I think that as God orchestrates our life as a Potter with clay that he designs the consequences of getting older to be added weight on the barbell of our life to make us stronger and more like Jesus in character. Things were so much easier when I was younger. Just getting my socks on in the morning now is a ten-minute ordeal. As of late I have found myself paralyzed, stuck in my recliner. I am not really paralyzed, it is just easier to stay there than get up and do what I am supposed to do, so I just sit there, seemingly unable to move. The self-control needed to get with it hasn’t caught up with the effort required to get up and do something.

The character growth takes place as I recognize what is going on in my life, and determine to conquer this and then to just do it. The fact that it takes more effort and time is just how it is, not just for me but for most people as they get older and, for many, much worse than what I am experiencing. I can still fish, work on my car, preach and teach for hours, work on my house, and ride my bicycle, it just takes more effort, determination and time than it used to.

The cool thing is that God wants me to grow in character, to run the race that He has set in front of me with endurance, and to be diligent, self-controlled, and joyful in the process. He gives me His strength to do just that, and I have the promise that He won’t put more weight on the bar at any one time than I can handle.

Another cool thing is that the recliner I have has an electric hoist, so I push a button, and it lifts me right up to my feet. Now if I could just get it to put my socks on I would be set.

Years ago I decided that when I say “I love you” to Patty it needed to be more than an expression of affection, it needed to be an expression of my commitments to her, so I wrote out a list of seven commitments and expanded the list to a dozen on our 50th wedding anniversary. Every time I say I love you I am remaking these commitments. A few of them are;

(1) I will not get angry at you, not even a little bit irritated, no matter what you do.

(2) I will talk to you any time you want, for as long as you like, and I will honor you by paying sincere attention to your words.

(3) I will pray with you at least three times each week.

(4) I will not be bossy or controlling of you.

(5) I will not be selfish or possessive of your time, and will give you all the freedom you desire to develop your spiritual gifts and ministry.

(6) I will regularly ask for your opinion and counsel on character weaknesses and blind spots that you see that I need to work on in order to enhance my walk with Christ, my role as a pastor, and as a husband to you.

Proverbs 27:17 states, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” We must always stay sharp. For this to happen, strong and positive relationships are a necessity. It requires building a community of like-minded individuals who genuinely care about each other and want the best for each other. Way too many men are not in any kind of group that has as it’s purpose to “sharpen one another”. The reason is that they don’t think they need to be part of such a group. They might think that it would probably help them a little bit.but it isn’t worth the time it would take. God created us so that we won’t come close to being what we could be or accomplish what we could accomplish without help from others. He made us, wired us, saved us, and put the Holy Spirit in us, not so that we could declare independence from others, but so that we would have power to help others. We give and receive grace from each other but only in an environment of love, forgiveness, acceptance, and gentleness.

There are

about a dozen areas of life that need balance in order for us to be healthy, happy and successful. One of those areas is balance between having an intense desire to accomplish a goal and being relaxed about accomplishing that same goal.

Intense desire, passion, want, and focus is the difference between being a person who is a true champion continuously accomplishing significant goals or a person who is mediocre at best in his life and life accomplishments. Being a person who is driven to accomplish significant things saves you from being lazy and unmotivated.

But being an intense, focused, and driven person can be hard when a goal that we are pursuing isn’t accomplished, the disappointment from unrealized dreams can be very painful. The pain of the disappointment tends to make us difficult to live with. But a highly motivated, focused and passionate person tends to think that he will accomplish all of his goals, but there are to many things in life that we can’t control to make that even a remote possibility. So we alternate between the joy of winning and the disappointment of losing.

A totally relaxed person is ok with not accomplishing a goal, not getting everything on the “todo” list crossed off. He is much more into the process of accomplishing the goal, the journey of accomplishing something significant needs to have a significant amount of fun in it. A totally relaxed person will have a lot of friends but few significant accomplishments in his life.

