I have five gopher traps that I have set in my backyard, trying to catch what I believe is one gopher making a mess. I usually have success catching gophers, but this one is wily. He has tripped my traps 4 or 5 times without getting caught. I am using all my years of gopher-trapping experience, so it will only be a matter of time before I catch him. We caught the one making a mess in the front yard, and when I catch this Wily one, it looks like we have another out in the orchard. My Dad hated gophers in the hay fields. The mounds of dirt they made were very hard on the cycle blades on the swather. He would pay us .25 cents for each gopher we could trap. I used to tie a string from the trap to an empty white plastic chlorine jug so I could find them, and then, when the hay got taller, I had wooden stakes with red surveyors’ tape on them. Whenever I see a field full of gopher mounds, I think of what my Dad would say. There are people around who make an income from trapping gophers. Several years ago, a guy pulled into the church parking lot to ask a question, and while we were talking, I looked in the back of his pickup, and it was half full of dead gophers. That was his business. Once, while I was on a bicycle trip, Patty hired a guy to catch a gopher that was making a mess in our yard, and he charged $25. That is a lot more than the .25 cents I used to make as a kid. Gophers are a nuisance, and I have jokingly said that God sends them as discipline for sin in our lives. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that they are demons, messengers of satan, meant to keep us humble. Whatever, I am going to kill as many as I can.

Saah Joseph was at Jefferson Baptist Church tonight and will be there tomorrow as well. He is a Senator in the West African country of Liberia. I first met Saah in 2002 in Sierra Leone right after the end of the awful 20-year civil war between Sierra Leone and Liberia over control of diamonds, often called the “Blood Diamond” war. Saah was a young refugee of the war. Four of us flew over to Sierra Leone to investigate the possibility of starting a mission work there. The four of us along with Saah and the driver of our rented car drove across Sierra Leone. It was the craziest experience of my life. The country was totally destroyed because of the war, people were living in mud huts with banana leaf roofs in terrible poverty. The roads were so bad that we had 7 flat tires and with no service stations getting them fixed was a challenge. We were there for several weeks and while we were there we started two churches. Since that time many more churches have been started along with dozens of schools and a Seminary. Saah and I became very good friends on that first trip over to Sierra Leone and it was so good to see him tonight. I have been back to Sierra Leone and Liberia about 20 times since 2002, and I am looking forward to going back again this April. Tonight Saah said that he would drive down to where I will be when I go, and we could drive around the country for old times sake. The roads are much better now so it won’t be quite like that first trip. A very funny thing happened on that first trip. The car we were in was overheating so the driver stopped by a small creek to get some water to put in. We didn’t realize it but there was an old man in the creek taking a bath. When Saah and the driver started towards where he was he dipped down under the water holding his breath. They took a while to get the containers filled with water and the old man couldn’t hold his breath any more so he burst out of the water making this weird noise as he gasped for air. It terribly scared Saah and the driver and they came scrambling back to the car yelling that they saw a demon! As we looked back and saw this naked old man standing in the creek looking more scared than we were we all got a great laugh out of it, but I am sure that the old guy in the creek had no idea what was so funny.

There are 26 different character traits that I focus on as I pursue Christ-like maturity for myself. I was strong in some of them early because of my parents’ training, such as diligence. I am still weak in some of them, but I am working on them diligently. I think that my weakest character trait is gentleness, and most people who know me well would agree. I know my wife does. Several character traits are mentioned in the Bible that have a lot of blessings from God attached to them, and gentleness is right at the top. God loves gentleness and uses and rewards those strong in this character trait.  Gentleness is one of the two character traits mentioned that Jesus had. Many men are probably weak in this character trait because it seems feminine or weak. The King James word for gentleness is meekness, which sounds like weakness.

A significant requirement by God for those He would use as leaders is gentleness. Not many of our leaders in today’s world would rate very high in gentleness, however you would define it. Gentleness is influencing and persuading people with no irritation or anger. It is motivating people by honoring them. It is recognizing that we all are easily hurt or offended and working hard not to do that. As Jesus defined it, gentleness is treating people as you would like to be treated. Treating people with gentleness takes great strength, self-control, confidence, and godly self-worth. I have several people in my life who are very strong in this character trait, so I have good models to follow, and I am growing slowly but steadily to be more and more gentle.

I am four weeks from my left hip replacement surgery. I had my last physical therapy session yesterday, and I have my final doctor’s appointment next week, when they will X-ray my hip and declare me healed and good as new. I leave for Alaska on July 14th and expect to slay the salmon more than usual with my new mobility. The orthopedic surgeon had said when they looked at my X-rays before my surgery that my right hip seemed as bad as my left, but right now it doesn’t hurt at all, so I think I will leave it alone until it does get to hurting, if it ever does. My left hip had gotten so bad that it was hard for me to stand up straight. It is nice to be taller than my wife again. I often wonder what they did for various health issues, even a few hundred years ago. There are so many health issues in the weekly prayer letter; most of them would have been untreatable back then. I guess they prayed a lot, suffered, and died sooner than we do. I try very hard not to take any blessings from God for granted, and to thank Him constantly for them. A major blessing that would be easy to take for granted is that I was born in 1948, in the United States, to the parents I had, and with the history I have had. None of that was I responsible for; God decided it all. Did he have a plan for my life, or was it just a matter of chance?

