I worked on my go-kart project today, with two of my grandsons who are both 10 years old. I had a bunch of 2 inch square tubing and they cut it up in the right lengths with a saws-all, and then sanded the rust and old paint off. I had a great time teaching them how to measure, mark, and cut the tubing, using a saws-all and a cut-off wheel. Proverbs 17:6 says it all, “Grandchildren are the crown of old men”. The entire time we were working I was praying for these two young boys to be champions for Jesus. I was also praying for wisdom that I would say just the right words to them to help them grow in character and in love with Jesus.

The character trait of diligence seems to be growing more rare in the general population. Every person is born lazy, some stay the way they were born their entire life, and others conquer it and become hard workers. Diligence as a character trait is more than being a hard worker, it is enjoying working hard. Diligence is more than simply working hard, it is working hard in pursuit of a goal, a dream. One of the problems that anybody has in being diligent is that working hard just to be working hard gets to be a drag. Most people are doing what they are doing for someone else so their is no personal goal motivating the diligence other than the hope of promotion or more pay. A true follower of Jesus has the potential of becoming a person with a very high level of diligence.

Colossians 3:23-24. Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve.

A person who does everything he does for the Lord, desiring to please Him with the quality of their work and also with the volume of their work becomes a highly motivated person, and one with the character trait of diligence. The tricky part is that we can’t see or hear Jesus, so the motivation to please Him easily wanes. In order to become a highly motivated servant of Jesus we must grow in our faith in Jesus, and in His presence around us. We must grow in our faith that He sees every thing we do and that He is pleased with us when we do well, and that He is not pleased when we do poorly.

This afternoon I dug a ditch, from our house to my shop crossing our driveway twice. Most of the ditch was in our driveway which is packed gravel, and very hard to dig a ditch in. I used a big, heavy, very heavy long bar to pound the gravel to break it up some. After I would break up the gravel I would scoop as much as I could and then go back and pound it some more with the long bar, did I mention that this bar is very, very heavy. I finally got it all done and every muscle in my entire body was revolting, and calling me bad names. In the old days I had a couple kids dig the ditches, but the kids are all gone now, left me to dig my own ditch. Oh well, think of all the exercise I got today. I whistled while I gasped for air bent over wishing that the ditch would just did itself, but I worked really hard not to grumble and not to feel sorry for myself. I got it done just in time to head over to our Wednesday service and teach on the book of Hebrew.

I decided a couple of months ago that I was going to run the Thanksgiving Half marathon in Albany, 13.1 miles. But I haven’t been doing much to get ready for it. I ride my stationary bike which is way better than nothing, but running a half marathon requires that you run to prepare. I was just having a very hard time motivating myself to run, to train for this race and had about decided to skip it.

Then today, I got totally motivated to train and ran 2 miles tonight, and I am going to run 3 miles tomorrow night. I ordered new running shoes online, and in a few minutes I am going to send my $70 in to register for the race. What happened you ask? Well our daughter Shelley who lives in Fairbanks, Alaska with Philip, her husband and their 6 kids, called and for my birthday she is going to fly down and run the half marathon with me. Wow, what a thoughtful daughter. Shelley is young, runs, and is in great shape, and I expect that she will leave me in the Albany dust, but we will start together and I will keep up with her for a little while, I think😳.

Living the Christian life is called a race in the new Testament. Hebrews 12:1-2 says it beautifully “Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God”

God never intended for us to run the race of life by ourselves. Those who are part of a church family will do much better than those who are not.

The Bible has statements and commandments that on first reading, appear to be contradictory, but they aren’t if studied throughly and accurately. People will often bring these up, not as seekers of truth, but as those who want to run their own life, and declare God out of the picture.

The Bible says, “do not fear or be dismayed”, and it says it around a hundred different times. Psalms 19:9 says “The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever;”This phrase is used many times in the Bible as well. So we are to fear the Lord, but not to fear trials or trouble in our lives.

Another kind of fear that is commanded in the Bible in Hebrews 4:1, “Therefore, let us fear if, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it.” And again in 1 Peter 1:17. “If you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth”.

A fear that I have every day is that people that I have taught, prayed for every week for years, counseled for hours, will fall away from following the Lord. The apostle Paul had the same fear and says, “I fear for you that the tempter might have tempted you, and our labor would be in vain.”

We live in a day and age where 75% of the U.S.population claims to be a born again Christian, but I fear that is true of only about 10%, and the other 65% are going to be so surprised at the point of their death. Eternity is a long time. Heaven and hell are very real places where very real people will spend eternity.

My Dad hated weeds, especially thistles. We had 160 acres and he would walk from one end to the other of our farm with his shovel digging up weeds. If he saw a farmer with one single weed growing in the middle of a field he would say, “he is going to go broke, anybody who would let a thistle grow in the middle of his field will let something else go, and then something else and pretty soon he is broke”.

Weeds choke out what is good, and keep it from growing. In the parable of “The Sower” Jesus said some people are like soil with weeds, the Word of God can’t grow because the weeds choke it out.  The biggest weed, like a thistle, in our life is our love of money. Most people wouldn’t describe themselves as someone who loves money, but we base our security on it and if something goes even a little bit wrong in the area of our finances we worry and get very anxious.

The Bible says that if we love the world or money the love of God is not in us. Put another way, “to the degree we love money we cannot love God, the two can’t co-exist in our mind and heart”.  In the Gospel of Luke Jesus says, “If you can’t faithfully manage your money, God will not give you important things to do with your life”.

