Today we fished for Shad on the Colombia River again, and we had a great time catching fish non-stop. As I was getting the hook out of a Shad the hook accidentally stuck into my finger. It went in we’ll past the barb and I couldn’t get it out. So I did the macho fisherman thing and pushed the hook through the skin on the other side of my finger, and cut the point of the hook off with the barb with some wire cutters. I was then able to pull the hook out of my finger. The hook had fish blood all over it so I imagine my finger will be swole up a bit tomorrow. As long as it doesn’t interfere with my fishing.

My son-in-law Aaron and my two grandsons, Duke and Rock from Oahu, will be fishing with me tomorrow. Duke and Rock are crazy about fishing, so I am anxious to take them tomorrow. Not much in life equals fishing with grandsons.

This a picture of the boat I built in the Colombia River just below Bonneville Dam fishing for Shad today. We caught several hundred Shad. They are an absolute blast to catch, you catch a lot of them and they put up a great fight.

One of the challenges while on a 5-day fishing trip is maintaining my spiritual disciplines of Bible reading, prayer, scripture memory, and writing. We get up at 4:00 am, fish all day, come back where we are staying very tired knowing that 4:00 am is coming soon, and so it is so easy to skip, or greatly reduce my commitments. The problem is if you skip once, a second time is easier, and a third even easier, and then you are quickly back to being lukewarm and bearing no or little fruit for God.

Gary Brown and I are staying in a cabin in Cascade Locks for a week going Shad fishing each day in the Colombia just below Bonneville Dam. It is about a ten-minute drive to the boat ramp from the cabin. We both brought our boats and have different guys driving up to fish with us each day. Gary had two friends coming today to fish with him that I had never met. He told them that they could park their motor home in the KOA campground that is about a quarter-mile from our cabin, and then join him this morning at our cabin at 5:30 am. I didn’t know about any of these arrangements. When we got here Sunday afternoon we decided to go to a local restaurant for dinner. Gary said, “Let’s drive around the KOA campground and see if we can find someone who looks lonely to invite to go with us to dinner and then we can witness to them.” I thought, “ Wow, that is cool, I did’t know Gary was that aggressive of a witness for Jesus.” So, we drive around and around the campground and Gary sees a guy, and stops, gets out of his truck and goes over and starts talking to him. The guy goes into his motor home and Gary looks at me and puts two thumbs up, and then two guys get into the truck with us. I again think, Wow, this is going to be fun. They introduce themselves to me and the one guy says, “I have a friend who knows you.” Now this totally confuses me because we have just met, I think he saw my confusion and said, “you are Pastor Duke, aren’t you? I said yes, but how did you know that, and he said, “Oh Gary told me you would be fishing with us when he invited us to go fishing with him.” Now I am really confused and say, “So, wait a minute, this isn’t the first time you have met Gary?” He answers and says, “Oh no, we have known each other for 15 years.” My words to Gary when he gets into the truck were, “Well, you scoundrel!”

I finally got my boat running good. I built this boat with 2×4’s and plywood covering it all with epoxy and fiberglass. It is a great boat, 26 feet long, very stable, but I have had trouble with the outboard motors. I have bought cheap motors that I could afford, $500 is average, I have had 3 different ones all 85 hp Johnsons. I finally decided to spend a little more and try to find one that was reliable, and I got this 135 hp Evinrude. The fellow that recently rebuilt it assured me that it was top-notch, and he seemed like a trustworthy person. I had some initial trouble because mud dobbers stuffed the coil full of mud. I got that fixed and then I had problems because the gas tank somehow got on top of the gas line and wouldn’t let gas through. I got that fixed and this little video is my boat on it’s successful test drive!! Yahoo

Tomorrow after church is over I am leaving to spend five days on the Colombia fishing for Shad. We are going to camp in Cascade Locks, and drive the few miles to the boat ramp each morning. There are different groups of guys driving up each morning to fish with us. I am looking forward to a good week of fishing in my very fine boat.

The church is the Bride of Christ, the eternal companion of Jesus Christ, He died for the church, and He is in the process of making her beautiful for Himself.

Tonight we had a dinner for new attenders to JBC, and I told our story along with slides and a video. Our church began in 1973 when I was 25 years old, and now JBC is 48 years old and I am 72. It is a long and glorious story of God building His church and making her beautiful.

As we showed the slides that were taken over the last 45 years, and I told our story, which I have repeated often, I was once again reminded of how blessed our church has been over the years, and how blessed I have been to be a part of the beautiful things God has chosen to do here. Sometimes people will praise me for my visionary leadership, but I have been like a surfer who looks for a big wave and hops on at a good time, and rides it in having the time of his life. Me seeing the big wave and getting JBC on top of it has been much more the result of God’s Sovereign working than my visionary leadership.

