I am going to take a couple month break from my blog. I am getting a bit burned out writing it and find myself constantly struggling with writer’s blank. In the past I have had way more stuff rolling around in my brain than I could write. I have enjoyed writing my blog very much, but of late it is becoming a bit of a drag. I look forward to getting my creative juices back, and writing some more.

I lost my cell phone yesterday. I think that is the first time in my life I have lost my phone. Patty loses hers every day, well, at least twice a week. I lecture her continuously, “Have a particular place or places you set it down, and don’t, under any circumstances, set it down any place else. If you travel, the first thing you do is establish that dedicated place for your phone; if you do that, you will never lose your phone.” She obviously has not followed my counsel. Well, yesterday I set my phone on the arm of my recliner, which is one of my dedicated places, but when Roscoe, my dog, jumped up on my lap, he knocked the phone off the arm of my chair without me noticing, and it went down and got caught between the arm and the cushion of my chair. I began backtracking every place I had been the previous couple of hours, checking where I typically put my phone. When I went into our room to check, there Patty had it in her hand, having guessed that it would be somewhere around the last place I used it, which was my chair. I said, “Thank you!” and she said, “You know, if you would put your phone in the same place every time, you wouldn’t lose it.” I can’t wait until the next time she loses hers!

Jesus told a story about a lady who lost a coin. She searches the whole house until she finally finds it, and she gets all excited, telling all her friends she has found her lost coin. There are lost people all around us, and Jesus expects that we will put in at least as much effort to reach them with the gospel as we put into finding a lost cell phone.

We live in a time when many people are declaring what is just and right, yet many of these opinions differ widely. As I hear and read many declarations about what is right, I can’t help but think of Proverbs 14:12: “There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” As I read and listen to different people, I have a basic rule that I follow: if the person who is expressing his view about life, government, energy, economics, taxes, drugs, and immigrants isn’t a follower of Jesus and devoted to His Word, I don’t believe him or put any stock in what he is saying. Many who claim to be followers of Jesus obviously don’t have a lot of wisdom and are influenced more by the world than the Bible, so I don’t value their message much either. The devil is very real and very powerful and has trapped many people into believing his lies. 2 Corinthians 11:3 “But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.” The sad thing is that when a person is led astray from following Jesus, they sincerely think they are right, but they are not. In my goals for this year, I have committed to reading 12 chapters a day in the Bible and to reviewing and meditating on 100 verses I have memorized each day. A key reason is that I want to have the wisdom of Christ, so I know what is right and what is wrong. Hebrews 5:13-14 “For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.” If you are not in the habit of reading the Bible daily, you are very susceptible to being deceived by the kingdom of darkness. That ought to make you nervous. I am not the source or the judge of what is right and wrong; God is.

Today we had our Jefferson Baptist Church half-marathon fun run/walk. We had almost 40 people, with about half walking and half running, and some doing both. The weather was terrific, and everybody seemed to have a good time. It started badly for me. The race started at our house at 9:00 am, so I got up at 6:00 am to get everything ready. I took a stiff wire with red flagging on it and drove to the halfway point of the 13.1 miles. The half-marathon was an out-and-back course. I got to the 6.55-mile spot, stopped my pickup truck, and tried to push the wire into the ground on the shoulder of the road, but it was too hard, so I went farther down into the ditch. I lost my balance and fell into the ditch full of muddy water. I got up and pushed the wire into the mud, with the flagging showing. But I couldn’t get back up the bank out of the ditch, so I crawled up on my hands and knees. But when I got back up on the road, I couldn’t get back up on my feet. So I crawled over to my pickup and used it to hang onto as I pulled myself up.  A car pulled up while I was on my hands and knees, and a woman asked me if I needed help as I pulled myself up. I thanked them and said, “I got it.” If I had thought faster, I should have said that I was praying. I drove back home, got everything else ready, and then had a cup of coffee. I walked the course with my daughter, Sherrie, and had a great time. We called Patty and had her pick us up at mile 12 because my right hip was giving me fits. I think I am going to go ahead and have it replaced this winter. My left hip, the one I had replaced this last May, worked great. Sherri and I averaged 18-minute miles, a scosh faster than 3 mph, so I felt good about that. When I got back to the house, I took a bunch of ibuprofen and sat in the hot tub for thirty minutes. For most of the walk, I thought about Hebrews 12:1 that says to run the race set before us with endurance. That race is the race of life, and I do, indeed, want to run it well and finish strong.