Being a person who is walking on a 2 x 4 going between two buildings 100 feet off of the ground will require amazing balance to accomplish that short journey without dying.

Having a balance between being totally obsessed and being relaxed will result in us being faithful, diligent, and enjoyable to be around.

As a 74-year-old pastor I don’t get drunk, take drugs, shoplift, cheat on my taxes, have affairs, swear, look at porn, or even get angry. But I still struggle with sinning. I think a lot of wrong thoughts about other people and about myself. I say things that I wish I hadn’t said a few minutes after the word’s leave my mouth. I am lacking in self-control in controlling my thoughts, my words, and also in managing my time well, in managing our money, and in eating.

Psalms 106:6 We have sinned like our fathers,
We have committed iniquity, we have behaved wickedly.

Psalms 38:4 For my iniquities are gone over my head;
As a heavy burden they weigh too much for me.

-Every night I examine my life and confess all known sins to God.

1 John 1:9
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

-I pray and declare that I hunger and thirst for righteousness, and that I will diligently pursue righteousness.

– I acknowledge that apart from Him I am nothing and have zero ability, strength, or self-control to change my own life, but I can with His strength so I ask God to bless me with His supernatural power in my inner man.

I recognize that the journey to holiness is slow because of the strength of my flesh, the attractiveness of the world, and the cleverness of the devil, but I commit to going up, not down, and I will not plateau in my growth thinking that I am good enough.

I will faithfully maintain the spiritual disciplines of reading the Bible every day, spending time with God in prayer every day, memorizing and meditating on key Bible verses every day, gathering with other believers often, giving, thanking the Lord constantly for my life and blessings from Him, grumbling and complaining about nothing, constantly seeking advise and counsel from other successful and strong people around me, reading good books, and listening to sermons and lectures on podcasts.

Jesus is coming soon I think, and if He doesn’t come quickly, I have 10 to 20 years left to live before I enter eternity with my character and stand before Him and give an account of my life.

Knowledge is knowing a lot of information about a lot of different things. Wisdom is being able to solve problems, to create things, knowing what to do and what to say in any situation or circumstance in order to succeed. Understanding is knowing why things are happening the way they are and knowing why people do what they do, being able to see beneath the surface of events in life.

People have the ability and potential to grow in knowledge, understanding, and wisdom as they grow older because of the lessons of life experienced on our own journeys, but many do not learn those lessons, in fact it appears that most do not.

Proverbs says that a major requirement to grow in these three is to seek them like gold, silver, and precious treasure. The first step in being a seeker is to read the Bible regularly and often, and then add to that systematically memorizing key passages and verses in the Bible and meditate on them daily.

Knowledge, understanding and wisdom seekers are readers, they have developed the habit of reading a lot in a variety of areas. They also listen to good teachers and speakers on a variety of subjects. With the modern day “podcast” listening to those with wisdom, knowledge, and understanding is easy. A major reason to build our pursuit of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom on a steady and large dose of the Bible is that you will be able to sort through all the books and teachers and eliminate the ones who teach error.

A steady flow of information into our head and heart will orient our minds to being in a constant state of seeking and learning. All day long as we live life we will be observing, listening, evaluating and storing information. The more we learn in our reading, listening, and experiencing the faster we can learn more and grow rapidly in knowledge, understanding and wisdom. It is like learning math, you won’t learn much algebra until you have basic math down.

So the bottom line is make goal to read, study, and memorize the Bible. Make a book reading goal. Make a listening goal. Write them down and read them everyday. Develop a routine so that you mostly read in the same place and at the same time every day. Listen while driving, exercising, mowing your lawn, and doing other activities. Being a seeker, a learner is a developed lifestyle, pursue that lifestyle diligently. There are a lot of old fools running around, determine not to be one.

