Dear Jesus,

I confess to You that I am a sinner, and I have broken many of Your laws.

I admit that I don’t deserve Heaven and never will.

I accept Your free gift of eternal life that You are offering to me.

I believe that You, Jesus are God, equal with the Father.

I believe that you emptied Yourself of all that You were as God, and that You left Heaven, and became just exactly like me in every way.

I believe that You never sinned, not even a little one, not even in thought or attitude.

I believe that You were nailed to a cross, and while You hung there God the Father took all of my sins, past, present and future and put them on You, and looked at You as if you actually committed the sins that I committed, and punished You, for my sins.

I believe that You physically died on that cross, that You were buried, and that three days later You rose from the dead, and that You are alive today.

I commit my life to You. You have purchased me with Your blood, I belong to You.

I declare You to be Lord of my life.

I will obey You and do whatever You ask and I will follow You and serve You all the days of my life.

I know that I will fail many times as Your disciple. Thank you for Your continual forgiveness of me. I will not take advantage of Your forgiveness, mercy, and grace, to live the way I want, but I will accept Your forgiveness and live my life free from the fear of failing.

I admit that I can’t live for You and follow You in my strength, but I do believe that the Holy Spirit now lives in me and gives me the power to grow and please You with my life.

Proverbs 24:3-4 By wisdom a house is built,
And by understanding it is established;
And by knowledge the rooms are filled
With all precious and pleasant riches.

I use that phrase a lot when talking about parenting. That ought to be our goal in our parenting, to raise and train champions. A champion is someone who consistently wins at almost everything they put their hand to because they want to win. Wanting to win is not driven by a desire to beat someone else but to be the best they can be. A champion does what needs to be done when they feel like it, and when they don’t feel like it because it needs to be done. A champion knows that the key to winning is hard work, lots of it, and they have learned to enjoy the feeling of being exhausted at the end of a hard day. A champion gets bored quickly with the status quo, with things being the same, with easy, with comfortable, they are always raising the bar, adding some more weight to the bar, writing more challenging goals. A champion is humble. They know that there is no such thing as a self-made champion, we all need help, need encouragement, need counsel, need a kick in the butt, and they are always looking for it, and when they get it, they say thank you. A champion has eliminated the phrase, “it’s hard” from their vocabulary; they don’t complain, gripe, fuss, or grumble; they just don’t.

No one is born a champion, they are trained into being a champion by wise parents. I am teaching a class on how to raise champions starting April 11th, Sunday mornings, at 10:15 till 11:15 am at JBC in the Discipleship Center upstairs in room 202.

Proverbs 23:7 says, “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he, ” which means what you think about predominately is what you will become or already are. In reverse, choose to think and meditate on being the kind of person you want to become and you will meditate and envision yourself into that kind of person. 2 Corinthians 10:5 says that we are to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. The most important discipline in life is taking captive every thought and choosing to think thoughts that are positive, wholesome, holy, thoughts about activities and ways of acting and talking that are pleasing to Christ. Because our mind is such an independent thing inside us, we have to be continually listening to what our mind is thinking; this is such a fundamental part of growing mature. It is worth reminding ourselves constantly to stay on top of this discipline.

It is easy to begin thinking critical, judgmental thoughts about others, but it so important not to let your mind go there. It may be true the thoughts you are having about others, but those thoughts don’t change them, and they just make you an unhappy person.

Lots of parents quote this verse as a guarantee that their kids will eventually turn around and come back to the Lord. The problem with many is that they think “train” means “teach” or “expose.” so if they faithfully take them to church, Sunday School, Vacation Bible School and “expose” them to the Bible or they teach them the stories in the Bible at home that they have met their part of the deal. The problem is the word is train, a very proactive word that means much more than give information to. Let’s pretend that God has said that if you want your kids to be very successful in life and to go to heaven when they die that they must play Beethoven’s No. 29 B flat major without a mistake. As a parent, what would you do? You would teach and then they would practice, you would teach and they would practice, you would teach and they would practice, and when they got ahead of you, you would find someone else to teach and continue the cycle. That is called training, and that is what Proverbs 22:6 says to do “Train.” Training assumes a plan or strategy, it assumes practice and evaluation, it assumes a goal or target. Kids that hit 18 years of age who have not been we’ll trained, well parented have a significant disadvantage in life.

