Some of you may remember on January 23rd I went steelhead fishing and caught a limit of very nice steelhead, and on the same trip I lost my wallet. That was the first time in my life I remember losing my wallet. I didn’t know where or how, but assumed it was while I was either putting on my waders or taking them off. I called all the credit card places and canceled the cards and ordered new ones, went to DMV and got a new drivers license, I got a new boat operators license, I got a new Medicare card, AAA card, health insurance card, and a couple of other things that I have forgotten about. In short, it was a major pain, and took hours, and then I had to buy a new wallet as well.

The last 3 days I have been gone to Cannon Beach on the annual “Pastor’s Prayer Summit”, when I got home today I was unpacking my duffel bag, and Patty sitting in a recliner watching me said, “look up on top of the bookshelf”. From across our bedroom I could look up and see the top of the bookshelf, and there laying in plain sight was my wallet. I exclaimed, ” where did you find it?” And she said, “Right there”, and I said sounding very confused, “who put it up there?”Patty smiled and said, “It must have been you”. “You have got to be kidding me!” “I don’t remember putting it up there!” “Oh great, I am cured of Parkinson’s one day, and lose my mind the next!”

“Oh Lord, have mercy on me, and take me to heaven soon before I forget who I am!”

That title sounds way worse than it was, in some respects. I decided to do some surf fishing while we were here in Cannon Beach for the “Pastor’s Prayer Summit”. I didn’t skip any prayer sessions, I got up early this morning and fished before breakfast, and then we had a break this afternoon and I went fishing again. The method we use surf fishing is to follow the surf out, and right before the waves start back in cast it as far as possible, and then walk really fast back with the bail on your real open, before a big wave knocks you down. Well on one of the casts I didn’t walk fast enough and a big wave knocked me down. I didn’t get very much water down my waders but I did get a bunch in my jacket pockets where my cell phone was. It doesn’t work now. It is supposed to be water proof but I dropped it and cracked the glass a week after I got it, so I suppose that is where the water got in. I am so disgusted with myself, this is the fifth phone that I have messed up falling in the water while fishing. I fully intend to put the phone in a safe, dry place when I get in the water where there is a potential for a fall in the water, but I get so engrossed in fishing I forget. Oooooooh, I wonder how much money this is going to cost me. I just got this phone about 6 months ago as an upgrade. I am trying to think of some spiritual application that I can make with this story, but the only one that I can think of is, ” don’t be stupid”! Oh well, I am going to bed, and I am hoping that when I get up in the morning it is working.

I am at Cannon Beach Conference Center with about 65 pastors from the Corvallis, Albany, Lebanon, Jefferson area for our annual “Prayer Summit” that goes from Monday noon until Wednesday noon. I went to the very first “Pastor’s Prayer Summit” 30 years ago in 1989, and haven’t missed a year since. I started Pastoring at Jefferson in 1976 when I was 28 years old, and in the next 13 years I made every mistake and bad decision that a Pastor can make, and I made them 2 and 3 times each. Because of my poor leadership JBC was not very healthy with lots of conflict and disunity, and after 13 years I was absolutely fried emotionally. I was very discouraged, burnt out, depressed, thinking that I was the absolute worst failure at being a pastor in the history of the church, and I was ready to quit and go back to farming.

It was then that I went to the first “Prayer Summit”, and it turned my life totally around, upside down, inside out, and every which way! It was at that Summit that I made Prayer the highest priority of my life. I made a goal to pray an hour every day, another goal to pray for every person in my church by name every week, a goal to pray with my wife, Patty at least 3 times every week, and to start dozens of corporate prayer times at JBC. As a result of the dramatically increased prayer time everything started to change in our church, but especially in my life. God started giving me wisdom because I asked for it every morning, strength and stamina, I asked for that also, my preaching got increasingly better, unity and love began to grow rapidly.

The last 30 years of ministry have been wonderful, and every year that I come back I am reminded why.

I watched the super bowl today with a number of friends from our church. It was pretty much a yawner, breaking the record for the fewest points scored in a game. Neither team was one that I root for during the regular season, being a Seahawk fan, but the punter for the Patriots, Ryan Allan attended our church when he was a kid, and his Dad and I are good friends, so I was definitely rooting for the Patriots to win their 6th Super Bowl. The best thing about the game was the fellowship with friends and the barbecued ribs!

