We all make plans for the day, for the week, some of us make plans for the month and even the year. When something comes up unexpectantly and messes with those plans, especially big ones and important ones, we get frustrated and sometimes even angry or in more serious set backs depressed. Learning to cope with those nasty little inconveniences, to possibly solve the problem so that they go away, or make a mid-flight adjustment, so we continue with the plans with some differences, is a significant part of growing in character and wisdom. Thinking back on those events in our life, especially the recent ones is a very good way to practice self-evaluation on our character level and growth. Doing that self-evaluation with paper and pencil is much more accurate than wondering around in our memory trying to figure it out.

My grandson and I are restoring a 1969 mustang, and when we finish it, it will be his car. I have had an enjoyable time working on it with him. We rebuilt the engine in it, which is a 250 ci inline six-cylinder engine. I built an engine stand, and we put it on it with a radiator and working gauges. We let it run for quite a few hours with break-in oil. I had a stainless steel corrugated hose that fits onto the exhaust pipe; I ran the end of the flexible pipe outside so we wouldn’t die from an overdose of carbon monoxide. The engine ran great and sounded super good. About six months ago we put it into the car. I have been working on the electrical in the car and was down to just needing to finish the gauges on the dash. I got everything to work good except the oil pressure gauge. I changed gauges, I wired it different, I called the company that I bought the gauges from to make sure I wired it right. Nothing seemed to work and I was getting super frustrated. I assumed the oil pump in the engine was pumping oil because it had been before. But I thought, maybe, for some reason, that oil pump isn’t working. I put a fitting in the hole in the side of the engine block where the sending unit was screwed in and fastened a four-foot length of clear, plastic hose on the fitting. I started the engine and no oil was coming out the hose, zero. I shut the engine off quick and was grateful that in all my starting of the engine to test the oil pressure gauge that I had never let it run more than a couple of seconds.

So, my oil pump is not working. So now the main question is why? I am assuming that while putting the engine into the car something happened. I don’t what or what exactly is broken. Thursday I will have time and I will figure it out. I have worked out my plan of attack in my head and I know what I am going to do and how I will figure out the problem. I even have a new oil pump that I bought for the car by accident because I had forgotten that I had already bought one.

So, how did I do with this set back. These kinds of situations are the hardest to deal with because it is usually because of some stupid, idiotic decision that I made, and that is tough to take with all the heckling that I will get from guys in the church.

So, I want to grow in this situation. How do I do that? I will Write out in detail what I did and what I am going to do about it. I will write about my reactions at the most difficult times and evaluate my level of maturity and make a commitment to do better next time

When you have a clear understanding of God’s desire for you to be holy like He is, and at the same time you faithfully practice the basic discipline of self-examination and confession of your sin, you will arrive at a place in your life where you have a sense of urgency about growing and at the same time you will be relaxed and have a freedom from the fear of messing up which results in a great sense of peace and joy. It is a nice place to be in your thinking and attitude as you live life with purpose and drive. A person who lives life in the world that we are now in, in the midst of turmoil and uncertainty with great joy, peace, and security is rare, but as Christians it ought be normal. It is that confident living mixed with graciousness and humility, in the midst of storms that attracts people to our faith. God gives us strength and He forgives us our sins, and He plans and directs our steps, but we must choose everyday to pick up our cross and follow Him. It is the life Jesus invites us to live when He says, “take My yoke upon you.” A yoke is hard work, but then He says, “my yoke is easy.” The Christian life is a great paradox between easy and hard, between sacrifice and reward, between giving and receiving, and between dying to self and living for Christ. It begins with the cross, with the dying to self, with the huge effort, and then it moves to victory, power, and much fruit and glory.

Psalms 51:1-2 Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; According to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

One of the significant blessings of being a Christian, being a child of God, and being in His family is the gift of being forgiven. We are forgiven legally of all of our sins, past sins, and present sins when we first trusted Christ as our savior, and as a result, our sins were paid for by Jesus , so we are legally God’s child and headed for heaven. This is a one-time deal. But there is also the relational sins that we commit probably daily. These sins need to be forgiven by God on an on going basis. It is like my marriage. When I say or do things that hurt Patty our relationship is damaged, but if I go back and figure out what I did, and confess it to her, asking her to forgive me, she does, and our relationship is restored. I can also confess my sins to God, and he will forgive me, and I will have a good relationship with Him. I examine my life for sin and confess them every night. I want to keep short accounts with God. Self-examination and confession of our sins regularly keeps our conscience tender and our relationship with God strong. It is a discipline because we don’t like to do this,we would rather just ignore our sins and hope that it is no big deal. That is a bad idea.

