I am going to fast February 1st through the 10th, eating nothing and drinking only water and coffee. I may drink some fruit juice when I take my meds if they start to give me any problems. I am choosing to do this for 3 different reasons. The first reason is that the Bible teaches fasting as a discipline along with prayer in order to increase our power in prayer or our influence with God in prayer. There are many factors in the life of the person who is praying to God taught in the Bible that increases or decreases our power when praying. One of those factors is the presence of unconfessed sin in the life of the person praying, the Bible says that God will not listen to that person’s prayers. The book of James in the New Testament says that if a person doubts or has little faith they won’t have much power when they pray either. There are at least a dozen of these factors mentioned in the Bible that either increase or decrease our prayer power. Our church is having a prayer event called the “Five Days of Prayer”, which starts on Monday and goes until Friday. We have people in our prayer room praying together from 5 to 10 am and from 5 to 10 pm each of the five days. There are usually 20 to 30 people in the prayer room each of those hours praying and asking for God’s blessing. We have 4 of these prayer events during the year and each one has a different focus. This particular one is focusing on our Foreign Missions ministry that we have around the world. I want more and more power or influence with God when I pray, and I want more and more power from God in my life as I live, and I am believing that my choosing to fast for the next 10 days will result in that increase in power.

I don’t like to fast, I like to eat. I am not looking forward to the next 10 days, in fact I am dreading them. But I am looking forward to what I expect will be a time of growth in my life, and in my relationship with God. I said at the beginning that there were 3 reasons I was fasting, I will write about the other 2 in the next couple of days.

I believe in God, I believe in the God that is described in the Bible. I believe that He is all wise, infinitely powerful, omnipresent, totally and completely just, sovereign over everything and everybody, creator of heaven and earth, and that He loves me unconditionally. I believe in Jesus Christ, that He is equal with the Father, one with the Father, that He willingly emptied Himself of all that He was as God and became flesh, became man, just like me, experienced life like I do, was tempted to sin in every way that I am tempted, can totally sympathize with my weaknesses, and that He lived a perfect and sinless life. I believe that Jesus took all my sin upon Himself, that He became my sin, that is, it was as if He actually committed the sins that I have committed, he felt the shame and the guilt of my sin, and that God the Father turned His back on His own Son as He hung on the cross because He had become my sin, and God the Father because He is completely holy could not look on His Son because He had become my sin. Jesus felt that break in their unity, and oneness, something that had never happened in all of eternity, and cried out, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me! I believe in the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, and that He abides in me, lives in me, that He gives me power and strength to live my life in a way that is pleasing to God the Father. I believe in the Church, the Bride of Christ, the eternal companion of Jesus, that Jesus loves the Church, gave His life for the Church, and is in the process of making her beautiful for Himself. The Church is the Body of Christ, the physical manifestation of Jesus on the earth today. I believe that my love for my church is my love for Jesus, that my commitment to my church is my commitment to Jesus.

I have poured out my life over these last 41 years for my church. I have worked hard, prayed a lot, studied and preached often, organized, administered, and led, envisioned and set goals. I have done all this for all of these years not as a job, but because The church is the Bride of Jesus, He loves the church and so do I, He gave His life for the church, and so have I.

Most can’t see past the flawed people that we all are, Jesus loves the flawed people and so do I, so many are very critical of the church and say things like, “nothing but a bunch of hypocrites”, we can’t help ourselves, we are just sinners, born that way like everyone is, but we are forgiven by Jesus because we love Him and we are pursuing righteousness and He is helping us.

My love for my church is my love for Jesus, no more – no less. My commitment to my church is my commitment to Jesus, no more – no less.

One of the major blessings in my life now is my grandchildren and I am fortunate enough to have many who live close and who I get to spend time with almost weekly. Proverbs 17:6 says that “Grandchildren are the crown of old men, and the glory of sons is their fathers.”when we were raising our kids, one of my goals was to teach them to be diligent in character, and to enjoy working hard. One of my favorite things to do with our grandkids now is to work with them, and see if I can’t infect them with this joy of working hard and accomplishing something worthwhile. Because of the nature of our flesh we are all born lazy, but good parents will instill the character trait of diligence, and good grandpas will work at and aim to instill that character trait in their grandchildren as well.

