This week is one of our “Five Days of Prayer” events.  We have about 20 people in the prayer room from 5 to 10 am and from 5 to 10 pm Monday through Friday. We are praying for people, events, and ministries.  I have a goal to be in the prayer room 40 hours this week, which is the goal I usually make for this prayer event when we hold it every three months. It makes for a very full week doing my normal responsibilities at church and home as well as the praying, but in spite of that these “five days of prayer” are probably my favorite weeks of the year.

One of the promises in the Bible is that when we gather together like we are doing to pray and seek God’s presence that He does indeed manifest Himself in such a way that in our spirit we can sense His presence, and the result is an incredible peace and joy that sticks with me for some time after the event is over.  The more I participate in these prayer times it seems the more sensitive I become to God’s presence, and that seems to stick with me after the five days as well.

Joshua 1:9 say, “Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go”  I know that to be true by faith, but it is so nice to experience His presence in reality. With the presence of God courage does indeed increase, as well as joy, and peace.

There are some who think that because I am in the prayer room for 40 hours that I am a super saint, but I am just very addicted to God’s blessings of joy and peace, so I am there more for what I receive, and secondly for all that God does for others in response to our prayers.

Friday evening and Saturday morning I am speaking at a “Men’s Retreat”. I think that is my favorite thing to do, of all the things I do in ministry. Everyone has unique roles and responsibilities depending on age, gender, job, and other circumstances in their life. Being a responsible man means you understand what your responsibilities are and you are faithful in doing them. A responsibility is something you do that impacts and influences the joy, the success, the growth, and the security of others. The Bible teaches that those that are faithful to what they have been given, will be given more responsibility. Men are created by God to want more responsibility, but some have had that desire crushed and squeezed out of them by life events. I wake up every morning and ask the Lord for more, and for His strength to be faithful. I enjoy teaching men and challenging them to be faithful and to aspire to being useful to God, and bearing much fruit for Him. 

It has been so nice the last two days working outside in the warmth and sunshine.  I knew it was coming sooner or later. One of the “big three words” in the Bible is Hope, and the other two are Love and Faith. We tend to define hope as “maybe it will, maybe it won’t”, but the Biblical word, Hope, means “the positive expectation of a future event”.  The book of Hebrews says “We have a hope, both sure and steadfast and is the anchor of our soul”. I knew it was going to get warm and that we would see the sunshine, I just didn’t know when.

I am going to get a new, brand new, never to get old, perfect in every way, body.  That is not a “maybe yes, maybe no” kind of hope, that is a “positive expectation of a future event” hope, I just don’t know when. The more my old, creaky, stiff, achy, sickly body goes downhill the more I think about my future hope. My hope gives me joy and peace, it is the key to the endurance in my life because it is just a matte of time.

Hebrews 12:1, “Run the race with endurance.” It seems like the older I get the more tired I become, and the quicker I get tired. Endurance as a character trait is running tired, and not quitting because of weariness.  Endurance is mostly a mind thing, it is disciplining our mind not to dwell on the tiredness, but on the goals we have set to glorify God and accomplish something that really matters. Endurance is learning to think about the things in my life that are fun, enjoyable, and noble. 

Patty has this obsession with her chickens. She talks about them like another set of grandchildren. Whenever we go out to eat she gets a little box for everybody’s left over food to go in, and if someone asks if she is bringing it home for a snack later or for Seth, Patty says “no, it is for my chickens”.  So, we have a major crisis at our house!! Something has killed and eaten 3 of her chickens. I set up a “live animal trap” with the remains of one of the chickens inside the trap to lure the killer in.  Tomorrow I will set up the 2 trail  cameras that we have. They are activated by motion to take a picture of whatever walked in front of it, so we will be able to see what the culprit looks like.  If another chicken gets killed and the trap doesn’t catch anything I may be asked to parole the chicken yard with my Savage .17 HMR and new scope!! 

When I was a kid I heard a preacher teaching  and explaining the book of 1 Peter and when he got to the verse that says, “the devil is like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour”, he said that verse reminded him of the big dog that was killing his chickens. One of the titles for the devil is “the devourer”, and also the one who “destroys”.  He doesn’t kill us like a chicken, but he does all he can to make us miserable, to get us to sin, to get us to destroy ourselves with our dumb choices. The biggest advantage the devil has over us is that we can’t take a picture of him with a trail cam, we can’t shoot him with our rifle, and we can’t even see him coming so we can prepare ourselves. 

The Bible says that if we resist him, firm in our faith that he will flee from us. We resist him by praying and asking God to beat him up, by reading the Bible and trusting the promises in it. One of the most powerful weapons against the devil and his demons is corporate prayer, that is the church praying together. The church has “authority” as the “Body of Christ”, and we exercise that authority when gathered together, when we are unified and agree, and when we pray. We will trample Satan under our feet. 

I am pretty sure that tomorrow I will be writing about the raccoon that “was”. 

On Thursday a friend and I did some last minute planning and decided to leave at 4 am Friday morning and drive 4 hours to Eastern Oregon and go Sage Rat hunting, and then drive back that evening getting home around Midnight. It would be a long day but worth it if we got to do some shooting with our .17 HMR’s at those ground squirrels that tear up the hay fields of the ranchers back there.  I had sighted in my gun with a new scope that Inhad just purchased that went up to 20X and I was hitting a 2 inch bullseye at 200 yards just about every shot.  I couldn’t wait to get over there and do some shooting. We had a great day, and we headed home. We didn’t have cell reception where we were so I had turned the phone off and put it away. About at Sisters on the way home I turned it on and saw that I had a voice mail from Patty so I listened to it. I could tell right off that I was in trouble. We had left at 4 am when everybody was still asleep, and I thought I had told Patty what I was doing but evidently I had forgotten, so she was frantically trying to figure out where I was. My friend had picked me up so my car was still there, my toothbrush was still there, but she couldn’t find me. Someone went out and looked on the back side of the shed I was building to see if I had fallen off the roof and was laying dead over there. So I called and I had a tense conversation with Patty that consisted of 4 word sentences from her. I considered stopping and buying some flowers but it was so late by then I didn’t think any place would be open. So when I got home I did what any intelligent husband would do, I confessed my total thoughtlessness, groveled, begged for forgiveness, begged for mercy, and promised I would never do it again. Patty was so relieved that I hadn’t gotten run over by the train that goes by our place that she had a hard time being upset for very long, and we hugged and I told her about my wonderful day. As I was telling her about the day I realized I hadn’t told her about that very nice scope that I had bought! Oops!