Several years ago, I was working on helping to build the first chapel that Jefferson Baptist Church had. I was coming down from the roof of the building when my feet slipped off the ladder, and I fell, but I didn’t fall very far because my wedding ring got hooked on the top of the ladder, and I hung there by my finger. I managed to get my feet back on the ladder and took the weight off my finger. I pulled the ring off because my finger was starting to swell noticeably, and it hurt like the dickens. I iced it well and wrapped it up with a towel. It was a couple of months before it was back to normal. I put my ring in Patty’s jewelry box, intending to put it back on when the building project was done. Several months later, our house got burglarized while we were at church. One of the things that got stolen was my wedding ring. Several years passed, and I still hadn’t bought a replacement ring. I was in at Les Schwab’s waiting for new tires to get put on my rig, and a lady started flirting with me a bit. I smiled and said, “I need to check on my car.” I shared that with Patty, laughing about it, and she declared that we would buy me a ring soon, even if it were cheap. Patty’s Dad died of a heart attack soon after that, and I inherited his wedding ring. The cool thing is that it had also been Patty’s grandfather’s ring. I got it sized to fit me and have been wearing it ever since. Last night, my son-in-law was working on the shop/house we are building next to our home for him and his family to live in, and he had a very similar experience, except he hooked his ring on the head of a nail instead of the top of a ladder. The result was the same, though, severe pain and immediate swelling. He also pulled the ring off before the swelling made it impossible to get off. Our wedding rings are special and symbolize our relationship with our wives.

The Bible says that we have crowns. ” Revelation 2:10 says that one of those  crowns that we have comes from Jesus, and it is a statement of our special relationship with Him, much like our wedding rings; ‘Be faithful  until death, and I will give you the crown of life.” In Revelation 3:11 in the passage written to the church of Philadelphia, Jesus says, “I am coming quickly; hold fast what you have, so that no one will take your crown.” In the same way I lost my wedding ring, I can lose my crown. I suspect that the world and the devil are the thieves. I don’t think that losing my crown means I have lost my salvation, but I do think it means that I have lost eternal rewards from Jesus.

We have a bunch of apple trees in our front yard. We make cider out of some, dry some, can some, store some in our “cool room” to eat later,  and make apple sauce out of a lot. Patty has been busy picking, peeling, and slicing apples for applesauce this last week. I love her applesauce. She doesn’t use any sugar, so I can eat it; I do, I eat a lot. But her last batch tasted terrible; it was super hot and spicy. She usually puts cinnamon in her applesauce, but accidentally put in cayenne pepper instead. The jars were the same size, and the ingredients were close to the same color. I like spicy, but it was too hot for me. I don’t think the chickens will like it either. One of the problems we have in our world today is that people believe things to be true that are not. They make decisions and choices based on foolish information. As a result, they end up with messed-up lives.

 2 Corinthians 11:3  “But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.”

2 Corinthians 11:14 “No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.”

Some things may look reasonable, sound true, and appear to be wise, but don’t be deceived; it is cayenne pepper. It won’t taste very good. Be wise.

I was 12 when I killed my first deer and have hunted all of my life since then. I have killed a bear, a mountain lion, an antelope, three caribou, six elk, a bunch of deer, including five axis deer in Hawaii, geese, ducks, turkeys, pheasant, quail, coyotes, sage rats, and other critters. But the highlight of my hunting career was being with my boys when they got their first deer and elk. Several of my grandkids have shot their first deer in the last couple of years, as well as elk, and one of my grandsons has killed several wild pigs and some axis deer. My grandson in Idaho killed his first elk a couple of days ago, and he just turned ten. After the kill, there comes the field dressing and the pack out, often many miles in rugged country. When you get the elk home, you cut it up, grind it, vacuum seal it, and put it in the freezer. We usually processed all our games on the dining room table, and the whole family was involved. I think the camping we did as a family on our annual hunting trips was one of the most powerful parenting tools we had as we raised our eight kids. When God delivered the nation of Israel from Egypt, He promptly took them on a forty-year camping trip. God planned to develop character in His people. Hunting is like life. You have a goal, some accomplish it, but most do not. The ones who work hard, plan well, and acquire many skills usually succeed, just like in life. 

I took my granddaughter skydiving on Saturday. I was also going to jump, but decided that it might be a bit risky with my new hip. Usually, everyone lands by sliding in on the grass, but occasionally someone will have a hard landing. I have gone twice in the past, so I was content to watch, cheer, and take pictures. I was proud of my granddaughter because many people are too spooked to jump out of an airplane at 14,000 feet. We will do it again next year and take a couple of other grandkids who have had their 18th birthday, and my hip will be all healed and good as new. One of my life principles is continually looking for hard things to do. I don’t always succeed at accomplishing them, but it is always an adventure trying. It is good to see my grandkids adopting that principle in their lives.

