When we raised our 8 kids we had 10 character traits that we primarily focused on in our parenting. One of the 10 was diligence, that our kids would grow up knowing what working hard looked like, and that they would at some point in their growing up enjoy working hard. As I wrote about grand parenting a couple days ago I want to influence my grandkids now, and I have written out “10 personal commandments” that I review regularly so that I actually do them. Today I split firewood all day using a hydraulic wood splitter with a friend and a grandson. The hard work was getting the wood from the back yard to the front driveway of the house of the person who gave us the trees. We loaded it in a wheelbarrow after we split it and pushed it up a ramp over the back deck and back down on a trail around the house where we threw it into the trailer. So as I followed my “grandparent commandments” on how to influence I worked as hard and fast as I could so he could see what that looked like, and even though I was panting like an old work horse I acted like I was having the time of my life. I would occasionally coach and encourage and tried to praise him often for his hard work. It was a very enjoyable day, and it was a great joy for me to see my 12 year old grandson work hard for at least 6 hours today with a very positive attitude. Diligence is doing everything you do heartily, with passion and energy as if Jesus were watching, because He is, knowing that He rewards diligence with opportunities and open doors to do something great with your life. In our culture now in the U.S. the number of people who actually have a strong work ethic is getting to be less and less, so a young person who grows up with a strong work ethic will do very well in life.

Over the years prayer has become more and more a major part of my life. By major part, I mean the amount of time and the amount of mental energy and focus is spent in the activity of prayer each day. I offer to pray for people all the time, every visitor to church, all my Facebook friends, and perfect strangers. The cool thing about prayer is I have never had anybody get offended at me asking if I could pray for them, and I have never had anybody turn down my offer to pray for them.

Different people have different levels of prayer power, that is God listens to some more than others, and He works more powerfully as a result of some people’s prayers than others. There are a number of different factors influencing the prayer power we have, but one key one is how much we pray. If the only time God hears your voice is when you are in a jam or going through a trial you will have minimal influence with God. Often people get irritated and even offended when they hear me say that, but if they would just think about it from any earthly fathers point of view they would know that what I am saying is true.

Because I offer to pray so much I get a lot of emails, text messages, and phone calls asking me to pray for medical crisis, family crisis, and everything under the sun, unless I am tied up and praying isn’t possible, I almost always stop what I am doing and I pray specifically, and with great wisdom for the trial that the caller is going through. The number and frequency of people asking me to pray for them has been increasing almost daily. I truly want to help people and influence their level of faith in God, so I pray, pray, pray.

went fishing today at Detroit Reservoir with my grandson, Jesse and a friend. It was a very nice day on the Lake in the sun catching fish, and having good fellowship. I enjoy spending time with my grandkids, especially in some kind of activity like fishing, hunting, biking, or camping. I recognize that my method of influencing my grandkids is different than when we raised our kids, but influencing them is my goal. So in order to do that pro-actively, mostly by example, I have thought through some commitments as a grandfather who wants to be used by God to make a huge difference in the lives of my grandchildren. I have written them down and call them, “The Ten Commandments of Being a Godly Grandfather”.

1. Never, ever get angry at them, not even a little, tiny bit irritated.

2. Never, ever complain, fuss, grumble, gross about anything, no matter how bad it might be, but instead always rejoice, be happy, and smile.

3. Think out loud when solving problems or overcoming obstacles, and do it with the kind of passion and “can do” attitude that a quarterback on a Super Bowl winning football team has.

4. Praise and compliment everything and anything positive in behavior, attitude, and character that I observe.

5. Give instruction in how to do things in short, simple sentences, and repeat them regularly and often until they get it.

6. Tell short stories periodically about my life and history that highlight character and commitment to Christ.

7. Ask questions of them that encourages them to talk about their faith in Christ, and growth as a Christian.

8. Ask questions that encourages them to share their values, and commitments, and /or questions that helps them form their commitments and values in life.

9. Talk to them about my goals, teach them about goal setting, and help them write their own goals and phone, email. or text weekly asking them how they are doing on their goals.

10. Pray for each grandchild daily, especially the day before a scheduled get together, and ask for wisdom in influencing them for Christ’s sake.

Whenever I have a birthday that ends in 0 I write out 10 year goals along with my 1 year goals, so in 2 more months I will be 70 years old so I am starting to think seriously about and write goals that I plan to accomplish before I am 80. Up to this point in my life these 10 year goal writing events have been fun and exciting as I try and imagine what the future holds, and what God wants me to do with my life. Many of the goals that I write I don’t even come close on, in fact I abandon them after a couple of years, but others happen just about the way I envisioned them. But this year there is the obvious questions over every goal, “what will my health be like in the next 10 years, and will I even be alive until I am 80 years old?” So in order to practice the normal crazy, audacious, reckless, and absurd goal writing that I love doing I am pretending that I am going to live to be 100 and healthy the entire time.

I teach a lot on goal setting, envisioning your life in the future, and dreaming big dreams, but very few people take it up as a normal part of their life. It always seems so strange to me that so few learn and faithfully practice the skill and discipline of goal setting. I am not sure what the reason is but I know that much of my energy and enthusiasm for life and ministry is because of my goals. If I start feeling old I just read my goals over and I get all pumped.

