I am reading the book Moby Dick right now. It was written in England in 1851, so the language and words are a bit of a struggle to understand. On just about every page, there is a word that I have to look up its meaning. I have read that one mark of a person’s intelligence is the size of his vocabulary. If I can remember all the words that I am looking up, my vocabulary will increase significantly by the time I finish the book. Maybe I will go from average intelligence to genius! As a person who is 76 years old, I am very aware of the number of older people who have started to have memory and thinking problems. I would like that not to happen to me. I know that there is a lot that we can’t control in our lives; it is pretty much up to God, but I also know that we have some things that we can do to maintain physical and mental health. Ever since I learned that I don’t have Parkinson’s but that I have food allergies that produce Parkinson’s symptoms, I have done a lot of reading about the role foods have in our health. I have read a lot of information that shows that what we eat not only affects our energy and general health but also our minds. But, I am sure that the most important thing I do for my mind and intelligence is not looking up definitions of words or eating right, but memorizing and meditating on God’s Word. I take 45 minutes every day to do my scripture memory discipline, but I am convinced it is the best use of my time in the entire day. Jesus said, “Man shall not live on bread alone but by every Word that comes from the mouth of God.”

I read a lot, and the older I get, the more I read. I enjoy reading, and I read a variety of kinds of books. I just finished a Louis La’Mour western. I read one of his books two or three times a year. I have read them all, but I don’t remember the first ones I read, so going through them a second time works. I just started reading Moby Dick because I read an article that said it was one of the top five books ever written. I read technical books on how to do certain things. I am reading several books on how to catch halibut in Alaska right now. I am also reading a book on boat building.

I read many Christian books on living the Christian life, Bible doctrine, and commentaries on the Bible. I read many books on leadership and success, both Christian and secular. I also read books on how to teach better, how to grow your church, and how to succeed in business. I do a lot of my reading while I ride my stationary bike. It is a recumbent with a small table attached so I can set my iPad on it and read while exercising. The cool thing about reading on my iPad is that I can make the font bigger and set it to scroll down at the rate I read, so I don’t have to touch it. Proverbs says to seek wisdom like gold and silver, and I can’t think of a better way to seek wisdom than to read good books. Of all the reading I do, my favorite book is the Bible, and I spend at least thirty minutes reading it every day. It is the ultimate source of wisdom and motivation. The Bible is the Word of God, the mind of Christ; it is living and supernatural. 

My hip surgery is on June 2nd, and I planed to leave on my bicycle trip on June 23rd. Our trip this year was only 600 miles, which we would do in ten days. But today was my pre-op meeting, and they talked me out of it. They said I wouldn’t damage anything but would probably be riding in a lot of pain. So now I am trying to figure out whether to cancel riding or try and move it to another time. Part of the problem is that I am riding with my brother and his wife, so their schedules are also part of the equation. Making decisions about what we will do in the future is a very important part of life. Some decisions, like bicycle trips, are not super important, but many others are. Decisions like who we will marry, what job we will work, where we will live, and what ministry we will be involved in. Knowing the will of God is not an easy thing to find out. A key part of the process is an attitude of submission. I declare to the Lord every morning that I will do His will for my life, whatever it is. I then ask Him to guide me and show me what His will is. I then live life thinking through decisions, getting counsel, planning, and all the while trusting that God is putting His will in my heart. I move ahead with confidence, making adjustments as I see things more clearly and doors open up and close. 

My summer is starting to pick up speed. Tonight is my last Wednesday service teaching, and tomorrow night is my last leadership class. They both begin again this coming Fall. Next week, I head to Alaska for a week to work on my boat and do some halibut fishing. When I get back from that, I will have my hip replacement surgery. On June 23rd, I head off on a 600-mile bicycle trip. Then, I head back to Alaska in July for a month of salmon and halibut fishing. I will be home all of August and September, preaching on Sundays at the Evangelical church, writing sermons for this next year, working for my wife, and fishing local spots as much as possible. Sometime in August, I will get my second hip replaced. In October, I am going deer hunting for a week, and then on October 23rd, four days before my birthday, I am heading out on a boat from San Diego for a ten-day tuna fishing trip. I expect to bring home a lot of fish. I hope my summer will go much better when I can walk without pain; that will be awesome. Of all the events on my calendar for this next year, I am really hoping that Jesus coming for us is one of them. From all that is happening in the news, it looks like it could be soon. Those who have their minds set on heaven live life with more joy, energy, and purpose. Every night, I pray, “Lord, please come tonight,” and every morning, I pray, “Lord, I am going to live today as if it is my last before You come. Please open doors for me and give me the wisdom and strength to serve You well.”

