We had the Memorial Service this afternoon for my good friend Denny Fryman who died several months ago from a brain aneurysm. It was a total shock, in that he wasn’t sick and less than 60 years old and was very active in life. Denny was a very committed and faithful follower of Jesus Christ, and I think that God was so pleased with Him that He just decided to bring him up to heaven to be with Him. The service today has prompted me to think a lot, almost non-stop about life after death, what it will look like, feel like, and every facet of what the experience will be like, especially the first hour. When a baby is born it enters into this life as a human being. When we die we enter into the next life, what we are really created and meant for. This life is like being in our mother’s  womb, just preparing us for real life.

The key thing to think about is are we ready, where are we going, what will our rewards be like. Dear Lord, “teach me to number my days that I may present to You a heart of wisdom”. As I mentioned a few days ago in my blog, don’t be naïve.

1 Thessalonians 2:8-12.  Having so fond an affection for you, we were well-pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us….. just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children, so that you would walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory.

I spend at least an hour every day praying for the people in JBC, those who are regulars, visitors, and irregulars. With most I find them on Facebook and put pictures in my prayer journal and read about their life. I enter in information from prayer requests, observations, and conversations about health, marriage, kids, trials, jobs, finances, and especially spiritual condition. In the process of praying at least weekly for every person in my prayer journal I become very emotionally attached even if I don’t spend a lot of time with them or know them well. I rejoice in my praying over victories and growth, I grieve over trials, I agonize over backsliding and lukewarmness, and I pray with great fervency because of observed sin. Sometimes after a long season of praying pleading with God to work in people’s lives I get a bit of a chest ache. Someday when I get to heaven and see everything clearly, I am pretty sure the hour each day I spend praying will have been my greatest contribution to God’s work.

With the nature of our culture and people in our day we all make lots of changes, and one of those changes is people start attending church, stop attending church, come faithfully, stop attending faithfully, stop altogether, go to another church, move to another city or State, get upset at me, or get upset at God. When people just drop out of my life with no word of explanation, or a good bye, it is quite painful. It isn’t a possessive thing, or a loyalty thing, it is a relational thing. I am sure most who move, choose to go to another church, or just drop church think that I barely notice them or think about them, so they assume it is no big deal to me, but it is a big deal. A note, an email, or text would be nice and thoughtful instead of nothing.

There are so many things that I can do with money,  like, really cool things, like paying for a guided fishing trip. It doesn’t get much cooler than that, or super boring things like pay the mortgage. We also use it to serve the Lord as we give it to our church or a missionary.  Usually we plan ahead how most of our money is spent, but sometimes there is something unexpected that happens, and the only thing that will fix it is some money.  I got a letter today that said I owed $222 more on my income tax because of some wrong math. I went back and checked and sure enough I had made a really simple, but dumb mistake. Reminds me of Proverbs 4:5 that says, “Money makes itself wings and flies away”!

Money is a tool, and a gift from God and it can accomplish a lot for Him and in our life, but there are some significant things that money can not do that most people think it can do. At the top of the list is “Money can not give us happiness”.  The devil controls the world be getting people to believe “false news”, that he has fed into the world in such a way that most believe it to be true, they then make decisions and choices based on this false information, and those decisions and choices mess up their life.

God made life so that there are constant tests in life to measure our love for God, and also ways to grow in our love for God, and one of them is responding correctly to unexpected emergencies that suck our money into a black hole. So I want to get an “A” on every pop quiz and, I want to grow stronger in my love for my God every day. So today when I opened up the letter from the “tax people”, and saw the news I said out loud, “Lord, joy doesn’t come from money, neither does security, they come from You, only You, so I am trusting You to be my joy giver, my protector, and my provider”. I love you for giving me the amazing, incomprehensible gift of eternity with You, nothing else really matters at all.

How to grow tomatoes, how to grow fish, how to grow corn. People grow all kinds of things, and some do it well and others don’t. On the dairy when I was growing up, one of the very important things we did was raise our baby calves up to be money making milking cows. One of the principles was, every heifer calf born was born with an inherited potential for milk production, but if she was stunted even a little bit in her growth she would also be stunted in her milk production, so we took the raising and growing our calves very seriously. 

How do we grow ourselves? Not on the outside, the physical part of who we are, but on the inside, the spiritual part of who we are. The part of us that goes to be with God when we die. That inner person is manifest in our character, that is our inner person maturity can be seen by how we act and behave most of the time. It obviously is impossible to grow mature in character without God, but we are involved in the process, and make choices that helps or hinders our growth to be like Jesus in our character. 