In 2 weeks I am going to teach through the book of Hebrews at 8:00 am on Sunday mornings, and a duplicate teaching on Wednesday evenings at 7:00 pm. Since January 1, 2018 I have read all 13 chapters, all 300 verses every day, and I am working at memorizing the entire 300 verses as well. I have been listening to a couple of sermons online each week, and reading in about 6 different commentaries. I have enjoyed very much the depth of the study and the learning that I have done, and am excited about teaching it. It is amazing to me how much the Bible is bottomless, that is the content, the principles, the truth, the wisdom in it is limitless, infinite. The more I have learned from Hebrews the more aware that I become of how little I have learned and how much more there is yet to be gleaned. Another personal discovery is that the more I learn from Hebrews the easier and faster I learn more after that. Learning new information, especially eternal truth, that which I am convinced is the very words of Jesus is very exciting for me. I think I may get just about as excited teaching what I have learned to others. I have also discovered that the more I teach the more I learn.

I love to fish. One of the main reasons is because my Dad loved to fish, and I caught his love of fishing. He also was one of the best fisherman that I have ever known, he caught fish when nobody else was. During the last couple years of his life my favorite thing was to go fishing with my Dad. Another reason that I love to fish is that it is the most therapeutic activity that I do. The best definition of an extrovert and introvert that I have heard is “an extrovert is energized by being with people, and an introvert is energized by being away from people”. I am very much an introvert, and Pastoring can be very draining emotionally. Going fishing is like driving into a gas station and saying, “fill er up”. I have pastored at JBC for 42 years and if I live that long I feel confident that I can go another 20 years, and the reason is because I know how to fill up my gas tank when I get depressed and burnt out, go fishing. I enjoy fishing with people who enjoy fishing, and I have a lot of good friends that I love to fish with, but sometimes to get the full value that fishing has for me, I need to go fishing by myself. I recently bought this 9 foot, inflatable pontoon boat, and it is so much fun to take it out on Detroit Lake fishing, and there is only room for me on it. Yesterday I spent most of the day making modifications to my little boat. I put the seat up on a 12 inch pedestal, and put a wood floor in it so it is so much more comfortable. I moved the electric trolling motor from the back to the front of the boat, and steering is way easier. Notice the “downrigger” on the right side of the boat which allows me to fish 50 to 100 feet deep if that is where the fish are, and the Garmin “fish finder” screen on the front left that shows me if there are fish under me, how many, how big, and how deep. The really cool thing is that another fisherman gave me the downrigger and Garmin Fishfinder, I bought the pontoon boat at Costco for a really cheap price, and I bought the electric trolling motor from Cabella’s with gift certificates that I got for my birthday last year. This is a fishing machine, and amazingly effective in reenergizing my soul.

Every night when I finish writing this blog I pray and ask God to bless it and use it in the life of millions of people to help them walk close to the Lord, and motivate them to pursue God, to know God’s will for their life, to zealously press on to grow in the character of Jesus, and to bear much fruit. Now “millions”is way beyond the number of people who are presently reading it, but if I keep praying for millions I believe the number who do read it each day will grow. I also pray before I write it each night and ask God for His wisdom, His insight, and His guidance so that each blog is anointed by God, and will have a huge impact in the lives of each of the people who read it. So why do I pray those prayers? What is my motive? Well, I like to think that my motive is to be used by God to make an eternal difference in many people. But I know myself well enough to know that my motive could be, “to be well thought of by many people” and to have many people think that I am cooler than sliced bread. Obviously that second motive is very prideful, and not very pleasing to the Lord and a major turn off to those who read my blog. Jeremiah in the Old Testament says that our heart is very selfish, prideful, and deceitful and that it will trick us into thinking we our Nobel in our desires and motives when in fact we are far from it, and we won’t even know it. I know that this motive thing takes constant self examination, and that if I get lazy in guarding my heart and soul I can slip sideways very quickly.

The first two years of my College career I attended Cascade College which was located on Killingsworth Street in North Portland. It was a small Christian College that I very much enjoyed. While there I grew a lot spiritually, and it was while I was there that the seeds to be a pastor were first planted in my heart. I was in college because if I wasn’t I would get drafted and go to Vietnam and that wasn’t one of my goals for my life at that time. I was also there looking for a great Christian girl that I could marry, and I found Patty my future wife. At the end of my second year there Cascade closed because of money problems so we got married and transferred to Seattle Pacific University. I didn’t like Seattle, I didn’t like Seattle Pacific, and I hated the part time job that I had. It was at a large freight company that transported a variety of goods all over the world using trucks, ships, airplanes, and even little carts pulled by people. The first day I showed up to work a secretary told me that my supervisor was on sick leave so until he returned just walk around and get familiar with every thing. I wandered around for a week, and still no supervisor. I kept asking different people what I was supposed to be doing, but nobody knew, and they just suggested that I relax and enjoy the life of ease as long as I could. After being there 3 months President Nixon changed the military draft system by instituting a lottery system. Every day of the year was put on a ping pong ball, then into a big wheel that could be spun and the dates picked out. The first third were 100% sure of being drafted and going to Vietnam, the second third had about a 50% chance, and the last third were 100% sure of not getting drafted. I was number 364 so that night I rented a little trailer, packed all of our stuff in it, and headed home to the dairy in Trout Lake. The next day I wrote a letter to the school saying , I quit, I wrote a letter to my job saying, I quit, and I wrote a letter to our landlord telling him where he could find the key. I never did find out at my job what I was supposed to do, it was the worst job experience of my life, I hated it.

So, most Christians have no real clue what they are supposed to be doing, so most just wander around with no purpose, dreams, passion, or clear goals, that would be such a rotten way to live life. Our primary purpose in life is to grow to become as much like Jesus in character as is possible with the time we have left. We are admonished to press on to maturity, to pursue and to become like Jesus, to follow Him and imitate His way of doing everything. The more focused we are on our purpose for being here the faster we will grow. We are supposed to become experts in growing in character, and to be obsessed with making every day the best day of character growth we have had. Every morning I remind myself what my job is and commit afresh to pressing on to become as much like Jesus as I can.