I am reading a good book called “The Intangibles of Leadership”. The author over the years has studied successful leaders and looked for common traits that are not normally studied in the lives of highly successful people. The first one is “wisdom”. Wisdom is different than I.Q. Wisdom is making right choices and saying right words through the course of a day that add up to regular “wins” in life. Anybody can become wise, but few do because the price is high. Wisdom requires a great deal of personal reflection in regards to our successes and our failures and accurately assessing the reason for both. These bits of wisdom remembered and reflected on, meditated on, and combined systematically with all the bits that we have collected results in a disciplined way of thinking that allows us to quickly make decisions and choices that are right. Part of becoming wiser quickly is using the experiences and reflections of others as well as our own. We do that by talking to wise people and asking them great questions. Those who are longing for more wisdom are always looking for these kinds of people and are humble enough to seek wisdom from them. Those who are looking for wisdom like gold, silver, and precious treasure also read books written by winners and listen to messages and talks that wise people have given. I want to be wise, I want to be wiser wiser and wiser. I will pay the price. Help me Lord.

The Tilapia that I am raising like warm water. They grow fastest in water that is 80 degrees. The nice thing about that is that the grow beds that the water goes through is nice and warm and along with the high nutrient level of the water because of the fish poop, the plants that I am growing in the greenhouse are growing like crazy. Heating the water has been the biggest expense of raising Tilapia in my aqaponics system. Today I took 70 feet of 3/8 cooper tubing and rapped it around and around the stove pipe on my wood stove and plumbed it into two pec lines that I had running to my greenhouse that are insulated and buried. Got everything hooked up and turned on the pump and it all worked like a charm. The water coming out into the tank where the fish are is about 90-95 degrees. I think I will take care of most of the heating expense with this plan. It is always fun to have a problem and then to invent a solution for the problem that works. We were created by God in His image and likeness. The proneness that all of is have to create, to invent, to solve problems comes from God, and is a lot of fun. I wonder what I will create tomorrow.?

Samson was asked by Delilah over and over what the secret of his great strength was. He refused to tell his secret and finally he gave in and told and that was the end of his secret and his strength. What is the secret to having amazing strength today. The answer is simple, wait on the Lord. Isaiah 40 says, “Those who wait on the Lord will mount up with wings like Eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not faint, yeh I love that word about not fainting, even in ER. To wait on the Lord is to do nothing except focus on him. A personal quite time of 15 minutes or so works great when we simply seek to draw near, to grow in our ability to focus on Him alone with no distractions. I am 67 years old, not real old, but at the age where most are retired and I have Parkinson’s which causes severe tiredness. But in spite of that I have more passion and fire and desire to bear more fruit for God now than I ever have in the past. When I get tired I pray for awhile and ask God to give me strength. I wait and wait and pray and pray with great importunity until I feel motivated and strong. It is much more a discipline than it is a secret. We tend to think that a secret is easy, but being devoted to prayer is not easy and very few pray to God with any kind of sacrifice to the point that they experience Isaiah 40. The tireder I get the more I pray, that is the secret of amazing energy.

I like to write. I often jokingly say about Patty that she can’t think without talking. That is how she sort of clarifies things in her mind, by talking about it. I on the other hand can’t think without writing, at least that is when I do my most creative thinking and that is how I most successfully solve problems. I periodically will write out my vision for the future, my ideas and thoughts for a better tomorrow. I do this almost exclusively about the church I have pastored for 39 years, Jefferson Baptist Church, JBC. I love the church, I have given my life for the church, most of my thinking during waking hours is about the church, and I am constantly dreaming about the future when she is more holy, healthier, reaching more people, and doing wonderful things for families. I like to just write for a long time about projects that our church could do, events that would be fun and attract lots of people, growth that we will have, ministries that be improved and started. Over the years of doing this it is quite amazing how much I saw and wrote down actually is who we are today. I have been writing a lot of late about my vision for the future of JBC. As well I write about the obstacles that that there will be to keep the vision from happening, and I conquor those obstacles in my writing by writing strategy, goals, solutions. I never share these writings. They are purposefully wild, over the top, extreme, crazy, like a “Alice in Wonderland” story or a “Starwars.” Adventure. Because no one will read them I can just go crazy and dream extreme as I pastor JBC.

They gave Patty some prednesdone and breathing treatment and we are on our way home. They said she had COPD, and she will be fine, very common. WhenIget homeIwill ride on my stationary bike to get the wooziness out of my head and I will be fine. Fun night😀

One of the concerns of doctors for patients that have had major surgery like a hip replacement is blood clots. So when Patty started having breathing problems that didn’t respond to her normal asthma treatments we called the doctor and he said we needed to go to Emergency and have her lungs checked for blood clots withs CAT scan. So here I sit in the ER waiting room waiting for the results of the CAT scan that were done a few minutes ago. They said it would be around 45 minutes for the results. Sherri, our daughter is in with Patty texting me info as she hears it. I am in the waiting room because I tend to get nauseous and faint inside hospitals and I become an unneeded distraction. Even here in the waiting room I make regular escapes to the outside to breath some cool air and clear my head. It helps to sit in the far corner away from the normal activity in an Emergency Room reading and writing. I am reading Psalms and meditating on the words and praying them back to God. Writing in my journal my thoughts and feelings as I wait for news about Patty and writing this blog. Oh here comes Sherri. She looks calm, things must be ok. I will finish the story tomorrow.

