A lot of men don’t have any close friends. The Bible makes having friends very important. Having friends, close friends is like getting married in that when I wanted to get married, I was on the hunt; I was looking for a godly wife who would be a fun companion and someone who would bring great joy into my life. So I looked and I dated and once I had made up my mind I put her in my sights and courted her.

The first thing a guy has to do to have friends is to recognize how important good friends are. If the value of friends is foggy, they won’t exert the effort required to have friends. Then take the first step, take the initiative, and pursue a close relationship with someone that has character, encourages you, that you encourage, that is transparent, and has a close friendship with Jesus.

To maintain friendships the basic principles of our Christian faith must be practiced faithfully;

1. Forgive quickly. A proneness toward a judgmental attitude, bitterness, anger, resentment, and hurt feelings makes maintaining a friendship almost impossible. Nobody owes you anything, you have to earn it.

2. Be a servant. A real friend looks for opportunities to meet a need in the life of his friends. He sees them easily, acts quickly and doesn’t expect to be rewarded.

3. Be gracious and accepting of differences. Everybody has opinions about everything under the sun, and very few people have the same opinions about anything. Discussions and conversations about life, principles, events, values, and opinions are enjoyable, but it is easy to cross the line to becoming argumentative, and then friendships can be lost quickly. The question to ask ourselves is, “ what is more important to me, being right or having friends,” rarely can you have them both.

There are nine more on my list of basic principles on healthy relationships, but you can probably figure them out. Just ask the question, “how do I like to be treated? and then treat others that way. They are all in the Bible.,

Matthew 6:1 beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise, you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.

Can you imagine standing before Jesus at the Judgment seat and He is looking in His book about your life, and He says, “Oh that is a good work deserving a nice reward! Oops there is a note by it that says you already got your reward from the people you were trying to impress, to bad.” Then he says it again and again and again and again. . . Then Jesus gets to the end of the book on your life, and your hands are empty; too bad, so sad. You can get your rewards now or you can get them in heaven from Jesus. The big difference is that rewards that we get in this life don’t last long but the rewards we get from Jesus in heaven last for eternity.

It is a good idea to think about what motivates us. We were created by God with glory and majesty, His glory and majesty, but we lost it the first time we sinned. The result is that we all have a huge hole inside of us and we crave glory. We can attempt to fill it with praise from people or wait until we stand before Jesus and have Him give us glory and honor for what we have done for Him with our life. We are all pulled very hard by our flesh to be people pleasers because of our hunger for the glory we lost, and we have to constantly work on our motives and guard our hearts.

Psalms 57:2-3 I will cry to God Most High,
To God who accomplishes all things for me.
He will send from heaven and save me;
He reproaches him who tramples upon me.

My adversary in life is the devil and his demons. Their goal is to get me to sin, to dishonor God by the way I talk, to love the world, to keep from making a difference in the world, and to try and take all my joy and peace out of my life. I can cry to God most high, my heavenly father, my creator, my savior and He will protect me and drive the devil and his dogs away.

When I was in the sixth grade there was a kid named Fred Zea. He must have flunked several grades because he was a great big kid and he was a bully. This was in about 1960 when we took our lunch to school in a brown paper bag or a lunch box with the Lone Ranger on the outside. Fred discovered that I brought sandwiches in my lunch made by my Mom that was homemade bread with sliced roast beef, so he took my sandwiches and sometimes took my whole lunch. I told my Mom what he was doing and she said, “well we will fix him.” I was excited to see what form the vengeance my Mom had in mind would take. The next morning she gave me two lunch bags and one of them had Fred’s name on it. I asked her what she was doing, and she said, “The Bible says to feed your enemies and to do good to them.” She instructed me to give the extra lunch to Fred and not to do it with a bad attitude. Good grief, that seemed impossible! But I did what I was instructed to do, and Fred became my protector. Nobody in the entire Junior High building messed with me or talked trash to me, or Fred would beat them up. It was nice not to worry about anybody trying to steal my marbles or my comic books, good ole Fred.

We all make plans for the day, for the week, some of us make plans for the month and even the year. When something comes up unexpectantly and messes with those plans, especially big ones and important ones, we get frustrated and sometimes even angry or in more serious set backs depressed. Learning to cope with those nasty little inconveniences, to possibly solve the problem so that they go away, or make a mid-flight adjustment, so we continue with the plans with some differences, is a significant part of growing in character and wisdom. Thinking back on those events in our life, especially the recent ones is a very good way to practice self-evaluation on our character level and growth. Doing that self-evaluation with paper and pencil is much more accurate than wondering around in our memory trying to figure it out.

