This week is the “Five Days of Prayer” at JBC, and Monday will begin the three-day “Pastor’s Prayer Summit” at Cannon Beach. Whooooeeeeee, that is going to be a lot of prayer. I should grow a bunch if I focus and don’t just daydream and stare out the window, where we will be praying into the ocean, wishing I was fishing.

It is an everyday, all-day discipline to control my thoughts. I have so many selfish, worldly, fleshly, and demonic thoughts pop into my head, one after the other. If I don’t jump on them quickly and kick them out, they will burrow down and make themselves right at home. The times that I am most successful in this discipline are during corporate prayer times. The agenda is set, and I am not continually bombarded by visual images that prompt my brain to go where it shouldn’t. Even the ocean I stare at out the window during prayer prompts thoughts of God and His glory. Corporate prayer events and times are times of rest from the constant battle for control over my mind, and it is easier to get it all cleaned up.

In Alaska, there is a river called the Susitna. It is a long river running north to South. It starts at the base of Mt Denali and dumps into Cook Inlet just East of Anchorage at its end. It is almost always filled with volcanic silt, making the water look grey. There are a lot of salmon of different species that run up that river. A small creek or river which is very clear flows into the Susitna River every ten miles or so. The salmon swing into the mouth of those creeks and hang out for a couple of days to clear their gills of the silt, then back into the big river headed for their spawning grounds. Those creeks just up from the main river are a good place to fish because they are packed with resting salmon. That is a picture of me at corporate prayer times, cleaning out my gills.

In February of 1989, I went to the first four-day Pastor’s Prayer Summit held at Cannon Beach. The event produced a huge life change in me regarding my prayer life, but equally impactful at that time were the ten books I read in the next six months of my life on prayer. The Biography of George Mueller was the first, “Why Revival Tarries” by Leanord Ravenhill, the biography of John Knox, Charles Spurgeon on Prayer, the biography of David Brainard, and five books on prayer by EM Bounds. The bottom line in those books was that a pastor who didn’t pray for his church people at least three hours a day was a hireling. The main point of all of those books was that the weakness in most pastors’ prayer life was simply time. God wants our time, and if we don’t give Him much time, we won’t experience much blessing. Out of that came my life and church motto, “Much Prayer = Much Blessing. Little Prayer = Little Blessing. No Prayer = No Blessing. I was into convenient prayer, comfortable prayer, quick prayer, on-the-fly prayer, and a little prayer, and the number of blessings I was receiving from God was in line with what I was giving Him.
My life has changed a bunch since that first prayer summit and God has blessed our church and my life as a result. JBC is halfway through our winter “Five Days of Prayer” for our Missions ministry. I am praying seven of the ten hours each day. I used to pray ten hours daily, but I am getting wimpy in my old age. Even the six to seven hours now takes a lot of positive self-talk to accomplish. The key requirement is faith in the power of prayer and a powerful desire to see God work and lives changed.

We got home from Oahu, Hawaii, at about 1:00 am this morning. It was an incredible 10 days of relaxing, hunting, and hanging out with our kids and grandkids. The only bad thing is having to leave. Lazarus died and then was brought back to life by Jesus. I assume he was in Paradise and then got jerked back to this life; that must have been a bummer. If that had happened in our day, he would have written a book about his experiences and made a bunch of money. Hawai’i was amazing but not even close to what heaven will be like. I am unsure if it was the walking I did while hunting, the sitting in the airport and on the airplane, or the strange bed, but I came home with a painful hip. It hurts like the dickens, and I can hardly walk. I don’t know if it is my hip or my sciatica from my back, but whatever, it is excruciating. So now I am rejoicing because of the wonderful trip and the bum hip. It is easier to rejoice about the trip than the hip, but that is what I need to do.

We can rejoice about the past, the present, and the future. I have many wonderful memories of past events, blessings, and experiences, and I often reminisce about those memories now, and I get great joy from them. I often think of the future with my glorified body being with Jesus, trying to imagine what that will be like. I rejoice about the present because Jesus calls me to do that, and occasionally, I rejoice because I am in Hawaii, but most often, I am not in Hawaii, and I am in pain. Oh well, I am getting older, and heaven is getting closer. I have so many great memories of the past, so rejoicing always, even with a bum hip, is a piece of cake.

