I made a mistake and scheduled a speaking appointment in Nevada over Super Bowl Sunday! How could I be so dumb!! But it is working out ok, I am going to someone’s house tomorrow here where I am speaking, a dentist, with a big house and a really big screen TV and he is having a big party with lots of snacks. Everyone here is rooting for Denver and I am to. I want to see the old man, Payton Manning go out a winner. The Super Bowl for me is the moment that I appear before Jesus at the end of my life and I hear Him say to me, “Super, you did super living and serving Me with your life, come on in to My house now as a winner!” That is what I want and what I focus on everyday of my life. I will finish well and receive from Him the crown of life, the greatest trophy ever.

Jesus said every word that we speak will be brought up at the Judgment Seat of Christ. Proverbs says our words have the power to give life and the power to kill the motivation and hope in others. I am in Nevada teaching a parenting seminar and a main emphasis that I am making is teaching our kids how to talk and communicate, that includes social media, in such a way that they give life and hope and joy to those who hear them. Our communication skill will be powerful to give life if it isn’t about us, but purposely thought out so as to give worth and value to others, to give joy and hope to others, to create unity and love in others. Much speech and communication today causes conflict and disunity because it is loaded with fussing and whining about how we are not being treated fairly, and about the negative and what is bad and wrong. Very few things make me feel more fulfilled in life than listening to my kids talk to others or read what they write on Facebook. They will bear much fruit for God because they understand the power of a word spoken or written to give life or death, and they choose to give life.

The strongest desire of my heart is to become like Christ in character, entirely. At 67 years of age having pursued this desire passionately for many years I have found many things that don’t work. At this point in my life my firm conclusion which I intend to make the structure of my life from here on out is to maintain the perfect balance between “grace and works” or “grace and effort”, and the phrase I like best that I read in the book, “Renovation of the Heart” by Dallas Willard is “Grace and Method”. He says, “all of creation is an orderly realm, and for that which is broken God provides a methodical path of recovery or healing. Grace does not rule out method, nor method grace. Grace thrives on method and method on grace”. No human activity has it’s hands on both God’s grace and man’s methods or efforts as much as prayer does. In prayer I ask for wisdom To know what the right thing is, in prayer I ask for the will to do what I know is the right thing, and in prayer I ask for the strength to do the right thing well, and not give up until the right thing is finished. In much of what I read and hear today there is a big pendulum swing towards passivity and calling it grace. If that worked there would be a lot more Christ like people than there are. Passivity is a reaction to the “try harder” method of growing and changing which results in guilt, despair, and apathy. If “trying harder” does produce a little progress the result is pride and a critical spirit. But passivity is just apathy masquerading as trust. Prayer is hard to maintain with any level of faithfulness or sacrifice, and requires planning, great self-control, accountability and encouragement from others, but those who pray like Jesus become like Jesus in character, and begin to act and live the way Jesus did. I like it, balance has a harmony to it that sounds good, sounds right, sounds true. I will pursue a lifestyle devoted to prayer asking for wisdom, will, and strength.

I have been hanging out with 60 or so Pastors for the last three days as we have been here at Cannon Beach Christian Conference Center for our annual “Prayer Summit”. It is a great time of fellowship with lots of sharing, eating together and praying for one another. As we share with each other and pray for one another each year there is always a number of guys who are very discouraged, weary, burnt out, and looking for some answers. For the most part Pastors are a great bunch of people. Most work 60 plus hours a week at unpredictable hours that regularly interferes with normal family life. They do that for below normal income level often working a second job to support their families. They pray faithfully for their people, counseling them, doing weddings, funerals, visiting in the hospitals, studying hard each week to teach the Bible so that people can have an eternal relationship with God, administrating church programs and ministries, and all day long carrying a lot of concern for those struggling in life for a multitude of reasons. Then after all that they receive a regular dose of critism, gossip, and slander mostly because they represent God and people are often upset with God because life is hard. It shouldn’t be that way. God has forgiven each of us of everything bad we have ever done and we should be able to do that for each other, especially for our Pastors. The key to that actually happening is people praying for each other. I have a relatively easy time at JBC, and the reason is that there are so many people who pray for me, for each other and for unity and love to abound in our church. Each year when I come to this “Prayer Summit” and this is the 28th in a row, I am impressed and encouraged by the growing devotion to prayer on the part of Pastors, and I recommit to being devoted to prayer myself.

Do you ever wonder what heaven will be like? I do all the time. For sure it will be a place of incredible joy. Also relationships and fellowship will be a major part of it and they will be without any hint of bitterness, or resentment, or criticalness. Occasionally we all have an experience that is like that. They don’t usually last long but long enough to give us a little bit of a glimpse into our next life, and make us long for it and look forward to it with eagerness. My first day here at the “Prayer Summit” at Cannon Beach Christian Conference Center has been such a glimpse. If the next two full days are as wonderful as the first half day has been it will be an amazing time. There is something about this place for me that automatically causes deep reflection about who I am, what I am doing, why I am doing it, and what I am going to do from here on out. Along with the refextion comes personal resolve and commitment to really do it, and make it happen, along with a deep awareness that staying close to God is the only way that I will succeed at keeping this new commitment. Well, I think I will go to sleep and see what tomorrow brings.

