Well, I guess this COVID thing is going to hang on a little longer. Kind of like a bad cold. I tell people that I don’t get colds, but now I have the granddaddy of all colds. I sound like Sam Elliott, sneeze often, cough a lot, blow my nose every couple of minutes, have a headache, muscle aches, and enjoy a nap every couple of hours.

But my energy level is good and my attitude is positive. I plan on riding my stationary bike for an hour today, lifting weights for an hour, and working on the mustang for a couple of hours. I am also going to get a bunch of “Pastor work” done. I am going to write birthday and anniversary notes, grade leadership class papers, write my sermon for next Wednesday’s service, go through my prayer journal as I pray for people in our church, write the church family letter, and fill out and send out my “pastor accountability” report to the pastors that I am in a group with. If I get all those checked off of my “to do” list, I will feel pretty good

My old motto, “don’t act the way you feel,” works good when you are sick as well. So, even though I am sick with the COVID I can act like I am having the time of my life. The way we act, the level of positiveness, the attitude we choose to have, all has an impact on what happens in our life. I for sure don’t want to act and talk like a victim. I thank God all day long for all my blessings that I have received from Him.

I slept 10 hours last night, and got up this morning and rested in my chair while reading. At noon I went out to my shop and worked on the mustang for 5 hours straight. I am redoing all of the wiring in it and it is a slow, tedious job trying to figure out where everything goes to. Right now, sitting in my recliner At 8:00 pm writing this blog I am feeling much better. No cough, no sore throat, no muscle ache, no runny nose. I think that tomorrow I will declare myself healed! I probably won’t go out and about until Saturday in case I am still a bit contagious. Thank you very much to everybody who has been praying for me!

I am looking forward to teaching all of my classes this weekend at church. And this next week is our “Five Days of Prayer” for our Missions Ministry. We pray Monday through Friday, 5:00 to 10:00 am and 5:00 to 10:00 pm each day. These prayer times as we gather as the church are the most spiritually invigorating times in my life. Every area of my spiritual life is renewed by these prayer times, especially my practice of the presence of God.

Make a goal to come and pray. I am thinking Jesus is coming soon, and it would be so cool to know him intimately when you first see Him.

I am watching the Kansas City Chiefs play the Cincinnati Bengals, taking my vitamins and meds at appropriate times, an occasional nap at boring times, and eating the famous superfood, popcorn with a cube of melted butter, cures just about anything. I am expecting to be as good as new in a couple of days.

After this game is the San Fransico 49’s playing the Los Angeles Rams. Probably going to need to pop another bowl full of popcorn.

After the games are over I am going out to my shop and work on the mustang for a couple of hours then come in and ride my stationary bike for an hour and read my Bible while I do. I will also get in some good Christian book reading, and some scripture memory. I will set in the hot tub and the sauna before I go to bed.

During the day I will regularly and often take a mental break and thank and praise the Lord for my life, His amazing blessings, and for Him to use me for His glory.

Sherri and Thomas, our daughter and son-in-law, both got covid and are over it, then my wife got it, and has been sick all week, and now she is mostly recovered. But I did’t get it, I figured I was to tough to get it, you know, being an ex-dairy farmer and all.

I, with help of two other guys in the church loaded up four cords of firewood this morning, and dumped it at our house. When I got done with that I was feeling pretty wimpy so I took a nap and woke up with a bad sore throat, a fever, and a terrible taste in my mouth, Wow, I never had that kind of result from doing firewood before. Must be old age. My sore throat got worse quickly so I took a home test and was positive for covid.

Speaking of positive, there are a couple of very positive results from this. I was going to miss both of the NFL playoff games tomorrow because of teaching responsibilities, but now I can watch them while my wife brings me snacks, and occasionally checks to see if I am comfortable bringing another pillow and blanket. She is a very good wife!

The other positive is I should have plenty to blog about for the next couple of days as I work at inventing new and novel ways to conquer COVID.

I have been getting lots of advice on what to do so as to get over it quickly, but I did my old faithful cure for everything, I ate a Haagendouse ice cream bar. I am feeling better already! I am trying to decide now what my dose should be, once a day, twice a day, heck maybe one an hour. I have heard there is no danger of overdosing!

I plan to get in extra Bible reading, scripture memory, and a couple of books read.

Man, I hope I don’t get over this thing to quickly, sounds like I am going to have a lot of fun!

The definition of humility is multi-faceted; that is, humility is a significant character trait and is described and understood in various ways. The goal is to become humble in our hearts, in our character. The way we become humble on the inside is to act humble, do what humble people do, and as we faithfully live in a humble manner using self-discipline, we will become humble in our character. The most complete description in Scripture about humility is In Philippians.

Philippians 2:3-8
Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Humility is all about how we treat people. A humble person puts others ahead of themselves. The biggest place we struggle is in how we talk to other people. The most effective guide for us as we work at being a humble person is to elevate others, build their self-worth, and honor them.

Humble people don’t think about themselves and what they want or need; they are thinking about those around them, what they need. Sometimes we believe that to be humble; we need to put ourselves down; no, we need to lift others up. We don’t do that by making things up that aren’t true or flattering others, but we are “good finders,” we train ourselves to see the positive, the good, and the accomplishments in others and we affirm them with our words.

When we work hard at exalting others, God will exalt us, but if we exalt ourselves He will humble us.

It is a fun project to rank yourself on each of these 26 character traits. Go down through the list thinking about each one, thinking about yourself and how you act, and then give yourself a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, 1 being bad and five being good. On the traits that you gave yourself a one on, write out a strategy of how you are going to change and bring them up to a 2.

