Yesterday I said that the problem with pride is that we can have it and not be aware of it, a blind spot. Like high blood pressure, you think you are fine until you get it checked and you find out that it is in the danger area. I fantasized a bit about a device that would measure our pride level and we could use such a device to check all preachers, teachers, and singers before they taught or sang to make sure God would bless them. Wouldn’t it be embarrassing if, right before I was scheduled to preach, my pride level was checked, and it was way too high , so someone else had to take my place? As they began, they announced that I wouldn’t preach because my pride registered 160/100. Twenty-four years ago, I weighed 247 lbs, and after much nagginge from Patty, I went to the doctor and had a checkup; my blood pressure was high, as well as my blood sugar and cholesterol. The doctor wanted to put me on some medication but I suggested that I try exercise and weight loss first. I started running that very night, ran the Hood to Coast relay with a team from the church four months later, and a couple of months later I ran my first of twelve marathons which I did over the next 15 years. It didn’t take long before I had lost 40 lbs and my blood pressure was down to 110/70.

So if such a pride measuring device really existed and I really did have a very high measurement what would I do to bring it down so that I could preach again? I don’t think running and dieting would help much, but I should have some plans. Here is my plan for pursuing the character trait of humility.

1. I will read the Bible daily with a schedule plan, pondering what I read. Deuteronomy 17:18-20 “Now it shall come about when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself a copy of this law on a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priests. It shall be with him and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, by carefully observing all the words of this law and these statutes, that his heart may not be lifted up above his countrymen.

2. Psalms 119:11 “Your word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against You.” I will identify Bible verses that speak directly to pride and humility and memorize them and then meditate on them daily so that the power of God’s Word will work on my heart from the inside out, such as Philippians 2:3-8 and 1 Peter 5:5-6

3. I will journal three times a week minimum and write about events during the week where I got my feelings hurt by someone and found myself thinking about it over and over or was offended to the point that I verbally responded negatively. I will write about the situation examining my own life and motives and confessing to God all sin of pride that I uncover.

4. I will worship and praise God sincerely at weekend worship services, and I will sing as loud as I can. I will spend at least 15 minutes with God in prayer every day, and I will spend much of that time thanking and praising God for all the blessings He has brought into my life.

5. I will write at least one note each week to someone thanking them for how they helped or blessed me that week.

6. Every morning I will pray a prayer of commitment to the Lord declaring Him King of my life, and that I will follow and obey Him that day. I will make several specific commitments to Him, and one of them will be that I will diligently pursue humility as a character trait and ask for His power to succeed.

7. Whenever I become aware of someone being upset at me for anything, I will take the initiative and seek peace and reconciliation.

Psalms 10:17 O Lord, You have heard the desire of the humble;
You will strengthen their heart, You will incline Your ear

Psalms 25:9 He leads the humble in justice,and He teaches the humble His way.

Proverbs 11:2 When pride comes, then comes dishonor,
But with the humble is wisdom.

Isaiah 66:2 But to this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word.

James 4:6 God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

Micah 6:8 what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Matthew 23:12 Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.

Humility as a character trait is a big deal to God, and it also is a character trait that we value greatly in other people in our life; we don’t like spending time with the proud and arrogant; they push our buttons.

Pride is a very difficult fault to see in ourselves. There are a lot of people who are on God’s bench, not in the game, not doing anything with their life that matters because of pride. You can want to do something significant with your life, but if God doesn’t give you something to do, you will just spin your wheels

We all need to pursue humility with great diligence. The admonition is to be humble like Jesus was. That seems impossible, but it must not be if it is clearly stated in the Word, but it certainly won’t be easy.

Philippians 2:3-5 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves. . .Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus,

Pride in us is like high blood pressure, you can walk around with high blood pressure and not know it until you get it checked. I got mine checked the other day as part of a doctor visit and it was 130/80 and it has been 110/ 70 for year’s. Not super bad I guess, but an added incentive to lose weight. Now what I would like is a device that could measure our pride level. We could make it available for anybody who wanted to check it in the foyer. We could make it mandatory for all preachers, teachers, singers and leaders to make sure that motive was pure. Yikes, that would be embarrassing if I had to cancel a sermon and hand off the responsibility to someone else. “Why isn’t Pastor Dee preaching at the Wednesday night sermon?” “Oh, he didn’t pass the Pride check, maybe next week!”