The election didn’t turn out the way that I hoped and I was disappointed, Oregon lost their football game to Washington today and I was disappointed, I didn’t get to go elk hunting this year and I was disappointed. As I think about major disappointments in my life the one that sticks out the most is when I flunked my motorcycle driving test for the third time in a row. I had already bought my Yamaha V-star 1100 motorcycle, and I had already planned every day of my 9000 mile trip around the United States hitting all lower 48 States on my motorcycle. I thought the driving test would be easy, but I kept knocking down those dumb cones. After my third failure I took the “Ride Oregon” class at Chemeketa Community College and passed and got my motorcycle endorsement. But I remember very clearly the pain of the disappointment of that third failure. I had not yet resolved in my head the disappointment of being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and I wanted very much to get away by myself on this motorcycle adventure and get life straightened out in my head, but I couldn’t pass that stupid test. I had not ridden a motorcycle before so this was a bit of a stretch for my adventure seeking mentality, and now that I had committed to going on the trip my inability to get a license was extremely frustrating. When I passed the test in the parking lot of the college I was so relieved and happy. I remember thinking to myself that my disappointment and then the happiness were strange and unbalanced in light of things that were way more important.

We all experience disappointment, some minor and other very painful. How do we manage disappointment? It is the self talk that we do that determines our level of success at coping. we can turn a fairly minor disappointment into a a deep, dark depression if we don’t manage our thoughts and self talk concerning the disappointment. My most successful tool for coping with disappointment is to memorize key Bible verses and meditate on them so that I am able to refocus my dreams and desires on something else, and keep running the race of life with passion and fire.

I experience a lot of disappointment because I want certain things to happen with great passion and fire, and the drive that I put into things guarantees that I feel great disappointment. But I work hard at not letting my disappointment cause me to downsize my dreams as many do.

When you get to the end of the day, and you are all done in, it is good to talk to yourself in a positive way about being tired instead of feeling sorry for yourself. When you are busy, rejoice and consider yourself blessed to have so much of significance to do. Burnout isn’t because of working too much; it is caused by faulty, negative thinking.

I try and pack my day full of activity so I am often going at a frantic pace to try and get everything done on my to-do list. I discipline myself to always rejoice over my busy schedule and to tell myself that I am having a fantastic time doing things that make a difference as well as things that I enjoy.

I start my year on October 27th so I am about two weeks into my new goals and I am getting into a routine in pursuit of them. Here are half of my 74 goals for the year, my favorite ones.

1. I will teach each week four different Leadership classes until the end of April. I am presently doing that and I have a total of 70 studemts who are doing great.

2. I will pastor Agape Family Fellowship in Albany for the next year preaching on Sundays and mentoring Preston to take over with the goal of having an average attendance of 100 by the end of 2023.

3. I will study hard and prepare well and preach each week at our Wednesday night service with the goal of an average of 200 in attendance at the end of 2023.

4. I am either leading or involved with four different men’s weekly accountability groups now. I will work at getting three more groups started and coach leaders for an additional three groups.

5. I will write my blog each day working on my writing skills with the goal of of having 800 people subscribed and 100,000 views in 2023. Everyday I will pray asking God to spread the blog and to work in me granting me a special annointing when I write to bless and edify those who read.

6. I will be involved in two different online Pastor accountability groups with the goal being to stay faithful to the disciplines so God will use me and bless my efforts as a Pastor, and also to encourage the pastors in my groups to be faithful to the disciplines so that they will be successful in their ministries.

7. I will meet with the young staff at JBC each week mentoring and teaching and holding them accountable so that they become very faithful and successful leaders of their respective ministries at JBC.

8. I will mentor and coach two pastors outside JBC helping them to become very successful as Pastors of their churches.

9. I will teach a two-day seminar at JBC in January on how to develop a leadership training program in a local church. I will pray that we have 100 pastors here.

10. I will coach six different people in JBC helping them start and lead their own ministries.

11. I will pray for 600 hours total this next year with 300 hours being “by myself” praying, 50 hours praying with Patty, 200 hour of corporate praying with JBC, and 50 hours of corporate praying with Agape.

