Tomorrow I am headed to Seaside for three days of meetings with Pastors from Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska. Many of them I know and see at various events like this one, and many know me because of attendance at our “Pastors Seminar” that we held each year in January for over 20 years. My prayer request as I pray tonight is that God would give me opportunities to encourage other Pastors in the conversations that I will have randomly for the three days. I am also asking for wisdom to see and hear the open doors that God will provide, and that I wouldn’t be hesitant and lose the opportunity.

On the other hand I am praying for wisdom, self-control, and humility not to be a pastor “know it all” in those conversations. There is always the fleshly, carnal temptation to look and appear like the accomplished and successful pastor in giving suggestions, opinions, and counsel to peers. Sometimes my desire to be used by God is too strong, and I move ahead of Him.

It is tricky balancing between being quick to respond to God-ordained opportunities and being overbearing and talking to much. What I try and do is mentally review each conversation after I walk away and try and discern if I was helpful, gracious, and humble, and determine to make adjustments as needed in the next encounter.

I am looking forward to the fellowship and camaraderie that this event usually provides, and the good food as well.

Most mornings when I wake up I groan, and mutter, “I don’t want to get up!” But I do. I stagger around, barely coherent, wondering what day it is and where I am supposed to be. I manage to find and get into the shower and usually it only takes a couple of minutes before my reason and sanity return to me and I remember my schedule for the day. I then pray my “morning prayer of commitment,” and at the end of my prayer, I very sincerely ask God for strength and wisdom for the day.

When someone says they are motivated, they are usually saying that they are energized, excited, or passionate about a particular goal or project and they can’t hardly wait to get at it. There are even some who would say that about their entire day, wow, crazy people. I used to be like that, energy to burn, always in a hurry, jumping up and down, running in place when an interruption messed with my schedule. Back in those good old days, I didn’t need a “to do” list because I could easily remember everything I wanted to get done and had the next event planned in my head before I got to it. I was a machine back in those days, but no more.

Now I make a detailed “to do” list the evening before while I can still remember what I need to do. I read it a dozen times each day as I try and figure out what’s next on my agenda. I take a lot of breaks, coffee breaks, water breaks, bathroom breaks, smoke breaks – opps, no I don’t smoke, “to do” list reading breaks, rest breaks, nap breaks, and talk to whoever is around and will listen breaks.

The fuel for my motivation in the good old days was my dreams, vision, and goals; they were huge and drove me all day long. I loved working hard, accomplishing a lot, always wanting more. I usually jumped out of bed well before the alarm went off, singing as I showered and dressed. I was rarely ever tired or weary back then, but now I wake up tired and it gets worse from there. I have a commitment never to say I am tired because it just makes it worse, but I always am. Yes, those were the good old days, they are also the long gone, never to return days.

To say that I am no longer motivated would not be true. I am very motivated, but it is different now. I used to not have to work at being motivated, I just was, now, I have to choose to be motivated, make a commitment to do something that matters. Now, it is a sense of duty or responsibility to others that is my fuel instead of my dreams, I choose to do what I do because that is what I am supposed to do. I make “to do” lists because I want to please the Lord and do well at the “Judgment Seat of Christ.” Life and work are much more of a grind now, requiring a ton of discipline and self-control.

But I am sure that the joy that I get out of life now is much greater than the good old days. In the long gone days my joy came from accomplishment, from the deep satisfaction of doing something significant. Now my joy comes from being faithful and from the Lord because I am running the race with endurance and not quitting even though I want to every time I take a break.

I can’t wait for my new, glorified body, the body that will be just like the body of Jesus, the one that will be superhuman; now those will be the good new days!

In 52 days I am leaving on a two-month, 4000-mile bicycle trip. The things that I need to get done before I leave are easily 90 days’ worth of work. How am I going to get everything done? I am not sure. When I had six months to go until I left it was hard to know how fast I needed to work to get everything done, but the closer the day of departure gets the more impossible the list becomes😫😫

As I was writing everything down tonight I have already started admitting some things will need to get moved to the “when I get back” list. In those 52 days there is three days of meetings with a bunch of pastors over at Seaside, there is the three-day marriage retreat that I will be teaching, there is the “five days of prayer” before Easter, there is an all day steelhead fishing trip to the Siletz River that is scheduled, there is the all day trip to Portland to go to the “Swap Meet”, someone gave me a bunch of firewood that will take a day to get, I need to get all my bicycle stuff, and camping gear checked out, organized, and packed, I need to study, write and prepare the four lessons for the marriage retreat, I have seven Wednesday night worship service sermons to write, I have 35 Leadership class lessons to give, six parenting class lessons to write, at least ten different people I need to meet with, I need to get 50 apple trees pruned, I estimate that I have 100 hours of work to finish the 1969 mustang restoration, which I really want to get done before I go for my grandson, Men’s Breakfast is in the morning, I need to take Patty out to dinner a couple of times before I go, and there is all the regular stuff that needs doing.

Your schedules are just as hectic as mine, maybe more hectic. So what do we do? So now that I have written everything down that needs doing except eating, sleeping, brushing my teeth etc. I am prioritizing the list, most important things at the top and putting as much as possible on the calender so each day I have a “to do” list all set.