Give thanks is a commandment repeated many times in the Bible. God is everywhere, all around me. The Holy Spirit lives in me. God is controlling every circumstance around me to shape me and teach me to be like Jesus in character. I am a child of God, headed for eternity with Him. I want to cultivate an attitude of gratitude all the time, about everything, no matter the circumstances. My natural tendency is to see the bad and to react negatively to it, to be critical, grumble, and get irritated, upset, and angry. The negative, critical journey begins in my head, in my thoughts, then comes out in words to others, and finally results in disagreements that can grow into major conflicts, even with people I am very close to. I can take my negative thoughts captive and rejoice always about everything. Every morning, I pray a prayer of commitment, declaring Jesus as Lord of my life, and in that prayer, I make commitments about several things I will do in obedience to Jesus as my Lord. One of them is, “I will rejoice always and grumble about nothing.” I then ask God to give me the power to keep my commitments. It is a slow journey that I am winning little by little. The biggest battle now is the news, especially politics, and conversations that pop up throughout the day about various events and views. As soon as I have a negative thought or a critical word about anything I choose to set my mind on, “Rejoice always, thank You Lord for saving me, grumble and complain about nothing, God’s bondservant must not be argumentative, my ability to change things is not from complaining about them but in prayer about them, I trust You Jesus to use me however You choose to influence those around me, You will do that when I am obedient to You.” I have memorized that self-talk statement; it is 55 words long and has significant power to control my life and move me toward being a person with an attitude of gratitude, relaxed, at peace, and full of joy. Give it a try, it is free.

Today is a goof-off day. I get more of these than I used to, now that I am an old man at 77. I am memorizing Bible verses, writing notes to people, reviewing and thinking about my goals, reading some, listening to, and watching YouTube videos about fishing, building boats, and bicycling. I am going to take off and walk six miles for exercise in a few minutes. I am walking 13.1 miles next Saturday in our JBC half-marathon walk, and my goal is to finish in 3.5 hours. We will have t-shirts for 30 people, so walk with me, or more accurately, ahead of me. Most older people struggle with tiredness, stiffness, achy joints, and a lack of motivation. I do, for sure. Exercise is essential for us as people, and especially as we age. The only way I can motivate myself to exercise faithfully is to write specific goals and include as many other people as I can.

I am walking a half-marathon on Saturday with 30 different people. I am walking another half-marathon in February and one in April. In June, I am going to bicycle 1,500 miles. On July 11th, I am going to climb Mt Adams with a half-dozen other people. Each of those events will push me to train. It is not a guarantee that I will participate in each of those events, but my public goals increase the probability substantially. Most people wish they would exercise or do something challenging in their lives, but it never happens. What turns a “wish” into reality is writing down the wish on paper as a goal, reading it every day, and sharing it with a bunch of other people who will encourage you. It works, give it a try. Do the same with your Bible reading, prayer life, starting a ministry, praying with your spouse, or losing weight. If you write some goals for 2026, send them to me. I would love to read them.

Today we had our first Thanksgiving celebration. Next week, we will have our second when we drive to Idaho to celebrate Thanksgiving with our son, Seth, and his family. Today we had four of our eight kids and their kids, our grandkids, with us, 22 in all, counting Patty and me. We ate a lot of delicious food that everyone brought, we watched the Oregon Duck football game, some of us did anyway, we talked a lot and played games, and it was a great day. At this point in my life, these kinds of days are my favorites. I will be on a high for the next week, and it will be added to by our time with Seth and his family. For many years, when the kids were young and all home, they were our life; our life revolved around them. I miss those days a lot, and so many memories come flooding back on days like today. I will look at one of them while we are playing this dumb pantomime game, and I will clearly remember an event with them from years ago. It is enjoyable but also sad because it is gone. One of the most tragic things for me is thinking about all those years and activities and events that are gone from my memory. It is like they didn’t even happen. One of the blessings for me in thinking about heaven is that I will have a glorified body, a body like Jesus’, and part of that is a glorified brain, mind, and memory. I will remember everything, every tiny detail, and I will have a perfect understanding of all the events that confused me as I lived them. I expect that my gratitude to the Lord will explode as I see all the planning by him that went into my life, the details, the people, everything had a purpose, and I will see that clearly. 1 Corinthians 13:12 “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.”