Psalms 9:1-2 I will give thanks to the Lord with all my heart;
I will tell of all Your wonders. I will be glad and exult in You;
I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High.
The most often given commandment in the Bible is to thank the Lord, praise Him, worship Him, and glorify Him for everything. While we are here in Oahu enjoying the weather, the beaches, our family, and the beauty, it is easy to take it all for granted and forget to say thank you repeatedly. I have been trying hard to say thank You, Lord, all day long. We are having such a good time with all the grandkids, the times of fellowship, and the enjoyment of God’s creation.
But I have an even harder time saying thank You and rejoicing when things are bad and everything is falling apart. Rejoicing is as essential for me when life is hard as it is in good times. When you are on the beach in Hawaii, it is easy to say thank You, Lord. It is hard to thank the Lord when times are hard.
James 1:2 Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials. It would certainly be an act of obedience of our will rather than from our emotions to say thank You if something terrible happened to one of our kids or grandkids.

Patty and I are in Hawaii on the Island of Oahu with two of our kids and their families and are having a wonderful time. It is presently 79 degrees and very comfortable. Everyone except me went to church yesterday and had a great time worshiping together and being blessed by good preaching. I felt a bit under the weather from the plane flight, but I’m good now. We all went to the beach yesterday, and the kids swam and surfed. Patty and I sat in lawn chairs and watched. It was a very relaxing and enjoyable time for us.
Being here makes me think about heaven as an enjoyable place where everything is good and perfect. Even Hawaii has many negatives, mostly all the people, traffic, and crowds. Even the beach isn’t perfect, as a couple of young people died from drowning the day we got here.
One of the cool things about heaven is that we don’t have to worry about whether we will make it. If we believe and confess that Jesus is God and that He died for us and paid for our sins, we are born again and have eternal life. If we die or He comes first, we will receive a body like His. The older I get, the more of a pain my body is and the more I am looking forward to my new one. I watched a lot of football on Saturday and Sunday, and tonight I will watch the College National Championship game. Watching those guys run, throw, catch, and block is impressive, especially how well their bodies function. Someday, I will have a body even better than theirs.

Today is Patty’s birthday. She is 77 years old, and she was 21 when we got married. I have written about it before, but I thought today would be a good day to share again how we met.
I played on the basketball team at the college I attended, and we practiced during dinner time, so our team ate in the cafeteria after everyone else was gone. Patty worked in the cafeteria as part of her financial aid package from the college, and she was the one who usually dished out our food for us each evening. One evening, our coach came in and announced loudly that we were given free tickets to the “Far West Classic” basketball tournament at the Memorial Coliseum, where some of the best colleges in the country would be playing, and the seats were close to the court. We all got super excited, and in the midst of our excitement, Patty yelled from behind the food counter, “Hey! I feed you guys every night; I should get to go!” The coach laughed and said, “No! Guys only”! Well, on the night we were going to the tournament, we all gathered outside the Student Union Building, where we were going to board our school’s bus to take us to the Coliseum. While we were standing there, Patty dressed up in a guy’s suit, which was way too big for her, with her hair stuffed up inside this man’s hat that was too big for her head. She looked like a homeless guy, and we all thought that was who she was until she got close and we recognized her. She intended to show up at the bus for a joke and then return to her dorm, but our coach told a couple of guys to grab her and haul her on the bus with us. When we got to the Coliseum, 16 College men got off the bus with Patty, who looked ridiculous! Everyone was teasing her through the whole evening, telling her how to walk like a man, clap like a man, and eat hot dogs like a man. They all were flirting with her, except me, and I thought, “What a dumb thing for anyone to do”! At half-time, everyone had left to go and get refreshments except Patty and me; she was about eight seats away from me. I turned and looked at her, and at the same time, she also turned and looked at me. Our eyes met, and she smiled at me. Thinking back on it, it reminds me of when I went fishing and I set the hook on a big steelhead; she hooked me good with that one look. The rest is history.

