Learning how to manage my energy and get to the end of each day still going strong is a skill set that I am working hard to learn and acquire, and also to pass on to others. Everyone struggles with weariness, and gets tired and discouraged and burnt out by life. The Biblical admonition is “do not grow weary in well doing”, “run the race set before you with endurance”, “in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary”. One of the keys to endurance is systematic rest. Systematic rest is resting by the clock and not waiting until you feel tired. Resting when you get tired is like looking for a gas station after you have run out of gas in your car. Every hour I rest for 5 minutes. Sometimes I close my eyes and just sit, other times I pull out my IPhone and look at the pictures of my grandkids and pray for them. If I have been at my desk studying or writing I will get up and walk over to the new building and back and pray while I walk. Often I work on a memory verse or read part of my daily Bible schedule. At home I really enjoy going out where my 55 gallon aquarium is with my brooder tilapia and sit in the chair I have set there and watch them swim around. 5 minutes of variation, mind shift, something fun, distracting, silly, is very powerful in restoring energy. It is not an easy discipline to develop because we just forget to do something that short and that often. For the person who struggles with tiredness getting this discipline down is more than worth the effort. I started this about 10 years ago when I read that walking for 1 minute for every 10 minutes of running in a marathon would give you a faster time then running the entire time or walking when you got tired. I tried it and found that I did indeed finish a bit faster and I felt way better at the end of a race and the next day. Systematic rest is not just sleeping for 8 hours every 24 hours, but getting a breather all through the day on a scheduled basis.

What is success? Who is a successful person? My definition is that success is accomplishing something with your life that is significant. A significant accomplishment is one that changes things for the better, that meets real needs in the lives of people, that has a long term impact on those that were targeted, that makes the world better even just a little bit.
In the Bible a significant accomplishment would be called fruit. In the gospel of John Jesus talks for six chapters about how to bear much fruit. The few days before He is crucified is when these dialogs by Jesus are made to His disciples. Jesus knows He is going to die on a cross, be raised from the dead and go back to heaven with the Father. He knows that His disciples will now have to carry on building the church without Him so these chapters are full of great truth on how to bear fruit, in fact Jesus says that they will bear more fruit than He did. I have read these 6 chapters over and over again wanting to glean all that is there on how to bear more fruit than Jesus. I am now in the process of memorizing these 6 chapters so the principles will not get lost or forgotten. For the next 6 weekends I will be preaching at JBC on these chapters teaching on “how to be truly successful and accomplish incredibly significant things with our life.” Services are 7 pm on Saturday night, 9 and 11 am on Sunday morning. If you don’t go to church someplace try JBC and see what happens.

Jefferson Baptist Church has been given the priviledge of adopting a small church in Bend and making it one of our daughter churches. Jonathan Henderson who has been on staff at JBC for the last 4 or 5 years, developing our Men”s ministry is going to be the pastor. He and his wife Chrystal and their 5 little girls have moved over and today was the official beginning of his ministry there. There were about 200 people who drove over from JBC for this official beginning. It was a very special time with a great sense of God’s presence. I truly believe God is going to do a great work through Jonathan in Fellowship Bible Church in Bend, Oregon. It was an amazing series of apparent coincidences that brought the two churches together in this venture, and to me it seemed obvious it was God orchestrating the whole thing. To me this was so obviously God’s doing that it creates a great sense of expectation in what is going to happen and confidence and willingness in investing time, money, and one of our staff. It is quite honoring to be given an opportunity to do something that really matters for Him. I am not doing much except for some mentoring with Jonathan, but when God gives an opportunity there is in me a strong desire to be faithful and do a good job for Him. I am looking forward to many more assignments from God in the next 10 years.

