I enjoy reading early church fathers’ writings. St Irenaeus is a “third generation” church father. The Apostle John was discipled by Jesus, he discipled Polycarp, and Polycarp discipled Irenaeus. He lived during a time when many heresies were infecting the church, and he was a major defender of orthodoxy. One of the false teachings that he dealt with was the teaching that said “flesh” was sinful so Jesus never became flesh, He just appeared to be flesh.

1 John 4:2-3 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.

2 John 1:7 For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist.

Christmas is the celebration of God becoming flesh just like us in every way. One of St Ireneaus’s famous quotes during the time of this controversy was, “Jesus became just like us so that we could become just like Him, and if He did not become like us than we can not become like Him.”

At the very beginning when God said, “Let Us make man in Our Image,” the purpose was God wanted to fellowship with us, to know us, to love us, to enjoy us, to communicate with us, and He wanted us to fellowship with Him, to know Him. To love Him, to enjoy Him, and to communicate with Him.

For all that to happen we need to grow in character, to become “perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” That is what life is about, us growing in character, and it is possible because Jesus became like us in every way except He never sinned.

God is a goal-setter; everything He has done or will do has been planned out ahead of time. We have been created in the image and likeness of God. Ephesians 5:1 says, “be imitators of God.” We function best when we set and pursue goals. Goals are not obligations; they are not vows; they are not laws, goals are an expression of the desires of our heart, and they are what we genuinely want to do. Those who set goals manage time better, have the right priorities, get less entangled in the world, they are more focused. Goals are flexible; you can change them, adjust them, make them harder, or make them easier, depending on the circumstances. You maintain the direction and the motivation but adjust as needed, so your goals aren’t crushing you. Those with clear, well-written goals can say “no” easily; when you write your goals out, you can read them every day; that only takes five minutes, and then you will never be lukewarm again. Goals are the key to not falling into the squeaky wheel syndrome. Goal setters are the 20% who get the 80% done. Goal setters are the ones who bear much fruit and glorify their heavenly Father. Goal setters are the ones who get to the end of their life and say, “I finished the race!” They are the ones who hear Jesus say, “well done, good and faithful servant.”Goal-setters manage their money well, tend to have good marriages, and raise good kids. People don’t set goals because they think they can just operate out of their head, and do as well. Besides it is easier and takes less time to just live life without written down goals. I guess if that is what you want, easier rather than better.

A person who runs the race that God gives them with endurance and is a finisher has to be a strong person. Paul says, “don’t grow weary in we’ll doing, for in due time, you will reap, if you don’t become weary.” All of those people who are in the seven churches in Revelation 2 & 3 are blessed and rewarded at the “Judgment Seat of Christ” if they are “overcomers.” An overcomer is a finisher, a winner, a champion, and a strong person.

In real, everyday life a physically strong person got that way by training and practice, and the same is true for those who are strong in character. A key training principal is to choose to do hard things. You can do that as opportunities present themselves and you have the option of taking the easy way or the hard way. Choosing to take the hard way will make you stronger as a person, and it usually produces much more fruit or results in your life. Another way is to set personal goals that are harder. It is almost the New Year, and wise people have or are in the process of setting their goals for the next year. As you do that you can increase the size of some of them. If you had a goal of praying five hours in each of the five-day prayer events you could increase that to six hours. Or if you had a goal of reading 3 chapters each day in your Bible you could increase it to 4 chapters. Or you could come up with a new goal that would push you and train you and as a result you would become a stronger person. A great goal for many of you would be to start a ministry. You could start and lead an accountability group, that is a great ministry. You could start a home group in your house and lead it or recruit someone else to lead it as you hosted it. You could start a Bible study at the church, in your home, or at a restaurant.

The main thing is do something with your life for the Lord and don’t just give Him easy, left over time and energy. Grow stronger every year, grow in character every year, grow closer to Jesus every year. Set some goals for 2023.

There is two kinds of toughness, one is when we act tough and the second is when we are tough. The difference shows up over the long haul, real toughness as a character trait endures, perseveres, doesn’t lose heart and quit. In fact I have stopped using the words tough and grit, and I use the word endure and endurance instead.

2 Corinthians 6:4-5 but in everything commending ourselves as servants of God, in much endurance, in afflictions, in hardships, in distresses, in beatings, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in sleeplessness, in hunger,

Hebrews 10:36 For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.

Hebrews 12:1-2 Therefore, 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, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

The success of almost anything requires that we finish what we started. The one’s who finish well are those who endure. Endurance in us requires a motivation, asking and answering the question of “why”? Why are we doing what we are doing, why finish? According to the Bible the more we can make what we are doing as act of love for other people around us, and the more we can do what we are doing to please the lord, the more motivated we will be and then the more we will endure.