Imagine that you have a power, a supernatural ability, to influence people all around you. You exercise this power by looking at people. There comes out of your eyes this light that when it lands on other people, especially their eyes, they become very open to the gospel. If they are mean, they become nice; if they are resistant, they become open; if they are obnoxious, they become super gracious. The strength of this power changes constantly and it is easy for you to see the change because the light gets bright or dull, sometimes almost going away. It doesn’t take very long for you to notice what causes the light to become very, very bright and for it almost to disappear. And because you want to be used by God to influence people to become Christ followers you conscientiously work hard at doing those things that makes your gift super bright, and avoiding the behavior that causes your light to grow dull.

In the New Testament this power from God to influence the people around us is called authority.

Matthew 7:28-29 the crowds were amazed at His teaching; for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.

Matthew 9:8 But when the crowds saw this, they were awestruck, and glorified God, who had given such authority to men.

Matthew 10:1 Jesus summoned His twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every kind of disease and every kind of sickness.

John 19:10-11 So Pilate said to Him, “You do not speak to me? Do You not know that I have authority to release You, and I have authority to crucify You?” Jesus answered, “You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above;

If you could see this authority, this power from God grow strong or weak, at the moment of certain behavior, you would be very motivated to practice that behavior. I can tell you what that behavior is because the Bible tells us clearly what it is.

God states the first clearly and emphatically, this behavior will make or break you as a successful servant of God. It is humility in relationship to other people and in our relationship to God.

James 4:10 Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.

Mark 10:43-44 but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant; and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be slave of all.

1 Peter 5:5-6 all of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time,

The world teaches that the key to becoming a person of influence is to be assertive, strong to the point of being overbearing

There are two arenas of leadership in the world, those leaders who have a position and title of leadership like the boss you work for, teachers, police, and politicians, and those who do not have the position or title but are leaders because of the power of their influence on the people around them. In the church, it is the same, the official leaders are the Pastors, Elders, teachers, and those in charge of particular ministries. But there are also those who have great influence on the culture in a church and the direction it is going who have no title or position. All of us should strive to be a positive influence on at least part of the people we spend time with. Those who have the most influence in any group of people like a family, a church, or at work have common characteristics that can be observed and learned.

These characteristics are ones that I have learned about from others who have them and from reading the Bible and many other books on leadership written by smart people, and I have also recognized the power and value of these characteristics as a Pastor experiencing and witnessing the impact of highly influential people at Jefferson Baptist Church over the years who have these characteristics.

I said that I have learned about these characteristics, not that I have learned to practice them, to live them, they have not yet become strong character traits in me, though I am growing and making progress as I press forward in my quest to become a strong, positive influencer of people, a real leader.

I teach this information in my “Leadership Classes,” at JBC so I thought I might also write about it in my blog.

The most important characteristic of strong leaders is not really a character trait as it is an awareness of the power of influence, an accurate assessment of our own ability to influence, and a super strong and relentless pursuit of becoming more and more a person of influence.

Last night we held our Halloween outreach event called “Trunk or Treat” and it turned out great. We had about 50 vehicles in our far parking lot along with canopy tents behind every car because of the rain, and most of the cars or pickups were decorated and all had a ton of candy. Parents brought their kids down to JBC and they walked down the rows of cars saying “trick or treat,” collecting candy from each “trunk.”We also had free hot dogs and hot chocolate in the gym, giving away 700 hot dogs. I had my pickup and my canopy set up and I gave away a lot of candy, there was a huge crowd of people. This ministry provides a nice alternative for parents who can bring their kids to our place instead of the street and have a big gym with warm food and a bouncy house to play on. As each kid reached in my cooler and got a handful of candy I would pray for them, their parents and family asking God to work in their life and to draw them to Himself, and that being there on our parking lot, and in our gym would plant seeds in their heart and that at a later date those seeds would sprout and they would come to a regular church service and would become part of our church family and part of God’s family.

There are so many different tools available to us as we work to reach the lost. Many different people have used their strong desire to save the lost to stir their creative minds to think of ways and methods and simple ways to influence lost people to trust Christ. I was sitting in my lawn chair last night looking at all the kids that were everywhere around me and I thought, “I wonder who invented this simple spinoff of the old traditional “trick or treat”, and what prompted it.

It was a lot of fun seeing all those kids and imagining the potential that was walking by me of future disciples of Jesus.

