organizing our life is so that the important things in our life get done well, and that we accomplish as much as is possible with our life. I am working at organizing my life, and becoming a person that does the high priority things faithfully and successfully. Managing time is important, but an aspect of being organized that I need to work on most is organizing my surroundings. Having a system of storing things and being disciplined to put things where they belong so it doesn’t take half a day to find a tool. Getting rid of clutter and unimportant things that tend to complicate and hide that which is needed and important. In our Christian life there are a few really important things like reading the Bible, praying, worship, but often they don’t get done because our life is so full of stuff, choices, activities, and events. An organized person simplifies his life so the important stuff gets done. I am determined to do that.

I have a prayer App on my IPad And I have close to 2,000 people in it that I pray for. The App allows me to add pictures of people to help me remember them better. I collect many of my pictures from Facebook, others I take when around you  with my IPhone.  I record information about each person as I become aware of it so I can pray with insight. I try to get through every person each week. It takes me about an hour each day to make that happen.  It is funny how many think when they hear about my praying how hard this must be. It really isn’t because my faith in the power to change people through my prayers has grown so much that I feel a special sense of priviledge to be able to influence so many for good.