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We all have physical energy, emotional energy, and mental energy. We have a gas tank for each of those types of energy. When our gas tank runs dry we are in trouble.

Physical energy is the easiest to understand and evaluate, and it is also the easiest gas tank to fill. When we get physically tired we know why and we know how to replenish our energy, sleep, rest, and eat. That cycle happens to most people every day. Exercise is a key activity to increase the size of our physical energy gas tank. I am riding my stationary bike as I write this. A lot of people don’t take the time for exercise and they will pay the price in increased tiredness, and then in reduced productivity.

Emotional energy is where are passion, enthusiasm, happiness, motivation, and drive comes from. When we run out of emotional energy we feel flat, bored, unmotivated, and even depressed. An NBA basketball team was playing poorly the other day and the commentator remarked that they were playing with no passion, just going through the motions. Understanding what uses up our emotional energy and how to fill up our emotional gas tank is super important if we want to stay enthused about life, highly motivated, and positive in our vision for the future.

Mental energy is the most difficult to understand in ourselves, to monitor, and to replenish. When our mental energy tank runs dry we can’t focus, think clearly, or remember information very well. Very few people are aware of the ebb and flow of their mental energy.

Because my job of being a pastor requires that I think about people’s problems in order to help them, to think about how to communicate truth so that it is understood and easy to apply, and to think about God, His Word, to understand it, and teach it in a way that people can use it to live their lives successfully, I can get mentally fatigued easily. Because I am burning up so much mental energy in the course of a normal day I have learned how to read my mental energy gas gauge, how to fill it back up, and how to increase the size of my gas tank.

The most effective and powerful way to increase my mental energy tank is to spend long periods of time memorizing Bible verses. Memorizing is a very high mental energy drain and doing it every day for 30 minutes to an hour is equivalent to riding my bike, lifting weights or going running physically. When I first started memorizing for a minimum of 30 minutes my brain would get so fatigued I could hardly think or focus on anything, but now I can go hard for at least an hour. It has paid huge dividends in being able to think in a focused way for several hours at a time. Having a lot of mental energy is not the same as being smart or highly intelligent, it means that we can focus mentally, solve problems, and create with our mind.

One of the things I have learned is not to use up my mental energy on things that don’t have much return for me in what I accomplish. One of the most mentally draining activities is to listen to a negative speech, like what is common on the news or talk shows, or to be involved in a negative conversation. I just read a book on “thinking” and I saved this quote, “According to Stanford University biology professor Robert Sapolsky, studies have shown that after listening to 30 minutes of negative speech, the neuron cells located in the hippocampus begin dying. And this is the part of the brain related to problem-solving, so those are definitely neurons worth keeping!”

I let myself get addicted to reading and listening to a ton of news stuff in the last two years, but I have recently gotten free of that. Now I read a little bit of the news to stay informed, and I memorize Bible verses way more.

The word Vintage originally had to do with wine that was good because it had aged. A vintage car is one that was manufactured from 2030 to 2019, older than 2019 is an antique, and from about 1990 to 1930 is a classic car. I was born in 1948 so that makes me a classic.

I worked for several hours today on the 1969 Mustang that my grandson, Isaac and I have been restoring for the last three and a half years. It is coming along nicely and hopefully we will be all done with it by Valentines Day. Isaac worked on the interior and I worked on the electrical. We should be ready to do the body work and painting in a couple of weeks. I have been watching You Tube videos on how to do the sanding and painting and I am close to being an expert! I enjoy very much doing car restoration projects, and when we finish the Mustang I am going to start on a 1950 Ford Club Coupe with a Flathead V8 in it, that is going to be super fun.

God is doing restoration projects on us. He is in the process of making us like Jesus in character. He uses different tools on us like I do on the Mustang. Issac and I have a goal and that is to restore the car to it’s original look and feel. God’s goal is to make us look like and act like Jesus. The closer He can get us to Jesus in character the more we will enjoy heaven when we get there and the more we will enjoy Him and He us.

The car is totally dead, it doesn’t do anything in the process of making it look like new, it just sits there. We on the other hand must cooperate with the work of God or we will be a non-living project as well. What our part is in our becoming new is to rejoice always, and never, ever complain, not eve a little bit. The more we rejoice the faster we change, that is God’s rule. It isn’t natural or easy to rejoice about everything, but it is doable if we commit to it every day asking God for the strength to do it. Come on, let’s do this together.

