In yesterdays blog I mentioned 3 keys to being re-energized when you get tired. 1. Be careful with your self-talk. Don’t tell yourself how tired you are or you will only get more tired, instead rejoice that you have lots to do that matters. 2. Discipline yourself to exercise faithfully, daily is best, and variety. 3. Faithfully spend time with God reading the Bible and praying. God loves to give His strength to those who give Him their time.

So here is another couple of keys to refilling your gas tanks so weariness is temporary.

1. Examine your life and confess all known sin to God everyday.

1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Psalms 32:3-5 When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away Through my groaning all day long.
For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me;
My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to You, And my iniquity I did not hide; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord”; And You forgave the guilt of my sin.

2. Forgive others. Forgive anybody of anything, no matter how bad it is, no matter how many times they have done it to you, and forgive them quickly.

Matthew 6:14-15 For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.

Both of these are super important. If you do not forgive others God will not forgive you and then “your vitality will be drained away”, and no amount of rest, exercise or good diet will make any difference. You can’t afford to hold grudges not even for a little bit, especially not into the next day.

Being tired is a universal human experience, everybody gets tired. The best remedy for tiredness is usually sleep. Sometime tiredness is because of something wrong with our physical body as simple as a cold or the flu, and sometimes the cause is more complicated or serious. Sometimes tiredness is more mental and emotional than physical because of anxiety or because of the high amount of emotional energy used in an event. The kind of tiredness and the cause of our tiredness is interesting, but the most important thing is how we react to our tiredness, how we think about it, the self-talk that goes on in our head, and what we proactively do to reenergize ourselves. Tiredness is universal and normal, but many people stay tired much longer than others because of their post tiredness rituals or habits, and because they have small energy gas tanks because of their present, daily habits of physical and emotional self-care. Some key principles of personal energy renewal;

1. Our self-talk needs to be positive concerning our weariness. “I am so tired from skiing yesterday. Oh thank You Lord for the great experience of going down hill skiing. It was such a beautiful day and I had so much fun”. Don’t end the thought with “I am so tired”, but go on and add the reason in a positive way.

2. Those who have a disciplined and strenuous exercise program and routine will be less tired and will recover faster than those who don’t. The older we are the more important exercise is. Exercise is a discipline because generally our flesh hates it so it will usually require some accountability in our lives to keep us faithful to it.

3. Isaiah 40:30-31 Though youths grow weary and tired, And vigorous young men stumble badly,
Yet those who wait for the Lord Will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles,
They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary.

God gives strength to us when we need it, but if we are in the habit of giving Him left over time, occasional time, convenient time, only when we need Him time, we won’t receive much strength from Him when we really need it. Those who read their Bibles everyday, spend time in prayer, conversation with Him daily, those who gather together with other Christ-Followers often and regularly, who worship and praise Him corporately and privately, and daily examine their own life and confess all known sin to God will have His strength to live life well and to accomplish a lot with their life that really matters.

More on this tomorrow

I went skiing today with a friend at Mt Bachelor. I have not been skiing for almost 40 years so I was very apprehensive about the outcome. I did pretty good, only falling down twice, though the first time I went up the chair lift I fell getting off the chair, how embarrassing 😡. I got to turning and swishing pretty good though I stayed on the “bunny hill” with the little kids and old people😀. I couldn’t believe how tired my legs got, they felt like jello at the bottom of every run I made. I thought, man, I have been riding my stationary bike an hour every night and I still feel like a wimp! So I determined that I would pick it up a bit to 80 minutes every night as well as weight lifting every night. I am not sure I will ever go skiing again, I checked it off of my goals for the year and think I will focus on bicycle riding and fishing. Today was a good experience of trying something new, challenging, and something that I was fearful of doing. The nervousness came from the fear of not being able to get back on my feet after falling. One of my biggest challenges with my Parkinson’s is getting stood up while sitting, and if I get down on the floor for any reason, getting back to my feet is a huge challenge so I was thinking that if I fell down on the ski slope I would just have to stay there forever. But I actually got up without to much trouble. Most of us avoid doing anything that we would possibly fail at or embarrass ourselves at, but it is good for our character growth to move out of the safe and secure areas of our life and take a risk.