The electricity was off today for about 5 hours. It went off about the same time the fire started in the field next to our house so I was mostly focused on the fire and didn’t think anything about my 100 fish in my aquaponics system in my greenhouse. About 9 pm I went out to feed them and they were all floating on the top of the water dead. I have air pumps that pump oxygen into the water constantly and a water pump that pumps the water into the gravel grow beds to filter the fish poop out, both obviously run on electricity. I had no idea that is all the time it would take for them to die from lack of oxygen. Netted them all and put them in a cooler with ice, filleted them in my wife’s kitchen, she is a good wife. vacuum packet them and they are now in the freezer. Oh well, I guess it is time to buy some more baby fish. I was reading about a 12 volt back up system using regular car batteries that comes on automatically if the electricity goes off, I guess I better invest in one of those. Life is funny like that, just relaxing from all the excitement from the fire and woops, dead fish! It is times like this when I also need to switch into another mode of acting and thinking. It would be nice if there were some kind of program where the switch would happen automatically, but it is pretty much a choice and often a hard choice. Act happy, rejoice, be nice, don’t be grumpy, not even a little bit, sing, don’t feel sorry for yourself. Whooooeee I think I did pretty good. Got a little grumpy when Patty asked me why I wasn’t cleaning the fish outside on the fish cleaning table she got me for Christmas😄

I was sitting in my chair reading and someone drove in our driveway and started honking. The mail lady does that sometime so I thought I had a package, probably some bicycle parts I had ordered. I got up to retrieve my package and a lady had come to the door that I didnt recognize, and she was yelling “fire”!! I looked up and the grain field next to our house was on fire and it was burning pretty good and it was moving toward our house. I went in and yelled at Patty and Seth and we started moving the cars out in the orchard in the green watered grass. I got one of my heavy coats off the back porch and went out to my greenhouse and put it in my 300 gallon fish tank and got it soaking wet. The electricity had just gone out so we had no water to use. I went out and started whacking the fire with my wet coat. I was making a pretty good dent in it, and was pretty sure I could save the house though I was most worried about my 1949 Ford pickup. I saw Charles Ingles do it on an episode of “Little House on the Praire”, and he saved everything. The fire trucks started showing up so I didn’t have to save the house by myself. Wasn’t to long before the firefighters and trucks had it all out. There were trucks from Jefferson, Marion, Stayton, Scio, Crabtree, Tolbot and Aumsville. I always like a little excitement and this was a great addition to an otherwise boring day. As I was whacking on the fire with my wet coat I was thinking, now if the wind picks up and I can’t keep it back from the house and it and everything in it burns, what will be our next step? I was sort of creating a plan of action for ourselves in my head while I whacked away. I was quite impressed with the clarity and the calmness of my thinking, and I recognized that emergencies tend to kick your brains into high gear. Now everything is back to normal and I am sitting in my chair yawning feeling quit bored.

My son-in-law Thomas who is from Liberia became an official flag waving citizen of the United States today. He and Sherri drove up to Portland and he took a test which he passed because he has been studying for it for about 5 months, and then they had a swearing in event and now he is an American. Whoooeeeee.  He was nervous before the test but I knew that it would be a piece of cake for him as much as he has studied for it. Most of you know that he had a farming accident two years ago and broke his neck and now he is paralyzed and in a wheel chair. That is a major trial in life for sure, but it doesn’t have to be the end of dreams and goals, just changes course a bit. He has checked that goal off of the list and now he moves on to the next one of getting a good education and figuring out how to use it in meaningful ministry. So many people get discouraged because of difficult events that happen to them and quit dreaming and go into a “coast mode” of living life. That is when someone has the predominate attitude of “I won’t dream or set goals because something might happen to block them from happening so it is safer to just let life come to you”. That is a boring way to live life even if it is “safe”. It is also a guarantee that there will be no significant fruit come from that life lived I can’t think of anything worse then getting to the end of our life and there be nothing to show for it.