Proverbs 7:4 Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,”
And call understanding your intimate friend;

Part of my daily Bible reading plan is to read one chapter in Proverbs. Each day I read the chapter that corresponds to the day, and today is the 7th so I read chapter seven. There are 31 chapters in Proverbs so I get through it each month. Sometimes for some reason a verse in the chapter I am reading for the day jumps off the page at me, and I am prompted to think about it for a little while, and make personal application of it to my life.

The 7th chapter of Proverbs is all about moral purity, resisting temptation, and making wise choices in life. The key to staying out of trouble and not messing up your whole life is wisdom. One of the definitions of wisdom that I use is, “wisdom is knowing what kind of seed you are planting and knowing what kind of crop you will harvest from that seed if you go ahead and plant it.

Galatians 6:7 Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.

Proverbs is a book that explains the consequences of stupid choices.

Proverbs 7:21-23
With her many persuasions she entices him;
With her flattering lips she seduces him.
Suddenly he follows her
As an ox goes to the slaughter,
Until an arrow pierces through his liver;
So he does not know that it will cost him his life.

The point of Proverbs 7:4 is if you want to be a wise person who makes wise choices and is blessed because of having wisdom you have to seek it diligently. That is the theme of all of proverbs, find wisdom and you will be blessed by God, but you have to seek it diligently.

Psalms 37:7 Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him;
Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way,
Because of the man who carries out wicked schemes.

I am a bit on the driven side, usually in a hurry to get everything on my todo list done, and I often get tense on the inside when things aren’t going as planned. Especially if the things going wrong are caused by people. I growl under my breath and mutter words that are just words with very little meaning, usually just grunts. I rarely ever say anything or show frustration, successfully maintaining my poker face. So I have made it a goal this year to faithfully practice the above verse, “to rest in the Lord.” Another word that can be used is “relax in the Lord.” I wrote my goal this way, “I will work hard and faithfully pursue my goals, dreams, and responsibilities, but in situations where things get out of sync and I have little immediate influence or control I will choose to relax and trust the Lord.” I will accomplish this by meditating on this verse, going over and over it in my mind, praying God’s blessing on any person I am frustrated with, and mentally reviewing a bunch of good things that have happened lately, thanking and praising the Lord for them. No sense in getting uptight about a few things when their are many things to rejoice over.

I anticipate that my new relaxed lifestyle will result in growing back some of my hair, losing some weight, and catching more fish. One can always hope!

What makes you grumpy? I have been grumpy most of the day. I haven’t been around many people for very long so I don’t think I have acted grumpy, I just have felt grumpy, not happy, not much joy, sorta like when you are sick, you know, you don’t care about anything, you don’t much want to do anything either. I am not sick and nothing bad has happened so why am I feeling this way? I know what it is; it is this stupid diet that I am on; this would make anybody grumpy. It is amazing how food makes me feel so good, not just any food, but food that has a lot of calories in it. Not much feels as good as a really big bowl of ice cream with lots of chocolate sauce, whipping cream, nuts sprinkled all over the top and a dozen maraschino cherries to top it off. Wow, I am feeling better just thinking about it.

There is a short phrase in the Bible that is stated half a dozen times,“ the pleasures of sin.” And in 2 Timothy 3:4 it says, “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,” that verse makes this struggle to be free from the addiction to pleasure very important in my walk with God.

So I am thinking that this stupid diet is not only to help me lose some ugly fat, but it is also helping me to be less addicted to pleasure. Proverbs says that a man who is a lover of pleasure will come to ruin! Yikes, I certainly don’t want to come to ruin.

Which brings me to the second point of this blog, one which you have heard from me one million times, but it is always worth repeating, “I don’t have to act the way I feel!” I am feeling grumpy because I am not feeding my pleasures, but I can still act happy, I can still take my thoughts captive and think happy, and I can still treat people happy. You know what? When I act happy despite feeling grumpy when I choose to think happy, and when I work at building up the people around me to make them feel happy, pretty soon grumpy is gone, and happy is here; that is better than a bowl of ice cream.

Almost every day will have a problem, a trial, or a conflict of some sort, and many days will have a bunch of them. None of us likes problems because they are always painful. When they come we try to figure out a solution and we also try to understand the cause. What or who caused this situation that is messing up or semi messing up my life. None of us get very old before our ability to figure out the cause of our problems and trials is mostly gone. And once we have lost the ability to figure out the cause we won’t be able to come up with a solution that works either.