Most parents assume that because they are parents, they somehow have the knowledge and wisdom to be good parents. They may be good parents, loving parents, but they probably aren’t good trainers, good coaches. What parents need to do is get trained themselves on how to do Proverbs 22:6 effectively. Most parents don’t get training because of the time required, and they won’t know that they needed to get training until it is too late for their kid.

When our first child was born Patty, and I went to several seminars a year on parenting. We bought dozens of books on parenting and read and discussed them. We drove hundreds of miles to get personal counseling on parenting from a Dad of 12 of the best behaved, most disciplined, and amazingly talented family of kids I had ever seen. He gave us 15 minutes a week for three months, and we drove into Portland, a 90-minute drive each week to get it.

I am going to teach a class at JBC on “training our kids” on Sunday mornings at 10:15 am until 11:15 am starting April 11th until June 6th.

Whenever I write about a mess up that I have done or even a sin I have committed, I get more than expected responses, positive responses; it is almost like people enjoy my mistakes😁. It leads me to conclude that the cool dude, I’ve got my act together, perfect leader type is highly overrated, which is a good thing for me. So why do people seem to enjoy a leader’s mistakes? I don’t think it is merely the fallibility of a leader that warms people’s hearts, but it is how he responds to them to maintain his dignity without being a “holier than thou” person. Everybody messes up, sins, and does foolish things regularly. Because our self-worth and dignity are so important to us, we do everything we can to protect them. Most naturally assume that the way to do that is to cover up, excuse, blame others, ignore, lie, or exaggerate our strengths. We tend to do all of the above subconsciously. As can be seen in the political world, leaders who do that are not respected have few admirers, and they aren’t really leaders at all. One of the lessons I have learned is that my mess-ups are usually funny if I don’t take myself too seriously and don’t go through the list of methods to protect myself and my supposed reputation. I don’t enjoy seeing someone blow it or fail at something, but I do enjoy seeing someone blow it big time when he comes out the other side unscathed, with maybe even a more positive image than before. The key for me is to find every sin, even the little itty bitty ones, and character flaws that are in me, hand them all over to God and thank Him for dying for me and paying the penalty for those sins.

Tonight I thought and I wrote, I thought and I wrote, as I wrote the blog for tonight. It was slow going, my brain wasn’t cooperating and I couldn’t seem to get into the mood. After about two hours I was finally close to being done and I was thinking that it was going to be pretty good. I was thinking about how to bring it to a close and while thinking I fell asleep. I only slept for about 5 minutes, but during that five minutes my hand fell on the screen of my Ipad and it erased everything I had just written. Usually, my Ipad saves everything I write, but somehow during this eraser event, I convinced my Ipad not to keep anything. I tried to rewrite it from memory, but it seemed like it had gotten erased from my memory like my Ipad. I finally gave up, and now you are stuck reading this account of why you are stuck with such a pathetic effort at writing.

Have you ever had an event or something that you did, and at the conclusion, the best description you can come up with is, “now that was a complete waste of time!” I call them “Efforts in futility!” Because I have already spent two hours working on this blog, I am not inclined to spend too much more time on it so, sorry this is what you get.

I have a goal of consistently increasing the number of people who subscribe to my blog, and that will happen if the quality is good enough that those who are subscribed read the blog through to the end each day and that many pass it on to others who choose to subscribe to my blog after reading it.

I don’t think I will get very many people who “share” this blog with others. Oh well, tomorrow will be better, I hope so anyway.

My driving desire is to win. It consumes me, and I think about it all the time. God created me to be a winner, and the Bible commands me to be a winner, you too.

1 Corinthians 9:24 Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win.

Winning means I beat someone at something. My adversary is the devil, my own sinful nature, and the world around me. Seven times in the book of Revelation, it mentions the person who “overcomes, ” which means to be a conqueror, a winner, and after every reference to overcoming a reward is cited. One of those references is in Revelation 3:5;

He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.

1 Peter 5:8 Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

God created the devil to do precisely what he is doing. He knew we wouldn’t grow much in this life without an adversary so He created one for us. As we strive to win, to conquer, to overcome, as we go to war every day we get stronger, wiser, and we grow in character or we lose. Losing can be fatal and most of often is eternal in consequence.

Satan, the devil, our adversary, makes life hard, like he did with Job. Every day we get out of bed there is an additional roadblock, a problem, a crisis, a trial, and we can let it beat us, or we can conquer it, and stomp the devil under our feet.

