Pastor Mike is in Sierra Leone, West Africa teaching at our Bible College so I preached this weekend at the main services at JBC and will the next two weeks. I am also teaching Hebrews at 8:00 am on Sunday morning and again on Wednesday night, and 5 different leadership classes, and 6 different accountability groups, and then there is the study, preparation and writing for each of the sermons and lessons that I teach so it is a pretty full schedule. I enjoy every minute of it though, and feel so blessed that I get to invest my life doing what I enjoy and what God has gifted me to do. After a day like today that is stacked full of ministry and activity, I sit in my recliner replaying the day, and think, ” Wow, what a great day, how did I get to this place where I get to do this”? I am not sure, but thank You Lord for making it happen. I will stay faithful, and hopefully I will get to do this with my life for many more years to come. We will see.
Yesterday I ran my chain saw for 5 hours straight, and today I split and stacked that same wood for 5 hours. The big difference was that I had 7 grandkids here helping me split and stack it, what a fun day it was. They all worked very hard, and we got a lot done, about one more hour of splitting and stacking, and we will be done with that job until next year. One of my and Patty’s goals in raising our kids was to teach them to enjoy working hard, that they would have the character trait of diligence. It was rewarding and fun to see 2 of our kids working with their kids, our grandkids today teaching them how to work and enjoy it. Of course working with grandpa is what really makes it fun, especially when he has grandma bring out Cokes for everyone and we have hot dogs for lunch. I had a young college age boy visit me several years ago and he said he was unmotivated to do anything but play video games, and that he was lazy. He said he knew he was lazy, he didn’t like being lazy, but he didn’t know how to fix it, to change, and he came to me for advice. I gave him a dozen Bible verses on diligence to memorize, a good book on diligence to read and told him to come back in a week and we would discuss what he had learned. He came back the next week but he hadn’t memorized any verses or read even one page in the book, to unmotivated he said. That was the last time I saw him. I have thought of that event numerous times and have wondered what I could have done for him, should have done for him that would have helped him to escape this significant character flaw. I still haven’t figured it out yet for sure, but that short experience with this unmotivated young person made me very thankful for my parents who taught me to love working, and for my parents work ethic being passed down to my grandchildren.
I ran a chain saw for about 5 hours straight today cutting up some really big fir trees for fire wood for our household to burn. Wood heat is the main heat for our entire house so getting a good supply of good wood is important. We have had wood heat since we were married 50 years ago so I have cut a lot of firewood over the years and have spent a lot of hours running a chainsaw. I enjoy cutting firewood very much, I am not sure why, but I do. Even though I enjoy it, tonight I am totally tuckered out, and I am sitting here in my recliner with every muscle in my body screaming at me for abusing them. Sitting here thinking about the day, I wonder how many more cords of firewood I have in me. I am fighting this getting old thing but it doesn’t feel like I am winning. As I sit in my recliner right now I am so tired I am struggling big time trying to focus my thinking to finish this blog. In fact I think I will call this good.
I am going to be doing the preaching in the main worship services at JBC for the next 3 weeks while Pastor Mike is in Sierra Leone, West Africa teaching at our Bible College there. I am going to teach about the “One Another-ing” commands given in the New Testament. There are 18 different commands given, and they are basically the commands given by God on how to have an amazing, wonderful, joy filled relationship with just about any person in your life. A few of the 18 are, “encourage one another, be kind to one another, serve one another, forgive one another, and accept one another”. Reading over the 18 “One Another’s” in the context of where they are in the New Testament” makes me feel this strong longing for such an environment in my life where these commands are lived out consistently. I guess they will be in heaven, and that is where I am headed. In the mean time we work hard at getting better at living these basic relational commands day after day. Through discipline they will eventually become a learned skill, and then after a season of faithfully practicing these commands they will move to habit, and then they will become character traits. Once they are embedded in our soul as character that is who we are, that is how we act, we can’t not do them. How cool is that! Every morning now I present myself to Jesus as my King and Lord, committing myself to pursue Him and obeying these commands, asking Him for the power and strength through the Holy Spirit to overcome the pull of my flesh, the influence of the world and the temptation of the devil and his demons that push me hard toward self-absorption and selfishness.
You don’t have to act the way you feel, and if you do most people will think that you are childish, selfish, dumb, a bitter old man, divisive, grumpy, and a person to avoid. So what do I do with these emotions in me? Ignore them, stuff them, pretend they don’t exist? God cares about my emotions, I can dump everything on Him, and there is no fear that He will reject me. Most of the Psalms are a roller coaster of emotional experience and expression, and most of the Psalms are a prophecy of the coming Messiah, which clearly indicates that Jesus was a very emotional man. When I am depressed I tell the Lord, and I talk to Him about why and what can I do now. When I am angry I unload on the Lord again, and I pray for those I am angry at, sometimes I pray that God will give them a severe case of diarrhea for 6 months. When I am afraid I pray and ask God for boldness. God knows my heart, and He knows the emotions that I am feeling, He understands and fills my heart with His peace and joy. The key is spend time with God everyday, and talk to Him about your day, talk to Him about everything.
