I have a characteristic that I have valued and liked in myself in the past years of my life and that was the joy I got out of living life on the edge. Not living life on the edge of danger but living life on the edge of failure. I guess I wouldn’t call it joy, just a sort of high, a sense and feeling that is the opposite of boring.

Riding a motorcycle 9,000 miles in 30 days hitting all lower 48 states, camping every night, when up until a couple of months before I left on the trip I had never ridden a motorcycle before. Running two marathons and 4 half marathons a year for ten years with the goal of qualifying for the Boston marathon before I was 60, which I never did accomplish. Building a 900 seat sanctuary with cash, no loans and with all volunteer labor. Riding a bicycle twice to Fairbanks, Alaska, three times across the nation from coast to coast and a half dozen other trips of 2,000 miles or more. Making a goal of growing our church to 2000 people by the year 2000, we didn’t even come close to that goal. Making a goal of starting 10 daughter churches between the year 2000 and 2020, we almost made that goal. Starting 100 churches is Sierra Leone, West Africa before I die, that one is in process. Setting over 60 personal goals every year for the last 15 years, and of the 60 plus goals each year ten have been nearly impossible to accomplish.

Over the last 60 years of my life I have failed at more goals and adventures that I have started than I have accomplished, and some of them were major failures. I broke away from the security of farming with my Dad on the family dairy to start my own dairy and failed miserably. I attempted twice to start a small business that would support my family so I wouldn’t need to take a salary from the church so we could put the money back into ministry and failed both times. At least one third of my goals each year I don’t accomplish.

So, I am anything but a successful person, but I have enjoyed life to the max. I have always felt very confident in the beginning stages of all my goals that they were the will of God for my life and that I could accomplish them, and when I didn’t accomplish many of them I never felt like a failure because my definition of success was in trying to accomplish them not necessarily in accomplishing them, though I definitely wanted to accomplish all of my goals, and gave all of them my best shot.

Now at 75 years of age I would like to live life without that constant push to accomplish more which I have lived with all of my life. Just to relax and sleep into 9:00 am every morning with no “to-do” lists driving me crazy. I have tried really hard to relax and take it easy, but life gets so boring when it gets easy and comfortable and I hate boring. Oh well , I will try again when I hit 80.

October is Pastor Appreciation month, it was also the 50th anniversary of our church, and it was also my birthday so October was a good month. I got a couple of dozen very nice notes and letters from different people at JBC, and it was very encouraging to receive them and I read them all over a number of times.

Everybody enjoys being praised and affirmed for what they have done and how they have blessed the lives of others. I believe that God will communicate His pleasure in us through people that we have influenced. The trick is to keep my motives focused on pleasing the Lord rather than people even though they are being used as God’s mouth pieces. When I hear people praise and affirm my teaching or ministry or read notes and letters saying very nice things about me I say to myself, “thank You Lord for affirming my service to You, thank You! “

When Jesus came up out of the water after He was baptized God the Father spoke from heaven and said, “this is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” God does that, He communicates His pleasure in us, but He does it through people so it is important for each of us to see the source of the praise so we we don’t trapped into working to please people instead of God, it is easy to do.

Our motives for what we do and why we do it are very important because God knows what our motives are and He energizes us, guides us, and blesses what we do when our motives are pure. Our heart is tricky and easily self-deceived so we need to examine our heart and our motives often so that we don’t mess up our lives and God’s church.

Just finished planning our bicycle trip for this coming year. It is 2400 miles and we will ride it in 40 days. It will be unsupported meaning that we won’t have a vehicle with us for the trip. We will carry all of our food, camping gear, cloths and bicycle supplies on the bicycle in four panniers, two in front and two in the back. Each of the front bags will have 15 lbs and each of the back bags will have 20 lbs for a total of 70 lbs. There will be a total of 98,722 feet of climbing with about 1/3 of that being in Utah. We will go through five National Parks in Utah which will be beautiful. Anybody wants to go let me know.

Sunday is a good day. I get to teach four different classes and they all are great classes with very teachable people in all of them. I won’t go to sleep tonight before 1:00 am because I am on such an adrenaline rush right now from teaching those classes that I can’t go to sleep. It is rewarding, exciting, fulfilling, challenging, and a great blessing to be able to teach these classes for the Lord and for our church. Next week I am adding another class to my schedule at our daughter church in Tangent, Agape Family Fellowship. I will be teaching my “Leadership I” class on Sunday afternoons at 5:00 pm.