I am going to work on the 1969 mustang with my grandson today. I went out and turned on my propane heater at 7:00 am, and right now at 8:30 it is still pretty cold in my shop. I like working on cars, but I don’t like working on cars if I am cold. The older I get the more that is true. I have a wood stove in my shop but at some point in the past the wind blew my stove pipe over. I must have decided when I installed it that I could screw the stove pipe together later and forgot to do it. I need to get my ladder out and get up on the roof of my shop and reconnect the stove pipe and screw it together, but Patty will get very upset if I go up a ladder and get on the roof, she thinks that I am old and decrepit. I will have to do it without her knowing.

I had a diesel space heater that put out a lot of heat, but I couldn’t get it to start so I sprayed some starter fluid in the burn chamber and caught it on fire. By the time I got the fire put out the heater was toast, and my beard was all singed, oh well, it was kind of a smelly old heater anyway, and my beard needed trimming. I guess I will drive to coastal farm and buy another heater.

Living life is like that. There are problems and barriers and sometimes in the process of trying to fix them another bigger problem is created. The key thing I remind myself of constantly is don’t get uptight, enjoy the ride, never grumble, rejoice always, and keep the fire extinguisher close.

I finished filling in my calendar for 2023 tonight. I have almost every day filled in though some days are a guess, but I will probably be right or close on most guesses. We have four “Five Day Prayer Events,” and I am pretty sure where they will fall. I fill in the high-priority events first and then I move to the next level of priority, and then the least important. My “Leadership” classes start the first weekend of October, and go for every weekend until the end of April, super, high priority. My bicycle trip down the pacific coast starting on the Canadian border and going to The Mexican border starts on May 25th and ends June 23rd. My Alaska salmon fishing trip to the Kenai River in Soldotna is from July 12th to August 7th. The Portland Sportmans Show is February 16th, all day. The Portland Swap meet is March 31st. The JBC Sportsmans show is February 10th, 11th, and 12th. I can’t miss that!

The events of 2022 are in front of me on my 2022 calendar, so, on many things, I just transferred events from last year to this year. A couple of dates that I don’t know for sure is “The Rapture,” I wish I did, and the day I die and go to heaven. I don’t think either will be in 2023 but they both are very probable soon. If the rapture happens first I won’t die, and if I die first I will find out the date of the rapture from Jesus. It is fun to write about those days and guess when they will happen.

In all of my planning I remain flexible, but I want to be rigid enough so that planning is valued and followed.

A problem in the church today in the U.S. and probably all over the world, is that there are many people who think they are Christians headed for heaven who are not, and won’t discover it until it is to late to do anything about it.

Matthew 7:13-14 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. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

Matthew 7:22&23 On that day. . .I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me,

Notice that it says that many enter through the broad and easy gate that leads to destruction, but few enter through the narrow gate that leads to life.

How do I know if I have real faith, how do you know that you are on the right path to eternal life with Jesus in heaven, and not relying on a pseudo-faith. You pass the test. My granddaughter took a Final today in College, and she got an “A” she more than passed the test; she aced it. What is the test for real faith? Read this next couple of verses very carefully so that you understand what they are saying.

1 Peter 1:6-7
In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ;

What do you do when you go through trials? Do you grumble and complain or do you rejoice? The answer to that question is the answer to the question, “is your faith genuine or false?”

Yesterday was the Christmas Concert at Agape Family Fellowship in Albany/Tangent where I am the Interim Pastor. We had seven special music performances that were solos, instrumentals, and duets. The music was so good, it was obvious that everyone put in a lot of time practicing. I am sure that everyone in the audience was incredibly blessed by the music. My part was to preach a short 10-minute gospel presentation at the end that made it clear what Christmas is all about. It is funny, a normal sermon that I preach each week is 40 minutes and I don’t get nervous about it, but this short sermon made me very nervous about how I would do. I went over it in my head dozens of times, and rewrote it three times. I think the reason that I was so nervous is because I expected a number of people to be in the audience who didn’t know the Lord so I wanted what I shared to be very clear. I prayed a lot asking God to use me, to speak through me, and to help me not to mess up the message. I get to preach the same message this coming weekend at JBC on Saturday, and twice on Sunday morning so I should be practiced up after yesterday. I love teaching “Leadership class,” writing my blog, preaching through 1 Peter on Wednesday nights, and getting to preach occasionally on weekends, and other occasions as they pop up. Preaching and teaching the Bible is God’s method of drawing people to Himself so that they become believers and followers of Him. He expects that those who are given this responsibility will be faithful and responsible and will prepare well. That is what I get nervous about.

1 Corinthians 1:21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.