My grandson and I are restoring a 1969 mustang, and when we finish it, it will be his car. I have had an enjoyable time working on it with him. We rebuilt the engine in it, which is a 250 ci inline six-cylinder engine. I built an engine stand, and we put it on it with a radiator and working gauges. We let it run for quite a few hours with break-in oil. I had a stainless steel corrugated hose that fits onto the exhaust pipe; I ran the end of the flexible pipe outside so we wouldn’t die from an overdose of carbon monoxide. The engine ran great and sounded super good. About six months ago we put it into the car. I have been working on the electrical in the car and was down to just needing to finish the gauges on the dash. I got everything to work good except the oil pressure gauge. I changed gauges, I wired it different, I called the company that I bought the gauges from to make sure I wired it right. Nothing seemed to work and I was getting super frustrated. I assumed the oil pump in the engine was pumping oil because it had been before. But I thought, maybe, for some reason, that oil pump isn’t working. I put a fitting in the hole in the side of the engine block where the sending unit was screwed in and fastened a four-foot length of clear, plastic hose on the fitting. I started the engine and no oil was coming out the hose, zero. I shut the engine off quick and was grateful that in all my starting of the engine to test the oil pressure gauge that I had never let it run more than a couple of seconds.

So, my oil pump is not working. So now the main question is why? I am assuming that while putting the engine into the car something happened. I don’t what or what exactly is broken. Thursday I will have time and I will figure it out. I have worked out my plan of attack in my head and I know what I am going to do and how I will figure out the problem. I even have a new oil pump that I bought for the car by accident because I had forgotten that I had already bought one.

So, how did I do with this set back. These kinds of situations are the hardest to deal with because it is usually because of some stupid, idiotic decision that I made, and that is tough to take with all the heckling that I will get from guys in the church.

So, I want to grow in this situation. How do I do that? I will Write out in detail what I did and what I am going to do about it. I will write about my reactions at the most difficult times and evaluate my level of maturity and make a commitment to do better next time

When you have a clear understanding of God’s desire for you to be holy like He is, and at the same time you faithfully practice the basic discipline of self-examination and confession of your sin, you will arrive at a place in your life where you have a sense of urgency about growing and at the same time you will be relaxed and have a freedom from the fear of messing up which results in a great sense of peace and joy. It is a nice place to be in your thinking and attitude as you live life with purpose and drive. A person who lives life in the world that we are now in, in the midst of turmoil and uncertainty with great joy, peace, and security is rare, but as Christians it ought be normal. It is that confident living mixed with graciousness and humility, in the midst of storms that attracts people to our faith. God gives us strength and He forgives us our sins, and He plans and directs our steps, but we must choose everyday to pick up our cross and follow Him. It is the life Jesus invites us to live when He says, “take My yoke upon you.” A yoke is hard work, but then He says, “my yoke is easy.” The Christian life is a great paradox between easy and hard, between sacrifice and reward, between giving and receiving, and between dying to self and living for Christ. It begins with the cross, with the dying to self, with the huge effort, and then it moves to victory, power, and much fruit and glory.

Psalms 51:1-2 Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; According to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

One of the significant blessings of being a Christian, being a child of God, and being in His family is the gift of being forgiven. We are forgiven legally of all of our sins, past sins, and present sins when we first trusted Christ as our savior, and as a result, our sins were paid for by Jesus , so we are legally God’s child and headed for heaven. This is a one-time deal. But there is also the relational sins that we commit probably daily. These sins need to be forgiven by God on an on going basis. It is like my marriage. When I say or do things that hurt Patty our relationship is damaged, but if I go back and figure out what I did, and confess it to her, asking her to forgive me, she does, and our relationship is restored. I can also confess my sins to God, and he will forgive me, and I will have a good relationship with Him. I examine my life for sin and confess them every night. I want to keep short accounts with God. Self-examination and confession of our sins regularly keeps our conscience tender and our relationship with God strong. It is a discipline because we don’t like to do this,we would rather just ignore our sins and hope that it is no big deal. That is a bad idea.

Proverbs 7:4 Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,”
And call understanding your intimate friend;

Part of my daily Bible reading plan is to read one chapter in Proverbs. Each day I read the chapter that corresponds to the day, and today is the 7th so I read chapter seven. There are 31 chapters in Proverbs so I get through it each month. Sometimes for some reason a verse in the chapter I am reading for the day jumps off the page at me, and I am prompted to think about it for a little while, and make personal application of it to my life.

