One of the challenges theologically that many struggle with is, if we are saved by grace, not by any works of righteousness, what part does good works play in our life? Simply put, “we are not saved by good works, we are saved for good works”. What that means is if we are genuinely born again our life will change because God has changed our heart and the Holy Spirit lives in us.

A lot of people think they are saved, but they aren’t really, and it will be a very sad experience for them when they hear Jesus say these words recorded in Matthew 7:21-23, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. . . . And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’” This statement by Jesus of People who think they are christians, but will find out to late that they are not, is surrounded by 3 parables that Jesus tells. The first is the parable of the narrow and wide way in Matthew 7:13 “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.” This passage easily suggests that before we choose to follow Christ though we are saved by grace there is an understanding that it won’t be without effort and sacrifice. The next parable that Jesus tells as part of this trilogy is in verses 15-20, part of which is, “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits.” Good fruit is obviously good works, and without them we will be thrown into the fire. The last of the 3 parables is the house built on a rock. “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock.” To act on the words of Jesus is to obey them.

In the Bible we are admonished to examine our own life, our character weaknesses and flaws, our blind spots, our sins, especially repeated or habitual sins. I regularly and often just sit and think about me, where I have grown and where I am not growing, the words I speak out repeatedly that are defensive or accusing of others. When I have accurately figured out who I am, I confess all known sins to God, ask for His help to grow and change in the area of my weaknesses, and declare Him the Lord of my life and that I will follow and serve Him always. I try to have a daily time that takes care of the obvious blunders that I committed, but I take significantly more time to think through the “why” of my repeated offenses on a weekly basis and figure out my strategy for growth. I don’t ever want to get comfortable with where I am, my goal is to maintain and even increase a deep hunger and thirst in myself for righteousness.

my new 10 foot pram that I just finished building today. It is built out of 1/4 inch and 3/8 inch marine grade plywood covered inside and out with with 12 oz fiberglass cloth and epoxy resin, two layers on the bottom, the seats have 11 cubic feet of poured in place styrofoam, making it unsinkable, it has nice, sturdy 8 foot oars, a very nice Garmin fish finder, and a 50 lb thrust Minn Kota electric motor, on a nice little trailer that I built. I can’t wait to take it fishing.

I enjoy building things. We are just about finished remodeling a house that the church owns for a parsonage for a staff person and his wife, and I have enjoyed that very much, I am remodeling the big 24 foot dory that I built last year to make it more sea worthy, I am just about finished with the 16X22 foot wall tent I am building, and I have plans for a 3 wheeled car that I am going to start on soon.

My all time favorite thing though is to help Jesus on His building project. In Matthew 16:18 He says that He is building His Church, “I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hell will not overpower it.” The cool thing is I get to help, and He blesses me in this life when I do, and He rewards me when I get to heaven for what I have done to make His church healthy and holy. Any disciple of Jesus is invited to help.

It is Sunday night, and as is normal on Sunday night I am so dead dog tired. But I will still choose to be kind, gracious, pleasant, and loving to the people who are in my life on this night, even though I am so tired I can hardly see straight. I will choose to be nice, patient, and lovable in spite of my weariness because I can, God gave me the strength to make such choices so I will. I will choose and work hard to be the most pleasant person you have ever met in spite of the very busy and draining day, because it is the right thing to do. When I am as tired as I am tonight it seems like it takes a major effort just to hold my head up, but I will choose to listen attentively when Patty talks and I will smile and will offer intelligent response to her words to me. I will do this because I love her and want to communicate to her how much I love her, and because I can, I am able.

I am so stinking tired tonight, it is a bummer to get old. But, though I would very much like to skip, just for tonight, I am going to get on my stationary bike and ride as fast as I can for an hour. If I don’t the next time will so much easier to skip, and then before I know it I am a wimp. As I think about tomorrow a thought pops into my head, “You are very tired, sleep in tomorrow” my response to the demon who is talking to me, “I will sleep in when I get to heaven and you are cooking in the lake of fire”. Tomorrow is going to be a very busy day, and I am going to choose to work hard, I can do that and I will.

Patty and I have been at Odell Lake Lodge the last couple of days with 20 couples from Jefferson Baptist Church at our annual marriage retreat. This is the third year in a row of us doing this event here, and it has become one of my favorite events of the year. I enjoy it so much because it is so fun to get to know people beyond the normal “Hi, how are you” which is the case with so many people at JBC that I see at regular services, but don’t get to spend much time with. Here we work on our marriages together, eat together, play games together, talk about our lives and challenges together, and laugh together. It really is a great time, and we are going to have 2 more of them in the weekends ahead that Patty and I get to attend together as the teachers. It is very rewarding to be a couple months away from our 50th wedding anniversary and be able to teach what we have experienced and learned together on how to have a great marriage. In dealing with life and all the pressures, responsibilities, and disappointments that are almost a daily part of life, a great marriage is such a major gift and strength to face life and stay full of joy and peace. Almost anybody can have a great marriage if they are willing to work hard on it.

The failure to forgive anybody of anything is probably the biggest problem that most people have, and brings the greatest consequences into their life of anything that they do. Matthew 6:14-15 says, “For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.” That is a pretty black and white statement. Have you ever thought of all the consequences that will come into your life if God doesn’t forgive you of your sins, there are many and they are significant. If God doesn’t forgive you of your sins, He won’t answer your prayers, He won’t even listen to your prayers. If God doesn’t forgive you of your sins you will have little energy, you will be tired all the time, you will have no joy, and you will have a growing despondency. If God doesn’t forgive you of your sins He gives demons permission to make your life as miserable as they possibly can, and they have had a lot of years practicing on that fine art of theirs. And the list goes on, there are at least 30 different consequences that come into the life of the person who chooses not to forgive anybody of anything no matter how bad it might be, no matter how many times they have done it.

