My Dad was a patriot. He fought in World War II and had four ships sunk under him. He was a patriot as a matter of principle; if you lived in a country you supported it, you fought for it, and you were loyal to it, that was just the right thing to do. To my Dad to live in a country like the United States, to have a job, a house, to be protected, and have freedom and then to be critical of that country was the height of self-centeredness and childish thinking and acting.

During the Vietnam war there was a young farmer in our community who hung the U.S. flag upside down on a flagpole in his yard in protest of the war. I don’t ever remember seeing my Dad so angry about anything before. He started up a petition trying to get all the other dairy farmers in the area to sign it to get Mayflower the company that bought and picked up our milk to refuse to take his milk. It didn’t succeed but it did succeed in getting the young farmer to honor the flag, he quit flying it upside down, and it seemed to me that the reason was that the guy feared my Dad. In my opinion a very smart thing to do.

Over the last 30 years I have been in about 20 different countries on short-term mission trips. I have been in Vietnam, China, Mongolia, Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Bosnia, and others and seen first hand the restrictions, the corruption, the control that government attempts to exert over people.

Many people were interviewed over the fourth who were critical of the United States, and listening to or reading their comments ; it was easy to see that they have no clue. I thought to myself as I read or heard what they said, they need to live for a year in Vietnam or Mauritania.

Even in our present state of liberalism, and wokeism as a nation we are still the country that people in every nation in the world want to come to, we are still the country where you have a chance to do something with your life that matters and to move up in life.

My main thing as a concerned citizen of the greatest nation on earth is to pray diligently every day that God will bring revival to the United States of America.

Reflective thinking is a learned skill that very few people have learned.

God’s goal for us is that we would become righteous and holy as He is. He will work on us, around us, and in us to make us like Himself, but there is a level of cooperation that we must bring to the process for what He does to work. That is why we are commanded in the Bible to pursue righteousness over and over again.

One of the most important things we need to do to grow in righteousness is to accurately and honestly evaluate who we are, where we are, what our flaws are, what blind spots do we have, what our motives are, and what is our character like. That evaluation of ourselves is called reflective thinking, it is looking in the mirror, as it were so that we can see our own heart.

This self-examination is not a morbid self-lothing, it is a result of our very strong desire to please Christ and to be like Him in character. As I said, very few followers of Jesus do this routinely as a discipline of life. The primary reason is because our flesh hates it. Our flesh ignores, justifies, blames, and denies our character flaws, we learned to do that as children and most have refined that skill ever since so that we have no clue who we really are on the inside.

Psalms 36:2 For it flatters him in his own eyes
concerning the discovery of his iniquity and the hatred of it.

Proverbs 12:15 The way of a fool is right in his own eyes.

Proverbs 21:2 Every man’s way is right in his own eyes.

Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it?
“

If I evaluate my level of pride on a scale of 1 to 100, and God does the same, how close will my evaluation be to His? It all depends; if I evaluate myself in cooperation with Him, asking for Him to open my eyes to see myself clearly, and with the desire to grow and become like Him, I believe they will be very close.

Jeremiah 17:10 I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind.

For me, the best time to think reflectively about who I am is when I have any relational conflict. My character flaws show up in my relationships. The natural tendency is to think I am right and others are at fault, but if I assume that tension, strife, hurt feelings, hurtful words, and irritation are my fault, and use that conflict to honestly examine my words, attitude, and behavior I will probably learn a lot about my character and heart.

Reflective thinking, how much do you do? How accurate is it?

Proverbs 16:5 Everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord.

An abomination to the Lord! Wow, how bad is that. The Lord has an opinion of every person. Some people in the Bible, such as Daniel are called God’s favorites, obviously God’s opinion of him was very high. Abraham was called God’s friend. I don’t know how important it is to you to be well thought of by the Lord, by the God of the universe, the all-wise, holy, all-powerful God. The apostle Paul declared that his goal in life was to be pleasing to the Lord in every respect.

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

That is my ambition in life, to please the Lord in all that I do. I am obsessed with it, thinking all the time about how I am doing. Wondering what God thinks of me as He watches all that I do, listens to how I talk, and hears all of my thoughts. The Bible says that “God weighs the motives of a man’s heart, ” I wonder what He thinks of my motives. It is hard for me sometimes to know what my motives really are, but He knows.

