We were headed back from hunting and I was riding on the back of a 4 wheeler holding on to my bow with one hand and the rack I was sitting on with the other hand and our Nebraska rancher/friend, Boone was driving. It was dark and I wasn’t looking ahead where we were headed and we started up this fairly steep spot, it caught me off guard, and I rolled right off of the back of the quad. I landed with a thud, rolled back down the hill, all the while trying to protect my bow. He didn’t realize that I had fallen off until he got to the top of the hill, and was a bit startled when he discovered my absence. He yelled, asking if I was alright, and I trudged to the top of the hill and said, “that is the most excitement I have had on this hunting trip, thanks”! I got to thinking about it later and thought, “I hope he didn’t think I was insulting his guiding efforts for our whitetail hunt”, so later I told him I was having an awesome time even if I hadn’t shot anything yet, and I was just trying to be funny on the “fall off of the quad experience” so that he didn’t feel bad for dumping an old man off the back of the 4 wheeler while he was driving. He did acknowledge that he was afraid that I might have gotten hurt and was glad when I laughed and made light of it. In thinking about being careful about what I say so that I edify people and don’t offend them I was reminded again of one of my memory verse, 1 Peter 3:10 “The one who desires a good life, to love and see good days, must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.” Saying the right thing at the right time, always, is a major challenge, taking wisdom, self-examination, desire, and an awareness of the blessings when successful and the consequences when hurtful words are spoken. My daily commitment to God is “Every word I speak today will edify and give grace”, I can’t do this, Lord, without Your help, please help me today.

As each one of us chooses what we do and don’t do during a day, both short term and long term decisions, there is always a reason why we choose an activity or a particular course of action over other options. The reason for why we choose a direction in our life can be good, pure, and wise or it can be bad. Our motive for our choices is important. As I was sitting in a tree stand this morning from 5:30 to 9:30 am, freezing to death, and only seeing 6 does, I thought to myself, “Why did I decide to do this?” Included in the question of motive is also the question of joy, “what do I enjoy doing?” The pursuit of joy is a very legitimate motive, in fact God created us that way. One of the most important things to remember is that the ultimate source of joy in life is God. Psalms 16:11 says, “In Your presence is fullness of joy”. When we seek God diligently through prayer, reading the Bible, worship, and gathering with other Christ followers God gives us His joy and He blesses us with events and experiences that brings joy into our life. 1 Peter 3:10 says, “He who wants to love life and see good days must speak right, do good, and seek peace with everybody because God rewards and blesses those who do these things”. So why did I choose this hunting trip? Because I enjoy, very much, doing things that are a challenge, that are hard, and winning, conquering, and surviving! So, I am having a great adventure and enjoying it very much, but I am spending time with God in prayer every day, reading the Bible everyday, memorizing every day, and I skipped hunting and went to a local church on Sunday morning because God is the ultimate source of joy, He gives joy and He takes it away, and He works in the details and circumstances of life to give joy.

We are hunting whitetail bucks in Nebraska with our bows. We are hunting in tree stands and ground blinds trying to be where the deer are at the same time, and closer than 60 yards. Tonight I was in a ground blind in the middle of an alfalfa field where we had seen over 50 deer the night before. I watched as two monster bucks fed past my ground blind never getting closer than 70 yards and a number of smaller bucks that were close enough, just not big enough. Then about an hour before dark a couple of bucks come into the field and start feeding towards me, and one of them is a monster buck, here is a picture of him.He kept feeding closer and closer to me, 180 yards, then 100, then 80, then 60, then 50, and then 40 yards. My heart was pounding so fast and hard I could feel it in my neck and chest. As he was feeding closer he was also moving downwind of me and I could tell by the way he would put his nose in the air that he was starting to get a whiff of me, and once he got a big whiff he would bolt. He was broadside at 40 yards and I can hit a paper plate every time at 40 yards so I felt pretty good about the chances of hitting him. When I pulled my bow back he looked right at me, and when I released the arrow that buck ducked and spun so fast that he literally dodged the arrow. I never have had that happen in Oregon with mule deer. I was shocked, amazed, then disappointed, then sad, and now depressed. Man, all that waiting in a dark ground blind waiting for daylight, freezing to death in the process, and then to miss ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Oh well, I keep repeating to myself, “It is the experience not the kill that matters”, over and over in my mind. I am having a great experience, probably one of the best ever for hunting, but oh my, it would have been so nice to have hit that buck and have his head mounted on my living room wall at home. I think Patty might be praying for me to have a good experience.

