the big news last night and this morning was the super big storm coming our way.  As big or bigger than the Colombus Day storm! Yeh, right! I kept waiting but no super big storm ever made it to our house. I know most of the media is super exaggerating information surrounding the presidential race, but I didn’t think the same was happening with the weather. I guess that is the new norm because hyperbole sells. Oh well, no tree blew over on my house, The plastic that I had over my pickup didn’t blow away, and we were only without electricity for about an hour. Nice. I guess I will have to wait for the next big storm for my great adventure.

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One of our daughters, her husband, and three little kids live on the coast in Washington. Early this morning they got a tornado warning and were advised to go to the center of their house away from all windows, so they got the kids out of bed and sat together in a hall way until the warning passed. Not exactly your normal Friday night routine.  Sunny, comfortable weather is  nice. Windy, rainy, cold weather with tornado warnings is not. Though they are not always totally accurate it is nice to get a bit of a warning from the weather service about what is coming so you can prepare for it.

Life has storms of crisis, unexpected events, conflicts, financial, health, death. Most of the time there is no warning about this storm that is about to strike. Some people face it, deal with it, fix it, solve it, adjust to it and when the storm passes they are stronger, wiser, better equipped to face the next storm and to help others with their storms of life. These people are strong.

The admonition to “be strong” is repeated often in the Bible. That admonition  is not telling us to just grit our teeth, clench our fists and try not to worry. When David in the Old Testament came back to his city with his army and found that all the woman and children had been kidnapped, the city burned to the ground and his men threatening to stone him. It says “David strengthened himself in the Lord”, took charge went after the kidnappers and rescued all.

God gives strength to those who ask, seek, and knock often. Every time a negative, fearful, anxious thought pops into my head, even a little one, I immediately pray and ask God for His strength. If another one pops in 10 seconds later I ask again, and again, and again. Pretty soon the anxious thoughts are farther and farther apart, and I am experiencing the “peace of God”. Strong people aren’t strong because of big muscles, they are strong because they have trained themselves to automatically and quickly turn to God in storms in total trust.

One of the qualities that is valued tremendously by God in us as He observes our life is our endurance.

Hebrews 12:1-3 Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

So many times over the last 40 years of pastoring at JBC I wanted to quit. I was discouraged, depressed, burnt out, and dry. One verse in the Bible spoken by Jesus was a key keeping me from quitting.

Luke 9:62  But Jesus said to him, “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Now, as I think about how God has blessed I am so thankful that I didn’t quite . Another verse that impacted me was, Galatians 6:9  Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.

But the key thing in my life that kept me from quitting was friends who encouraged me often to keep on running and not give up. Good friends who know the importance of encouragement are super important to being successful at life. I have been blessed with many.

According to the book of Proverbs the main requirement for success is wisdom. Solomon asked for wisdom, and God was pleased. God created the world and the universe using wisdom, God in His Word says that if we seek wisdom like gold, treasure, precious stones we will find it. Wisdom is knowing what  to do and say in any situation. I want to be wise and to always make wise choices. How do I get wisdom?

1. Read, read, and read some more. Our brain was created by God and was designed by him to function best with words. I faithfully read 20 pages every day.

2. Find smart, successful people , invite them to lunch, buy, ask really good questions, and take good notes.

3.  Find good, highly recommended seminars to regularly go to.

4. Write. Write in a journal, write a blog, write a book.,Writing is a major mental exercise that creates clear thinkers who will have lots of wisdom.

5. Spend 15 minutes each day memorizing the Bible. The Word of God is the supernatural Word of God so spending time hiding it in our heart and meditating on it works powerfully.

6. Find an opportunity to teach. Sunday school, youth group, whatever you can.

7. You write this one.

1 Corinthians 2:16
For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.

when it comes to accomplishing a lot with our life that really matters, things that make a huge difference in people’s lives, and also personally growing every day to be more like the Holy God who created us in His image, nothing is as important as wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to think like God. Wisdom is knowing what to say and do in any and every situation God sovereignly puts us in. Wisdom is the ability to connect the dots between the words we spoke, the things we did, and all the thoughts of our mind  a year ago to the problems, trials and difficulties, and the victories, blessings and accomplishments that we are currently experiencing.

1 Corinthians 2:16 says, “we have the Mind of Christ”. What is the mind of Christ, and how is it that we have it? The mind of Christ is the Bible, the Holy, living Word of God. Psalms 119:97-100 says, “I understand more than the aged…I have more insight than all of my teachers…I am wiser than my enemies”. Why? “Because I meditate on Your Word”!

The Bible has been miraculously preserved over thousands of years as God’s great gift to us, the mind of Christ. If we read the Bible faithfully, diligently, seeking we will discover the knowledge of God. Memorize the words in it and ponder, wonder, and meditate on those words. The world has no clue what is right and wrong, what is wise and foolish, what brings the blessing or the curse of God. Those who spend time reading, studying, memorizing, and meditating on the Bible will understand all things.

God’s ways are not man’s ways. God’s ways often appear foolish to people. Discovering what God blesses, making that your lifestyle and not drifting off of that lifestyle, but staying faithful . What we do matters very much if we want to grow and bear fruit, much fruit. It isn’t the one time choices it is the faithful, diligent, self-controlled routines and disciplines done every day over time that matter. I have established “A Daily Dozen Duties and Disciplines” in my life that I check off every day before I go to bed, and I don’t go to bed until they are all done. Growing up on the dairy there was a simple principle of success, ” you can never skip milking the cows”, morning and evening, every day, 365 days a year, that is just the way it is.

1. I will Read my Bible every day using my plan of 10 chapters each day.

2. I will pray every day for a minimum time of one hour, praying for lost people, family, church family, and needs as they occur.