As people we have the ability to sense God’s pleasure in us, and we can refine that ability so that we are very in tune with his opinion of us. When pleasing the Lord is our greatest desire and we have grown to sense His pleasure in us we become highly motivated people.

Just as we can refine our sense of His joy in us, we can also dull it to the point of being totally unaware of his pleasure and also His displeasure to the point of being an abomination to Him. How sad to be an abomination to the Lord and not even be aware of it. How do we do that to our own heart?

The primary way is to become motivated by the approval of people rather than God, to be more concerned about the opinion of those around you instead of God’s opinion. It is subtle, it happens slowly, but it happens to most, we become “people pleasers.”

Colossians 3:23 Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men,

Galatians 1:10 For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.

Reflective thinking is when I examine my heart and my motives, asking the question of myself, am I striving to please the Lord or people. God is so desirous of our hearts to be entirely devoted to Him that He will help us in our effort to figure out why we do what we do.

Self-worth, self-esteem is a critical human need. Self-worth is not really our own opinion of ourselves, it is our perceived opinion of either other people of us or God’s opinion of us. Which do you think is healthy self-worth? Self-esteem that comes from people’s opinions of us turns to pride.

I went to JBC’s Vacation Bible School program tonight. It was a lot of fun and very inspiring to see all those kids on the stage singing about Jesus. Jesus said that if we wanted to be great in the kingdom of heaven we needed to become like a little child. It was easy to see tonight what Jesus must have seen in the hearts of kids during his day that endeared them to Him.

My Mom took me to Vacation Bible School when I was a kid. In fact if there were four churches relatively close to us and their VBS dates were different she would take me to all four. I got a lot of good early teaching and training when I was a kid because of those faithful people who took time out of their busy schedules to teach a bunch of rowdy kids for five days.

Sometimes people will ask me when I got saved, and I will say in Vacation Bible School, in fact I got saved many times in VBS. At the end of each of the different programs there would be a gospel presentation and then the person who gave the lesson would say “anybody who wants to accept Jesus as their savior raise your hand.” I would raise my hand and pray with the teacher. If I went to four VBS’s I would get saved four times, and again the next year, and the next. As a kid I had a very strong sense of eternity, I thought about it a lot, and I did not want to go to hell. Back in those days preachers preached about hell more than they do today, and I had heard a number of them at an early age that put the fear of God into me. So every time there was an invitation I raised my hand, just to be sure.

We raised our eight kids taking them to school in the back of a Volkswagon pickup with no seats and no seat belts. They sat on the floor of the pickup though we did have a canopy so they didn’t get wet from the rain, but there was no heater or windows. Then we moved up to a Volkswagon bus with no car seats or seat belts. They are all alive and well and are quite bold and unafraid of taking a risk today.

Staying safe has become a religion. “Safetyism,” as it is called, like all religions, places what it values — in this case, being safe — above other values. Safetyism explains the willingness of Americans to give up their most cherished values — including liberty — in the name of safety for the last year and a half.

Millions of Americans not only gave up their right to go to work, earn a living, attend church, and visit friends and relatives, but they even gave up their right to visit dying relatives and friends. One can assume that nearly every person recorded as having died of COVID died without having a single loved one at their bedside from the moment they entered a hospital until their death. The acceptance of such cruelty — irrational and unscientific cruelty, one might add — can only be explained by the desire for safety above all else.

The religion of Safetyism has increasingly deprived Americans of joys as well as freedoms. Children, in particular, have been so coddled that American children of the last two generations have probably had far less joy and far more fear than children of any previous American generation. Young children cannot take walks on their own lest child protective services be called; and monkey bars and seesaws have been removed from playgrounds. As an article in the Australian website Babyology headlined: “Monkey bars are dangerous and must be removed from playgrounds, experts say.”

Two Norwegian scientists, Ellen Sandseter (Queen Maud University College of Early Childhood Education) and Leif Kennair (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), wrote a study on children and risky play published in Evolutionary Psychology in which they concluded: “We may observe an increased neuroticism or psychopathology in society if children are hindered from partaking in age-adequate risky play.”