The main thing during the next 52 days to remember is don’t get stressed, enjoy the pressure, do it all for the Lord, ask for His strength and wisdom every day, never get grumpy, give Patty all the time she wants, be faithful to all the basic spiritual disciplines, and rejoice everyday for such a great life.

In less than two months, I am leaving on a 4,000 mile, 60-day bicycle trip from coast to coast with four other people. One of the daily questions and discussion points among us will be “how far have we gone?” and “how far do we have to go?” We have every day of the trip mapped out in detail and we will soon have every camp sight reserved. I have a little computer on my bicycle that I put the destination in every morning before we hit the road, and it tells me all day long how far we have pedaled and how far to camp. It estimates the time left based on past speeds. It also tells me how many feet I have climbed that day, what my top speed was, what my average speed was, what my total miles ridden since the beginning of the trip is, and how many miles left before we get home.

My two-fold purpose in life is to grow to be as much like Jesus Christ in character as is possible in the time I have left before I see Him face to face, and to accomplish as much with my life as possible before I stand before Him at the “Judgment Seat of Christ.” I renew my commitment to those life purposes every morning. What I wish is that I had some little computer that would tell me how am doing. How much did I grow in character, in maturity last week? Did I grow? How much have I accomplished with my life that matters, that Jesus will praise me for when I get to heaven. I love keeping track of progress, but it is so hard to know for sure in life.

I write in my journal several times each week examining my life, trying to discern my strengths, weaknesses, growth areas, accomplishments, sins, character flaws, and blind spots. But I know that it is very hard for us as people to be honest with ourselves, our heart is self-centered, biased, prideful, and very deceptive.

I want more than any other desire of my heart to hear Jesus say to me at the end of my life, “well done, good and faithful servant,” not “you wicked, lazy servant!”

I don’t really, just seeing if the title would prompt more people to read my blog! But let’s pretend that God did give me a very clear revelation of the exact day and time when Jesus was coming back to take us all to heaven with him. Now that I have that information what am I going to do with it.

Maybe it would prompt more people to trust Jesus as their Savior if I told them when Jesus was coming back. In my witnessing to them I could tell them that if they didn’t trust Jesus as their Savior before He came back then they would spend eternity in hell. The problem is that there are quite a few people who already claim to know the date and time of Jesus return, just check YouTube, but nobody believes them. The same is true of Christians, if I would tell our church the date and time of Jesus return so that everyone would get excited about witnessing to lost people they wouldn’t believe me either. Probably because in sermons in the past I have said that if anyone comes to you with the time of Christ’s return don’t believe them, they are a nut case.

Well, I guess I will just use the information to motivate myself to live for Jesus and to witness faithfully. Do I really need to know that information to be motivated to serve Jesus with all my heart and to seek Him with all of my might? I shouldn’t need it, not if I am faithful and obedient.

OK, I guess I will be content not knowing exactly what God is going to do in the future, I know that I am in the family of God and headed for heaven, so I will call that good and choose to be highly motivated to live as a bright light and influence people every chance I get.

I ate a small piece of delicious chocolate tonight and then Sherri brought in a bowl of sauerkraut for me. I love sauerkraut but right after that piece of chocolate it tasted terrible. When the kids were small Patty put a piece of black construction paper in the freezer and when it snowed we took it out and caught snowflakes on it. Because it was cold the snowflakes didn’t melt and because it was black the white snow flakes stood out and it was very easy to see their shapes and designs. Contrast magnifies differences.

One of my regular “lines” to people who complain about life and wonder why God doesn’t make things better is, “ this is life not heaven!” When we get to heaven God will make everything perfect, but now we are on earth living life, and God purposely designed life to be hard, very hard. Because life is hard we grow and when we get to heaven we will be so grateful and thankful to God that we are there, and one of the reasons will be because of the contrast.

I was supposed to go fishing on the Siletz river for steelhead today but it got cancelled because of the weather. I am sitting here in my recliner feeling very disappointed that I didn’t get to go fishing. We feel disappointed when what we wanted and expected to happen did not happen. Sometimes our disappointment is because of an event that failed to happen, sometimes it is because an unrealized goal, and sometimes it is because a person failed to do or be what we expected and were planning on.

We all feel negative emotions such as disappointment, sadness, and grief regularly, but when we do we need to manage them. If we let these emotions of loss stay in us we will become pessimists. A pessimist thinks and expects mostly bad things are going to happen, at least not very many good things. Disappointment is painful, and many in their pain management eliminate most dreams, goals, and desires because if they don’t happen there is disappointment, so in their mind it is better not to hope than to be disappointed.

Pessimists are low on fruit-bearing for God, they are low on joy, low on healthy relationships, and they are low on faith.

I have a lot of dreams for the future, I have a lot of goals, and I have high expectations for most of the people in my life, so I experience a lot of disappointment. My desires for the future tend to be intense and passionate so my disappointments are the same.

When I have a disappointment I rejoice over what did happen that was good and what was accomplished, and then I reschedule, set another goal, adjust, or adjust my thinking. Today, I looked at the rain and wind and thought, “boy, I am glad I am not fishing!” Then I started thinking about the next fishing trip coming up.