If I go to a farmer who is know by all tomato growers to be the best at his trade than any other, and ask him how I can grow tomatoes successfully, he can give me a plan, a strategy, a guide, and if if I follow it closely, I to can grow big tomatoes. The same would be true of dairy heifers, corn, fish, whatever. So I want to grow as rapidly as is possible in my character to be fully mature and Christ like on the inside. How do I do that? I would also as a Pastor like to be teaching, training, influencing, and leading others so that their  growth is facilitated to the max by me. How do I do that?

As I read the Bible I take note of every passage that would give information on this “farming skill”. As I read books I again try and pay attention, and learn everything I can on this skill of nurturing myself and others.  As I work with people and notice those who grow like weeds and others seem to be in a perpetual slump, I ask myself, what is the difference? Why? Over the years of being on this hunting expedition for principles, guidelines, and practices I have written a lot of strategies, plans, principles, and guide lines, and I am constantly refineing them as I observe results. Every day I ask God for the strength and the wisdom to stay balanced and dependent. 

Every year I start a leadership class for men that lasts 9 months, and I put into practice the accumulated wisdom and skills to grow a man into a disciple of Jesus. I also teach a second year class for the highly motivated. This year I am also going to teach a class for ladies for the first time. If you live close enough you are welcome to be part of one of the classes. I think they are going to be super, and lots of growth in lots of people is going to happen.  Working on myself diligently to grow as fast as I can in character, and then using those same principles to make disciples of others is the absolute love of my life. 

My Dad was a patriot. He lived during the Great Depression and fought in World War II. He had a very hard time during the Vietnam war reading in the News and watching the News about protestors. A local farmer hung the American flag upside down on a flagpole on his place in protest over the Vietnam war, and my Dad who rarely got into dicussions about politics was very upset. I was in High School at the time, but my Dad’s response stuck with me. One of the things he said to me as I asked him about the things that were happening during that time was, “you need to do the right thing , because it is the right thing”. People easily tend to be devoted and faithful to that which benefits them the most at any given time in their life, be faithful, responsible, and loyal on the basis of principle not convenience or personal gain.  My main convictions as a Patriot is to pray for my country everyday that God would bless her and that He would deliver us from evil and turn us back to Him. I pray for Government leaders, that God would turn their hearts toward Him and His Word, that He would fill them with a knowledge of Himself and His will, and that He would protect them from the evil one. I faithfully pray that everyday because God’s Word tells me to. Another conviction that I try hard to keep is not to speak critically or dishonor leaders of our country. That is not because I agree with everything, but because that is what God tells me to do in His Word. I truly believe that my greatest influence in my country is when I obey God and trust Him. Happy 4th of July!

A lot of different words and phrases are used today to describe our belief in or lack of belief in Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, who “emptied Himself of all that He was as God and became flesh just like me, was tempted  in every way as the devil gave it his best shot to get Jesus to sin, because then Jesus couldn’t be my savior or yours. Then Jesus was nailed to a cross and God the Father reached into our lives, clear back to Adam and ahead to the last person to be born and took all our sins, and put them on Jesus, and looked at Jesus as if He actually committed all of those sins. Because God is holy He turned His back on His son and their unity and oneness was broken for the first time in all of eternity, and Jesus cried out on the cross, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?!” As I consider what Jesus has done for me so that I can be with Him forever my most natural response is to love Him with all my heart, my soul, and to serve Him because of my love. My love for Jesus controls my life. I want to please Him with my every thought and each of my words, and the way  I live my life.  A question that I have asked hundreds of people over the last 40 years is” suppose you die tonight, and you are standing before God and He asks you, Why should I let you into my heaven, what will you say? The answer better be right because their are no Mulligans, no do overs, at this point. I have heard every answer under the sun, but their is one right answer that gets you into the presence of God and that is”I love You Jesus because You first loved me.”. 