February 1989 was the first “Prayer Summit” that I went to, in fact was the first one ever held any place. Since that first one I have not missed any of the 27 since then. It almost always is the first full week in February at Cannon Beach, and I get it on the calander a year early. When I went to the first one I was at a very low place in my life and ministry. I had been pastoring for 13 years at JBC and was sure I had made a mistake ever leaving the farm. I had located two different dairies that I could get a job at and had made up my mind that I was quiting ministry and going back to the only thing I had ever really succeeded at. While at that first Prayer Summit God touched my life in a very real way, and I recommitted my life to ministry and told God that I would stay at Jefferson until I died. That was 27 years ago and I am still committed to pastoring at JBC until I die or get to senile to do it well. Every year when I go back to the Summit I get revived, and am excited for the next year to unfold. I leave in the morning for the 28th Prayer Summit, and I am looking forward to a great time of personal renewal. When I leave the Summit on Thursday I will be a man on a mission, full of passion and desire.

I have so many goals, and so many things on my “to do” list, that I am always hurrying and trying to get as much done as possible, but I recognize the need for systematic rest in my life to get refueled for more work and accomplishment. Today I slept in to 9:30 am, did a few things on my “to do” and then took a nap. I did ride my stationary bike for an hour and lifted weights for 30 minutes but then I took another nap. I felt very energetic during our Saturday night service and expect that I will tomorrow as well. It is nice to work hard and get a lot done but it sure feels good to have a day like today to relax and rest.

Finished the “Five Days of Prayer” tonight. We prayed Monday through Friday, 10 hours each day, 5 to 10 am and 5 to 10 pm each day. I prayed 38 hours and tonight I am really tired, but it is a good tired. There is a tired where you feel a half a step from dead, that is no fun, there is a tired that is more discouraged and depressed than lacking in energy which is a real bummer, tonight’s tired is like what you would feel after you run a marathon and you won! You would be dead dog tired but my oh my you are so excited you hardly feel the exhaustion. That is a good tired, a fun tired, a satisfied tired. My Dad used to say, “feeling tired at the end of a day of hard work is a good feeling, means you did something with your life”! Devoted, sacrificial, prayer that takes long hours, effort to stay focused, and self discipline to get up really early and not fall asleep during prayer or quit early, has that “I won a marathon” feel to it. I believe that this concerted kind of prayer is the most neglected and undervalued and unappreciated activity on the planet earth. I also believe that no activity comes close to producing the eternal results in the lives of people as this kind of praying does. I think the reason I feel so fulfilled in spite of the weariness is that in my heart God has made it known to me the true value of five days spent like the last five. I will see the value when I get to heaven and see the people there because of it. I can’t imagine what that is going to feel like.

When I was younger I went through several periods of time when I didn’t have much faith in God’s existence. As I tried to resolve this tension in my mind my method was intellectual, that is I read books to try and find answers that seemed sure. It was during the last serious questioning of all that I had been taught that a speaker at a conference that I was attending said “you really will never be absolutely confident in your faith by reasoning. You have to experience God and you will never do that unless He chooses to reveal Himself to you. God’s promise is that if we seek Him we will find Him and if we draw near to Him then He will draw near to us.” He went on to say that “If God draws near to a person that person will know without a doubt that God exists”. I determined that I would seek God with all my heart and do all I could to draw near to Him so that I could really experience Him as much as if I took a trip to heaven and saw and heard Him. The speaker said “God waits to be wanted, and a casual, half hearted attempt at seeking Him would not work.” He suggested that those who were serious would do well to take several days, maybe even a week, and spend most of it praying and reading the Bible. I took 3 days, got all by myself, fasted, read the Bible for 20 minutes or so, then prayed for awhile, then wrote in my journal for a bit, read some more, took a nap when I got sleepy, but didn’t sleep more than a couple hours at a time. I continued that routine for 60 hours. There wasn’t any sensational experience with God, but there was a settled confidence that came into my heart that I have never lost. JBC is in the middle of a “Five Days of Prayer” for missions. I prayed 10 hours both Monday and Tuesday and that same sense of God’s presence filled me. That phrase, “God waits to be wanted” is a super important one in my life.

2002 to 2007 I traveled to Sierra Leone, West Africa 12 differed times for the purpose of helping in starting churches, schools and doing seminars for the pastors of the churches that we started. During these years of going into Sierra Leone more than twice each year A significant attitude change developed in me. Sierra Leone is one of the poorest and undeveloped countries in the world. People live in small houses made out of mud with dried leaf roofs that leak rain and they own very little. They went through years of civil war when thousands of people were killed and mutalated and most recently an Ebola plaque that again killed thousands. What happened in me was I realized how much we fuss, fight, argue, and worry about things in this country that really arent that important. We all have a value system impressed in our heart that controls how we act, talk, spend time, and what we worry about. I haven’t traveled to Sierra Leone near as much in the last 5 years. Last night from 5 to 10 pm for our “Five Days of Prayer” for missions we prayed about Sierra Leone, and I started reliving many of the experiences, sights, sounds, and conditions that I had during those few years of being there so much. I again realized, there really aren’t that many things in life that are super important, just a few, and I need to focus my life on those.