Philippians 4:4 says, “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice”. What does that mean? I don’t think it means that it is wrong to grieve or to be sad. Jesus was grieved and sad on numerous occasions, and obviously what He did wouldn’t be wrong for us to do.

Matthew 26:37 And Jesus took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed.

I don’t think it means that we have to smile all the time and be happy in spite of trials or hard times. Let’s look at how Jesus rejoiced while on the cross being tortured to death.

Hebrews 12:1-2 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.

“Who for the joy set before Him”. Jesus looked ahead and saw all those who would be with Him in heaven because of His death on the cross, and that joy was what gave Him the strength to endure the pain of the cross. We can do that, we can look ahead to our entry into heaven, we can look ahead to the rewards we will receive at the “Judgment Seat of Christ”, we can look ahead to the people who will be in heaven because we witnessed to them. To rejoice basically means to trust God that He knows what He is doing and every event in our life will work together for our character growth and much fruit. To rejoice means to submit to Him even when we don’t understand and when nothing makes sense in life.

I went steelhead fishing on the Siletz River with my friend Matt Borg today, and we netted 5 fish, and had 4 others on for awhile before they got off, and a bunch of “bobber down”, but not sure if they were fish or a rock. 2 of the netted fish were hatchery fish and 3 were wild which we released. I ate some of the fish I brought home tonight, so good😀!

The weather was sunny and warm, though for the first 2 hours it was 27 degrees and very cold. There isn’t much that I enjoy as much as a good day fishing with friends. I am incredibly blessed because I have a wife I love, 8 kids, their 8 spouses, and 27 grandkids that I love, a job that I love, a God and Savior that I love, good friends that I love, and hobbies like fishing that I love.

I love Tuesdays because I have 4 men’s accountability groups that meet on Tuesdays one at 5:30 am, another at 6:30 am, and another at 7:30 am. These three all meet at Denny’s restaurant in Albany in the same booth back to back to back. I then have one in my office at the church at 6:00 pm and at 7:00 pm I attend a men’s prayer time for an hour. During the accountability time each guy shares how they are doing on their goals and we congratulate, praise, and encourage appropriately. We all have Bible reading goals, prayer goals, pray with our wives goals, some have exercise goals and weight loss goals, some have kid goals, job goals, home project goals, and guys like me have fishing goals. Most everyone has about a dozen goals that they share each week. When we finish sharing our goals we usually quote some Bible verses that we are working at memorizing and then tell fishing stories or whatever. They are great times of fellowship, encouragement, and friendship which I enjoy very much. It is my opinion that every man ought to be in an accountability group either because they need it or because they can be an encouragement to others who need it. When those men who have their acts together opt out of these groups then there are few models and examples for others to follow. The Bible makes it very clear that if we have been taught by others then we need to teach others, if we have been encouraged by others than we need to encourage others, and if we have been coached by others than we need to coach others, anything less is selfish and irresponsible.

As therapy for my Parkinson’s I ride my stationary bike 4 nights a week, and row on my rowing machine after the bike, 60 minutes on the bike and 15 minutes on the rowing machine. Three times a week I lift weights out in my “Man Room” for about one hour, using a program called “StrongLifts 5X5”. There are 5 different lifts and on each one I do 5 reps 5 times with a 3 minute break between reps. One night I will do squats, bench press, and the bar bell row, and the next time I lift I will do squats, over head press, and the dead lift. So I do squats every time I lift, and alternate between bench press, bar bell row, and overhead press, dead lift. During the 3 minute breaks I work on memorizing Bible verses. The App I have is really cool in that it times you between lifts and beeps when time is up, it automatically increases the weight by 5 pounds when I successfully lift the current weight 5X5 times and it leaves it the same if I only can do 4 on any one of the 5 lifts. It is fun adding weight, successfully lifting it and adding more.

That is the way I train myself spiritually as well. I add another verse to memorize, increase the amount of Bible that I read each day, read another book, push myself to read a little faster, add another goal to my list of goals, learn something new, do something new and different, go someplace I have never been, and learn a new skill. Just a little bit more over time results in significant accomplishment and growth. The key is don’t get content or lazy, keep pressing on, just a little bit more.

