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.