I played baseball in College from 1967 through 1969, over 50 years ago. When JBC was first started, I played softball on our church team. We had a pretty good team, as I remember. But it has been over 30 years since I played softball. Last year, I was talked into playing one game because our church’s team didn’t have enough players. I am unsure why I agreed to do it, except for the fun and the challenge. For some reason, I decided to be on this year’s team. Hopefully, I will only play when there aren’t enough players. My 22-year-old granddaughter will also play, and she hasn’t played much. She was a high school and college soccer player and a good athlete. This last week, I bought gloves for her and me, and today, we played catch for 30 minutes. It took a little bit of throwing, but I got to where I could throw the ball close enough to where she was standing that she could catch it. However, we were only about 15 feet apart. But practice makes perfect, but in my case, practice will make a little bit better. The physical indicators of old age are increasing at an accelerated pace in my life. Still, I am doing as much as possible to slow down the slide into a permanent bed in a rest home, playing softball, riding my bicycle on long trips, fishing, exercising, hunting, walking, and playing golf. Every stage in life has its unique challenges to overcome. Those who recognize that these challenges are meant to be conquered and overcome, not fussed about, usually make it to the top of the mountain. I enjoy the present challenge of doing something meaningful with my life instead of sleeping in my recliner. We will see how long I can run in this current marathon. The key is to seek the Lord diligently and ask for His strength, guidance, and wisdom all day long. Old guys have gone downhill in many things, but most of my old friends and I have grown in faith in God’s promises as we have gotten older. A strong faith makes up for a lot of physical deficiencies. 

I keep track of college basketball during the season, but I don’t watch any games until “March Madness,” the end-of-season tournament made up of the best 68 teams in the nation. Now, they are down to 16 teams left standing, soon to be 8, then four, and then the national championship on Monday night, April 7th. This game is my second favorite of the year, just behind the Super Bowl. A number of us will be watching it together upstairs in the Discipleship Center at JBC on the super big screen, with fried chicken and other food that people bring. You all are welcome to come and watch it with us. I am hoping it is Duke and whoever. I bet you can’t guess why my favorite team is Duke. I played basketball in high school and college. Both my boys played from the time they could dribble through four years of college, so I watched hundreds of hours of basketball. A number of my grandkids play now. It has been 40 years since I have touched a basketball, but I still enjoy watching it and cheering on my favorite teams. We don’t have television, and I am often busy when teams are playing, but I enjoy watching the games I am interested in on YouTube in the evening on my iPad. I will watch the replay of Duke and Arizona that played earlier this evening tonight. Competition is an interesting characteristic of many people; it often brings out the best in people and sometimes the worst.

The Bible has many illustrations using completion, so it is a characteristic God put in us. I spend almost an hour daily memorizing scripture and reviewing the verses I have already memorized. I have an App called Bible Memory that I use to help me. The main help it gives me is the extra motivation to spend an hour every day working on it. The motivation comes from the competition between myself and others using the same App. We get points for memorizing and reviewing verses, thousands of people use the App, and everyone gets ranked on how many points they have earned. My brother Cliff and several of my Pastor friends are way ahead of me. I am in 235th place and trying hard to move up. If I miss one day of memorizing, I can fall two or three places; I hate it! Several people have accused me of memorizing scripture for the wrong reason. My ultimate motives are pure, but it helps to have some competition. Try it and see if you can catch me. Scripture Memory is the name of the App. 

I keep track of college basketball during the season, but I don’t watch any games until “March Madness,” the end-of-season tournament made up of the best 68 teams in the nation. Now, they are down to 16 teams left standing, soon to be 8, then four, and then the national championship on Monday night, April 7th. This game is my second favorite of the year, just behind the Super Bowl. A number of us will be watching it together upstairs in the Discipleship Center at JBC on the super big screen, with fried chicken and other food that people bring. You all are welcome to come and watch it with us. I am hoping it is Duke and whoever. I bet you can’t guess why my favorite team is Duke. I played basketball in high school and college. Both my boys played from the time they could dribble through four years of college, so I watched hundreds of hours of basketball. A number of my grandkids play now. It has been 40 years since I have touched a basketball, but I still enjoy watching it and cheering on my favorite teams. We don’t have television, and I am often busy when teams are playing, but I enjoy watching the games I am interested in on YouTube in the evening on my iPad. I will watch the replay of Duke and Arizona that played earlier this evening tonight. Competition is an interesting characteristic of many people; it often brings out the best in people and sometimes the worst.