I went with several friends last night to see the move “12 Strong”. A war movie about 12 guys who go into Afghanistan shortly after 9/11. It was a good movie, and the last battle scene was worth the price of the movie, the pop corn, and the soda pop. War is pretty much what the nations have done since the beginning of history, there is not many stretches of time when there wasn’t a war going on someplace. Watching the last battle of the movie I couldn’t help thinking how I would have done in that situation when I was younger. Those who survived had to think fast and make decisions quickly and accurately, and to be very decisive in their actions, they also had to be incredibly well trained and skilled in fighting and shooting. Whenever I see a war movie, and there have been some really good ones over the years, I am very thankful all over again for two things, the fact that I never had to go into combat and kill somebody, and I am very thankful for those who weren’t as fortunate as myself and ended up over in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and even worse places and fought, and experienced all the trauma that I get a small sense of watching a movie. Being genuinely thankful and appreciative for the actions and bravery of people that I have never met is so important, because of them I can sit here in my recliner writing this blog in peace and security. There are a lot of naive, self – absorbed people in the world today who have a difficult time thinking past their own needs. I really don’t want to ever slip into that way of thinking and acting.

Dear Lord, I love you! Thank You for orchestrating my life in the perfect way. Give me wisdom to know what to do in every situation You sovereignly put me in, and I especially thank You that I am going to live forever with You.

One of the cool things about being a believer in and a follower of Jesus is that when we blow it we can be forgiven, but it is not just a given, there are some requirements. Proverbs 28:13 explains what those are, “He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion.” To confess our sin to God is simply to acknowledge to God that we have sinned with no excuses, justification, blaming, or ignoring and pretending. We are so prone to protecting ourselves, and afraid of failing even in our own eyes that totally owning the sins we commit is super hard for us to do. But the principle is clear, confess to God that we sinned, own what we did as our responsibility, and then commit to not doing it anymore. We usually do repeat the sin, but in declaring in our own mind to God that we will not do that particular sin again expresses our desire to conquer it, and that brings Gods power and grace into our life. At the end of every day I examine my life and confess all known sin to God, and then I accept His forgiveness. Then I commit to Him that I will pursue righteousness and I ask for His strength to make it happen. It isn’t rocket science, it is clear and straight forward, I just need to do it every day, unless I have a perfect day with no sin, but so far I haven’t pulled that one off yet, but I am working on it.

I am sorry about confusing some of you last night when you tried to open my blog. I tried to put a picture in and I evidently did it wrong and everything went away, and it was so late I didn’t want to do it again, so we will try again tonight.

I am building a boat as many of you know. It is 24 ft long, 8 ft wide and has a flat bottom with a slight rake in the front. It is called a pacific dory, and is a very stable boat to use for fishing in the ocean. It is made out of plywood which goes over ribs made out of 2×4’s and 2×6’s, and then covered with 18 oz fiberglass cloth and epoxy. I filled the various voids between the ribs with 20 cubic feet of pored in place styrofoam which gives it an additional 1,200 lbs of floatation. I have an 85 horsepower Johnson outboard engine on it which is mounted in a motor well 4 ft up from the back of the boat with a center console with the controls and steering wheel, and under the console I have a 65 gallon fuel tank. I put in two bilge pumps that pump 3800 gallons an hour each with a built in activation switch, and I have 4 very comfortable seats in it. I have thoroughly enjoyed building this boat from plans that I bought on the internet, in fact I have had so much enjoyment on this project that I have thought of selling it and building another one.

I will finish painting it, then I will do the electrical wiring, then I will put on the various finishing touches like rod holders, a radio, gps, fish finder, anchor system, cleats and grab bars. The next thing is to do a little work on a boat trailer that I bought for one dollar, and I will be ready to take it on its maiden voyage. My plan is to drive it up to Alaska in July and fish for halibut out of it. I am excited about this upcoming adventure. Keeps me young, excited, and full of passion for life. Sorry for the poor quality of my picture, I got epoxy on the lens of my camera!

