There is one day left in 2024, so it is probably a good idea for me to write about goal setting again. If you write goals, you will always accomplish more in a year that matters. You will always learn more in a year. You will always grow more in character. You will always have more new experiences in your life if you write goals. What I just wrote is true. The ones who would deny what I just wrote are those who have never set goals, so they don’t really know. Another reason a person would argue about what I just wrote is because they don’t want to set goals for any number of reasons and want to justify their reluctance.

Set a goal for your Bible reading. You will read more than you usually do and be much more faithful at it.
Set a goal to pray for 15 minutes every day.
Set a goal to read five non-fiction books this year.
Set a goal to go on a short-term mission trip to Sierra Leone, West Africa.

Set at least a dozen goals, write them down, and read them at least weekly. It will transform your life.

God is a goal-setter. He premeditates everything He does, decides, and plans ahead of time. We are created in His image, and we function best when we function as He does.
Come on, give it a shot. What have you got to lose? You might find that everything I just wrote is true.

One of my goals is to pray for all our kids, their spouses, their children, and our grandchildren daily. Counting Patty, that is 45 different people. As I wrote about a couple of days ago, we received an electronic picture frame as a gift for Christmas. Once pictures are loaded into it from our phones, iPads, and computers, it rotates through all the photos, each staying on the screen for about 30 seconds. I have it sitting on top of a dresser about three feet away to the right of my recliner. We have every family member in it about ten different times, so now, every time I look over, I pray for the person on the screen.
I have great faith in the power of prayer and in my prayers to God on behalf of others. My most significant influence with God is when I intercede for our family. God gave them to us, and with that responsibility, He gave us the power to guard and influence them through prayer. Jesus declared that same power with His disciples in John 17:9: “I ask on their behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given Me;” I genuinely believe that one of the reasons our kids have turned out so well in regards to their character and their love for the Lord is the fact that Patty and I prayed for them so much. I think we are even more passionate about praying for our grandkids than we were for their parents.
One of our grandkids is driving our old Kia Rio. We bought it in 2008, and it now has close to 300,000 miles on it, but so far, it is running well. I bug him regularly about checking the oil every time he drives it. It only takes a few minutes, but it is easy to postpone and neglect because of business. Once the engine starts knocking, it is too late to put oil in it.
Many parents are busy and don’t take the time to pray for their kids daily, especially not together as a couple in unity. When they see them messing up, the motivation to pray gets strong, but it could be too late.

Over the years, I have taught regularly that God answers some people’s prayers and not those of others. I have also taught that we intuitively know in our hearts how much prayer power we actually have and that many Christians don’t pray much because they know that not much will happen when they do pray. There are twelve different reasons why our prayers don’t get past the ceiling. I have called those barriers to effective praying “The Dirty Dozen.” Let me give you the first two.

The first of the “Dirty Dozen.” If we don’t listen to God much by not reading His Word, He isn’t going to listen to us much.
John 15:7 If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
Proverbs 28:9 He who turns away his ear from listening to the law, even his prayer is an abomination.

This is the second of the “Dirty Dozen.” If we do not obey His commandments in His Word and work hard to please Him with our behavior, our prayer power will be weak.
1 John 3:22 and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.

Prayer to God is the most essential way for us to be partnered with God to accomplish His will. Paul uses the phrase “working together with Him.” We can achieve a lot and change a lot through the infinite power of prayer, but only if we have gotten rid of the “dirty dozen.”

How motivated are you to pray? How much faith do you have that God listens and works powerfully when you pray? Our apathy or drivenness to pray is a pretty good indicator of how much the “dirty dozen” is part of our life.