The 7th chapter of Proverbs is all about moral purity, resisting temptation, and making wise choices in life. The key to staying out of trouble and not messing up your whole life is wisdom. One of the definitions of wisdom that I use is, “wisdom is knowing what kind of seed you are planting and knowing what kind of crop you will harvest from that seed if you go ahead and plant it.

Galatians 6:7 Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.

Proverbs is a book that explains the consequences of stupid choices.

Proverbs 7:21-23
With her many persuasions she entices him;
With her flattering lips she seduces him.
Suddenly he follows her
As an ox goes to the slaughter,
Until an arrow pierces through his liver;
So he does not know that it will cost him his life.

The point of Proverbs 7:4 is if you want to be a wise person who makes wise choices and is blessed because of having wisdom you have to seek it diligently. That is the theme of all of proverbs, find wisdom and you will be blessed by God, but you have to seek it diligently.

Psalms 37:7 Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him;
Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way,
Because of the man who carries out wicked schemes.

I am a bit on the driven side, usually in a hurry to get everything on my todo list done, and I often get tense on the inside when things aren’t going as planned. Especially if the things going wrong are caused by people. I growl under my breath and mutter words that are just words with very little meaning, usually just grunts. I rarely ever say anything or show frustration, successfully maintaining my poker face. So I have made it a goal this year to faithfully practice the above verse, “to rest in the Lord.” Another word that can be used is “relax in the Lord.” I wrote my goal this way, “I will work hard and faithfully pursue my goals, dreams, and responsibilities, but in situations where things get out of sync and I have little immediate influence or control I will choose to relax and trust the Lord.” I will accomplish this by meditating on this verse, going over and over it in my mind, praying God’s blessing on any person I am frustrated with, and mentally reviewing a bunch of good things that have happened lately, thanking and praising the Lord for them. No sense in getting uptight about a few things when their are many things to rejoice over.

I anticipate that my new relaxed lifestyle will result in growing back some of my hair, losing some weight, and catching more fish. One can always hope!

What makes you grumpy? I have been grumpy most of the day. I haven’t been around many people for very long so I don’t think I have acted grumpy, I just have felt grumpy, not happy, not much joy, sorta like when you are sick, you know, you don’t care about anything, you don’t much want to do anything either. I am not sick and nothing bad has happened so why am I feeling this way? I know what it is; it is this stupid diet that I am on; this would make anybody grumpy. It is amazing how food makes me feel so good, not just any food, but food that has a lot of calories in it. Not much feels as good as a really big bowl of ice cream with lots of chocolate sauce, whipping cream, nuts sprinkled all over the top and a dozen maraschino cherries to top it off. Wow, I am feeling better just thinking about it.

There is a short phrase in the Bible that is stated half a dozen times,“ the pleasures of sin.” And in 2 Timothy 3:4 it says, “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,” that verse makes this struggle to be free from the addiction to pleasure very important in my walk with God.

So I am thinking that this stupid diet is not only to help me lose some ugly fat, but it is also helping me to be less addicted to pleasure. Proverbs says that a man who is a lover of pleasure will come to ruin! Yikes, I certainly don’t want to come to ruin.

Which brings me to the second point of this blog, one which you have heard from me one million times, but it is always worth repeating, “I don’t have to act the way I feel!” I am feeling grumpy because I am not feeding my pleasures, but I can still act happy, I can still take my thoughts captive and think happy, and I can still treat people happy. You know what? When I act happy despite feeling grumpy when I choose to think happy, and when I work at building up the people around me to make them feel happy, pretty soon grumpy is gone, and happy is here; that is better than a bowl of ice cream.

Almost every day will have a problem, a trial, or a conflict of some sort, and many days will have a bunch of them. None of us likes problems because they are always painful. When they come we try to figure out a solution and we also try to understand the cause. What or who caused this situation that is messing up or semi messing up my life. None of us get very old before our ability to figure out the cause of our problems and trials is mostly gone. And once we have lost the ability to figure out the cause we won’t be able to come up with a solution that works either.

Our strong desire to protect ourselves and to build our own self-worth blocks our ability to own very much of the responsibility for the cause of our problem. If we do take some of the blame we will usually justify or excuse what we did or said. But we easily blame others, giving them full credit for our difficult situations. This practice of self-deception grows stronger and more automatic as we continue doing it with no attempt at self-discovery and humility. This has been the usual way of dealing with trials, relational problems, and failures since Adam and Eve.

Wisdom is the ability to solve problems, but most people stay fools because of their self-deception that they are in.

What is needed is an honest, humble, and earnest pursuit of self-awareness. As we work at being honest with ourselves and owning and confessing our sins we will gradually escape the jail of self-deception, and then we can really grow.