We get up at 4:00 am, get dressed, eat a banana, brush our teeth and then Boone, a Cattle rancher here in Chadron, Nebraska who doubles as our hunting guide picks us up at 5:00 am. We drive to the spot we are going to hunt, climb up our assigned tree stand, a full hour before there is any daylight. The reason is so any deer we may have spooked getting to our stand will be calmed down by the time we can see them. That hour wait in the dark is cold and rather boring, but not as much as it could be because I pull out my cell phone and work on memorizing Bible verses using an app on my phone called “Scripture Memory”. When it gets shooting light I am looking intently for a deer and try not to spook him until he walks close enough for me to shoot him with my bow. The deer need to be 50 yards and closer for me to have a reasonable chance to shoot and hit them in a vital spot so as not to just wound them. I have had a dozen deer in that distance, but they have been does or small bucks, and I want to shoot a big buck. We come back to our rooms at 9:30 am and go to Boone’s house where his wife Nadeem cooks us breakfast, a really nice breakfast. Then back to our rooms to try and fit in an hours nap before Boone picks us up at 1:00 pm and off we go to the tree stands or ground blinds again, where we stay until 7:00 pm. After we get cleaned up we go back to Boon’s house again for a late night supper, a really good supper and really big, I might add. We climb into bed at 10:00 pm and then start all over again at 4:00 am. I skipped hunting this morning and went to church and had a wonderful time. The preaching was great and the worship was just like being at jbc. I slept in a little this morning, until 7:00 am, which felt really nice, then got up , did laundry, and off to church. It is now 9:44 pm so I am going to wrap this up so I can get 6 hours of sleep before the alarm goes off. Hopefully I will have a picture of a monster whitetail buck tomorrow night.

I am writing this sitting in a tree stand near Chadron, Nebraska waiting for a big white tailed buck to walk under my tree so I can shoot him with my bowthe temperature is 17 degrees but the chill factor made it 8 degrees. I don’t think I have ever shivered so much in my life, it was so cold. I was reminded of a book written by a Navy Seal where he described a time in their training that they had to stay in the ocean for several hours. He went to say that a great tool to help develop self control is to take cold showers in the morning. As I sit in this tree stand freezing to death, at least it feels that way, I am thinking that that Navy Seal didn’t have anything on me. The deer in the picture is my brother Cliffs, he is the one in the picture as well. I am hoping that I will have a picture of my deer in my blog tomorrow.

Wisdom is knowing the best thing to do and say in any situation you find yourself in. Two areas of life that requires great wisdom to succeed in is our marriage and raising our kids to be champions. We grow in wisdom by seeking it diligently.

Proverbs 2:2-6 Make your ear attentive to wisdom, Incline your heart to understanding; For if you cry for discernment, Lift your voice for understanding; If you seek her as silver And search for her as for hidden treasures;Then you will discern the fear of the Lord And discover the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom; From His mouth come knowledge and understanding.

One of the best places to find wisdom is from those who have it demonstrated by their success. There are people around us who have great marriages and are raising good kids. Being humble enough to ask for counsel and advice from them is God’s method and plan. God gives wisdom to the humble. God gives us wisdom through other people.

Proverbs 1:5 A wise man will hear and increase in learning, And a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel,

Most people are to proud to ask for advice or counsel and they will fail, and the sad thing is their kids will fail as well.

Proverbs 1:30-32 They would not accept my counsel, They spurned all my reproof. So they shall eat of the fruit of their own way And be satiated with their own devices. For the waywardness of the naive will kill them, And the complacency of fools will destroy them.

Years ago I heard a sermon by the title of,”God Created Man to find a Cave with a Bear in it, Kill the Bear, and Live in the Cave”. The sermon was based on 1 Samuel 17:34-36,

But David said to Saul, “Your servant was tending his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and took a lamb from the flock, I went out after him and attacked him, and rescued it from his mouth; and when he rose up against me, I seized him by his beard and struck him and killed him. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, since he has taunted the armies of the living God.”

I have killed a Bear and a mountain lion, but with both of them I used a rifle, a big rifle, a 300 Weatherby Magnum, David killed his with his bare hands. How did he do that? First, he had zero fear, second, he obviously was a tough guy and very strong, and third, he had a very high level of faith that God would help him and He did.

Here is one of David’s personal statements of faith written in Psalms 18:32-34 “The God who girds me with strength and makes my way blameless? He makes my feet like hinds’ feet, And sets me upon my high places. He trains my hands for battle, So that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.”

Our faith in God grows stronger as we experience success as a result of His provision and power working in our lives. The problem is that most don’t attempt anything big enough, hard enough, and scary enough to experience that success from God. The result is that our faith is pretty much just intellectual ascent to God’s power and provision which doesn’t motivate us to attempt anything hard in our life.