For most of my life, the day after Christmas has been the laziest day of the year. We stay up late on Christmas Eve, preparing everything for Christmas Day. Christmas day is full of activities with family, gifts, eating, talking, and playing games. Also, on Christmas, I eat more than on any other two days of the year put together. So, the day after Christmas is all about recovering. I slept in this morning until 10:00 am and have taken several naps. I didn’t eat much today; I just nibbled here and there. I was going to go to my office and work on my sermon for this Sunday, but I decided I could do it tomorrow. I was going to write a dozen letters and emails to people but decided I could do that tomorrow as well. Our hot tub is leaking, and I planned on fixing it today but changed my mind; it got rolled over until tomorrow. I ate so much yesterday that I was determined to lift weights a bunch today and work off those extra calories, but, you guessed it, that, too, is on the to-do list for tomorrow. My main accomplishment today was loading a couple hundred pictures into the gift we got from our kids. It is a 10×14 inch electronic, framed picture. You hang it on the wall, and the pictures rotate every 60 seconds. So I loaded it full of grandkid pictures and quite a few hunting and fishing pictures, of course. It is sitting on top of the dresser next to my chair, so I just have to turn my head to see another picture of a grandkid, kid, their spouses, Patty, elk, deer, salmon, and crappie. The cool thing is that I can send the code for the contraption to our kids and grandkids, and they can send pictures to it as well. I don’t know how many pictures it will hold, but I am guessing we will have a couple thousand pictures soon. One thing I do more and more as I get older is reminisce about my life, our family, and all the fish I have caught. This picture thing stirs that up all day long. The good thing is that as I sit and reminisce, I continually say, “Thank You, Lord, for blessing me.” It is pretty amazing how many events, grandkids, fish, kids, and deer there are in my life. Thank You, Lord, for the full, exciting, varied, and wonderful life You have given me.

I was one of those kids who believed in Santa Claus well past the age of most. When I was six, Dad was stationed at Kodiak Island, Alaska. We lived in a small mobile home; back then, we called them trailer houses. My Dad got a friend to climb up on the roof of our trailer house and stomp around. There was about a foot of snow, and I could hear the crunch of the snow under his feet. Dad and Mom got a plate of cookies and milk and set it on the table for Santa to have when he finished his delivery at our place. They told us that he wouldn’t come in with the presents until we got into bed, and if we got up before he left, he would take the presents with him. I went to bed and stayed there until Mom yelled that it was time to get up the following morning. I was thrilled that he had eaten all the cookies and drank the milk, and most importantly, there was a bunch of presents under our tree. We lived in Kodiak for about 18 months, but Christmas is my only memory of living there. Old Santa Claus made a strong impression on my mind. About two years later, I was getting excited about Christmas and Santa Claus, and my younger brother said, “There is no such thing as Santa Claus; Mom and Dad are the ones who buy the gifts, and they eat the cookies and drink the milk. They just made him up for fun, kind of like the tooth fairy. I believed in the tooth fairy as well. He said he had gotten up, sneaked out, watched Mom and Dad wrap the presents, put them under the tree, eat the cookies, and drink the milk. I asked him why he hadn’t let me in on this little secret sooner, and he said he was afraid he would get in trouble. I promptly went and asked Mom, and she confirmed the fact that Santa Claus was not real. I don’t remember having much grief over this new revelation. I do remember feeling embarrassed when my brother informed me that I was the only kid in school who still believed in Santa Claus. Oh well, at least the presents kept coming. I know some people make a big deal about how parents shouldn’t lie to their kids or get them to believe in something not true, or they will damage the poor kid’s faith, and he won’t believe in God after being fooled about the jolly old man in the red suit. I believe in God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, angels, and demons, and I fondly remember old saint Nick.