Probably one of my most repeated life principles is, “I don’t have to act the way I feel”. I also repeated it to my kids as they grew up more times than anybody could count, and I have repeated that phrase in my teaching and preaching ministry hundreds if not thousands of times. Our emotions are up and down, good and bad, strong and intense, and then no where to be found. We have little control over how we feel from one minute to the next, they are mostly the result of events, circumstances, and words. We can be feeling like a real winner and then as a result of someone’s comment can be in a major blue funk in the next minute. Our feelings are neither good or bad, they are automatic responses to life. We feel happy, angry, sad, depressed, confused, hurt, embarrassed, critical, and passionate. Allowing our emotions to be the dictator of our life is very foolish and immature. Acting the way we feel makes us a victim of life circumstances that we usually have little control over. People who act the way they feel have many strained relationships because they are not fun to be around, God doesn’t use them much to do anything significant or important because they can’t be trusted. But, that being said, it is very difficult not to act even a little bit the way we are feeling, especially when the emotion is strong. It takes great self-control to do the right thing, say the right thing, and even think the right thing when our emotions are pushing us to do the wrong thing. For me the key to staying in control in spite of raging emotions is to talk to myself in a wise way, in a way that persuades myself to be kind, talk nice, no anger, patient listening, and honoring to others. I have Bible verses memorized that I can meditate on that tremendously help in my self-talk. Some days I do pretty good and then other days I am continually doing and saying things that are provoked by my emotions. It is a daily battle and it is a battle I am committed to winning for the sake of my witness for Jesus and so my relationships will be healthy and growing in love.
I recently filled out my mail in ballot. The single most important issue to me in this election or any election is abortion. I don’t vote for anyone that is even a little bit lukewarm on this issue. I believe plain and simple that abortion is murder, that life begins at the point of conception. Any nation that defends abortion on the basis of freedom to choose is sick, and will sooner or later experience the judgment of God. There are a lot of other issues discussed, and people get fairly heated in debating them, but all those other things are incredibly insignificant compared to the blatant killing of unborn children in the name of freedom of choice. I have been praying almost every day for years that God would heal our land. I think that the only solution and hope is a national revival, which will take a lot of followers of Jesus committing time to pray faithfully.
I am having a wonderful time building a go kart with my two, 10 year old grandsons. Today we got the back axle installed complete with a tire at both ends of the axle, seated, sealed, and full of air, compliments of starting fluid and some late night explosions. We also got the motor installed, lined up and squared with the axle, with a drive chain cut the perfect length and installed as well. Put motor oil and gas in the engine and it started the first pull. I have a belt drive torque converter/Transmission bolted to the engine, and as the engine ran it worked perfectly. I had the back end lifted up sitting on a bucket so the tires could spin freely as it ran. Wow, I was so impressed with our creation! I was basking in the success of our project when all of a sudden I realized that the tires were spinning in the wrong direction, it was going backwards. I had failed to pull the starter rope and see which direction the engine turned before doing all the work getting everything on. I can’t believe I did that!!
On October 27th, the day of my birthday everyone in my family was busy so we postponed celebrating my 70th birthday until tonight. All 5 of the local kids, their spouse and their kids came over, and we had barbecued elk burger, vegetables, and apple pie with ice cream. Everyone sang a special song for me complete with 4 ukuleles, a flute, trombone, and a drum. Afterwards everyone sat around and told stories of the growing up years with lots of laughter. It was a very enjoyable evening, and a great birthday party. As the kids told stories I was surprised at how many of them I didn’t remember. Kind of sad thinking about all the years of raising our 8 kids and realizing that I have forgotten most of it. I wonder sometimes if I will have a perfect memory when I get to heaven so I can remember every detail of every experience with the kids, Patty, and the church. I suspect there are some memories I would rather forget. One thing for sure is that we will have so much more understanding of why things happened the way that they did. So many mysteries that exist now will all be cleared up when we see things from God’s perspective. The most important principle to follow while living life is “keep your eyes on the finish line”. The finish line for those who know and follow Jesus is heaven, eternity with God. When we focus on eternity our joy goes up, our ability to manage pressure goes up, our willingness to take a risk goes up,
I like the title of this blog. We all will go through tough times eventually, some more than others. I believe God plans those events, and brings them into our life to grow our character. If the purpose of the trials results in significant character growth we have suffered successfully, but if the suffering results in bitterness, self-pity, grumbling, and conflict with others we have failed miserably and are a failure. The worst part of failing these events from a human perspective is that now we have to take the test over again until we pass it. I flunked a very important test in college, in fact it was so important that I couldn’t graduate without passing it. My professor said we can arrange for another test to be administered, but understand something, the next test is more difficult than the first one, and if you flunk it again the next will be even more difficult yet, and if you flunk that one you will need to take another full semester of classes in order to graduate. I remember thinking, whooeee, I wish I had studied more on that first test. How do you suffer successfully? The first step is to recognize that, this is what life is about, so get over thinking when you have a major trial that God is being unloving and unfair, He is getting us fit for eternity, how is that uncaring.
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