One of my core beliefs is that my love for my church is my love for Jesus, and my commitment to Jesus as Lord of my life can be measured by determining my commitment to my church.

You can’t go wrong in life loving, serving, building, and helping the church to grow. Find one that preaches the Word and pour your life out in it. God loves His church and those who make her beautiful receive a special blessing from Him.

I went and watched my 9-year-old grandson Courage play in a baseball game today. Every year a group of us drive up together and watch a Mariner’s game. The trip up to Seattle with a group of friends to watch a professional major league baseball game is a lot of fun, especially when we get seats just a dozen rows up from first base, and especially when we pig out on hotdogs and other treats while watching the game, and then stop halfway home for a steak dinner at a nice restaurant. But as much fun as that is, I think I enjoyed the game today more.

When our eight kids were in school and playing basketball, volleyball, and football, I used to yell my fool head off at games and then be hoarse for the next couple of days. It has been quite a few years since those days so I was a bit intimidated to yell today, not wanting to embarrass myself or my grandson, I must have picked up some vanity in my old age.

I did pray none-stop for him as I watched. I prayed that sports would be a great tool to develop a spirit of passion, drive, and desire in him that would be a key character trait as he gets older so that he will bear much fruit for the Lord. I prayed that the desire to win would motivate him to be very diligent to be the best that he can be. I prayed for his coach that he would motivate and encourage him and not discourage him and that in the coaching process, Courage would become very teachable in spirit. I prayed that his ability to play the game of baseball with his teammates in unity and comradery would shape him so that when he gets older he could work together with others in his church to accomplish great things for the Lord. I especially prayed that if he were to become good at baseball and or other sports, he would not become prideful as so many athletes do.

The Apostle Paul used sports as an illustration for living the Christian life a lot. What it takes to become a successful athlete is very close to what it takes to be a champion for Jesus, so I am going to keep praying for all of my grandkids every day.

1 John 5:14-15 This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.

So all I have to do to guarantee that my prayers get answered is pray according to God’s perfect will. But the problem is that there are a lot of areas in my life that I have no clue what God’s will is. I can try and guess what God’s will is, or I can just pray what I want to happen and hope we agree on what is best.

An example would be praying for our President. The Bible says that we are to pray for Kings and all who are in authority. So precisely, what do I pray? If we were living in the Tribulation, the antichrist would be the world ruler doing precisely what God programmed him to do so prayers for him to become a follower of Jesus would be futile.

1 Timothy 2:1-4 First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

This passage on praying for Kings ends with “who desires all men to be saved .” So, this is my prayer in regards to politics and our US leaders.

“Lord Jesus, I have the same desire that You have, that all people are saved. I pray for myself that You would give me many opportunities to influence people to follow you with 100% of their life and heart. I pray for every person at JBC that You would stir them and motivate them to look for opportunities to influence people to love and follow Jesus with their life. I pray for our President and the rest of our authorities that the decisions that they make would cause Your Word and the gospel to spread rapidly, whatever that might be, You know.

I was out in our yard walking around with a backpack sprayer attacking all the weeds in our yard. It has a handle on the side that I pump periodically to create pressure inside the sprayer so that the herbicide sprays out. When I pump it, it makes a strange noise, like someone gasping for breath. I was wandering around looking for weeds pumping on the handle and our neighbor lady saw me and heard the noise that my pump was making and thought it was me having difficulty breathing. I took a break and went in the house and sat down, and pretty soon the husband came over and asked if I was alright because his wife saw me wandering around aimlessly having difficulty breathing and thought maybe I was having a stroke or heart attack. I assured him I was fine, but that I appreciated him checking on me.

I wrote yesterday that a strong motivation to press on toward a Christ like life was the promise that God would bless us in this life. Those blessings are great joy in spite of circumstances, His strength to bear up under anything, His wisdom so that we can solve any problem, healthy and strong relationships, and many open doors and opportunities to do something with our life that matters for all eternity. The more like Christ we become the more each of those blessings grows in our life. That really does motivate me, but a greater motivation to work very hard at becoming more and more the kind of person God wants me to become is the “Judgment Seat of Christ”.

2 Corinthians 5:10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

The rewards that we receive from Jesus at the end of our life for what we have done in this life are amazing and eternal. The knowledge of them is supposed to motivate us. I think about that event all the time;I imagine what Jesus will look like, what He will sound like and what I will feel when He says, “ well done, good and faithful servant”!