I got more written responses to the blog I wrote two days ago than any blog I have written in the last ten years, outside of the blogs I wrote during the COVID years, so it was obviously a topic that many have strong beliefs about. Thank you to all who responded. It was nice to get gracious responses despite differences in belief and opinion. I was a member of some Bible and theology groups on Facebook, where the discussions get very mean-spirited. I have bailed on most of those because of that. One of the reasons for my jaunt off into the theological areas where there are some significant differences in belief is that I am now Pastoring Jefferson Evangelical Church, a church that is Arminian in doctrine instead of Calvinist. I was raised in a Baptist Church, which was very Calvinistic in its teaching, and I went to College and Graduate School that were as well. I must admit that my knowledge of Wesleyan theology has been limited to what I heard as it was being held up as the theology that was the opposite of Calvinism, so it was mostly in a bad light. I decided that if I was going to Pastor an Arminian church, I should find out what they believe, so I have been reading the writings of John Wesley and others and enjoying learning from men who loved Jesus and wanted to please Him. In case some of you are worried that I am leaving my Baptist theology, one of my favorite writers is still John Piper, and one of my favorite preachers is still John MacArthur. But I am learning how to hold two teachings that seem to oppose each other, one in one hand and the other, in the other hand, in tension, without messing up either. A major bonus for me is that I can now talk with others with different views without thinking they are idiots and talk with them graciously, and learn from them.
As I have pastored over the last 50 years, I have encountered many people who struggled in their marriages, couldn’t seem to control their anger, had many people in their lives whom they held a great deal of bitterness toward, were in debt up to their eyebrows because worldliness had such a grip on their hearts, and had a host of other relational problems. Teaching them how to conquer sinful habits and to grow in character through their relationship with Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit by faithfully practicing the basic disciplines of the Christian life has been the focus of my preaching and teaching. Over the years, I have run into many people who are doctrinal encyclopedias on their view of eternal security, eschatology, pneumatology, and other doctrines but are so obnoxious and rude in presenting and defending them. I am not sure that being correct in every detail of doctrine is that important if doing so makes you mean.

My new church believes that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God, and that we should read it, study it, and memorize it so that we can live it. They believe in the gospel, in grace, and that Jesus is the only way to heaven. They believe in prayer, that we should seek the lost and make disciples of all men. I am good with that.

In my last Blog, I wrote, “Sometimes you have to hold one truth in one hand, and an opposing truth in the other hand, and hold them both in tension without messing up either one.” I wrote about two truths: man’s responsibility and God’s sovereignty. Some people thought I was messing with the sovereignty of God. I believe in the absolute sovereignty of God, but I also believe that every believer will stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ and be held accountable for what they have done or not done with their life, and that they will not be able to use their belief in God’s sovereignty as an excuse for doing little with their life. I can hold two truths that seem to oppose each other without messing up either one. Many people cannot; they think that if they believe one doctrine is valid, they must deny the other. Most believers don’t pray much because they believe that God, in His sovereignty, will do what He will do, and our prayers don’t change anything. That apathy to prayer resulted from being unable to hold two doctrines in balance without messing up either one. Many solid believers don’t witness because God will save who He will, and what we do doesn’t change anything. There are a lot of people who are solid believers who go to church faithfully but bear very little fruit for God. I have heard words from many like them: “God is God, He is in charge, He is going to accomplish all His good will, and He doesn’t need us.”
In all my years of Pastoring, I have never met a person who prays a lot, witnesses every chance he gets, and works like a dog to change his world because he thinks God is not in control, is doing nothing, and has left everything up to us. Every solid servant of Christ I know believes in the God of the Bible, and that belief motivates them to action, not to apathy.