Psalms 139:16 Your eyes have seen my unformed substance. And in your book were all the days that were ordained for me, when there was not one of them.

I have a responsibility to be a good steward of the life God has sovereignly given me, to never take it for granted, and to thank Him constantly.

Self-confidence is a character trait that those who accomplish a lot in their life all have. It is also a character trait of those who are tough and have endurance as they face challenges in life. The problem is that pride and arrogance can easily masquerade as confidence, but almost always result in failure and difficulties. A person who lives life with endurance and who is tough has confidence. 1990 a report entitled “Toward a State of Esteem” was published. In the report, low self-esteem was declared a contributing factor to many social problems, including drug and alcohol abuse, crime and violence, poverty and welfare dependency, and family and workplace problems. The 161-page report reads like the group had found the key to fixing society. It states just that on page 21: “Self-esteem is the likeliest candidate for a social vaccine, something that empowers us to live responsibly and that inoculates us against the lures of crime, violence, substance abuse, teen pregnancy, child abuse, chronic welfare dependency, and educational failure.” Public education jumped on this and began “participation awards” instead of “achievement awards.” The frequency of slogans like “Believe in yourself and anything is possible” skyrocketed in the ’80s and ’90s. Posters with positive sayings covered the walls of school classrooms throughout the nation. The obvious problem is that when self-esteem becomes the goal that is pursued rather than the byproduct of proper behavior, we begin to seek it from people, and our self-worth is determined by what we think others think of us. When high self-esteem becomes the goal, the result is low self-esteem. With low self-esteem comes a lack of confidence, which is replaced with arrogance, a counterfeit confidence. Probably no area of life was more infected with this philosophy than sports. Kids were told to act confident and you would become confident, think like a winner and you would become a winner, talk like a champion and you would become one. As a 76-year-old man who has raised eight kids, pastored hundreds of people, and seen the best and worst of what people can do, I have concluded that accurate, healthy self-esteem results from sensing God’s pleasure in me. As a member of God’s family, because of my faith in Jesus Christ, I have His Holy Spirit in me, and as a result, I can sense God’s pleasure in me when I obey Him and do His will. My sense of worth and value doesn’t come from people but from God.

Hebrews 11:5 “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death; and he was not found because God took him up; for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God.”

Proverbs 16:7 When a man’s ways are pleasing to the Lord, He makes even his enemies at peace with him.

2 Corinthians 5:9, we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to the Lord.

 1 Thessalonians 2:4 but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God, who examines our hearts.

1 John 3:22 and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.

As a senior in High School, I was on the High School track team. We had a small school with about 15 boys in the High School, and most of them participated in all three sports that our school offered: cross country, track, and basketball. I was not a very good athlete in High School, but I greatly enjoyed the experience and camaraderie. One of the events I ran was the mile; my fastest time was over 7  minutes. That is pretty slow. Another senior in another high school ran the mile in under 5:00 minutes and lapped me when our schools were in the same meet. Not many people can say they have been lapped in the mile. That was one of my finer accomplishments in High School athletics. For my first two years in College, I went to a small college of about 500 students and played basketball and baseball. I was a little better than in High School, but not much.

As an adult I have competed in softball, golf, racquetball, ping pong, and basketball and have been mediocre at best. I think golf is the only competitive sport I plan on attempting to get better at in my old age. I might try pickleball, but probably not. In all my years of participating in competitive sports, beginning in grade school, I have been fiercely competitive and have tried hard to win in everything I did. I trained and competed, trying my hardest to win. I never got discouraged, even when I got laughed at for getting lapped in the mile, and I never quit. As I try to help people run the race of the Christian life with endurance without getting discouraged and quitting, I try to help married couples stay in their marriage, being faithful to their marriage vows. As I try to motivate believers in Christ to do something with their life that matters for eternity instead of just coasting,  I often wonder what is missing in many people. I had an inner confidence, assurance, and self-worth as a young person that didn’t come from accomplishments. It kept me in the game, trying my hardest, enjoying the experiences, and comfortable with who I was. As I think about my life and where that came from I give the credit to three things, my healthy family life, my healthy church experiences, and the fact that I read the Bible through when I was 13 years old because of the encouragement of a 20 year old camp counselor, and at least that every year since. The Bible is God’s living, supernatural Word, and it is amazingly powerful to change us from the inside out. I am who I am because of God’s working, but He did His work in me through other people, parents, pastors, camp counselors, and many others. I pray that God will use me to do the same for many others. The main point is “read your Bible every day, every day, every day.”