12. I will bring my total number of verses memorized up to 700, get up to 200th place in “Scripture Memory” and maintain it, and memorize the book of Colossians.

13. I will finish my devotional book of the best of 365 of my daily blogs.

14. I will read twelve chapters every day in my Bible.

15. I will read 1,000 pages in good books.

16. I will listen to 100 sermons, lectures or talks online.

17. I will take Patty on 100 dates and will love her the way Christ loves the church.

18. I will pray my prayer of commitment every morning, first thing without fail.

19. I will write a book on how to successfully accomplish Hebrews 6:1 in your life, how to practically pursue maturity.

20. I will go hunting in Alaska in August.

21. I will go halibut fishing in my driftboat in Alaska in May.

22. I will go sockeye salmon fishing in Alaska in July.

23. I will ride my bike with others along the Pacific coast from Canada to Mexico a trip of 1800 miles taking 29 days.

24. I will put in a quarter acre fish pond on my place using a liner, a filter system, and aeration, I will plant large mouth bass in my pond and put in an automatic feeding system to maximize growth.

25. I will restart my aquaponics system that I had successfully running a couple of years ago using largemouth bass.

26. I will finish restoring the 1969 mustang with my grandson Isaac.

27.I will start restoring my 1950 Ford Club Coupe with a flathead V8.

28. I will build an electric car from scratch using my purchased plans.

29. I will lead the remodel/building project at JBC of turning the racketball court into a chapel room for the kid’s ministry.

30. I will ride my stationary bike an hour each night that I am home, I will run/walk on my treadmill two times each week for 30 minutes, and I will lift weights three days a week for 30 minutes.

31. I will lose weight and get to 188 pounds and maintain that weight.

32. I will go fishing at CJ Striker reservoir in Idaho for one week this summer with Seth and his family.

33. I will run the Sauvie Island half marathon on July 4th.

34. I will reroof the north side of my big shop, reside it, and paint it.

35. I will shoot a blackmailed deer in the next two months with my bow.

36. I will send a text, email, or phone each kid, their spouse and grandkid each month.

37. I will facilitate a psstor’s lunch inviting JBC daughter church pastors, local pastors, and JBC staff once every three months and I will teach a lesson on pastoral leadership.

My friend Matt and I went fishing today and we caught these nice chinook salmon. We also caught and released at least a dozen Coho salmon and a very bright steelhead that got off at the last minute. That was one enjoyable day.

Salmon fishing in November is exciting and fun but it also has a fairly high price tag. (1) I got up at 3:00 am (2) we drove for an hour and a half in the dark and fog on a very windy road, (3) we froze to death sitting in a metal boat on a cold river all day (4) we drove an hour and a half back home, and (5) we paid the guide an amount that would buy two tanks of gas. Is it worth all that??? Yep, I would do it again in a heartbeat. I was so tired tonight that I fell asleep while riding my stationary bike, whoooeee now that is tired. It is now 9:00 pm and if our guide called and said, “my clients for tomorrow just canceled on me, do you want to go tomorrow?” “Yes sir, see you in the morning!” crazy!! Though, I must admit that now that I am 74 years old, I think about it for 60 seconds when I used to think about it for 10 seconds.

Values are an interesting things. What I value in life someone else may find totally boring. It is sort of like food, I hate okra and my son-in-law loves it. As we get wiser and more mature our values are no longer based entirely on what is fun, exciting, and challenging, but on what is good for us and others. I place a high value on riding my stationary bike, not because I enjoy it, it is a lot of work and it is as boring as dirt, but because it is good for me physically. I read my Bible every day though I would rather read a book on fishing, bicycling, or auto mechanics. I put reading my Bible every day as one of the highest values in my life, more than fishing, because the greatest desire of my heart is to know God more intimately and Bible reading is a key to that desire happening.