Some basic Biblical principles on being a good steward of money is (1) Budget, plan ahead how you will spend every penny, eliminate impulsive buying from your life. (2) Be very cautious about buying things on time, going into debt. Some debt is going to happen, but pray about it for a week, and longer as the amount gets bigger. (3) And give systematically and sacrificially to God and His work. There is something very powerful and life changing about giving our money to our church, missionaries, and needy people. God blesses us, provides for us, we grow closer and closer to Him, and He opens up many doors for doing something with our life that really matters and makes a difference for all eternity.

I have a significant hearing loss, which seems to be getting worse. It is probably because of the hours I spent on tractors as a kid, running chain saws, and shooting guns a lot, all with no hearing protection. When I worked construction for a few years running a track drill to drill 100 foot holes in solid rock to blow up for asphalt plants I would put the filters off of cigarettes in my ears. There was a fellow worker who liked a particular brand of cigarettes but he didn’t like the filters, so he tore them off and gave them to me, they worked pretty good for reducing the noice of the drill that I ran all day. I went to an ear guy on Wednesday, had my ears tested, and ordered some hearing aids. They are pretty sophisticated, with a computer in them and everything. I think they do just about everything except make coffee. The ear guy kept repeating the line, ” you aren’t going to believe the difference”, every couple of minutes he would say it again. I don’t know if he was being truthful or not, but I got pretty excited after the 20th time he said it, it will be kind of nice to hear well.

The Bible talks about people whose hearts are dull of hearing. In Hebrew 4 the author says that he would like to teach them some really important information, but he can’t because they had become dull of hearing. When our heart has a hearing problem it means that we can’t understand the truth in Gods Word, it makes no sense to us, it also means that we are unable to sense the prompting of God as He attempts to direct our lives into His perfect plan for our lives. In Revelations 2 and 3 there are seven letters written to various churches, and in every one of the letters there is an admonition which says, ” He who has an ear let him hear what the spirit says to church’s. It is a sad day when we can’t hear What the Holy Spirit is saying to us.

Hearing aids will fix my hearing problems, but how do we fix a heart that can’t hear God when he calls, and can’t hear or understand the Bible when it is read, or can’t understand what the preacher is trying to say each weekend. Becoming dull of hearing is a judgment from God for failing to obey or to keep what we already know.

I talked to a pastor of a church last year who had just celebrated his 50th anniversary as the pastor of that church. He is one of my main hero’s in life, a great man of character. He had started the church, and seen it through all of its stages of growth, and paid a huge price in effort and sacrifice over the years. I asked him what was the hardest part of the 50 years. He reflected for a few minutes on that, and said, “I know the answer but I don’t know how to put it into words”. He went on to say “I can’t remember ever doing anything or wanting anything in the church for myself, everything I have prayed for was for others, all the preaching and counseling was always for others, the work on the building, the lawn mowing, and the toilet cleaning, it was all for everyone else. I wanted to attract people to Jesus, I wanted to help them grow, I wanted for their marriages to be strong, I wanted their kids to grow up to be champions. Giving my life away, and serving everyone wasn’t hard, it was a joy, but what was hard, very hard was when those same people whom I had served for so long with no thought for what I wanted left because their needs weren’t being met. I got over it, and I knew it would happen again and again, but it never got easy, it never lost its sting. I guess that is what it means to give your life away, and to do all that you do for Jesus. Yep he is my hero.

The weakest area of my life is self-control. I eat more than I should, though I don’t want to, I sleep less than I should and I have major goals to change, but I don’t, I don’t exercise as much as I know would make major changes in how I feel, I remind myself constantly of the benefits of exercising but I don’t do as much as I want. It is a constant puzzle to me how impulses in me that have no intellect or motive can override my will and true desires. It makes me feel like a crazy person .

1 Corinthians 9:24-27Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air; but I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.

“I discipline my body and make it my slave”, my oh my, I want to be able to say that. I constantly tell people that you change by training faithfully, not by trying harder. How could I train myself to have great self control? I finished my goals already, but I think I will add one more, “I will fast at least one day a week.”

I went fishing yesterday for Chinook salmon on the Alsea River with 3 other good friends. We only got one salmon, a 20 lb chinook that was bright and fat. I am not sure what it is about fishing that I enjoy so much, but I do, even when I don’t catch a fish like yesterday. We rode around in a boat pulling spinners up and down the river. While we rode we talked about everything under the sun, we ate Oreo cookies, black licorice, jerky, cheese and crackers, and a variety of other heath foods, and drank lots of coffee. It was a long day, getting up at 4:00 am getting home at half time on Monday night football and seeing Drew Breese break the record for most Passing yards. After the game was over I rode my stationary bike for 45 minutes, then went out to my shop and punched on the heavy bag for 15 minutes, and then lifted weights for another 15 minutes, then went back in the house and ran on the tread mill for 15 minutes. I do that exercising just about every night for 90 minutes. I don’t enjoy it much, but I do read, listen to audio books and watch videos of really good preaching, so the time goes pretty fast. Finished all my reading, and praying goals, and went to bed at Midnight. It was a long, hard day, but so rewarding and fun. Today was totally different, began the day with a breakfast at Denny’s at 5:30 am with a group of 7 guys who share their goals and hold each other accountable, then at 6:30 I had another group,and then at 7:30 another group. Then I went to the Evangelical Church in Jefferson, set my alarm on my phone for 9:30 am, put my seat back and went to sleep for an hour. After waking up I went inside where we had a prayer meeting with people from the other churches in Jefferson for an hour. It was a great prayer time, and then I went to my office and wrote on my Hebrew messages for most of the day until 7 pm when I taught my “Leadership III class”. As I sit in my recliner tonight writing this blog and finishing up on my disciplines I can’t help but say, “thank you Lord for my life”, it is awesome.