The lesson that I taught in “Leadership Class” yesterday was on accountability. One of the points in the lesson was that we can accomplish just about anything if we get enough help from others. Most of that help being in the way of encouragement, accountability, and counsel. We all, as Christians, recite Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me,” but one of the principles of the class yesterday was that God strengthens us through other people, He doesn’t just pour it directly into us, it would be nice if He did, then I wouldn’t need you. We, as believers have the Holy Spirit indwelling us, but He works in us when we are in interdependent relationships. The Power of the Holy Spirit was not given to us to encourage a self-sufficient, independent attitude. Most people don’t seek help from others because of pride, “I can do it by myself,” and because we want to avoid any feelings of shame that would come from the failure to accomplish our goals. We tend to keep our failures a secret, and pretend we are doing alright.

The goal that I struggle with the most is my weight loss goal and my exercise goal. So I am going to post at the end of each day’s blog my weight, how much I rode my stationary bike, how much I ran/walked on the treadmill, and how much weight lifting I did.

My Parkinson’s has taken a turn for the worse, and I am pretty sure it is because of my diet, extra weight, and apathy in my exercising. It is all an issue of self-discipline. I know all the principles of growing in the character trait of self-discipline, I teach them all the time. One of the principles is that “self-discipline” is not really “self,” it is “others,” I get God’s strength from others; I can’t just crank it up in myself, by myself; God did not create us to be successful on our own, by ourselves for very long.

So, here we go!

Weight – 227 lbs, bike – 45 minutes, treadmill – 0, weight lifting – 0.

These two pictures represent good memories with my two sons, Sam and Seth. The first is at the end of a hunting trip on the North slope in Alaska. The second one was an Olympic distance triathlon at Sun River that we participated in. I remember it very well because when the boys finished they turned around, and ran back to where I was and finished the race with me.

Good memories are very encouraging and on days that I am feeling like a loser I will pull these two pictures out and remember the great sense of victory that I felt

One of the things that I believe to be true is that the commandment given repeatedly in the Old Testament and in the New Testament to “rejoice always,” has significant rewards and blessings in our life. A major one of those blessings is good health. Nobody has perfect nealth, but some are certainly more energetic and less sick than many others. One of the factors in the level of our health is the amount of positive rejoicing and praising we do as opposed to complaining.

Proverbs 17:22 A joyful heart is good medicine,

We all tend towards fretting and worrying about events coming in the future. The Bible says that we should pray about anything that makes us anxious and God will reward us with a peace that is impossible to understand.

Living our life every day free of anxiety is possible. Living our life free of worry is not only possible but commanded by God in the Bible.

If you have stress, worry, and anxiety popping into your thinking at night or during the day you need to make a goal to conquer it. The cool thing is that growing and becoming a relatively stress free person is very possible for anybody who is willing to pursue it.

There were several hundred people who wished me happy birthday on Facebook, with emails, text messages, and birthday cards. As I looked at all the different names I recognized a number of people who were part of my past a long time ago. It was good to see their names and to see their faces on Facebook. If I had time it would be nice to call every one who took the time to write a note to me and chat with them for a few minutes and to get caught up on the news in their lives. One of the sad things in life is how quickly close friends can become almost totally forgotten in a fairly short amount of time after they move away.

Around me there are invisible circular lines, each farther out, like a target, and I am at the bulls eye. Each of the lines represents a relationship level or closeness to me. There are people at each level, and some are moving closer to me and some moving away. At the closest level would be Patty, kids, and grandkids, followed closely by good friends and people at JBC. Those in the inner circle of my life have great influence on my character growth and accomplishments in life.

Jesus had that those lines around Him as well, one person who seemed to be closer to Him than anybody else on the earth, was called “the disciple that He loved,” John. And then came Peter and James, then the rest of the disciples, who He declared were His friends in John 15. Jesus was obviously very close to Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, and of course His mother. When Jesus rose from the dead He made a point to see over 500 different people who knew Him.

When we get to heaven there will be those same circles of relationship around Jesus. Someone will sit at His right and left hand. There will be those described in Revelation 3 who will sit on His throne with Him. Part of the rewards that we will receive at the “Judgment Seat of Christ” will be our proximity to Jesus. The closer we are to Him in this life, the closer we will be to Him in eternity.

The key to our relationship to Jesus in this life is our Bible reading, prayer life, and worship. I love Him therefore I will seek Him and draw near to Him. These verses are the motto of my life.

Philippians 3:7-8 But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ,

This is a picture of all our kids, spouses, and grandkids, minus one. Praise our newest family member who Sherri and Thomas just brought home from Liberia as their adopted daughter will be in the next all family picture, whenever that is again. There are 46 people in our family now and they all love one another.

Not all, but a bunch of our kids came and visited us, and it was so much fun. It reminded me of my favorite verses in the Bible. Psalms 127:3-5 Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, The fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one’s youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them;