It was so hot today and it is supposed to be way hotter tomorrow!! I suppose it has been but I can’t remember a summer where it has been this hot for this long. I suppose this is what is called global warming. Politicians and others who are supposed to know the reasons and answers to such things say that it is man caused. When I was a kid we burned car tires, and now look what has happened!! I was curious about this today as I was cooking in the heat so tonight I got out my handy dandy Bible program that is on my IPad and typed in words like “hot”, “warm”, “scorched” etc and found dozens of verses like Deuteronomy 28:22 that said in part “the Lord will smite you….with fiery heat”.  Huh, could it be possible that global warming is God caused. Why would He do such a thing? Many of the passages had statements like, ” I will smite them because they have forgotten me”, ” because they have sinned against me”, “Because they have turned from following me”. And then there was those passages that contained these sad words, “but they refused to repent of their sins”, ” they continued to turn from God”. I wonder if this is just a one year thing and next year will be rainy and cool all summer or if it will be even hotter next summer. If it is indeed God caused one thing for sure is that we aren’t going to fix it except by turning back to God and obeying Him, but that is not likely to happen. I wonder if it is hotter next year if very many will entertain the thought that it could be God caused, and that there is a reason. Just wondering. I guess I will just have to wait and see what happens.

on the wall right next to my recliner is a big clock and all around it are pictures of our eight kids their spouses and our grandkids, 37 in all. Each evening as I sit here praying I start with those on the wall, praying for each one by name that God will bless, protect, guide, and use for His glory. I also include Patty and my Mom in this super important group. I then go to my prayer journal and pray for about a quarter of those associated with JBC, regular attenders, recent visitors, staff, key leaders as well as the JBC player letter. I make it to everyone each week. I also pray for the missionaries that we support.  Then I read through the recent entries in Facebook praying for many as I read about their lives, struggles, and trials. It seems like the more I pray that the stronger my faith grows that I am making a huge difference as I intercede for people that God will work powerfully in their lives, and the stronger my faith grows so does the power of my prayers with God. I  am a goal setter,a to do list maker, a keep track of everything kind of person who loves to work hard and be doing something most of the time so sitting in my recliner for hours at a time barely moving interceding for people was a huge struggle for me for years even when I was doing seminars on prayer. But now I don’t have the energy I used to have, I ache a lot, sitting down and resting is so nice. As we live life we go through stages and chapters. I am enjoying this chapter I am in now, and I feel more powerful than I have ever felt in my life knowing without a doubt that God hears my prayers and answers them.

I was doing some building in our backyard for our grandkids today. In fact we had about 6 of them here and they were helping me with the promise of a big payday for each of them. They don’t know anything about minimum wage so they are pretty excited about a couple of bucks each. We were putting up treated 2×6 borders with big wood chips and 3/4 inch gravel inside of the borders as play areas. It turned out very nice if I do say so myself. While I was screwing a screw through the treated 2×6 boards into long wooden stakes that I had driven into the ground the cordless drill I was using slipped off the head of the screw and the bit that I was using went through my thumb. Whoooooeeeeee that hurt like the dickens. I normally would have said crap with great emphasis, but being aware of all the grandkids around I didn’t say anything. I pulled the bit out of my thumb and wrapped it with the tail of my t-shirt that I was wearing and yelled at Patty to come help me. She poured hydrogen peroxide on it on the top of my thumb and the foam came out the bottom. She put a bunch of band aids on it, told me how tough I was and sent me back out to finish the project. We did get it done and it looks super nice. The grandkids will love it, and there is some of my blood on the boards. It is interesting to me how powerful the desire to be a good model to my grandkids is and how effective that desire is to give me motivation and strength to be super good around them. I want my life to be a powerful influencer on people around me all day long, every day so that they will want to follow Jesus.

God is omnipresent, He is everywhere, considering the size of the universe God is very big. In light of that, there is a Bible verse that I have memorized and I meditate on it several times each day, it is Matthew 10:28-29 where Jesus says, “are not two sparrows sold for a cent and yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Heavenly Father. Also the very hairs of your head are all numbered by God. So don’t worry about things in life, you are worth much more to God than many sparrows”. God knows everything, is every place, and yet he knows me in great detail and I am worth much to Him, very much. I want to believe that to the core of my soul, I want to understand it completely, and I want to live and think always in light of the truth in it. Occasionally I begin to fret a bit about things I can’t control, when I do I choose to pull this verse out of my memory and think deeply about it over and over until it controls my thinking totally and then I have great peace.