The Bible has many illustrations using completion, so it is a characteristic God put in us. I spend almost an hour daily memorizing scripture and reviewing the verses I have already memorized. I have an App called Bible Memory that I use to help me. The main help it gives me is the extra motivation to spend an hour every day working on it. The motivation comes from the competition between myself and others using the same App. We get points for memorizing and reviewing verses, thousands of people use the App, and everyone gets ranked on how many points they have earned. My brother Cliff and several of my Pastor friends are way ahead of me. I am in 235th place and trying hard to move up. If I miss one day of memorizing, I can fall two or three places; I hate it! Several people have accused me of memorizing scripture for the wrong reason. My ultimate motives are pure, but it helps to have some competition. Try it and see if you can catch me. Scripture Memory is the name of the App. 

With this great weather we have had the last couple of days and the availability of grandkids because of spring break, we are building a 600-foot fence around our orchard to keep chickens. We are starting with 16 chickens, though a dozen are still teenagers. We will expand that until we have enough chickens to keep the grass eaten down enough so that we don’t have to mow it. With eleven people living here at our place, we go through a dozen eggs daily, which are expensive. We will grow a garden for the first time in years, and I will catch even more fish than usual. It will be fun! Growing up on a farm, we always raised most of our own food, so it will be exciting to do that again and have jobs for my grandkids to do.

One of the main strengths in my life that I received from growing up on the farm is my understanding of the laws of the harvest. One corn seed produces one corn plant. There are different kinds of corn seeds and dozens of practices and methods of growing corn, but the best of all things will be readily determined by the harvest. The harvest determines all success. Proper practices and techniques on the dairy resulted in much milk, and appropriate practices and procedures in our farming resulted in bumper crops of hay. That is the bottom line in farming: do the right things. We were always contending with weather, prices, and disease, but everybody was. We learned the right stuff from other farmers consistently experiencing bumper crops. That is the fundamental law of living life. How much we are growing in character like that of Jesus and how much fruit we are bearing in our service to God is because of living by correct principles. I learn those principles from the Bible, personal experience, and others. 

The only sport that my father ever got into was boxing. We didn’t watch a lot of boxing on television, but we watched most of the championship fights. My dad’s favorite fighter when he was a boy was James J Braddock, the Cinderella Man, who won the heavyweight championship during the Depression. When I was a kid, the main guy we rooted for was Cassius Clay, Mohamad Ali. Another of our favorites was George Forman, who died just three days ago at the same age I am, 76. Big George, as he was called, won 76 fights, 68 by knockout, and lost just 5. One of his losses was probably his most famous fight when he was knocked out by Mohamed Ali in Africa, called “The Rumble in the Jungle,” in 1974. He finally won the championship back when he was 45, the oldest fighter ever to win a heavyweight championship. In 1977, George became a follower of Jesus. He also became an entrepreneur and a businessman. He became very well known because of the George Forman Grill. It is always fun to hear people’s stories, the details of their lives, and how they came to know Jesus Christ as their personal savior. George is in heaven now, and his story is over, but those of us who are still alive are still writing our biography. Make it interesting, exciting, and an obvious God story. 

One of the things that I love doing is looking at pictures from years ago that bring back good memories of events and accomplishments. Now that I don’t do so much, I love remembering the good old days when I did. One of the things that I used to do and don’t do anymore is run. When I was 55, one of my long-range goals was to run a marathon when I was 90, but I will not make that goal. Oh well, it seemed possible when I was 55. This picture shows our daughter Shelly when she and I ran a 10K together in Fairbanks, Alaska, at midnight when I was 63. I ran my last race 7 years ago when I was 69; I also ran that race with Shelly. Even though I don’t run anymore, I can still ride a bicycle, walk, sit in a boat, and reel in fish. One of the things that reading history and reviewing the history of our own lives does is to remind us of the faithfulness of God. Philippians 1:6 says that God began a good work in me and will perfect that beginning good work until I see Jesus. I may not be running anymore, but I am more like Jesus in character now than I was then. We all need to be able to say that confidently. If we want to grow and we work at it, God will make it happen.

Today was our “Spiritual Gifts” seminar. We started at noon, and I taught for over an hour. Then we took a break and discovered that our water pump had quit working, so we had no water at the church. No one was available to fix it until Monday. We called to get eight porta-potties delivered, and we got them at 2:00 p.m. We started with 150 people, then dropped to 125 after the water loss. I assessed that the devil was terrified of the results of the seminar, so he wanted to break it up. He had a little success but not a lot. The Bible calls the devil our adversary. He fights against us and against what we try to do for God. But the Bible says greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world. The main thing we have to do to win and overcome our adversary is persevere, pray, and rejoice. We did that today. It was a very good day, and many are motivated to serve the Lord more with their life and use the gift that God has given them. Today was my first time doing the seminar. I learned a lot, and the next time we do this, it will be much better. I bet the water won’t go out at the next one. I hope you can make the next one. 