COVID, I am sure, is a satan-caused and controlled phenomenon that he uses to defeat people, cause fear, cause strife and disunity, and turn people into losers. There will be something else as difficult if not more so coming up one of these days, and probably sooner than later.

A winner, an overcomer, doesn’t ask God to make life easier; he asks Him for strength and wisdom. Warfare is fun as long as you are winning.

The first sign that you are losing is when you complain and grumble and feel sorry for yourself.

I listened to South Dakota’s Governor, Kristi Noem, give her speech at CPAC today. It was a memorable speech that highlighted her wisdom and common sense as a leader. South Dakota never shut their State down; they never closed their schools, they never issued a mask mandate. Listening to her define the role and responsibility of Government was so refreshing. The United States is supposed to be the Land of the Free, the Home of the Brave, but instead we have become the Land of the Mask mandated and the Home of the Fearful. One thing she said repeatedly is that what we have experienced this last year was not based on science, it was based on political agendas and lying media.

Some churches chose not to follow the Government rules on shutdowns, but things in the future are going to get way more complicated than that if the House Equality Act becomes law. Civil disobedience could become a way of life for those who truly believe that we ought to follow and obey God rather than man.

But I am not worried or anxious because I know that God is sovereign, He is in charge, and He has an agenda that includes me.

The title to this blog is not true, it is a fairy tale that sounds cool, but won’t happen and will create a ton of frustration for the person who uses it as motivation in their life.

My motivating slogan is, “pursue the desires of my heart.” I believe if I stay close to God those desires that I have in me will be His desires for me. The tricky part is staying close to God, because if I don’t the desires of my heart can quickly become worldly, carnal, even demonic, and then they are evil desires.

Staying close to God is kind of like having a good marriage; you pursue intimacy in the relationship by following some basic principles. If you don’t follow the principles your emotions and feelings will be what fuels your efforts to grow closer in your relationship, and your emotions easily become focused on self needs and wants, and your efforts at a growing intimacy will become lazy and inconsistent.

The Biblical admonition is “seek the Lord, ” which doesn’t mean you are trying to find Him, He is right there with you all of the time, it means you are seeking to know Him more intimately. For much of my Christian life I thought that knowing God was to understand Him theologically, to know all about Him. To know God like I know Patty seemed illogical because I couldn’t see Him, touch Him, or hear Him.

My journey towards genuine intimacy with God has been gradual, but steady, and has come as a result of being faithful to the basic principles, the disciplines of the Christian life. I read my Bible devotionally almost every day, that is different than studying for a sermon, it is reading with an inner ear alert for a thought that could be from God. I spend time in prayer talking to God every day, often while I am reading His Word. I confess all known sin to God every day spending time reflecting on the day, examining my life, asking Him to show me what needs working on. I work very hard at worshipping well when I am at worship services with our church family, and I try to thank Him all day long for every blessing that comes into my life.

Deuteronomy 4:29 But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul.

1 Chronicles 16:10-11 Glory in His holy name;
Let the heart of those who seek the Lord be glad.
Seek the Lord and His strength;
Seek His face continually.

Psalms 9:10 And those who know Your name will put their trust in You, For You, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek You.

Psalms 34:10 The young lions do lack and suffer hunger; But they who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing.

Psalms 63:1 O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, In a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Psalms 105:4 Seek the Lord and His strength; Seek His face continually.

In the last year the number of times that I have had someone confront me about not wearing a mask, about my political opinions, or something I wrote or said has been as often as the previous 70 years in my life put together. It seems like that is what we do now, verbally bash people we disagree with, or disagree with us. People have always had differing views on things, different beliefs and values, but now it seems there is this powerful underlying force that pushes people to punish all those who disagree with them. It is difficult not to get caught up in this spirit of the day, and not insult the person who was rude to you.

I have compiled a list of Bible quotes that I am meditating on during the day to help me to act mature and loving all the time.

Don’t be conformed to this world.

Don’t return insult for insult, but instead give a blessing.

Sincerely pray for those who are rude, obnoxious, and mean.

So far as it depends on me be at peace with all men.

A soft answer turns away an angry person.

Rejoice always.

Jesus determines my worth and value as a person, no other person.

Don’t get uptight or anxious about anything, especially about what someone else says.

Act and talk like a free person, someone who isn’t controlled by the behavior of others.