3. At the end of every day I will examine my life, think about the day and confess all known sins to God.

4. I will begin every day by declaring Jesus as Lord of my life and committing to follow, serve, and obey Him for that day.

5. I will ask Jesus for strength and wisdom every day so that I can glorify Him, and accomplish His will for my life.

6. I will read my goals.

7. I will spend a minimum of 15 minutes every day memorizing and meditating on key Bible verses for my life.

8. I will record my use of time every day in great detail keeping a permanent record.

9. I will make a “to do” list for every day.

10. I will write in my journal reflecting on how I lived my life evaluating strengths and weaknesses.

11. I will write a daily blog of approximately 300 words with the desire of influencing more and more people to be committed to and love Jesus.

12. In will praise and thank the Lord for specific blessings experienced that day working at taking nothing for granted. I will do this in my prayer time, journaling and blogging.

As a Christian I believe God is orchestrating my life, that is the circumstances  that most often appear to be coincidental and random are  planned and controlled by God. In the midst of God’s sovereignty in my life is the freedom that He gives to people to choose, and their wrong, foolish and poor choices have impact on my life. The mix of God’s control and people in various levels of out of control living is a mystery to me, but I have a very strong trust in God’s wise, and loving  control, and protection of my life. In the events that unfold in my life on a daily basis are several purposes for me. A primary one is that the pressure, trials and tribulations that happen to me would make me strong and mature, and that I would grow to be more and more like Christ in character. I need to cooperate with God by not grumbling, complaining, feeling sorry for myself, or getting bitter. Another purpose of God is  In the midst of the events that happen, God puts opportunities to bless, serve and positively influence people. His instruction to me is to look for those open doors every day. I also believe that it is God’s will that I work at fixing, changing, and improving the systems around me that cause much of the pain, conflict, and problems in people’s lives.  Again, that opportunity to make a difference in the world is put there by God before me as a gift. I need to look for those open doors, really look in believing that God wants me to find them and press myself into using the gifts, resources, strength, and wisdom that He has given me to make a difference. As I aggressively do that I will grow. Grow, that is what I want to do, and to be a cause for other people’s growth, many other people.

i just finished reading a book by the title of “Emotional Intelligence” 2.0. The essence of the book is what I would say to my kids literally hundreds of times as they grew up, “You don’t have to act the way you feel”. You can choose to act responsibly. The New Testament book of Ephesians says, “be angry but don’t sin”, that is feel the emotion of anger but don’t punch anybody. Allowing our emotions to control our words, decisions, and behavior is to live our life out of control, and the more you do that the more out of control your life becomes. Self-control is the goal of every really successful person. Everybody and everything wants to run our life for us and often with ulterior motives. For me almost daily reflection on how well I lived my life is very important in not allowing my flesh, the devil and the world to influence me even a little bit. A great tool for reflection is my journal  where I write what I did and said with complete transparency and try to see myself as a third person.

Today two grandsons came over to help me split and stack firewood. They worked hard and we got a lot of wood split and stacked in the wood shed for winter.  All day long as we worked I thought about what I could say so as to influence them so that they would have the character trait of diligence. Parenting and grandparenting ought to have as its goal to build character through influence, training and teaching. When specific character traits are targeted and purposeful training takes place character growth takes place rapidly and permenantly. Every kid is born lazy and building the character trait of diligence takes effort, time, and patience, but truly hardworking kids are rare, and this character trait of diligence will serve them well in life.

Some principles Patty and I followed as parents with our 8 kids to train them in this primary character trait.

1. Never have them work by themselves when they are young. They will just goof off, and the best time to teach the value of hard work is while you work with them.

2. While you are working with them praise, praise , praise

3. While you are working with your child or grandchild be happy, really happy, enjoy the experience of work, and let them see you having fun.

4. Teach, teach, teach. Come up with short statements of wisdom and repeat them over and over again.  A few that I used are; “did you know that the faster you work the more fun it is?” “The best feeling in the world is being tired at the end of the day because you worked hard”.

5. When you work set goals and make everything you can a contest that they can win with diligence.

6. Take breaks that are fun.

7. Have a reward at the end of a project that rewards  good attitude, and working hard.

In the parenting class I taught last night at JBC I said that the key to parenting   Ultimately successful kids was to proactively train our kids to have character and in order to do that successfully we needed to identify the particular trait we wanted in our kids.  Then we needed to figure out what it would look like, that is, how it would show up in their behavior. Next we needed to figure out the strategy we would use to instill that particular character trait into their heart and soul so that it was truly who they were on the inside, and not just role playing. And then we needed to figure out how to measure the presence and growth of the particular trait we were targeting so we would know if we were being successful as parent/trainer/coaches or not. We primarily worked on ten character traits. There are many more than that, but we like simplicity so we picked ten. We called our parenting strategy, “Ten traits for tots and teens”. Of the ten, the character trait of being “tough” was probably the most important. That was the inner strength and trust in God that gave them the ability to face trials as a challenge to be won, and not something to fear because of the pain. If we were successful they would not grumble or complain about difficulties or trials that life brings to all. They would be able to carry a large load of responsibility without self pity. They would not be afraid to take a risk in life because of the potential for failure and pain . They would not be paralyzed by the fear of failing. They would not get bitter and angry at God or others because of crisis that resulted in loss and pain. Probably one of the strongest natural traits every person is born with is fear of pain  and the desire for comfort, so training our kids to the opposite took much thought and lots of effort, and  patient training. A major requirement is we had to model toughness by never complaining, rejoicing always, and being positive and pleasant in our treatment of others while in the midst of the trials of life.