In 1989, I attended my first “Prayer Summit” the first week of February. I had been pastoring at JBC for 13 years and had struggled greatly as a pastor. The Summit was four days of praying with 63 other pastors for most of the day, with no agenda, just praying. At the end of the four days I was very convicted by my prayerlessness. Before I got home from that prayer summit, I had written seven goals concerning my prayer life. I have diligently pursued those seven goals for the last 36 years. I now pray a lot more than was my habit then. I not only pray more, but I also labor earnestly in my prayers. Praying increases my desire for what I am praying for, my passion, so that I am pleading with God for what I am praying for. I pray for my weaknesses, my character flaws, and my sins. I want so much to be better, live better, serve better, and preach better. I pray for each of my family members, begging God to guide them, protect them, and bless them. I pray for the people in my churches to grow, love God, protect them from evil, and make them warriors for God. I pray earnestly for JBC and JEC that God will make them churches of great unity, abounding in love for each other and all people, and that they will grow and become blessed churches that glorify God. The cool thing is that even though I am becoming less and less mobile and energetic as I get older, I can still pray. The difference between now and then is because of those seven goals I set because of God’s convicting work in my heart. We all get convicted about things we need to change in our lives, but if we don’t write it down, we will forget about it.

I have many titles: the world’s greatest fisherman, pastor, the world’s worst clarinet player, Mr., husband, and Dad. My favorite title is Grandpa. In a couple of days, Patty and I are flying to Oahu to spend ten days with nine of our grandkids. I am anticipating having a very enjoyable time. I will get to fish with my grandkids, hunt with them, eat with them, swim with them, watch TV with them, and talk to them. I watch and listen to them all the time. While with them, I am trying to figure out who they are, their strengths and weaknesses, what they might do in life, and how they will serve the Lord. And I pray non-stop for them that God will bless them, protect them, guide them, and make them a mighty warrior for Jesus Christ. These kids have a great heritage; their grandparents on both sides of the family are Christians, their parents are Christians, and they are being raised and trained very well. I will pray a lot for them and their parents, but I am also praying that God will give Patty and me great wisdom and opportunities to influence them to be champions for Jesus. Here is a picture of one of my grandsons fishing with me the last time we were in Hawaii.

People who paint pictures, artists aim for perfection and beauty. They are seldom satisfied. People who make things out of wood are the same, constantly examining their work and working toward perfection. Those who play musical instruments practice and practice to get more skilled at their playing. Athletes that we watch in the Olympics strive for perfection in their performance to be the best in the world. That is how it is in every area of life, and it illustrates what our pursuit of character ought to be like; we want to be like Jesus. We aren’t critical of ourselves to the point that it causes us to be depressed, to be overly down on ourselves, or to have unhealthy self-worth. But we are honest with where we are as people in our growth so that we are motivated to make a concerted effort to improve every day. We want, want, want to be perfect, grown up, like Jesus.
I played a clarinet in my High School band. There were nine clarinet players, and we were ranked in ability. The top three played first-chair music, the following three played second-chair music, and the last three played third-chair music. The first chair players played the melody part and had all of the solo parts. Once a month, we could challenge the player above us. We would both be behind a curtain and play the same music, and the whole band would vote on who played the best. The top player for the years I was in the band was Sarah Coffenberry; nobody ever beat her. My problem was that I spent way more time hunting and fishing than practicing my clarinet. That is often our trouble in life; we spend so much time pursuing the things in the world that we have little time or energy left to seek Jesus. When we step into heaven, we will bring our character, not anything from the world.

Philippians 3:12: “Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus also laid hold of me.”
To be perfect is not to be sinless but to be grown up in character and like Jesus in character. Paul says he has not become perfect yet but is working toward that goal. God helps us in the journey towards perfection by bringing trials into our lives.

James 1:2-4 “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

Perfect and complete, lacking in nothing, that is my goal, and I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which I was saved. Many see getting into heaven as the goal of our life. “I am going to heaven, hallelujah; nothing else matters now.” Being given eternal life is a gift from God that we did not earn or deserve. Being born again is just the beginning. Now, we are on a journey of growing into the image of Christ. The power of goals is the most effective tool I have to help me grow to be like Jesus. Paul goes on in Philippians and says, “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” I, like Paul, am a long way from being perfect, but I press on toward that goal. I set goals, examine my life and confess all known sins, read the Bible daily, memorize and meditate on God’s Word, and practice the basic disciplines of the Christian life. Character flaws and weaknesses tend to appear in relationships, so I pay close attention to my reactions to what people say and do to me. Being right, treated well, or being first doesn’t matter nearly as much as being perfect. I will press on toward becoming like Jesus so that when I see Him, I will be like Him and not shrink away from Him in shame at His appearance. I need to be diligent in my “pressing on” because I am running out of time.