In our warped reasoning we think that we are punishing people for what they did or said by choosing not to forgive them. They don’t pay any price for our choosing not to forgive them, but we pay an awful price. Or we think that if we forgive them we are saying that what they did was no big deal. What we are saying is that my sins were a very big deal to God because He is holy, and just, and God, and He died for my sins so that I could be forgiven. He freely forgave me, and He asks us to forgive anybody else in the same way we have been forgiven.

Some have said, I can forgive, I just can’t forget. Every time you have a thought about what someone did to you, forgive them again, and again whenever a thought pops into your head. If you faithfully do that it won’t be that long before it is gone, God will see to that as you faithfully forgive every time you remember.

Bitterness is a poison and it will destroy you.

This is one of my favorite stories!

When I was a kid growing up on the dairy, occasionally we would have a cow die. We used to drag them out to a big rocky area and between the coyotes, the magpies, and the vultures they would soon just be a pile of bones. With the occasional addition of another cow to the rock pile, the pile of bones grew, and we gave it the name, “the bone yard”. It was about 400 yards to the bone yard from the back porch of our house, and we had one of our deer rifles sighted in at 400 yards, and we were able to get a coyote occasionally, and a bounty that went with the coyote. Then the inevitable came, the government said that leaving dead cows on the rock pile would pollute the world and that we needed to bury the cows. It was a very, long and hard job, but someone had to bury the cow whenever one died. We didn’t have a back hoe so we had to dig the grave with a shovel. So a key question comes up right about now, “how deep does a boy dig a grave for a cow?”, and the answer is, “just deep enough”. Several months after burying a cow, I was walking through one of our fields and I walked over the grave that I had dug. I fell through the small layer of dirt that had covered the cow into the grave. The cow had rotted away leaving the space taken up by the cow empty except for a couple feet of “soup” totally loaded with maggots. When I fell into the “soup” that the cow was reduced to, the smell totally overwhelmed me, and I was sure I had fallen right into hell! I managed to crawl out of the hole and escape from hell, but the “soup” had gone over the top of my rubber boots and filled them up. When I got back to the house my Mom wouldn’t let me into the house until I had taken off my boots, and pants and hosed off all residue of that rotten cow. After that experience I dug the future cow graves a little bit deeper.

It is funny how you can get hooked on certain activities almost like a drug. I have been spending an hour every day since the election reading the news. I have 5 different news apps that I read every day. I have realized in the past that this is not only wasting a lot of time, but it tends to make me irritated at what I read and watch and I carry that irritation into my day and my relationshipS. Today I made a commitment and a goal that I would not spend more than 15 minutes each day reading or watching the news. I have a stop watch as an app on my iPad and every time I start reading a news site I will hit that watch and when I am done reading I will record the time, and when I hit 15 minutes I am done for that day. I hate being controlled by anything other than God, but it seems that that I just rotate through the long list of activities that control my life periodically. Once I decide to quite it doesn’t take long to conquer, so it is strange that sometimes I am slow to have the desire to manage this activity. One of my life purpose statements is to seek to please the Lord with all that I do, and it is this particular purpose statement that motivated me to manage my life and my time.

Today I had a nice surprise, Saah Joseph called me from Liberia and we chatted for awhile. He is a Senator now so he is the Honorable Saah Joseph, but he still calls me Dad. I met Saah in 2002 when I made my first trip to Sierra Leone, and JBC officially started our ministry in the country by starting two churches and two schools. Since then I have made 22 trips to Sierra Leone, and we have started many more churches, schools, an orphanage, a Bible College, and a couple of well drilling companies. I gave up my role in our ministry there several years ago to younger guys as the 24 hour trips, time difference, and heat and humidity wore me out to much when I went over there. Saah said on the phone, “do you remember that first trip we did together driving across Sierra Leone” I told him that it was one of the most memorable events in my life, and he suggested that I make one more trip over and the two of us could drive all over Sierra Leone and visit all the churches. I told him that I would do one more trip for that experience with him. I don’t know if any thing will come of the conversation we had, but it was fun to remember with him those early days of ministry in a West Africa right after the war there was over.

Sierra Leone is one of those areas of my life that was and is a total God thing. I had no plans or dreams of going to Africa for any reason, but a series of events unfolded seemingly by chance that resulted in a major ministry in this country that I had trouble spelling right. One of my personal motto statements is, ” God leads and I will follow”. Most of the time I don’t know where the adventure will end, but I follow to the best of my ability.

We all have values. Different things in our life have value or worth to us. The easiest way to picture it is simply to say that everything in our life, people, activities, things, possessions, and God are all ranked in our mind, the thing that we give the greatest value to is first all the way down to that which is dead last. We don’t usually formally rank them, we just make choices in life based on this personal subconscious value system. God expects that He is going to be first place in our life, but very few people have Him first, most not even 2nd or 3rd. Most live their life acknowledging God, but basically forgetting about Him in the midst of the business of life. God knows everything about us, and He has this to say to those who don’t have Him as number one in their life in Psalms 50:22 “Now consider this, you who forget God, or I will tear you in pieces, and there will be none to deliver.” I don’t think God often literally tears people in pieces, but I do think that He makes the things that we value ahead of Him disappear, and life goes from bad to worse. Many people have very little joy in their life, they have lots of anxiety, many of their relationships are full of conflict, they are unmotivated, and they live life in a state of confusion. There is no one to blame for this sad state of affairs, but themselves. When God is first place in our life, He blesses us, when He isn’t first place in our lives He doesn’t bless us. It takes constant self-examination, and vigilance to keep Him first, but that is where He ought to be, He is God, our creator, our savior.