We were created by God to conquer, to overcome, to accomplish big things with our life. Stories about David and other hero’s in the Bible were written for us, to inspire us to pick up our sling and kill the giants in our life.

Look for opportunities to attempt something we would naturally turn down because it seems to hard. Write a few really big crazy goals and sincerely work at accomplishing them. Ask God every day for the opportunity and ask Him for the strength, the faith, the provision, and the wisdom to accomplish the task. After you have conquered give God all the glory, don’t get proud of your accomplishments.

I think the most severe pain that I have ever felt in my life was when I fell into a camp fire landing on one hand and burning it severely. I was part of a group who took a bunch of High School kids camping. After we got camp all set up it started raining so we were attempting to hang a big tarp over the eating area. I was standing on a round of firewood tying one corner of the tarp to a tree and as I stretched to reach the rope the big hunk of wood tipped over and down I went into the fire. Someone drove me into the emergency room of the hospital in Astoria near where we were camping, and as I sat in the emergency room I remember the pain being overwhelming. I then remembered my Dad saying, “managing pain is disciplining yourself to think right while experiencing it”. So as I sat there in that emergency room waiting to be seen by a doctor I began to think about and try to imagine the pain Jesus felt on the cross. I remembered a sermon by Chuck Swindoll where he said that crucifixion was the most painful of all human experiences. I thought, I wonder why the death that He died for me, that redeemed me from an eternity in hell had to be so painful? I guess it was part of the price that the sins of people required in order to completely erase them.

As I continued to think, ponder, and wonder about Jesus and my redemption I noticed that my pain had become considerably less torturous as I mentally focused on something else. I thought to myself, “My brain can be my best friend or my worst enemy”, it is up to me to decide which it is by choosing what I think about. The pain I feel in my body now as a 70 year old man in my neck, back, hands, knees, hips, ankles, and head gets worse with each year of life as it does with most people over 60 years of age, and it is pretty much 24/7. Occasionally I let my thinking wander off to self-pity, but then I jerk it back to meditating on Bible verses and thanking God for my new body I am going to get soon that will be totally pain free. Life is full of pain, mental, emotional, and physical pain, it was designed by God to be that way, but heaven is totally pain free, I can’t wait!

today we had a big family project of picking our apples and grinding and squeezing them into apple cider. We had 5 of our kids, their spouses and 14 grandkids here, it was a blast. We finished the day with 30 gallons and probably another 5 that was drunk during the day. Over the years that we were raising our 8 kids we usually kept them home from school most Mondays and had a family work day. We did all kinds of projects like making apple cider, cleaning up the place and going to the dump, cutting and stacking firewood, painting, cleaning the house, weeding in the garden, and on the list goes. Our goal was to teach the kids to enjoy working, to work hard, to work together with others in unity, and just to be together as a family doing something productive together. Those family work days are some of my best memories of our kids when they were home, and today was a blessed time of reliving the good old days.

In the Bible the character trait of diligence is mentioned a lot, in fact probably the only character trait mentioned more would be love, it appears to be very important to God.

If you had a garden full of tomatoes and said to me, “my tomato’s did terrible this year, I didn’t get a single tomato!” So I volunteer to look at your tomato’s and see if I can offer any advice. When I look at the dozen plants they are all brown, shriveled, and dead, and I say, “You have to water them if you want them to grow and have tomatoes!” Your response is, “I did, I watered them when I planted them and again 2 weeks later”! My response is” that is not nearly enough” thinking to myself, “is this person really that naive?

A major part of living the Christian life is nurturing your own soul by being faithful to the basic disciplines of the Christian life such as prayer, Bible reading, and gathering with other believers. Many Followers of Jesus aren’t doing very well at growing and maturing in their character, and I find out as I visit that they do pray, read their Bibles and get together with other Christ followers, but not nearly enough.

So how do you know if you are watering your tomato plant enough? It is green, growing, and bearing fruit, that is what tomato plants do if they are healthy. How do you know if you are praying enough, reading your Bible enough and the other disciplines. That is easy, you are green (there is life, passion, and energy in you), you are growing, and you are bearing fruit.

I talk to parents who have problem kids and they will say, among other things, “I prayed for them”. I think to myself, I wonder how much, there needs to be a lot.

The difference between successfully living the Christian life or not, between raising healthy kids or not, having a great marriage or a bad one, is usually just “not enough” of what it takes to succeed in these areas of our life. We are dumb or naive about this basic principle, “you have to water the tomato’s plants or they won’t have tomato’s“. It is as simple as that. We, as people, are into token amounts so that we can say that we did it, but token amounts won’t do much.