Today, August 24th, is Patty’s and my 56th wedding anniversary. It is hard to imagine being married that long, but barring health problems, we should easily make it to 70 years of marriage. If we do, we will have a party and you are invited. We have had a good marriage over the last 56 years. No affairs, no major fights about anything, at least not that I can remember. We raised eight kids and had the usual stuff and adjustments with them. For 50 years, we have been here at Jefferson, pastoring. In the early days of the church, we didn’t have much money. My salary was $500, and gradually, as the church grew, it went up, so we had to budget well to feed eight kids. I don’t remember having any tension about how to spend the money. I regularly worked extra jobs to help out with the bills. 

A couple of keys to our 56 years of unity and love: We went on a date together without kids almost every week. We talked about life, us, kids, finance, goals, church, problems, and our relationship with the Lord. Another key was that we got away with the kids camping at least twice a year. We went to the Steens Mountains to camp and hunt for ten days in the fall. We also went to several other areas. In the Spring, we went to the Powder River arm of the Brownlee reservoir, camped, and fished for ten days.

On our first anniversary, we went on a 100-mile canoe trip, camping each night. We had more adventures and excitement on that trip than you could imagine. Dealing with and conquering all those challenges was a great kick-start for a great marriage with hundreds more challenges over the last 56 years that we have figured out and conquered together. On our 50th anniversary we went to the Steens Mts and camped for a week, just the two of us. We camped next to Fish Lake and I would fish and Patty cooked what I caught. We started with a ten-day canoe trip, and 49 years later, we were still camping and fishing. But the primary key to our great marriage was that we prayed together regularly. We prayed for our kids, for wisdom, for strength, we prayed for money to be able to pay all the bills, we prayed about and for my preaching, we prayed for anything that became a problem, challenge, or tension in our marriage. Our prayers are what brought God’s blessing into our marriage and into our family. That is how I would describe our 56 years of marriage, God blessed.

Jefferson Baptist Church has had a ministry in Sierra Leone since 2002, when the civil war they had been in for over ten years ended. During the war, over 50,000 people were killed, most of whom were not soldiers but innocent civilians killed by raging bands of kids randomly killing, including thousands of people having their hands and feet cut off with machetes. The war was fought primarily to control the country’s rich diamond fields. When we went there in 2002 and drove across the country, we saw a country that this war had destroyed.  There was no free public education, very little electricity outside the capital of Freetown, 80% unemployment, the roads had been destroyed, and terrible dirt and rock roads were mostly what was left. It is hard to describe what we saw in the days of “touring” the country during our weeks there. But, despite the conditions, it was very easy to preach the gospel and start churches, and when we left after a couple of weeks, we left behind four churches. From 2002 until about 2017, I made around 30 trips with others over to Sierra Leone to teach and start churches. I haven’t gone back for the last eight years because of my health, but I am going again this coming April and looking forward to it with great anticipation. I thought about Sierra Leone yesterday when we got an email from JBC that the air-conditioning had gone out and wouldn’t be fixed until next week. I heard someone say they would stay home in their air-conditioned house and watch the service on “live stream.” I thought that was a good idea; it is nice that people have that option. Then I thought about Sierra Leone, where the temperature is almost always in the 90s with the same humidity, and no air-conditioning in any of the churches. Besides that, much of their worship includes dancing, which results in most of them being covered in sweat. One of the churches I worshipped at had rows of two bamboo limbs running horizontally to sit on with no back. They were happy, joyful, and very grateful for what they had. Comfort and convenience are not wrong until we begin to depend on them for our joy and level of gratefulness. Grumbling and complaining are very common with most people in our culture, and Christians are as bad as the world. As Christians headed for heaven, we ought never to grumble or complain about anything ever again.

Revelation 3:15-16 I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.

