Running the race of life with endurance without getting weary, losing heart, and quitting is not easy. Those who are the tough ones who keep going and don’t quit are not doing that based on willpower, but on thinking right, taking wrong thoughts captive, and replacing them with right thoughts. Maybe we can say it this way, taking wimpy thoughts captive and replacing them with strong thoughts. Our body has a built-in self-preservation mode, and when it thinks we are killing ourselves, it will intervene. I ran 12 marathons between my 50th birthday and my 65th birthday. Before I ran my first one, I read many books written by people who had run many marathons. They all talked about this voice inside of us that started screaming at us to stop because we were killing ourselves between mile 18 and mile 22. It was called the “wall” that we hit. The key to running through the wall was knowing it was coming and being prepared to replace negative self-talk with positive. Most marathons I ran had “aid stations” about every two miles with little Dixie cups of water or sports drinks on tables that you could grab as you ran by. I would stop running and walk by these stations, pour a cup of water over my head, drink a sports drink, and then start running again. But at mile 18, mile 20, and mile 22, I would walk for one minute before I started running again. It was so much easier for me to manage that wimpy voice in my head screaming at me to quit before I killed myself when  I was walking than when I was running. The same thing happened when I used to climb Mt Adams right at the 10,000-foot mark. This inner voice in us is wired for easy, for comfortable, and when we start moving into the hard, it talks to us, attempting to get us to take it easy. We also have demons around us constantly speaking to us to take the easy way, if not the wrong and sinful way. If you think you are tired, you will be exhausted; if you think hard, you will become discouraged; if you think quit, it won’t be long before you do quit. The most powerful discipline for me in controlling my thoughts and not letting them control me is memorizing Bible verses. The discipline it takes to memorize Bible verses gives us the self-control to take wrong, wimpy thoughts captive and replace them with the thinking of an overcomer. Most Christians don’t learn many Bible verses because their mind tells them it is too hard and they can’t do it. I wonder where those thoughts came from.

I have read several books about the journey of guys who became Navy Seals. I have also read several books about ultramarathon runners. I had several goals in reading those books. The first was to learn how those guys could accomplish what they did, and the keys or components of their toughness. I know that they were not simply born that way. They had all learned a skill set, an attitude, and a way of thinking that helped them manage and overcome major roadblocks and physical pain. The second goal was to figure out how to describe what they did and put it into writing in an organized way so that I could apply it to my own life and teach others. The word that I use is endurance instead of toughness or grit; the reason is that it is the word that is used in the Bible, though toughness or grit could both be used in most cases as synonyms. I also studied the life of Jesus as the ultimate example of toughness, but it was easy to see all the similarities between them as they lived life with endurance. Endurance is a key character trait in all of the champions in the Bible, and one that we all need to have to grow and to bear much fruit for God.

Hebrews 12:1-3 Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Hebrews 10:32 But remember the former days, when, after being enlightened, you endured a significant conflict of sufferings,

Hebrews 10:36 For you need endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.

The first of many principles on how to be tough in the midst of pain and problems is not to will ourselves through it but to think ourselves through it. The way we think about our pain and problems determines whether we will endure or not.

Yesterday, I overdid my exercise routine in my recovery process from my hip surgery. My leg swelled up a bunch, and it hurt much more than usual, so today I am taking it easy and doing a lot of icing of my leg. The main reason I overdid it is because of my competitive nature. You would think that when a person gets to be my age, they would relax a little bit and not get so worked up about winning and being first. I have an app on my phone given to me by ROC Orthopedics in Oregon City,  the medical group that did my hip replacement. It lists daily exercises, videos on how to do them, and a way of checking off the ones you have done. It also keeps track of my walking via my cell phone. Carrying my phone can sense my steps and give me a daily total of steps taken, the average speed I walked, and record it. The problem for me is that all those who have had hip replacement surgery and used this App are in the database, and I can see my rank compared to the others in the system. I realize that many of those I am competing with are younger and probably recover and heal faster, but it is still tough for me not to do more when I see that I am in the middle of the pack. I never did very well in sports growing up, I was pretty slow when I was into running marathons and half marathons in my 50s and 60s. But I still try to win most things I do, even if it is playing checkers with a grandkid.

One of the interesting things about the “Judgment Seat of Christ” is that one of the rewards is our proximity to Jesus in the Millennium. The disciples argued over who would sit at Jesus’s right and left hands. Jesus didn’t say no one would; He just explained how to be the one who did. Someone is going to be first in the Kingdom, and someone is going to be last.

Revelation 3:21-22: He who overcomes, I will grant him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

Overcomers are more than just being a born-again Christian.

Mark 9:35 Sitting down, He called the twelve and *said to them, “If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.”

1 Corinthians 9:24 Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win.

I know that I will be far from first in the Kingdom, but I do want to be close to Jesus and sit with Him there. 