I am having hip replacement surgery on June 2nd. The doctor doing it has nurses and other doctors as part of their team. They have this app that I downloaded and that they use to communicate with me regarding my preparation for surgery. One of the things I do on the app is fill out a daily questionnaire. One of the questions is how much pain I am feeling. I am supposed to answer with a one if there is no pain and a ten if it is the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. I always put a five, but I am inclined to put a two. It is a funny question to answer for me. Pain is not an easy thing to measure or evaluate. My Dad raised me to ignore pain and tolerate it but not to measure it or compare it with some other pain. Pain happens to everybody all the time. If you can do something about it, you do; if you can’t, tolerate it.

I take two pain pills in the morning for my hip, and they help a lot. I suppose if it hurt worse than it does, I would ignore the dosage on the container and take two in the evening as well. My hip has been hurting for a while, and I am sure there is a getting used to the pain as it gradually increases. The doctor commented that I must have been feeling a lot of pain when he looked at the X-rays of my hip, but when he said that, I thought, “It isn’t that bad, more of a constant annoyance.” Jesus felt a lot worse pain in the scourging and the crucifixion He experienced for me. I would guess that His pain went way past a ten. For me, a much worse pain is the pain of failure when I blow it big time. Or the pain I feel from another person who I care for and who hurts me. I believe that the pain Jesus felt when God the Father turned His back on Him because He had become our sin was much worse than the physical pain He felt. Or the pain from the shame and guilt He felt because He had become our sin. I have no idea how much pain Jesus felt when He died for me, but it seems whiny to call my pain a five if He was a ten. So I am going to call His a thousand and mine a two. 

My success at living the Christian life and growing depends on my disciplines and routines. The problem I have, and almost everyone I talk to, is that business, life pressures, and unexpected events cause us to forget or put off the disciplines. An occasional miss is not that big of a deal, but once there is one exception, the second is easier and pretty soon; it has been weeks since I have faithfully done them all. I have an even dozen disciplines, and I rarely miss most of them, but I skip a few often. The main one I miss is writing this blog because of the time it takes; sometimes, I just have a mental block and can’t think of anything to write about. Another one that I can talk myself into missing often is exercising. I usually do my Bible reading while riding my stationary bike, so I have to be careful so that I don’t skip that one, too. I have a goal of praying with Patty every day, but I am doing good if I make it three times a week. We both have busy schedules, and they are different, so it takes some planning to make it happen. I have a goal to read 20 pages in a good Christian book every day, but as long as I get my Bible reading done, I find it easy to skip that one or quit after 10 pages. The key to being faithful in my disciplines is not simply to depend on self-control but to attach my success in growing spiritually, my relationship with the Lord, my level of joy and peace in life, my success in ministry, the quality of my marriage, the unity I have with others around me to my faithfulness in keeping the disciplines. The more faithful I am in my “daily dozen,” the better everything else goes. I brush my teeth every day, not because I like to but because I want to keep them and not have bad breath or an ugly smile; I am motivated by the results. The key to my faithfulness in my disciplines is reminding myself of the rewards and consequences. 

Jesus declared that He didn’t pray for the world, just for those whom God, the Father, had given Him, His disciples. 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;” There are people in the world over whom we have jurisdiction in our prayers. When we pray, we have more influence with God over their lives than others do. We need to be faithful and accept the authority God has given us with Him over their lives. Samuel was the leader of Israel and said in 1 Samuel 12:23, “Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you.” I believe that the greatest authority given by God in prayer is to Mothers and Fathers over their children. We make more of a difference in their lives through our faithful praying than we do for anyone else and that anyone else has in their lives. It would be sad for parents to neglect the power and authority God has given them to shape the lives and future of their kids because of business. My mother prayed for me a lot and regularly told me she was. Patty and I prayed for our kids faithfully over the years, and now we pray for our grandkids. God has given us authority over their lives through prayer, and we don’t want to neglect that responsibility for their sake. 