I don’t think being lukewarm is bad like murder or lying, but it is a bad place to be in our Christian life according to these verses. Lukewarm people get spit out of the mouth of Jesus. That is certainly not a good thing to have happen. I don’t think that getting spit out means that we lose our salvation, but I do think it means that we lose our relationship with Jesus. I have an intimate, close relationship with my wife but I know of many marriages where there is little closeness, they are married legally but there isn’t much that shows their marriage to be true. Being lukewarm is being content with where you are in your character level, your righteousness, and your level of fruit bearing. The result of being content is a plateaued saint. There is no desire for more growth, a better relationship with Jesus, or more fruit in our lives. It is all good enough. The main problem with being lukewarm is that most who are think they are hot, they are blind to their true condition. Obviously this warning is intended to be a wake up call, a motivator to do something, to change, but it is hard to change what you can’t see to be true in your life. God will take a lukewarm Christian through trials to try and wake them up, sometimes they get it but often they don’t. I believe that a main tool of God’s to wake people up is good preaching. Paul’s admonition to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:2-3 was “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires.” Lukewarm Christians don’t want to be reproved, they want to feel good so they go to churches where that is the kind of preaching there is. My goal when I preach is to create a discontent in those who hear with their present level of maturity and a strong desire to do something about it. It doesn’t always happen but I always pray and prepare so that it might.

Years ago, I went on a short-term mission trip to a country that was very hostile to the gospel. If a person converted to Jesus, they risked losing their jobs, their property, their family, and possibly even their own life. I chatted with a leader of one of the small house churches we visited, and he said a very interesting thing, which I am reminded of often. He said that when a person became a follower of Jesus in his country, they were already ahead of most Christians in the United States in spiritual maturity, who had been Christians all their life. He said in the United States, many Christians are in a state of arrested growth or plateaued, a state that they rarely escape from, but in his country, that never happened. All believers grew rapidly from day one and never stopped. The reason was that they were picking up their crosses daily and following Jesus. They counted the cost of being a disciple of Jesus every day, and despite the dangers and fears, they continued to follow and serve Jesus. We never face persecution for our faith here; there is no price that we pay to be a fully devoted follower of Jesus. There, they risked everything to attend a small house church and rarely missed. It was a severely punished crime to be caught with a Bible, so they read it in secret for hours before passing it off to someone else to read and memorize. Christians in our country can grow rapidly and bear much fruit, but they are rare. In Oregon, the only ones who grow and never stop are the ones who desperately want to and pay the price in personal discipline to grow.

It is encouraging to see the number of professional football players who are Christians and give public testimony of their faith. It is even more encouraging to see many of these give intelligent, gracious, humble interviews and demonstrate Jesus’s character. I recently heard one NFL quarterback say that because of the platform that God had given him, he needed to be faithful and use it to glorify Jesus and attract people to his savior. Many of us don’t have the same platform as famous athletes, but we must be faithful to every opportunity God gives us. I believe that we all get many, many opportunities to be a witness for Jesus, divine appointments,  but we miss them; they come and go because we aren’t looking for them. They come and go because we are distracted by the things in the world, we miss them because we are timid and don’t want to influence someone to Jesus, and we miss them because we aren’t committed to being a witness for Jesus, so we aren’t looking for them. It is like the fellow who goes hunting and doesn’t see a single deer when they are all around him. Jesus said,” Lift your eyes and look on the white fields for harvest.” Look, look closely, look expectantly. Looking to see.

Everyone has their favorite time of year. Mine is September, October, and November. It seems like plenty of sunny days are left, even though the rains start, but it is cooler. I am not a hot-weather person; I like cooler weather and don’t even mind cold. I don’t like rain, but I can tolerate the days when it sprinkles for a few hours. I think I like the Fall because of the good fishing and hunting this time of year. I might have been mentally programmed on the dairy when I was a kid. June, July, and August were hectic and challenging months. We had to move the irrigation pipe daily, put in three cuttings of hay, and continue to milk the cows twice a day. When September arrived and school started, things slowed down on the farm. September, October, and November were much easier months. The winter snow and cold hadn’t started yet, the weather was still relatively comfortable, fishing was good, and hunting was in full swing. Now, things get busier in the fall with considerable increases in ministry. I still enjoy this time of year because I enjoy teaching, preaching, studying, meetings, and all the rest that goes with doing ministry, and of course, I enjoy hunting. My Mom used to say that for all of us, our favorite part of the year was when we were born. My birthday is October 27th, and October is my favorite month. My Dad’s birthday was in April, and he loved April.

I have never tested my Mom’s conclusion, but it was true for her, Dad, and me. We all use the word favorite a lot: favorite food, favorite sport, favorite month, favorite activity, favorite person, favorite color, and so on. I have a T-shirt that says, “God loves everybody, but I am His favorite!” I get lots of comments when I wear that T-shirt. I wonder what my favorite activity will be in heaven. Heaven will be a very active place. We will do a lot, and our activities will be very different. I don’t think my favorite activity will be playing a harp.