Back in 1989 when I began my personal emphasis on prayer, and my emphasis as a pastor on prayer for everyone in our church, I had to exert a huge amount of personal discipline and self-control in order to make prayer happen in my life, and I still wasn’t close to where I wanted to be. Token, convenient prayer that was short and scattered throughout the day which was pretty much the totality of my prayer life before 1989, was easy and it didn’t cost me much time from other activities. Once I began this pilgrimage of becoming a man devoted to prayer, I was overwhelmed by how hard it was to make prayer a priority in my life. On more than one occasion I said, “being devoted to prayer is the hardest thing I have ever attempted to do in my life, it must be the most important”. One of my little sayings that I repeat frequently about becoming a prayer warrior or a person who reads their Bible everyday is, “Being devoted to prayer begins dry as dirt duty, with goals, accountability, alarm clocks, and lots of failure, but if we persevere it will move to habit which is easier, but still a discipline, but if we stay faithful to the habit it becomes delight, that is what we do, that is who we are, that is how we think”. I have repeated that “Law of becoming a Prayer” many, many times, but just recently realized that I have become that kind of prayer, that is who I am, that is what I do almost without ceasing. For almost 30 years I have pursued being a man of prayer like Jesus was, almost like climbing a mountain, one foot in front of another, each step taking great focus and effort, wondering when it was going to get easier, knowing that it would, and all the while resisting the encouragement from many to relax, just trust God, He will make it happen. I know that this present state of practice and faith in prayer I have is a gift from God, but I also understand that I planted the seed and God made it grow. My faith that God works powerfully in the lives of the people I pray for everyday is strong. I know that nothing else that I do makes as much difference in the lives of the people in my church than praying for them does.

I went up to OHSU today to have an ultra-sound done on my kidneys, and then to have a consultation with my urologist. Because my bladder doesn’t work any more, I have to self-catheterize myself every 8 hours, and the chance for infection, or backing up urine into my kidneys because of forgetting and going 16 hours is very real. I have had this appointment on the calendar for awhile, and occasionally I let myself think about it to much and let my imagination get the best of me. I don’t get stressed about things but I do sometimes get a bit somber anticipating a difficult situation, and the choices I may need to make.

We ran into some bad traffic going up, and as I anticipating being late I started getting uptight, and because Patty was driving I decided to close my eyes and take a nap, and try and relax, but because of the traffic she would make these sudden stops that would cause me to sit up with a start. So I decided to work on my memory verses using the App on my phone “Scripture Typer”, but every little bump in the road, every quick start or stop, would cause me to touch the wrong key on my screen, and it would buzz at me as being a mistake, grrrrrrrr.

We got near OHSU and there was major construction going on with flaggers and road closed and detour signs everywhere, and I barked at Patty about her driving. I got out of the car when we got into the parking garage and let Patty find a parking spot while I headed to the 3rd floor. There were so many people waiting to get on the elevator that I had to wait for what seemed forever to get on, and then I mistakenly pressed the wrong floor button and had to go to the 14th floor and back down again stopping at every floor as people got on and off.

As I was laying on my back and then one side and then then other this nurse was moving this flat medal thing around on my stomach looking at a computer screen continually saying mmmm, mmmmm, with me tying to figure out if that meant ” whoooeee look at that!” Or what!

I then went up to the 10th floor and waited in a little room for 15 minutes for my urologist to come in and give me the news. When he came in he asked me a bunch of questions about how I was feeling, and then he started asking me about my upcoming bicycle trip. I thought, “you have to be kidding me, let’s get to the bottom line”. Then he stood up, shook my hand, and said, “by the way your kidneys are fine”, “on the way out stop off at the desk and make an appointment for one year from now and we will do this again”.

On the drive home I apologized to Patty, and then reminisced about my thinking for the last couple of days and tried to learn as much as I could about me, and how to grow in dealing with life, traffic delays, the unknown, and determined to do better next time.

Keeping my thinking process under control so as not to think immoral thoughts, anxious thoughts, angry – bitter thoughts, covetous thoughts, poor me thoughts, critical – judgmental thoughts, and prideful thoughts takes full time attentiveness to what is going on in my head, and when a wrong kind of thought pops into my mind to replace it quickly with thinking that is good, pure, humble, and godly. Sometimes it is so easy to just give in and let my thinking dwell on an event that was hurtful, and wallow around in it like a pig in mud. I do it because no one will know what I think after all, because it takes energy to keep my thoughts herded up all day long and I am tired, and because there is a certain kind of pleasure that comes from my flesh in thinking bitter, angry, poor me thoughts over and over that revolve around an event in which I was not treated well. When I get some news about a possible bad event that might happen in a couple of days it is so easy to allow anxious thoughts to grow strong and to create fear. When my body starts acting or feeling different it is so easy to imagine the worst and to become paralyzed with worry. I create my own joy level by choosing what I set my mind on. I have memorized several hundred Bible verses, and my goal is to set my mind on one of them when I begin to think wrong thoughts, and to make that switch very quickly. When I get lazy and don’t take my thoughts captive quickly I kill my own joy and replace it with sadness, depression, self pity, and despair. After a bout of this negative thinking and corresponding melancholy feelings I wonder why I am so stupid.