I have 10 passages that I have identified as my key verses to guide my life and influence my decisions. I have them memorized , and I meditate on them almost daily so that they are right on the top of my head, to help guide me during the day.  One of them is   Matthew 7:13-14. Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.  These verses are not talking about heaven and hell, they are talking about this life. “Life” is success, and “Distruction” is failure.  So the principle is this, all day long I will come to a “T” in the road of my life, and I will need to choose the right or the left. The right is the hard way, the narrow gate, and the left is the easy way.  Today in our culture the god that is worshiped by most , is the  god of comfort.  We are all born lazy, our flesh is easily addicted to comfort,  the devil constantly pushes us toward the easy way.  I want to bear much fruit with my life, and the hard way will be the way of success.  Every  day as I am faced with choices over and over, I think, which way is the hard and narrow way, I want success so let’s choose that way. It takes a bit to train your brain to think “choose hard” , but once you do, it becomes the right way for you. The main reason Christians are so unfaithful to the basic disciplines of the Christian life is that they are the “hard way” and the easy way is the default choice of most. 

The thing that those who choose the hard and narrow way discover is that the hard way becomes the easy way. What?? Jesus says in Matthew 11:29-30 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” When we choose the hard way Jesus helps us, and it becomes the easy way.  Only those who consistently choose the hard way as a matter of principle discover this truth. 

This week is one of our “Five Days of Prayer” events.  We have about 20 people in the prayer room from 5 to 10 am and from 5 to 10 pm Monday through Friday. We are praying for people, events, and ministries.  I have a goal to be in the prayer room 40 hours this week, which is the goal I usually make for this prayer event when we hold it every three months. It makes for a very full week doing my normal responsibilities at church and home as well as the praying, but in spite of that these “five days of prayer” are probably my favorite weeks of the year.

One of the promises in the Bible is that when we gather together like we are doing to pray and seek God’s presence that He does indeed manifest Himself in such a way that in our spirit we can sense His presence, and the result is an incredible peace and joy that sticks with me for some time after the event is over.  The more I participate in these prayer times it seems the more sensitive I become to God’s presence, and that seems to stick with me after the five days as well.

Joshua 1:9 say, “Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go”  I know that to be true by faith, but it is so nice to experience His presence in reality. With the presence of God courage does indeed increase, as well as joy, and peace.

There are some who think that because I am in the prayer room for 40 hours that I am a super saint, but I am just very addicted to God’s blessings of joy and peace, so I am there more for what I receive, and secondly for all that God does for others in response to our prayers.

Friday evening and Saturday morning I am speaking at a “Men’s Retreat”. I think that is my favorite thing to do, of all the things I do in ministry. Everyone has unique roles and responsibilities depending on age, gender, job, and other circumstances in their life. Being a responsible man means you understand what your responsibilities are and you are faithful in doing them. A responsibility is something you do that impacts and influences the joy, the success, the growth, and the security of others. The Bible teaches that those that are faithful to what they have been given, will be given more responsibility. Men are created by God to want more responsibility, but some have had that desire crushed and squeezed out of them by life events. I wake up every morning and ask the Lord for more, and for His strength to be faithful. I enjoy teaching men and challenging them to be faithful and to aspire to being useful to God, and bearing much fruit for Him. 

It has been so nice the last two days working outside in the warmth and sunshine.  I knew it was coming sooner or later. One of the “big three words” in the Bible is Hope, and the other two are Love and Faith. We tend to define hope as “maybe it will, maybe it won’t”, but the Biblical word, Hope, means “the positive expectation of a future event”.  The book of Hebrews says “We have a hope, both sure and steadfast and is the anchor of our soul”. I knew it was going to get warm and that we would see the sunshine, I just didn’t know when.

I am going to get a new, brand new, never to get old, perfect in every way, body.  That is not a “maybe yes, maybe no” kind of hope, that is a “positive expectation of a future event” hope, I just don’t know when. The more my old, creaky, stiff, achy, sickly body goes downhill the more I think about my future hope. My hope gives me joy and peace, it is the key to the endurance in my life because it is just a matte of time.

Hebrews 12:1, “Run the race with endurance.” It seems like the older I get the more tired I become, and the quicker I get tired. Endurance as a character trait is running tired, and not quitting because of weariness.  Endurance is mostly a mind thing, it is disciplining our mind not to dwell on the tiredness, but on the goals we have set to glorify God and accomplish something that really matters. Endurance is learning to think about the things in my life that are fun, enjoyable, and noble. 

Patty has this obsession with her chickens. She talks about them like another set of grandchildren. Whenever we go out to eat she gets a little box for everybody’s left over food to go in, and if someone asks if she is bringing it home for a snack later or for Seth, Patty says “no, it is for my chickens”.  So, we have a major crisis at our house!! Something has killed and eaten 3 of her chickens. I set up a “live animal trap” with the remains of one of the chickens inside the trap to lure the killer in.  Tomorrow I will set up the 2 trail  cameras that we have. They are activated by motion to take a picture of whatever walked in front of it, so we will be able to see what the culprit looks like.  If another chicken gets killed and the trap doesn’t catch anything I may be asked to parole the chicken yard with my Savage .17 HMR and new scope!! 

When I was a kid I heard a preacher teaching  and explaining the book of 1 Peter and when he got to the verse that says, “the devil is like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour”, he said that verse reminded him of the big dog that was killing his chickens. One of the titles for the devil is “the devourer”, and also the one who “destroys”.  He doesn’t kill us like a chicken, but he does all he can to make us miserable, to get us to sin, to get us to destroy ourselves with our dumb choices. The biggest advantage the devil has over us is that we can’t take a picture of him with a trail cam, we can’t shoot him with our rifle, and we can’t even see him coming so we can prepare ourselves. 