There are a lot of Patriot haters around because people get tired of the same team winning, and with Bill Belichick and Tom Brady winning 6 Super Bowls, they have won a lot. I like rooting for teams that win consistently, not just because of winning, though it certainly is fun to root for a winner, but because I believe so strongly that there are principles of success that God created and that very few people have discovered them and follow them consistently. When I was a kid growing up on the dairy every month a DHIA report came out that had most of the dairies in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho ranked based on milk production for the previous month. When we got it in the mail my Dad would say, “It isn’t luck that got the first place dairy there, it is that someone at the dairy is following systems and rules that work.” “Find out what they do, and do it as well , and you will also be successful.”

When our kids were young I would read books written on the subject of parenting, but I would only read those written by authors who were parents of large families and who had good kids. I would also read books on marriage, and again only by those who had been married longer than 30 years with a good marriage to show that they knew what they were writing about. Now I read a lot of books written by Pastors who have been exceedingly successful as a Pastor, and try to discover what systems, principles, and rules they follow.

Successful people are successful consistently because they consistently follow the principles of success.

When I played basketball in college during the first part of practice when we did drills we often wore weighted vests. I don’t remember how heavy they were, but I remember that half way through practice when we were going to scrimmage we took the vests off and I felt like I could fly.

I recently had all my symptoms of Parkinson go away, I guess you could say that I am cured. I am not sure exactly why, it could be the Keto diet I went on starting January first, it most certainly could be the literal hundreds of people praying for me that God would heal me, or it could be the strenuous exercise routine that I do every night.

When I was struggling with Parkinson’s I took a medicine called ropinorole that worked good to control my tremors and some others Parkinson’s issues. The medicine worked wonderful but a major side affect was that it made me very “addictive compulsive”, and I needed to practice major self-control to keep myself from doing dozens of different things that were wrong for me to do.

Every night as I examined my life, I plead with God to give strength over these compulsive activities. I regularly would be out in my shop working at 2:00 am in the morning because I didn’t have the self control to make myself go to bed even though that was my goal, and desire.

Now that I am almost totally free of the medicine that I was taking for Parkinson’s, I am enjoying great freedom from the side effects of that drug. When I was taking 18 milligrams today I had to exert great self control to do what I knew was right, and now that I am off of the medicine I have this new Super self control to do exactly what I want to do. I is like for the last 7 years I have had this vest on, and now it is gone. I know I will get used to the new “self-controlled ” me but for a little bit I am going to enjoy the power and the freedom of having great self control.

Hebrews 12:1Therefore, 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,

So, I have been on this “no sugar – no wheat flour” diet for 32 days, and I am apparently done with Parkinson’s, feeling much better physically, way more energy, and my mood is much more “up” than I can ever remember being. Now what? Am I going to live to be 100? I don’t know what tomorrow may bring, but I do trust God with all my heart, and believe without a doubt that He has a good plan for my life. “Good plan” doesn’t mean comfortable, or fun, or without pain, it means that I will have many opportunities to do something with my life that counts. I am in a pretty good spot right now so I want to make the most of every opportunity to do something that is significant. I am keeping my eyes and my ears open to possible open doors that God is supplying for me, and when I see one I am not going to hesitate, for fear that He will pass me by and give my assignment to someone else and put me on the bench.

On January 1st I started a diet with the goal of losing 40 lbs in 160 days, 1/4 pound of ugly fat lost each day. The diet was simple, just eliminate all sugar and wheat from my diet. I wasn’t going to count calories or anything, just eliminate all sugar and wheat from my diet. My thinking was that most of the snacking I did in the evening when I read, was ice cream, cake, cookies, chips, ritz crackers, and candy. Those would all be eliminated with this diet, and I should lose weight. One month is over and according to my goal I should be down 8 lbs, but I have lost 14 lbs, so it is working so far, unless I start eating way more bacon or something like that.

But the good news is that since starting this diet with no sugar and no wheat all of my Parkinson’s symptoms have gone away. The biggest issue was severe muscle rigidity and muscle pain, especially after being immobile for a little bit. In the mornings getting out of bed was a major ordeal because my muscles were like concrete, I couldn’t get them to do much, and when I did it hurt like the dickens. The tremor in my right hand is gone, and my balance is almost totally like it was 20 years ago. Before I always felt fatigued, like I had just loaded a trailer with 100 lb bales of hay, but now I have energy to burn. Before I didn’t sleep much because every time I rolled over or moved, because my muscles got so rigid that when I moved it was like I got stabbed with a knife, and I woke up, wide awake. Now, I am sleeping like a baby. I have also cut my medication in half and expect to eliminate it altogether in this next month.

It has only been a month so I am not letting myself get to excited yet, in case it is just some kind of fluke. But I am praising the Lord for a good January, and we will see what happens in February.