Last night I went to the Grand Finale of this weeks Vacaation Bible School, fondly called VBS, at Jefferson Baptist Church. There was free hot dogs, watermellon, chips, cake, and lemonade for all, and then 300 plus kids got on the stage and sang and performed for almost an hour. It was amazing, inspirational, and very entertaining to watch. What was amazing was how the adult and High School leaders got those kids to sing together and be nearly perfect in their behavior for that long, all crowded together on the stage. The inspirational part was seeing all those kids who have the potential to grow up and be champions for Jesus. The lessons on life and God that they learned this week as they were shared were impressive. As I sat and watched I thought, wow, this VBS is way more than crafts, games, snacks  and fun, this is an amazing ministry that will make a huge difference in the lives of hundreds of kids over the years.  As I watched I thought of some statements that Jesus made about kids;

Matthew 18:3-5. and Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me;

Matthew 19:13-15. Then some children were brought to Him so that He might lay His hands on them and pray; and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, “ Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” After laying His hands on them, He departed from there.

One of the things that has been most impacted by having Parkinson’s is my sense of balance. Falling is a constant problem in my life now, and I am working at being aware of this danger so that I am always looking for a handhold or way of compensating so that I can maintain a normal life in spite of this problem. Physical balance is important as we walk, ride a bicycle, and stand up. But a greater challenge is mental balance, and vastly more important to our success in life. Mental balance is the ability to hold two opposing ideas, views, disciplines, or truths at the same time without moving to one over the other. There are many examples of this mental balance, but let me zero in on one. I want to be a person who totally accepts himself, that I like who I am, that I am comfortable with myself so that I am not competing with others around me, that I am not eaten up with self critism, that I don’t get defensive when corrected or criticized, that I can make mistakes and grow from them and not be paralyzed by fear of doing it again or something worse, that I don’t feel the need to prove myself or defend myself. 

On the other hand I want to be constantly evaluating my behavior and performance so I can improve and grow rapidly, I want to press on to rapid character growth, I want to learn more, I want to do more, I want to succeed more. I live in a constant state of discontent with who I am and what I have accomplished and am always striving for more. Mental balance is being comfortable with who I am but being discontent with who I am at the same time. Physical balance is getting my two legs to work together in unity so I can move, walk, run from place to place with ease and rapidly. Mental balance is a key to feeling joy all the time, to having great relationships, to accomplishing a lot, being attractive to other people, and having a great relationship with God.

One of my personal mission statements is, “Never stop learning”. In order to be a life long learner, one that learns much, not a little, you have to have some clear guidelines that counteract the natural pull of our flesh. We are hard wired to survive and many things that we do are a result of this natural bent to survival. One of the major things we do to survive is to always be right. Our brains are hardwired for self-preservation—we are constantly seeking to protect not only our physical well-being but our ego as well.  The issue isn’t “being right” but rather “wanting to be right” and “fighting to be right” and “proving we are right.” People who are always wanting to be right cannot learn. A requirement for rapid learning is humility in regards to what I already know. So a guideline that I am working hard to implement in my life is “in any conversation about anything, with anybody don’t argue, or debate, not even a little bit. In college,there was a group,of us who would sit and argue, debate, and discuss passionately our various theological bents, opinions, and ideas. I learned how to hold my own in the most heated discussions and in the process cemented an attitude that would guarantee that I would not learn much the rest of my life. So it has not been an easy change to make on my part. The key motivatIon has been regularly reciting my mission statement, “Never Stop Learning”.

To be naive is to be a person who doesn’t think enough. A naive person is low on the character trait of curiosity. A naive person prefers not knowing because knowing information might disappoint, or cause fear and anxiety, or cause sadness.  A naive person prefers not thinking about the future, because the future might be painful, or depressing. A naive person believes they have no influence or control over the future so it is better to just hope for the best instead of trying to change anything or possibly make the future better. 

Choosing to be naive is a self protective move. It doesn’t really protect but it does take away much anxiety. In our day when everything is changing as rapidly as it is the future  is scary and intimidating, so naive people choose to not think about the future, or plan for it, or try to change it. Our life after we die will be really, really good or it will be really, really bad. Because it is forever it is not very wise to ignore thinking about our eternal destiny or not thinking seriously about how to make it much better. 

I ponder about my future every day. We were created by God as teleological beings, because He is, that is we can think about the future, we can plan for the future, and we can change our future. I want a very joy filled, rewarding, positive, and productive future, so I am making choices that will make those dreams reality. 

My greatest desire in life now is to somehow be a strong influence in the lives of many people so that they will move away from being naive, to becoming a genuine seeker of answers, always wanting to know more and more, and influencing them to be a genuine seeker for Jesus. God says that if we seek Him, we will find Him, He will see to it.