Played golf today for the first time in 3 or 4 years. Played with 3 JBC staff, Pastor Mike, Seth and Jeff. Weather was great and the fellowship was sweet. I only lost 7 balls. Good thing I bought used golf balls for .50 cents each. I discovered that the harder I tried the worse I did. When we first started I was relaxed and enjoying the day and I actually did pretty good and then I started trying to do good and then I started hitting balls into the tall grass. As I live my life as a Christian I need to be faithful, diligent and self controlled, but there is a critical balance that I need to learn to walk in, between my discipline and my trusting in and abiding in Christ. It easy to get unbalanced. One side is self-righteous trying harder mode that results in frustration and weariness, and the other extreme is being lazy, undisciplined, and foolish in choices and expect that God is going to bail us out in the name of “trusting Jesus”. I pray every morning and ask God for the wisdom to live my life as a disciple of Jesus who is abiding in Him, and being faithful to the basic disciplines of the Christian life. The key for me is to ask for wisdom and strength from Him all day long, and then to work hard.

The apostle Paul said that in this body we groan. I am groaning tonight. This old body is hurting. But he also said “we don’t loose heart, we don’t give up, we don’t quit. I will run the race with endurance that is set before me. The priviledge of serving Jesus is so great that I will rejoice and thank him that I get to be a player in the game, and I am not on the bench, when I put my head on my pillow tonight I will say, “please come tonight Lord Jesus” but if you don’t please let me do more for you tomorrow than I did today

Wow,What a nice day! Warm and sunshine, whoooeeee I could take this every day. But we all know that is going to happen. There are going to be the rainy days, the incredably foggy days, the snow days, and the cold days. It is nice that we can read forecasts that are semi accurate and have some idea of what the day be like tomorrow. That is life, good days and bad days, happy days and sad days, and we can’t control them or predict them, they just come without rhyme nor reason. But the good news for me is that I am going to heaven and then it will be just good days, very good days, incomprehensible good days. I can’t wait. I think about heaven all the time, I have my mind set on the things above rather than the things of this world. I will work hard with the days left to me to grow as much as I can grow and to serve as much as I can serve.

Went up to OHSU today for some tests. My bladder has quit working. Kind of annoying for sure, but I work hard at not fussing about the inconvience. The uroligist at OHSU is going to see if he can fix me. He put a camera inside my bladder, I won’t tell you how he got it there, and then we looked at the inside of my badder on a big screen TV. We took a little tour around the inside of it. Kind of weird to be looking at your insides on a big screen while laying on a bed. I go back in a month for some more tests, yeh, I can hardly wait😄 reminds me of one of my memory verses I am working on, 2 Corinthians 5:1-2, “For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down; we have a new body from God, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this body we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven.” I will say a hardy Amen to that verse!!

We can choose what we think about just as we can choose what we talk about. The Bible calls that choosing “mind set”. One of the admonitions in the Bible is to choose to set our mind on the things above instead of the things of this earth. I have been exercising great self discipline lately to spend a lot of time doing that, thinking about heaven. I have found that as I think actively about heaven, what it will look like, feel like, the joy, the freedom from all evil and bad, the stunning beauty, the presence of God that I have become increasingly more positive and happy and I have myself realizing that not much really matters that much in light of going to heaven. Anything that happens in life is temporary and soon will be over and then I will be in heaven forever. I have also become more and more grateful for my salvation knowing that I did nothing to earn my position in heaven forever, it was given to me as a gift because of my faith as a result of what Jesus sacrificed on the cross. I am incomprehensibly blessed. I will spend the remaining years of my life communicating to others about this amazing gift of heaven forever received by faith.

I got to speak in a class at Corban University today. There were 12 students all who were planning on going into full time ministry, most of them are planning on being pastors. As I was talking to them about the challenges of being a pastor I got to thinking while I was talking, about how young these kids were. Once upon a time I was that age and was so full of dreams and ideas about how everything ought to be done. I talked for 45 minutes and offered to put them in my prayer journal and pray for them faithfully once each week as long as they would regularly send me info on how they were doing in school and in pursuit of their goal of being in ministry. I have grown so much in my confidence that I make a huge difference in the lives of people by praying for them that I don’t hesitate to offer to pray for people, even people I don’t know and may never see again this side of heaven. “If you abide in Me, and My Words abide in you, ask whatever you desire and it will be given you”. I have so much power and authority and influence with God for people it would be a shame to be to busy not to spend much time in prayer.

I asked a friend if he would haul some gravel for me. He said, “I won’t get stuck, will I?”I said, “Oh no, the ground is all river rock. Well he got stuck. We kept putting gravel under his wheels and finally we got him unstuck. That little chore of getting his big dump truck unstuck is what you call an unplanned interruption to our plans. They happen at a fairly regular interval. One of the very real indicators of spiritual maturity is how we respond to these unplanned and annoying interruptions to our plans. Mature people know these interruptions are part of life. They understand and believe that God is in charge all the time. God is sovereign. God causes things to happen to us that will promote spiritual growth in us if we respond in trust. The requirement of God for these events to cause spiritual growth is that we would rejoice and not grumble. Grumbling is what everyone around us does so we will have to work hard to not let the world influence us. These unplanned interruptions can become an adventure and a challenge that needs solved if we handle them correctly or they can be major joy stealers if we let them. Every morning I say, “today there will be some inconviences and some of them will be major, I choose now before they happen to not let them control my life. I will be a winner today.

I have observed that I have a self control gas tank. In the morning when I get up it is full and my ability to exercise self control is relatively easy. As I go through the day exercising self control over what I say to people, my use of time, the speed at which I work, taking my thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ, controlling my eating, exercising, my gas tank goes empty and then in the evening as I sit in my chair I eat to much, I have thoughts of irritation as I think back on the day, I bark at my wife, I stay up to late doing research on my iPad about how to get rich raising fish, and then in the morning I confess to God my poor use of time and bad attitudes and then that evening I do it all over again. Sheesh. I think if someone came along in the evening and tried to sell me a new fishing rod I would buy it even with the dozen or so that I already own! I am making a goal and commitment to all of you that I will be in bed no later than 11 pm. That is when the empty gas tank of self control really starts to show itself. Ask me how I am doing. It is now 11:09. I am going to bed. Love you all. Dee

Today is the 12th and my taxes are supposed to be mailed in 3 days and I haven’t started yet. I have a goal to exercise 90 minutes each day. I didn’t exercise at all yesterday and I am sitting in my chair this evening telling myself I am going to get up and do it any minute now, but still I sit. I don’t think anything makes me more disgusted with myself than putting off unpleasant tasks when I know they need to get done. My desire is that I would be strong, that I would do what is right, what is responsible, what is important, and not allow my own flesh to control me. I have stretches where everything clicks and I am in a groove doing everything that I want in a timely way. But then for some reason I will get tired, discouraged, depressed and then I lapse into “nothingness”!Then I work at getting back into the groove, I finally get there and then I relapse again. I do know that the down times are way shorter than they used to be and the length of time between the relapses is getting longer. Change and growth is slow and gradual. I will persevere asking the Lord for His strength everyday, and I will press on to maturity.

In John chapter 10 it says that Jesus is the good shepherd, and that He cares for us and knows our name. I work at knowing the name of every person who has started attending JBC, but I often forget. In fact sometimes I forget that I have even talked to them at all. I don’t think I impress them much. Jesus knows my name and He knows me intimately.