Our strong desire to protect ourselves and to build our own self-worth blocks our ability to own very much of the responsibility for the cause of our problem. If we do take some of the blame we will usually justify or excuse what we did or said. But we easily blame others, giving them full credit for our difficult situations. This practice of self-deception grows stronger and more automatic as we continue doing it with no attempt at self-discovery and humility. This has been the usual way of dealing with trials, relational problems, and failures since Adam and Eve.

Wisdom is the ability to solve problems, but most people stay fools because of their self-deception that they are in.

What is needed is an honest, humble, and earnest pursuit of self-awareness. As we work at being honest with ourselves and owning and confessing our sins we will gradually escape the jail of self-deception, and then we can really grow.

It is interesting reading the news and listening to a few podcasts about current events and the struggle going on in our government over who is in charge and who is the leader. Jesus had a different way to lead.

Mark 10:42-45
Calling them to Himself, Jesus *said to them, “You know that those who are recognized as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them; and their great men exercise authority over them. But it is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant; and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”

Leadership is influence, it doesn’t mean that you get to be the boss of other people. Influence is based on character, it is a result of serving and caring. God says that He is the one who exalts one and humbles another based on humility and character. Those who are wise seek influence with others but are always cautious about power and the ability to Lord it over others. It is difficult to have power and not be corrupted by it, which our government is a classic example of. In all of our relationships and associations, we want to be a positive Christian influence on those around us. We can become growing biblical leaders who are bright lights and salty salt by following biblical principles and guidelines on being an influencer of people.

On Monday night I usually meet with a bunch of guys at the men’s conference room at JBC where there is a very big TV on the wall, and we watch Monday Night Football. Tonight in the first quarter a player collapsed to the ground. They did CPR on him and took him away in an ambulance. Almost all of the players from both teams knelt down together and prayed for him. I don’t think I have ever heard so many comments about prayer in such a short amount of time from the commentators and others who were interviewed; something about prayer was the common theme. It was quite amazing in light of how godless we have become as a nation.

About 40 years ago a friend invited myself and four other friends to lunch. He was studying to get a Doctor of Divinity degree, and was getting ready to write his Thesis which is like writing a book on a particular subject. The title of his Thesis was, “What America Believes and Does it Make any Difference.” He invited us to lunch because he needed our help in taking a survey for his Thesis. He wanted us to take 100 survey papers and fill them out after surveying 100 people. He said he would buy us a nice dinner and we could talk about our survey results and experiences that we had in the day talking to people. We all agreed and spent our day in a large mall walking around asking people if they wouldn’t mind taking a short survey. There were twelve short questions that required only a “yes” or “no” answer. Some of the questions were, “Do you believe in God?” “Do you believe in heaven?” “Do you believe in hell?” “Do you believe in prayer?” As best as I can remember I had to ask about 300 people to get my 100 surveys filled out. That evening we ate a very nice dinner and talked about some of the strange conversations we had as well as some of the very nice ones. One of the most interesting observations from the survey was that of the 600 total surveys there were only two people who gave a “no” answer to the question, “Do you believe in Prayer?” But there were slightly over 20 who gave a “no” answer to “Do you believe in God?”

I wonder how many of the people who were talking about prayer tonight really pray, or personally know the God they assume that they are praying to. Most people ignore God, deny God, and rebel against God until there is a crisis in their life that they have no answer for and no control over.

January 1st, the beginning of a new year. How was 2022 for you? Thinking back on it what were the most enjoyable experiences for you? What was most disappointing? What new, for the first time ever people did you meet that were very memorable? Do you think that you grew spiritually in 2022? A little or a lot or not at all? Did you catch many fish? Did you kill an elk or a deer? There were 365 days in 2022, did you make the most of each and every one of them? What is your biggest regret for last year? By survey the biggest regrets had to do with family. How will you keep that same thing from happening again this year? How did you do on your goals last year? Do you have your goals for 2023 all done? Do you feel confident that each of your goals is God’s will for your life? What goal or dream did you not write down because it was too crazy, too scary, or you were afraid other people would think that you were crazy? How did you do with time spent with family? If the rapture had occurred last year how would you have done at the “Judgment Seat of Christ?” What ministry involvement did you have in your church last year? If you had died last year would that have made any difference in your church, would you be missed because of what you did? Are there any people who you have not totally forgiven? If there are, what defense are you using to justify that? Are you truly anxiously looking for Jesus to come back? How many days did you miss reading your Bible? How many weekends did you miss attending your church’s worship service? Did you witness to anybody last year? Think about witnessing? Did you invite anybody to your church? Are you praying for any lost people? How would you do if Jesus was personally asking you each of these questions at the end of your life.