I consider myself to be very blessed to be able to do my favorite activity of teaching the Bible in a setting that is so positive to such teachable and enjoyable people at my age. I am hoping that I can keep my sanity and energy up enough to do this job until the day I die.

I don’t know what my future holds, but I will make adjustments in my life accordingly. I know that my present energy, health, and mental ability are not to be taken for granted and it could all change tomorrow, so I will do all I can for the Lord for as long as I can and thank Him for every day He gives me.

I have goals written out until I am 88 years old, and if I am still around and able to serve after that I will write out another five years worth. I am enjoying life right now, my ministry, my family and my hobbies. I enjoy writing goals for the future and my dreams for what I can do and accomplish. As I have written before, it doesn’t cost anything to dream so I am dreaming big.

Men’s Breakfast sermon this morning was entitled “The Cure for Stupid Thinking.” Yesterday I got excited and signed up to run a half marathon in Corvallis on April 6th. So last night I ran two miles on my treadmill with the incline set at 3% as I began my training for this new B-HAG of a goal. I think I might have overdone my first running in 10 years because tonight I can barely walk I am so sore. The worst part of it is my wife is laughing at me and calling me a perfect example of stupid thinking! We actually were laughing together as I sat groaning pathetically in my recliner.

I don’t think it is stupid thinking, just a bit naive, unrealistic and overly positive. But if I am going to have a thinking problem I would rather it be overly positive instead of negative and defeatist like so many people that I know. My soreness will be gone in a few days and then I will start in on the pursuit of my goal a little bit more gradually, but I am pretty sure that I will run a half marathon in April, even if a bit slow, and then I will ride my bicycle 2,600 miles to Southern Utah and back. I see where a guy 91 years old ran and finished the Boston Marathon this year, I think I will make a goal to do that.

The reason I like goal setting is that it costs nothing to write big hairy, audacious goals down and dream about doing them and make an attempt to accomplish them. I made a goal the last four years to climb Mt Adam’s, I didn’t make it to the top on any of the four climbs, but I did give it a go and made it quite a ways, and I had fun in the process. I think I might make another goal to climb Mt Adam’s if I finish the half marathon in April. yep, I am sure I will.

I may not finish the half marathon, I may not ride all 2,600 miles on my bicycle, I might not even attempt climbing Mt Adam’s or run in the Boston Marathon, but it is sure fun to dream about doing it. On some days when I am feeling especially good I even dream that I am going to win the Boston, now that is a fun dream!

I wonder if having crazy unrealistic dreams is bad for your health, if it will cause my heart to fail, or give me cancer, or make me a grumpy old man. I don’t think so!

Occasionally when I have run out of time or energy or both. Like tonight I go back and find a blog from several years ago that I like and republish it.

Living righteously takes a huge amount of inner strength, which all comes from God. God loves to give His strength to people who love Him and who are serving Him. He gives His strength to people who meet the conditions that He has established. The more faithful that we are in meeting the conditions the more strength that He gives us. 

Probably the most basic of conditions to receiving God’s strength is reading the Bible. In the Bible there are dozens of different blessings that God gives to those who love His Word, who read it, memorize it, meditate on it, and who study it. 

A few of the blessings that we receive when we faithfully read the Bible are;

Peace amid chaos. Psalms 119:165 Those who love Your law have great peace, and nothing causes them to stumble.

Extraordinary wisdom to know what to do and say in any and every situation. Psalms 119:97-100 O how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day. Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever mine. I have more insight than all my teachers, for Your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, because I have observed Your precepts.

Growing righteousness. Psalms 119:9-11 How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Your word. With all my heart I have sought You; Do not let me wander from Your commandments. Your word I have treasured in my heart, That I may not sin against You.

A healthy soul. Psalms 19:7 The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul.

A growing righteousness. 1 Peter 2:2 like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation,

A supernatural strength. Psalms 138:2-3 For You have magnified Your word according to all Your name.
On the day I called, You answered me;
You made me bold with strength in my soul.

Some people will say to me, “how much do I have to read the Bible?” It all depends on how much of God’s many cool blessings that you want.