As I was organizing my week and the rest of the month of May today, I recognized how differently I use time now than I did even ten years ago. I used to rarely say no to anything. When asked to do something or an opportunity opened up, I figured out how to squeeze one more thing into my already hectic schedule. It didn’t seem right to say no to something that would make a difference in someone’s life. If I did say no, I felt guilty about it for weeks. Now, I say no all the time; I think I say no more than yes. And I rarely feel guilty about it. For most of my ministry years, my biggest challenge was managing my time, trying to get as much squeezed into a week as possible. I don’t remember ever getting tired. If I did start feeling a little weary, I blew it off as a thinking problem and went even faster. Those days are gone.

Now, the challenge isn’t managing my time; it is managing my energy. I used to run out of time way before I ran out of energy, but now I run out of energy way before time. My goal is still to make the most of my time, but now I choose more carefully and thoughtfully what I will spend my time doing. I still have plenty of mental and emotional energy, but the physical gas tank has shrunk. So now, I pray more, read more, write more, teach more, talk more, and study more. All those require minimal physical energy, and I have enough left to go fishing or build Patty’s chicken house. I struggled for several years with this transition, but now I am very comfortable with this chapter in my life, and I expect that I will actually bear more fruit for God in my old years than when I had energy to burn. Managing my energy and saying no are new skills that I am getting better and better at. 

Mother’s Day is this Sunday. I have an electronic picture frame that rotates pictures every 20 seconds. The photos are about 9×12 inches and very bright, making them easy to see. It is right next to my chair, and I only have to look up, and to my right, and there they are. I have a lot of pictures of grandkids, kids, and their spouses, fishing pictures, hunting pictures, pictures of Patty, and pictures of my Mom and Dad. When I look up, I pray for whoever is on the screen. This week, I have been focusing a lot on my Mom. We don’t have the privilege of picking our parents; God does that. I don’t know why some people get great parents, and others are not so good. I was blessed by God, who gave me a fantastic mother who loved the Lord and taught me much about the Lord and how to live for Him. As I think about who I am, my character traits, and my values, there isn’t much I can take credit for; my Mom was the one who shaped my spiritual life. We never missed church, Sunday School, Bible camps, vacation Bible Schools, Youth groups, and prayer meetings. It wasn’t an option, so there wasn’t much sense in fussing about it. So much of my life I owe to my parents; God truly blessed me. I look forward to seeing them when I get to heaven. 

It is Saturday, May 3rd. I just got back from “Men’s Breakfast.” I ate 15 pieces of bacon, four sausage links, a bunch of eggs, and a very big cup of coffee. Pastor Mike told wild whitewater rafting stories and made spiritual applications to rafting. I had a very good morning. Today, I will finish Patty’s chicken house. The fence is completed, and we are all set up for 40 chickens. I will also apply for all my hunting tags today; May 15th is the cut-off day. I have my hip replacement surgery set for June 2nd, and I have some questions I need to answer online before May 12th, so I will take care of that as well. I will spend some time working on the sermon I preach at the Evangelical Church tomorrow; it is basically done. I just need to think up some cool stories for illustrations. I will take at least one nap during the day. Sundays tucker me out, so I try not to overdo things on Saturdays and get to bed early so I am ready for a great day on Sunday. I had today planned out, tomorrow planned out, and all of next week planned out as well. I have my goals, a calendar, and a to-do list; I am ready. People often ask me about God’s sovereignty and man’s free will. Using one of Pastor Mike’s illustrations, life is like rafting down the Desuettes River. God has set the right bank, the left bank, and the volume of water. As we guild the raft, we can go on the right side, the left side, the easy way, the hard way, and we can camp where we want. Some decisions are better than others, but they are still our decisions. The goal is not to wreck your boat but to have fun. Also, enjoy your time with others going down the river with you, and help them out as they help you. It won’t be long, and we will float right into heaven.