We had a fun time at the Hallaween event at JBC tonight, “Trunk or Treat”. 50 parking spots in our parking lot had cars, pickups with candie and decorations and games. The kids and parents go from “Trunk” to “trunk” getting candy. In the gym was free hot dogs, chips, and hot chocolate with a big bouncy house and other games for the kids to play along with face painting and a photographer taking pictures. In the sanctuary was a magic show for the kids with a Bible story along with it. We had a bus shuttling people from other parking lots and the bus was going non stop and our own parking lot was full as well the entire evening. We thought it might be poorly attended this year because of the weather, but I think parents realized that it was better to walk between parking spots and have a warm gym to go into as it was was to walk the streets in this pouring rain. We had a huge turn out. I took my 49 Ford pick up and had one of those fold out canopies to sit under in my lawn chair drinking coffee handing out candie to kids. It did pour rain, like a monsoon. Almost every spot had a canopy and the kids would go from cover to cover having a good time. I drank about 5 cups of hot coffee and ate way to much candy and by the time it was over I was way hyper. I think it will wear off before I preach in the morning. It was nice to take an event like Halloween that has no redeeming value, and turn it into a safe, enjoyable time where they can hear the Gospel. Yep, it was a good time.

Waking up in the morning on schedule and starting your internal engine and getting it reved up to a high speed, shifting through the gears, getting into high gear quickly, and then keeping the pedal to the medal most of the day with planned pit stops is a skill that can be learned by anyone. It is much more difficult now at 67 physically than it was at 30, but way easier mentally, and really 80% of what I just wrote is mental. We carry on a conversation in our head constantly and the content of that conversation is what it is all about. If we include the Lord in our conversation all day long then we will be “hot, on fire, highly motivated, passionate”, which is the key to accomplishing a lot with your life, bearing much fruit for the Lord. For me the time that I spend every day with the Lord as a planned date talking to Him about people, His will for my life, my goals, problems etc while I am doing nothing else, is the key to the all day conversation while I am doing something. A totally devoted time with the Lord every day is absolutely essential to focus, energy, joy, wisdom, passion. So few believers take the time for that time with Lord when you are doing absolutely nothing else but talking and listening to Him. A commitment of a certain amount of time, a particular place, and a set time of day is super important to being faithful to this spiritual discipline. 15 minutes is a good starting goal for that daily time with the Lord. I write a lot of my prayers to help stay focused and in tune. The early church fathers felt like an hour a day was essential, and almost anyone can work their way up to that amount if they are faithful to an alone time with the Lord everyday. The energy, the focus and the motivation gained by this daily alone time with God more than off sets the time given doing “nothing”.

Rich Overton died today. He had cancer, Parkinson’s, and he was old, close to 90 I think. He was a good friend for years. He has been involved and faithful at JBC for years. Probably my fondest memories of Rich is when he did all of the rock masonry for the huge three crosses on the front of our sanctuary. He couldn’t climb ladders or the scaffolding so we took him up to the top of the scaffolding in a high lift every day. He would work away up there for hours in the heat almost every day for a summer. Rich had a great sense of humor and always smiled, he was the kind of person who always made your joy level go up. He is one of those people who I think of when I read
Genesis 25:8 “Abraham breathed his last and died in a ripe old age, an old man and satisfied with life; and he was gathered to his people.”
With all the advances in medicine everybody is still going to die sooner or later. Rich loved Jesus with all of his heart and he is with Him now. I am a bit jealous, but I have a lot more I would like to do with my life before I join Rich, if the Lord lets me.

Patty and I got up this morning at 4 am and left for the hospital in Salem at 4:45 am, by 6 am we had all the paper work done and off she went to get a new hip. There was a screen on the wall with a bunch of numbers in different colored boxes. They gave us a piece of paper with Patty’s number and each color represented a stage in the process, so I could walk up to it any time and check and see how she was progressing. When she got to the pink box it meant they had wheeled her into her hospital room and we could go see her. Patty made the move from colored box to colored box right according to schedule, but she got hung up on the next to last box, she was in there way longer than was supposed to happen. Her blood pressure was to low and she had lost more blood than was normal so they needed to give her a transfusion. When I walked into her room and she saw me her blood pressure went right up to normal😄 You will have to ask Patty if that last part is totally accurate! But it was normal when I left and no one knows why except for me!! I got a bit woozy in the hospital which is normal for me so I sat in the recliner in her room and read “Happy Birthday” notes on facebook to me. That was very fun! After I left and came home they got her up in a walker and she got sick and threw up but she said that by this evening that she was feeling much better, and planning on coming home tomorrow evening. It was a good day in spite of the hospital, the surgery, the nauseousness, the unknowns. Today wasn’t a huge trial, but it was a pressure that we faced together trusting God and it feels good. I wonder what is next.