Another way to do the personal evaluation is to rank the character traits in your life.Take the 26 character traits and put the one you think you are strongest in at the top and the one you are weakest in at the bottom and all the rest somewhere in between. Work on growing stronger in just the bottom one, write out your personal strategy of how to do better in that one and then you can move on to the next on the list and work on it.

1. Honesty/truthful/Transparent/real
2. Patience
3. Thoughtful/Gentle/Gracious
4. Deference
5. Humility
6. Diligence
7. Self-control
8. Determination/endurance
9. Honoring of others/free from a critical spirit
10. Orderliness
11. Joyfulness
12. Contentment
13. Decisiveness
14. Faithful/trustworthy/reliable
15. Morally pure
16. Teachable/seeker of wisdom/discernment
17. Forgiveness/ free from all bitterness
18. Thriftiness/ good stewardship of money and possessions
19. Flexible
20. Initiative
21. Gratefulness/positive
22. Loyalty
23. Resourcefulness/creative
24. Boldness/confidence/ strong sense of self-worth
25. Toughness/grit/strong/handles pain
26. Peace/calm/not easily flustered

Growing to be like Jesus in character is of utmost importance because what we are in character when we die is what we are for ever and ever. You don’t want to be a baby in character when you enter heaven. So discovering principles of optimum growth is super important. A significant principle is that I grow much faster with help than I do by myself, and the most effective help in my life is Patty. God invented marriage as the most powerful tool in his arsenal to cause growth to happen in people. But our pride has the power to completely undo or block all the positive influence that our spouse has in moving us to Christ-Like character. It is impossible to overstate all the negative influence that our pride has on our changing and growing into the image of Jesus Christ. It is easy to determine when our pride is intervening in our pursuit of Christ-like character, we have conflict. Whenever there is conflict there is pride in at least one partner but most often in both, just manifested differently. Those who are serious about growth will do a bunch of self-examination to figure out what happened and how to fix it. A man and a woman living together, raising kids together, managing a house together, managing money together, planning their future together, and working at doing all that in unity will grow very rapidly to be like Jesus in character, that is God’s plan.

I am restoring a 1969 mustang with my grandson. When we bought it a couple of years ago, it was a total junker, everything needed to be fixed or replaced. When I go out in my shop to work on it now I have my choice; I can work on the headliner, I can finish putting in the parking brake cables, I can clean and refurbish all the gauges, I can put in the fuel line, I can install the back bumper and valence then install the backup lights, I have all the electrical to do, rebuild the door latches and window cranks, and on the list goes. When it is all finished, it will be a nice car.

I am a total junker, a 1948 junker, everything needs fixed or replaced, and the goal is that I would become like Jesus. I need my self-control to become much stronger, my pride to change to humility, and my patience to increase a lot so that I am not constantly fighting irritation. I need to become much more in control of my time so that I spend my time on important things that have significant eternal results instead of so much playing.

There are 26 character traits that I have identified in the Bible that I need to grow in. My desire is that I become like Jesus in each one of them. Using these various character traits breaks up my pursuit of Christ-like character into pieces that I can attack and can have success in. Some of the things that need done on the car are almost done, but others are just getting started. I have a picture of a 1969 mustang just like ours all finished. It looks beautiful and those who own it are asking $69,000 for it. Wow, whooooeeeeee!

In my life there are areas that I am doing good in, I have grown a lot in becoming like Jesus, but in other areas, I have a lot of work yet to accomplish. As I get up each day I can take my choice on what I am going to work on. It is nice to have a variety of things so that I don’t get bored pursuing the character of Christ, that would be bad.

Right now I am reading about and studying humility and pride in the Bible and in some books that I purchased. I want to conquer all pride in my life and walk with my God in total humility. My, oh my, talk about a junker and a long way to go, this is a major project for sure.

As we pro-actively pursue the character of Christ He will give us the power, the resources, the wisdom, the encouragement, everything we need to grow and change. He wants it in me more than I do and He will mold me like a piece of clay into the image of Jesus as I submit to Him.

I am pretty sure that Isaac and I will finish the mustang before God is finished with me.

I had a great day of fishing on the Siletz river for steelhead. The weather was perfect, a little cold but not bad. We saw zero other boats, so there was no competition. I went with a good friend so the fellowship was sweet. I caught a hatchery fish, a nice fat one that I brought home, and also a wild fish which we released. I also had two other fish on that got off after a few minutes of fighting. My good friend had about exactly the same results except his wild fish was approximately 20 lbs by measurement, 21 inches girth and 38 inches long. It was a very nice steelhead.

Fishing is one of my favorite things to do because of how refreshed, rejuvenated, and re-energized I feel after a day like today. If I could do this once every couple of weeks I probably would live to be 150 years old.

Being outdoors, on the the river, also has a significant impact on my spiritual life. I feel closer to God, my faith in Him seems to be markedly increased, and my sense of His presence grows.

Romans 1:19-20 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

I watched an NFL playoff game this afternoon between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills. It was one of the most exciting 4th quarter of foootball that I have ever seen. The lead changed hands three times in the last two minutes. Patrick Mahomes got the ball back on the 25-yard line with 13 seconds left, the Chiefs were behind, but they went on to win the game. It was back and forth, back and forth, it was crazy.

I thought to myself, the only way this kind of ending can happen is if neither team gives up, not even a little bit. Lots of people in their own life go by the statistics and probability and give up when if some effort was given things could have been different.

This is a really short blog, but I am going steehead fishing tomorrow on the Siletz River and have to get up at 4:00 am.