I often wonder about things I have been taught as I grew up using the standard Baptist theology. One area is God’s omniscience, His knowing everything, even before it happens. I wonder if that is a general statement with some wiggle room or absolute in every detail. An example is God’s command to Abraham to offer his son Issac as an offering.
Genesis 22:12 God said, “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”
Did God not know for sure what Abraham would do? I have read all the explanations on what it must really mean in light of God’s omniscience, but they all seem like educated guesses shaped by the firm belief that God is totally omniscient. I do believe that He is all-knowing, and I feel a bit heretical, even wondering about it. But I hate to push that phrase,”now I know that you fear God,” into meaning something that it doesn’t say with a literal reading of the passage.
But another example close to Christmas is Jesus becoming flesh in every way. Hebrews 4:15 says, “ we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.” That verse seems to be saying Jesus can now sympathize with us because He has experienced all that we have experienced, but He couldn’t quite understand us until He experienced it. It seems perfectly logical that even God would not fully understand what a human feels or needs until He experiences what we experience. It makes Jesus emptying Himself of all He was as God and being made in the likeness of man even more amazing. But it certainly infringes on the doctrine of God’s omniscience. Again, I have read all the explanations of Hebrews 4:15 to make it line up with the standard doctrinal view of who God is and His attributes, and again they seem more like logical reasoning than solid Biblical proof.
My favorite Theology professor when I was in Seminary would often say, “Sometimes you have to hold one truth in one hand, and an opposing truth in the other hand, and hold them both in tension without messing up either one.” I will try and hold them both gently until I get to heaven and see how they fit together.

When I was younger, the question was, “Is it right or wrong?” I wanted to obey the Lord and do what he had commanded me to do. Now, at my life stage, the question is, “Is it wise or foolish?” In the sense of right or wrong, many things would be okay but not very wise. An important area for me is how I spend my time. Another area close to managing time is how I use my energy; it is a limited commodity in my life. Another one is how we spend our money. There is a lot of leeway and freedom in those areas if we don’t care how much we accomplish with our life that has eternal value. The older I get, the more that seems to matter to me; I think that is because the time I have left to do something that matters is running out, so I need to use it well.

I got to thinking the other day as I was reading the book of 2nd Timothy and remembered that this was Paul’s last letter and that he wrote it from prison. He didn’t have a cell phone, an iPad, computer games, YouTube videos, not much of anything. I would guess that the things he had to choose between to manage his time well were small. I really wouldn’t want to be in prison like Paul was, but there is something in me that makes me envious of that simple life when it comes to making wise choices.

Often, the choosing isn’t figuring out what is wiser—I usually already know that. It is the willingness to do the harder thing, which is usually the wiser thing, and the self-control to do what my flesh doesn’t necessarily want to do.

Sometimes, I just want to say, “Awe, the heck with it! As long as it doesn’t make someone mad, I will just do what is easy and enjoyable.” But, I guess, at that point, we have moved beyond what is wise to what is mature, and I should be there at 76!

I have been reviewing the goals I wrote in October for this next year. I have taken several off and added some. One of the goals I removed was putting in a quarter-acre fishpond on our place and stocking it with largemouth bass. I have made this goal every year for the past 20 years, so I guess it is time to admit that it isn’t going to happen. It would be a fun goal to accomplish and to enjoy for years, but time and money have been barriers that have kept it from happening. I replaced it with fishing at Diamond Lake at least twice this next year. Now, that one will happen for sure.

Planning my life and setting goals reminds me of those robot vacuum cleaners. They take off across the room, vacuuming as they go until they hit something, and then reverse and go in a different direction. After going back and forth and around and around, they have covered the entire floor.

About a third of my goals don’t get accomplished every year, so I usually roll them over to the following year, but often, I chuck them. I chuck them because I have lost interest in accomplishing them or decide it isn’t possible with the years, money, and energy I have left.

There is a balance between being realistic and wimpy and giving up. I don’t quit on goals without a lot of thought about benefits, cost, and effort. One of the overriding issues in my goals is managing our income wisely and not going into debt, so many of my goals get shelved because of cost and our budget restrictions. More and more of our money goes into travel expenses to visit our kids and grandkids. Those goals make both Patty and me very happy.

We have a daughter, her husband, and three grandkids in Oahu, a daughter and husband and six grandkids in Fairbanks, Alaska, a daughter, husband, and three grandkids in Washington State, and a son, wife, and four grandkids in Idaho. The other four kids and families are close. Then there are birthdays for 28 grandkids, Christmas, extra groceries, and helping with emergencies and additional expenses they might have.

I don’t feel sad that some of my crazy goals get replaced by family goals; that is the reward for having eight kids.