The Bible says that if we resist him, firm in our faith that he will flee from us. We resist him by praying and asking God to beat him up, by reading the Bible and trusting the promises in it. One of the most powerful weapons against the devil and his demons is corporate prayer, that is the church praying together. The church has “authority” as the “Body of Christ”, and we exercise that authority when gathered together, when we are unified and agree, and when we pray. We will trample Satan under our feet. 

I am pretty sure that tomorrow I will be writing about the raccoon that “was”. 

On Thursday a friend and I did some last minute planning and decided to leave at 4 am Friday morning and drive 4 hours to Eastern Oregon and go Sage Rat hunting, and then drive back that evening getting home around Midnight. It would be a long day but worth it if we got to do some shooting with our .17 HMR’s at those ground squirrels that tear up the hay fields of the ranchers back there.  I had sighted in my gun with a new scope that Inhad just purchased that went up to 20X and I was hitting a 2 inch bullseye at 200 yards just about every shot.  I couldn’t wait to get over there and do some shooting. We had a great day, and we headed home. We didn’t have cell reception where we were so I had turned the phone off and put it away. About at Sisters on the way home I turned it on and saw that I had a voice mail from Patty so I listened to it. I could tell right off that I was in trouble. We had left at 4 am when everybody was still asleep, and I thought I had told Patty what I was doing but evidently I had forgotten, so she was frantically trying to figure out where I was. My friend had picked me up so my car was still there, my toothbrush was still there, but she couldn’t find me. Someone went out and looked on the back side of the shed I was building to see if I had fallen off the roof and was laying dead over there. So I called and I had a tense conversation with Patty that consisted of 4 word sentences from her. I considered stopping and buying some flowers but it was so late by then I didn’t think any place would be open. So when I got home I did what any intelligent husband would do, I confessed my total thoughtlessness, groveled, begged for forgiveness, begged for mercy, and promised I would never do it again. Patty was so relieved that I hadn’t gotten run over by the train that goes by our place that she had a hard time being upset for very long, and we hugged and I told her about my wonderful day. As I was telling her about the day I realized I hadn’t told her about that very nice scope that I had bought! Oops! 

It was such a nice sunny day today I decided to paint my shed that I just built. The first thing that I did was drop the can of paint, and got paint everywhere. At that point there was a huge urge in my mind to say a word like “shucks” very loud, with an unmistakable tone of disgust and anger. I have made a commitment to the Lord that I will not say anything as an expression of anger, or frustration when an event like this happens, not even “shucks”. I remake this commitment every morning to the Lord, and I ask Him for the self-control and help to keep the commitment that I have made. I started with this particular daily commitment about 2 months ago, and I have had one day since starting where I have been 100% successful, but I am getting better at controlling what comes out of my mouth. The reason for this goal of becoming totally in control of my mouth and not to say anything in anger is so I can exercise the same self control when I am with people. I want to build people up and never tear them down.. our words have supernatural power to build and create, or to tear down and discourage people that we talk to.

I have become very interested in developing my mind, making it strong, being able to think clearly, think with wisdom, understand people, understand me, understand life, understand God more, and solve problems. A major motive is to be able to communicate clearly, teach the Word of God accurately,  walk with God intimately,  and also to avoid any level of senility as I get older. I have been reading books about the mind, both Christian and secular, both from the mind perspective and the Brain perspective. A key book has been the book of Proverbs in the Bible which the author Solomon states as the goal of the book being wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. 

A key to a healthy mind is use it, stretch it, and feed it. One of my “goal setting motto’s ” over the years has been every year to “learn something I have never learned before”, with the emphasis being on learning a skill, “do something I have never done before”,  and” go someplace I have never been before”. As I have been learning and thinking about brain health I realized that this goal was a key to a mind that was open, inquisitive, and intelligent, which is certainly what I want. A key part of our thinking and our communicating is the totality of our experiences. If a person is born in a house and never leaves that house and does only what can be done in that house they will have a severely limited ability to think, relate to others, understand others, and communicate clearly to others.  

So, bottom line, choose to leave the house, get out of the rut, do something new, learn something new, get a new hobby, take a risk.  I can do this, You can as well.

May 15th is the deadline for applying for tags for elk and deer for the draw for most of the units. It is basically a raffle for tags. Some units that aren’t very popular the chances are good to get a tag, and other units that are very popular you probably won’t . It takes quite a bit of thinking and planning in figuring out where to put in for. Another couple of wrinkles is that there are preference points that are earned from failing to draw a tag in previous years. A preference point increases the odds of drawing considerably. Also we usually put in as a party or group so if one gets drawn the group automatically gets drawn guaranteeing that you get to hunt together or stay home together if you fail to draw. For us there are those units that don’t require a draw so if we fail to get tags for our first choice we go to one of the fallback units so we will always go hunting. I haven’t missed a year of hunting since I was 12 years old, and  I usually go on multiple hunting trips each year.  There is elk ,deer, bear, turkey, geese, ducks, moose in Alaska, caribou  in Alaska, mountain lion and antelope in Wyoming, and tomorrow I am going sage rat hunting!!  

I have noticed over the years that guys who are full bore hunters are different then those who are not. One of the very noticeable differences to me is that those who hunt religiously can tell stories much, much better than those who don’t. Non hunters can’t seem to acquire the balance between just giving a few quick facts, and going on and on and on till everyone has fallen asleep from boredom. And I think that the story telling skill spreads so that hunters as a whole are better conversationists, and can talk to people they hardly know. Hunters also deal with disappointment better because most years they don’t kill anything, but keep going back year after year.