One of the most prevalent comments I get from people when I tell them about my bicycle trips across the country is, “that sounds terribly dangerous!”

Take five minutes to watch the video of my son-in-law and my grandkids. I guarantee that you will be blown away by the risk and danger these kids who are 6, 8, and 10 years old face. This is an amazing video of parents teaching their kids to take risks and to not be afraid of danger. I put it on my Facebook page a few months ago. Cut and paste this to your internet to watch.

A growing area of pseudo-science today driven by liberal politicians is the “man-caused global warming crisis.” The global warming frenzy and resulting fear in our culture is a deliberate plan to control our culture. If weather and temperature change is happening, it is God-caused, and He is doing it for a reason.

“There are other voices – climate realists and real scientists – who have been speaking out for years about the pseudoscience associated with climate alarmism. One of them is Dr. Fulks. Gordon J. Fulks, Ph.D. is a physicist, originally from the University of Chicago’s Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research. He is currently one of the Directors of the CO2 Coalition, a group of prominent scientists and economists who point out that carbon dioxide and water vapor are the entirely beneficial byproducts of our civilization. He has been fighting the good fight against knaves and fools pushing climate alarmists’ draconian economic solutions for a nonexistent problem that have become manifested in a “Green New Deal.””

Evolution is a theory with no real scientific support. Over the years those who believe in evolution would declare that those who believed that God created everything that exists in six days were ignoring the science and were dumbheads. This attack was repeated so much that strong, Bible believing Christians would often compromise their belief so as not to appear dumb to the unbelieving world. There are many real scientists who have proven that the supposed science that supports evolution is indeed pseudo-science.

The worst thing about the mask mandate, the business shut down, and the isolation of people to the point of shutting down schools and churches this last year was the claim that it was based on science, “just follow the science.” It was pseudo-science driven by the media, politicians, and medical companies. Now that the push and pressure to get everyone to conform is coming to an end, the lack of real scientific support is becoming more and more evident. It had about as much real science backing as my Dad’s belief that castrating our pigs under a full moon would result in faster-growing pigs!

There are many real scientists out there in the world, but they don’t get quoted by the politicians or media; in fact, they most often get ignored, restricted, fined, ridiculed, and falsely attacked.

The best sign that something is being driven by psedo-science is when it starts being used as a club to intimate and force people to a particular agenda, and when it produces disunity.

We are all packed up, in the RV and headed home, having terminated the trip because of the excessive, record-setting heat. I am now in the planning stage for next year’s trip. I have decided that I am going to do the Adventure Cycling’s Trans-America route. It is a coast to coast route going from Oregon to Virginia, and is approximately 4,000 miles long. At this point my brother Cliff will go on the trip with me along with his wife Kathy, and several others are thinking about it.

There are a number of decisions that have to be made about the trip. The first is whether we are going to do it with or without a support vehicle. A vehicle makes it a lot easier because we won’t have to pack 70 lbs of gear, clothes, and food on our bikes. It also adds a lot of security in case of breakdowns or other issues that can come up. Obviously the fact that I will be 73 and Cliff 72 is a major consideration. The main reason not to is because it quadruples the cost of the trip.

A second decision is whether we will start on the West Coast or the East. The prevailing winds generally go from West to East so the probability for tailwinds instead of headwinds, which is a big deal, is higher starting on this side of the U.S. A big problem going from West to East is that the purchased airplane ticket for returning home departure date hangs as a deadline over your head in case of any delays in the trip because of break down, weather, or health.

Another decision if we decide to use a support vehicle is whether we will buy one just for the trip and sell it at the end or whether we use someine’s personal vehicle that is going on the ride. If we use someone’s personal vehicle there is the added time and miles of driving across the country at the beginning or end depending on the starting point.

Another decision is when we we would do the ride. The personal schedules and responsibilities of those going and the best weather are the key factors in deciding.

There are many more decisions that need to be made in the planning of this trip, but the most important has been made, I am going to do it. Actually, the planning and all the research that goes into a journey of this magnitude is my favorite part.