I am reading a book on the “science of true toughness.” Reading through it, I find it amazing how much it aligns with Biblical principles. One line I underlined said, “stress clouds our ability to evaluate a situation or a problem accurately. Stress causes us to greatly overestimate the difficulty of what lies ahead of us and greatly underestimate our ability to conquer the problem. Philippians 4:6 says, “Be anxious for nothing, but pray about everything.” It goes on to say in verse 7 that if we do that, God will give us a fantastic peace. Prayer is not only the key to living a stress-free life, but James chapter 1 says that if we lack wisdom, we should pray for it and God will give us wisdom so we can solve problems and think accurately about any challenge that comes into our lives. Another prayer that God will always answer is requesting His strength to manage any situation. God’s peace, wisdom, and strength sound like the perfect formula for being tough so that we can run the race that God has set before us with endurance. The basic key to toughness is to pray a lot. “Little prayer = little toughness, no prayer = a wimpy life, much prayer = tough as nails.” You can do it if you pray. Running the race with endurance doesn’t mean gutting it out but making time for prayer.

Today I went fishing with a couple of friends. We got up at 4:00 am, left Jefferson at 5:00 am, and drove 3 hours up the Columbia River gorge to the mouth of the John Day River, where we planned to fish for Walleye. The problem we ran into was that the wind blew 20-plus miles per hour all day, and we had a tough time fishing. We drove all that way, so we worked hard at it and caught a few fish after fishing for about 6 hours. We then drove 4 hours home. It took us 4 hours to go home because we went through Portland at 5:00 pm. So, all in all, you would call that a rotten day, but we had fun with the challenges and just being outside on the river. That is the cool thing about fishing: you don’t have to catch fish every outing to have a good time.

A key to running the race of life with endurance is to have fun even on bad days. It is possible if you think right and are with the right people. I always have fun with certain people, no matter what we do or how bad it turns out, and I rarely have fun with others, no matter how successful the event is.

Running the race of life with endurance without getting weary, losing heart, and quitting is not easy. Those who are the tough ones who keep going and don’t quit are not doing that based on willpower, but on thinking right, taking wrong thoughts captive, and replacing them with right thoughts. Maybe we can say it this way, taking wimpy thoughts captive and replacing them with strong thoughts. Our body has a built-in self-preservation mode, and when it thinks we are killing ourselves, it will intervene. I ran 12 marathons between my 50th birthday and my 65th birthday. Before I ran my first one, I read many books written by people who had run many marathons. They all talked about this voice inside of us that started screaming at us to stop because we were killing ourselves between mile 18 and mile 22. It was called the “wall” that we hit. The key to running through the wall was knowing it was coming and being prepared to replace negative self-talk with positive. Most marathons I ran had “aid stations” about every two miles with little Dixie cups of water or sports drinks on tables that you could grab as you ran by. I would stop running and walk by these stations, pour a cup of water over my head, drink a sports drink, and then start running again. But at mile 18, mile 20, and mile 22, I would walk for one minute before I started running again. It was so much easier for me to manage that wimpy voice in my head screaming at me to quit before I killed myself when  I was walking than when I was running. The same thing happened when I used to climb Mt Adams right at the 10,000-foot mark. This inner voice in us is wired for easy, for comfortable, and when we start moving into the hard, it talks to us, attempting to get us to take it easy. We also have demons around us constantly speaking to us to take the easy way, if not the wrong and sinful way. If you think you are tired, you will be exhausted; if you think hard, you will become discouraged; if you think quit, it won’t be long before you do quit. The most powerful discipline for me in controlling my thoughts and not letting them control me is memorizing Bible verses. The discipline it takes to memorize Bible verses gives us the self-control to take wrong, wimpy thoughts captive and replace them with the thinking of an overcomer. Most Christians don’t learn many Bible verses because their mind tells them it is too hard and they can’t do it. I wonder where those thoughts came from.

I have read several books about the journey of guys who became Navy Seals. I have also read several books about ultramarathon runners. I had several goals in reading those books. The first was to learn how those guys could accomplish what they did, and the keys or components of their toughness. I know that they were not simply born that way. They had all learned a skill set, an attitude, and a way of thinking that helped them manage and overcome major roadblocks and physical pain. The second goal was to figure out how to describe what they did and put it into writing in an organized way so that I could apply it to my own life and teach others. The word that I use is endurance instead of toughness or grit; the reason is that it is the word that is used in the Bible, though toughness or grit could both be used in most cases as synonyms. I also studied the life of Jesus as the ultimate example of toughness, but it was easy to see all the similarities between them as they lived life with endurance. Endurance is a key character trait in all of the champions in the Bible, and one that we all need to have to grow and to bear much fruit for God.

Hebrews 12:1-3 Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Hebrews 10:32 But remember the former days, when, after being enlightened, you endured a significant conflict of sufferings,

Hebrews 10:36 For you need endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.

The first of many principles on how to be tough in the midst of pain and problems is not to will ourselves through it but to think ourselves through it. The way we think about our pain and problems determines whether we will endure or not.