Someone was sending text messages today to people in our church as if from me saying that I was in trouble and needed money. I think most checked with me to see if it was genuine because there was a couple of things in it that made it suspicious. First it was the grammar, my grammar is bad but not that bad, second they signed it Pastor Dee Duke, I don’t believe I have ever signed a text message that way, and most who got the text recognized that fact, and then the phone number they used wasn’t mine and most who received a text know my number. Earlier today I got a phone call from someone saying they were from Social Security investigating a crime, and I had been identified as a culprit! I just hung up, but I got to wondering what would have happened if I had played along for awhile.

I googled “Scammers” and got some interesting information about the various scams going. A common one is with dating services, poor people, here they are looking for companionship and someone steals their money! One heading was, “How to scam successfully”, I bet they charged a lot for that one😀 It seems like a sad way to live one’s life, spending your days sending text messages, emails, and making phone calls trying to trick people so as to steal their money. Almost sounds like a computer game.

The devil has a number of names in the Bible, Lucifer, Satan, the dragon, the adversary, but I think a good one would be “The Great Scammer”. He is called the deceiver, trying to trick people into believing a lie instead of the truth. A scammers goal is to steal our money, but “The Great Scammers” goal is to steal our joy. The key to being “scam proof” is to know the truth, because scammers are always lying, and if we know the truth we will spot a lie a mile away.

When I was a kid we used to sing a song in Youth Group called, “Lead me, Guide me”. I remember thinking while we sang that song, “how does God do that”. I had never heard an audible voice that I thought was God’s nor have I heard one since. I think that it is a combination of God giving us wisdom as we seek for wisdom, giving us guidance through wise people that we seek counsel from, from His Word as we read it faithfully, and from promptings that He puts into our mind in the form of thoughts.

God guides those who want to be guided, who want to follow Him and obey Him, who believe that God knows much better than we do what is the best choice among the many that we make every day. A great way to communicate that desire is simply to ask for Him to guide, to seek wisdom, and to read His Word faithfully. These verses from Psalms are great ones to memorize and to pray back to God.

Psalms 5:8. O Lord, lead me in Your righteousness, Make Your way straight before me.

Psalms 25:4-5 Make me know Your ways, O Lord;
Teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth and teach me, For You are the God of my salvation; For You I wait all the day.

Psalms 31:3
For You are my rock and my fortress;
For Your name’s sake You will lead me and guide me.

Psalms 27:11. Teach me Your way, O Lord, And lead me in a level path.

Psalms 143:10. Teach me to do Your will, For You are my God; Let Your good Spirit lead me on level ground.

In Galatians 2:20 Paul says, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me”. Paul is saying, “it is no longer I who am choosing what to do all day long, it is Jesus Christ who lives in me who is choosing, and I am following and obeying Him”. Practically speaking how does a person pull that off and make it happen? It sounds super spiritual and in fact it is super spiritual if lived out that way.

It begins first thing in the morning when we say to the Lord Jesus silently in our thoughts or out loud, “You are Lord of my life and I will follow and obey You today”! Then in another hour we will say that again, and again, and again, all day long. It isn’t hard to do that and it only takes about 10 seconds to pray that simple 14 word prayer. The problem is we won’t remember to do it, we will simply forget because of all that is on our mind. The trick is to attach this simple discipline to something we already do all day long. For me it is looking at the screen on my cell phone to see if there are any new text messages or emails or missed calls. It was pretty simple to put a piece of masking tape cut 1/2 inch wide across the top of my phone with the words, “Jesus is Lord” written on it.

“You are Lord of my life and I will follow and obey You today“. Saying that simple 14 word prayer a dozen times every day will program our mind, our will, and our heart to listen for promptings from God on what to do and what to say all day long. Can you imagine how much more successful we would all be in our relationships and our goals if we followed the promptings of God. Also God will lead the person who will follow, He will speak to the person who will listen and obey, and by saying “I will follow and obey” God is prompted to lead.

“It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me”