The older I get the more I know that exercise is very important to my health and my overall mood. When I am faithful in my exercising I feel better, I sleep better, I don’t gain weight, and I like life better, I just have a much more positive outlook on just about everything.

I go through spurts on being faithful to it, just like my Bible reading, praying, scripture memory, and book reading disciplines. It is easy to get out of the routine and back slide into mediocrity and laziness.

One of the things that keeps my exercise discipline going well is if I have a goal that motivates me to do the daily grind stuff. I participate in a long distance bicycle ride most summers because if I don’t I get very sporadic in my stationary bike riding. Several of my older friends, not as old as me, but getting up there, said that they were going to train for a half marathon this coming Spring. One of the most motivating things for me is to do hard things with others. So I have decided that I am going to start training to run the same half marathon. I have run almost thirty half marathons in my lifetime, but they were all back in the day when I ran three or four half’s a year, but I have not run one now for 10 years, but I am going to run one this coming April. At least I am going to give it my best effort, and who knows I might even beat my friends, we will see.

I just started reading my new goals for this next year. My goal year runs from October 27th to October 27th, my birthday. I write my goals following a basic guideline which is, “pursue the desires of my heart.” I believe if I stay close to God those desires that I have in me will be His desires for me. The tricky part is staying close to God, because if I don’t the desires of my heart can quickly become worldly, carnal, even demonic, and then they are evil desires.

Staying close to God is kind of like having a good marriage; you pursue intimacy in the relationship by following some basic principles. If you don’t follow the principles your emotions and feelings will be what fuels your efforts to grow closer in your relationship, and your emotions easily become focused on self needs and wants, and your efforts at a growing intimacy will become lazy and inconsistent. 

The Biblical admonition is “seek the Lord, ” which doesn’t mean you are trying to find Him, He is right there with you all of the time, it means you are seeking to know Him more intimately. For much of my Christian life I thought that knowing God was to understand Him theologically, to know all about Him. To know God like I know Patty seemed illogical because I couldn’t see Him, touch Him, or hear Him. 

My journey towards genuine intimacy with God has been gradual, but steady, and has come as a result of being faithful to the basic disciplines of the Christian life. I read my Bible devotionally almost every day, that is different than studying for a sermon, it is reading with an inner ear alert for a thought that could be from God. I spend time in prayer talking to God every day, often while I am reading His Word. I confess all known sin to God every day spending time reflecting on the day, examining my life, asking Him to show me what needs working on. I work very hard at worshipping well when I am at worship services with our church family, and I try to thank Him all day long for every blessing that comes into my life.

Deuteronomy 4:29 But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul.

There are lots of different opinions on lots of different things. I think Fords are much better than any other brand of car or truck, but some of my good friends are stuck on Chevys! We are still good friends in spite of their mental ptoblems. When I was in High School one of my best friends thought holsteins were a much better breed of dairy cow than Guernseys, and we would argue and debate for hours on end almost every day as we rode home from school on the bus.

I will regularly read on Facebook a debate between a large group of people that will get started by someone’s entry about something. They can be between Trump haters and Trump lovers, or about the war in the Middle East, whether Israel is justified in invading the Gaza strip or not, or some aspect of the economy.

Tonight I was reading the responses to a Facebook entry advertising a new opening of a Home School Co-op. The discussion started out bad and got much worse from there. People were obviously very emotional about their opinions, and were incredibly rude and vicious in their arguments against those with differing opinions. There was name calling, very bad language used, insults, and as a whole very little intelligent diolog between intelligent people.

When I was in High School, College, and newly married discussions about differing points of view were part of the social life that we experienced. The discussions were often enlightening, enjoyable, and like a game of pinocle or checkers. Now when you are in a group of people you don’t dare bring up certain topics or it could easily turn into a big verbal fight with lots of anger, abusive speech, hurt feelings, and friends no longer friends.

Every morning I pray my daily commitments to the Lord, several of the commitments in the prayer are, “today I will love any person, You Lord bring into my life, no matter how hard they might be to love, today I will forgive any person of any offense they commit against me because You have forgiven me of every sin that I have committed against You, today I will not get angry at anybody, not even a little bit irritated, no matter what they do, today I will speak to people with grace, honoring them by the way I treat them. Dear Lord, please give me the strength to keep thse commitments snd forguve me when I blow it.”