Another good friend of mine died this week, Doug Sheets. He got an infection in a knee replacement he had, which led to other issues that his body couldn’t recover from. Doug was the worship leader at Jefferson Baptist Church for many years. I first met Doug at one of our early “Pastor’s Prayer Summits” at Cannon Beach Conference Center in the mid-nineties. He was one of the worship leaders there, and I remember being very blessed by the worship times we had there when he was leading. He was unemployed at the time and volunteered to come lead worship for JBC. After a short time, he became our full-time worship leader. It was in 1990 that prayer became a significant focus of our church, and with Doug’s leadership, it was very easy to add worship to prayer as our primary focus. God used Doug in those years to help shape us into the church we are today.

Because of my age, I think about death a fair amount, and then when someone I know well, who was younger than me, dies, it prompts even more contemplation about this step into eternity. As I think about heaven, what it will be like, what it will feel like to make that transition, I usually start thinking about the “Judgment Seat of Christ,” and how I will do there. Standing before Jesus, the King of the Universe, the Son of God, the creator of everything, I wonder how that will feel. The Apostle John, in the 1st Epistle of John, suggests that some will shrink back in shame at their first view of Jesus. I do not want to do that, but I want to stand before Him with confidence and hear Him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

When I was a kid, I asked my Pastor if there were only ten things that were wrong to do, because it seemed like my Mom and my Dad had a lot more than ten things that were wrong on their list. He said, yes, that there were more than ten wrong things, but that God had put the most serious sins in the Ten Commandments. I didn’t really understand the concept of coveting, and I told my pastor that I could think of many things worse than coveting, so why was that one on the worst-sins list? Coveting has several corollaries: discontentment and impulsive, undisciplined buying. I have discovered over the years that I am way less disciplined at night than during the day. I start the day with a good amount of self-discipline, but by the time I go to bed, it is mostly gone. The worst thing for me to do is shop online after 9:00 pm; I don’t know what I will buy. Many mornings, I go back over what I bought the night before, cancel them all, and think to myself, “What were you thinking?” It usually isn’t costly, just dumb. A few nights ago, I was watching a YouTube video on how to stay healthy and energetic after 80, and the speaker made a big deal about the health benefits of cayenne pepper. I went on Amazon and found a 5-ounce jar on sale for $2.00 an ounce, and a five-pound jug for 20 cents an ounce, so I bought the five-pound jug. That is what you call dumb. How long will it take us to eat five pounds of cayenne pepper, even if it were a bargain? Have you ever noticed when you are most apt to sin?

Reading good books is a discipline that many have lost or never acquired. Many tell me that they do not read well. We were all there at one point, but we learned to read; that is a basic purpose of school. Reading is a skill that all but an exceedingly small minority can do well with practice. God, in His wisdom and sovereignty, had the Bible, the Word of God, preserved in writing. He is the one who created us in His image; He made our minds. The best and fastest way to grow in wisdom is by reading. I became a reader at a very young age. My Mom and my Dad would read to us kids when we were small and instilled in us a love of books and a desire to read. I still remember some of my favorite stories. We drove up and down the West Coast following my Dad as he was stationed at various Naval bases. When we were about to drive to another location, Mom would check out a cardboard box full of books for me to read while she drove, and we would turn them back in at the library in the next town we moved to. When Dad retired and we moved to our first farm, thirteen miles outside of town, a bookmobile would drive out near our place once a week, and I would check out books there. My sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Wilson, had a thirty-volume set of paperback books that were a series of stories about a young Christian man and his adventures. She offered anyone who would agree to read them all an A in reading. I decided to take the challenge and read every one of them, and the spiritual lessons in each tremendously impacted me. The key to faithful reading is to set a goal and stick to it so a good habit forms. My goal now is to read 20 pages a day, 5 days a week. That is about 5,000 pages a year, or about 20 books, depending on their size. I have friends who read 100 books a year, which is two books every week. The more you read, the better you read, that is, the faster you read and the more you retain, and the more you read, the more you enjoy reading. The main thing is that the more you read, the wiser and smarter you will become. Don’t let the business of life and the things in the world keep you from growing your brain.