A classic television ad from the 1970s and 1980s said, “When EF Hutton talks, everybody listens.” The ads were always in a room full of people talking, and someone would say, “EF Hutton,” and then everybody froze with their hand behind their ear. That reminds me of Jesus speaking in Luke 4:32, “and they were amazed at His teaching, for His message was with authority.” The authority of Jesus was not because of the volume that He spoke, the tone, or even the content, but it was supernatural; when He spoke, people listened. I believe that God gives that same authority to some people; if they talk, people listen. As a teacher and preacher of God’s Word, I want that authority that comes from God. My motive is not to control people but to influence them to believe in the Bible and Jesus Christ, and they will live their lives in a way that pleases God. When I am in the midst of a difficult situation with people, I want to speak with authority so that the result is unity, love, and peace. God’s authority is earned from God. God’s authority is given to people who have years of faithfulness to Him and to the basic disciplines of the Christian life. It is lost in a few minutes of unfaithfulness, rudeness, careless speaking, and pride. A person who oozed God’s authority was Billy Graham; when he spoke, people listened. Over the years, I have been influenced by people with God’s authority; they gripped my soul when they spoke. God’s authority is probably on a sliding scale, some have a little and a few have a lot. Whenever I speak I ask for God to speak through me and to give me His authority afresh. I trust by faith that He has given it to me as I speak, and I am cautious not to do or say anything that would cause me to lose it. This is a fourth principle for me as I tackle challenging relational situations. Most people can’t rely on this principle in ther life because they have not yet earned it from God or they have lost it because of undisciplined living. It is worth pursuing. If you find yourself not being listened to much, don’t try and make it happen by volume, anger or other worldly methods, but instead pursue faithfulness to God, godly living, and faithfulness to the basic disciplines of the Christian life. He gives His authority to those who have earned it. 

I watch YouTube videos of sporting events and sporting news. I also have several sites that I watch for news revolving around Israel. I also watch U.S. news sites. As I watch debates, discussions, and arguments between politicians and various leaders, I see a lot of anger, insults, threats, and intimidation. They are like watching a boxing match. They remind me of Jesus’s words in 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.” Jesus was not a bully.

In the previous two days of blogs, I have given you two of my personal guidelines for attempting to resolve conflict. My third guideline is never to shame but always to honor those who I am talking to. I am ashamed of how often I have failed at this goal, especially with family and friends, because of pride, haughtiness, irritation, anger, and the world’s influence. God works through graciousness, not haughtiness.

Ephesians 4:29 Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.

Colossians 3:8 But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.

Proverbs 15:1 A gentle answer turns away wrath, But a harsh word stirs up anger.

The key thing to remember is that God works through us in the lives of other people if we do things His way, not the devil’s, the world’s or our flesh’s way.

My 2011 Ford F150 was totaled in the accident I was in last week. While I am looking for another rig to drive, someone in the church loaned me a Dodge diesel pickup truck. Several people have commented that I finally came to my senses and quit driving a Ford. That is irritating and very offensive to a long-time faithful Ford guy. So what should I do about that? I can’t let them get away with saying something so rude without retaliation! Most of you know that I am kidding about the Ford thing, but over the years, I have seen and heard of many serious conflicts that were more silly than that. As I have been involved in trying to help people resolve conflicts over the years, I realized that issues, information, views, and beliefs get blown way out of proportion by people’s repetitious thinking and retelling of events. Most conflicts are rarely as serious or consequential as they seem. I gave you my first rule of dealing with conflicts I am involved with in yesterday’s Blog, and here is number two. 

2. I give people the benefit of the doubt. They probably see things differently. They may not have gotten all the information. They forgot some information. I do everything I can to reduce the seriousness of the problem and even make light of it. Most issues are gone in a year if someone doesn’t stir things up again, and they are gone because they weren’t that big a deal in the first place. Our imaginations working in a negative direction can always make a mountain from a molehill. One of my thought processes is,” If I knew without a doubt that Jesus was coming back to take us to heaven in one year, how much would I fuss about? Not much, if anything. The key for me is to forgive anything and everything and forget about it. But what if it happens again? It rarely does. Make that assumption rather than, “Maybe it will.” Tomorrow, I will write about my third guiding principle, “It is much more essential to maintain healthy relationships than to be right or the winner. “