Decision making and planning are a key part of every area of life. God planned all that has happened, and has planned the future in detail. He has given us the power and the freedom to make plans for our own lives and the lives of others and for organizations that we may lead.

Some people make good plans and succeed, and others make poor plans and fail. There are three keys to successful planning. The first is to make God the leader in the planning process, even if it is as non-spiritual as a bicycle trip. The second is to get counsel and advice from others who have experience. And the third is to do lots of research.

Well, we decided when we got into camp today that we are going to abort our trip, it is just too hot to ride a bicycle as strenuously as we do. I checked the forecast for each area for each day, and it is supposed to be over 100 degrees every day. Today was only 42 miles but I started getting light-headed the last hour we rode when the temperature went to 102 degrees.

We will get up in the morning like a bicycle ride day and head home, it will be about a ten-hour drive. It is always sad not to be able to finish a goal, but like the old Kenny Roger’s song goes, “you have to know when to hold them and when to fold them, ” or something like that.

The fact is, almost all of my big goals have some revision in them because of unknown events or circumstances that came up. One of the character traits that we all need to be strong in is the quality of being determined, having endurance, and being tough, along with being balanced with being flexible and wise. We don’t want to be so flexible that we quickly quit our goals when things get hard, and we don’t want to be so rigid that we experience or cause someone else to experience some form of harm.

We now have bicycle trip number eight in the books. This is the shortest of all trips, both in days and miles. This is our eighth day and we have ridden almost exactly 400 miles

We are talking about doing the Trans-America next year. It is a route that many thousands of people over the years have ridden. It starts at Newport, Oregon and ends in Yorktown, Virginia, is about 4,000 miles long, and will take approximately two months to ride. If you would like to go let me know or if you would like to drive the support vehicle.

I do not think I have ever been hotter than I was today riding my bicycle. I didn’t think we were ever going to get to camp. Cliff and I stopped along a ditch and dipped our shirts in the water to cool us off. We kept an eye out for traffic because we were sure that if anybody saw us with our shirts off they would run off the road. The forecast for tomorrow where we are headed is 104 degrees, but two good things, there is a swimming pool at the campground, and we only have to ride 42 miles tomorrow.

Today we left from Baker City and biked to Oxbow on the Snake River. This campground is one of the nicest, best run, most beautiful campgrounds I have ever been in. We rode 70 miles and climbed about 3500 feet, and the last hill of over 2000 feet and 7 % grade was at the end, around 2:00 pm, at the hottest part of the day.

I got stung on the forehead by a yellow jacket while I was riding today. I am glad it wasn’t on one of our 40 mph down hill rides. We did have a good down hill run but I only got up to 38 mph.

In the campground last night there was a train track right next to where we were camped, and there were also some chickens in a pen close to our campground. Because we are in a different campground every night I sometimes wake up confused as to where I am. At 3:00 am a train went by and blew his whistle and then after it was gone a rooster started crowing. At home we have a train track behind our house and there is usually a train that goes by and blows his whistle at 3:00 am. We also have chickens and we used to have a rooster that would crow at 3:00 am, but I killed him. So I am thinking that I am home, but I can’t figure out how that rooster was alive, roosters don’t rise from the dead!

Speaking of rising from the dead I was thinking about eternity today as I rode, and what came to mind in the heat was the contrast between the state or description of the eternity between those who love Jesus and are following Him, and those who don’t. The place that those who do not know Jesus personally will spend forever in is described as “intense heat, ” “Lake of Fire, ” “torment, ” and “agony.”

I know many people who have planned their retirement well, but give no thought to their eternal future. They just ignore it, and hope for the best.

Today was a tough day. We climbed three passes, all of which were over 5,000 feet; we rode 70 miles, and the last 12 miles, we pedaled against a monster headwind that was a least ten mph. We saw lots of deer today as we rode through some beautiful country. We pulled into camp at Baker City about 3:00 pm, set up our tents, blew up air mattresses, put out our sleeping bags, took a nice long shower, sat in the hot tub, took another cold shower, ate some trail mix, and now I am getting ready to go to bed. It is only 8:30 pm, but we are getting up at 4:30 am. This is the most tired I have been so far on the trip, but I expect that 7 hours of sleep will cure everything wrong with me!