One problem I have been having with my hip replacement surgery is that I can’t put my left sock on without help. Patty and the grandkids have been helping me to do that. This morning everyone was gone so I improvised, and I found a pair of prongs that are used to grab baked potatoes with in one of the kitchen drawers. It took a little practice, but I got my sock on with no problem. God created us with creative minds and we are regularly learning, improvising, and inventing because of problems and barriers in our lives. The difference in the world between when I was a kid and now is amazing. When I was in High School we had a party phone line. That meant there were ten households on one line so if you wanted to call someone you had to pick up the phone and listen to see if someone else was on the line. It also meant that you had to be careful what you said while talking on the phone because any number of different people could be listening in. Now we have cell phones that we carry with us and that do everything but make coffee. With all the many inventions that have come into our life to solve hundreds of problems one problem that we can never solve on our own, is our sin problem. We cannot pay what is the penalty for our sin and we cannot stop sinning on our own. We are all slaves to sin and it is impossible to conquer it. Along with our sin problem is our death problem. Modern medicine is amazing in what they can now do for our health, but we will all still die, sooner or later, that problem is staring us all in the face. God has solved our problem for us. God sent His son into the world to die for us and pay the penalty of our sins and to  give us eternal life with Him. Those who accept this gift from God and trust Christ as their Savior are also given the gift of the Holy Spirit to live inside of us so we now have the will and the strength to conquer sin. Tomorrow Patty or one of the grandkids will want to help me put my sock on, but I will tell them that I can do it by myself. So many people think they can save themselves and ignore God’s free gift.

One key component of effective praying is importunity. That means we pray over and over for the same thing because we know it is God’s will, and we know that God wants us to ask again and again until He does it. Our persistence isn’t a sign of low faith; on the contrary, it is a sign of great faith.

 Matthew 15:21-28 Jesus went away from there and withdrew into the district of Tyre and Sidon. And a Canaanite woman from that region came out and began to cry out, saying, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is cruelly demon-possessed.” But He did not answer her a word. And His disciples came and implored Him, saying, “Send her away because she keeps shouting at us.” But He replied, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and began to bow down before Him, saying, “Lord, help me!” He answered and said, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” But she said, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus told her, “O woman, your faith is great; it shall be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed at once.

I didn’t have peace and freedom from anxiety about my hip replacement surgery at first, but I kept asking God for His strength and peace until He gave it to me. It is God’s will that I have His strength. It is His will that I have His incomprehensible peace. So, I have to ask and keep asking until His will is a reality in my life.

I have completed two weeks of rehabilitation since my hip replacement surgery. I went in for my two-week follow-up exam yesterday, and they took the bandage off and said everything looked good. I have graduated from a walker to a cane, and my goal is to throw away the cane in one week. This last week, I have walked 3000 steps daily plus 30 minutes on the stationary bike and 30 minutes of doing exercises assigned to me by my physical therapist. This week, I aim to walk 5000 steps daily, spend 45 minutes on the bike, and exercise for 30 minutes.

I like goals; they motivate me to press on and do more. I especially like goals that I can measure. Goals with numbers are my favorite. I asked the doctor yesterday about my physical therapy. While I am in there twice a week for an hour, they show me exercises and watch me as I do them. I have them all down now and do the assigned number and more at home every day. I asked the doctor if there was any reason I needed to keep going twice a week. He commented that most people don’t exercise at home after surgery; they only do what gets done during the hour-long sessions at physical therapy.  I assured him I was being faithful in doing them every day. So, I go once this week and once next week, and then I am done with physical therapy, and my final doctor’s exam is on July 10th. Then, on July 14th, I head to Alaska for one month of salmon and halibut fishing, hallelujah!

I also have spiritual goals for every day. I read my Bible every day for a specific amount of time and number of chapters, I spend a particular amount of time in private prayer, I pray with Patty, I have a weekly goal for corporate prayer, I read a certain number of pages in a good book, I spend time every day memorizing Bible verses, I write daily in my journal, I write on this blog, and I write notes, emails, and text messages to different people every day to encourage and motivate them in their Christian walk. I keep track of my work and send weekly email reports to several people I am accountable to for my disciplines.

I wasn’t surprised when I heard that most people who have had surgery like mine don’t exercise much. That is the way we are as people, but if we want to get better faster, exercise is essential. But the most important thing is that we spend time with God every day in daily spiritual disciplines. It is just like brushing our teeth or walking on the treadmill: do it every day, every day, with a few breaks.

I have been on a diet since April Fools Day. I started at 227 pounds, and my goal was to get down to 180 pounds. The day before my hip replacement surgery, I weighed 197 pounds. It was the first time I had been under 200 pounds for years. I weighed 188 on our wedding day and weighed 200 pounds the day I started pastoring. But one year later, I climbed steadily up to 210 pounds. On my 50th birthday, I weighed 260 pounds. That was the year I started running and got it back down to 215. Since then, I have kept my weight under 220 most of the time, with occasional lapses during the holiday seasons of pigging out. This recent diet has been my most successful ever. I eat a lot of fish, meat, eggs, chia seeds, spinach, lettuce, Greek yogurt, and other things I like that have no carbs. So you can imagine my surprise when I got on the scale a couple of days after my surgery and found that I had gained six pounds! I went online and found that my new hip probably weighed about 10 oz more than my natural hip. As I read further, it appears the culprit is the water weight from the swelling in my left leg after the surgery. I should lose most of that water weight after about 12 weeks. Who knows, I may be down to my goal weight by then. The key to my weight loss success in these last months was my discovery a year ago that I was allergic to sugar and gluten. It was easy to quit eating them because of the muscle spasms they caused and the irritation they caused while trying to sleep. Once I had stopped eating anything with sugar or gluten, adding rice, potatoes, and corn to the list of things I didn’t eat was not that difficult, and walla, a low-carb keto diet, has worked well for me in losing weight.

Hebrews 12:1: let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,

“Lay aside every encumbrance.” Fat men don’t run marathons. Have you ever considered what might be an encumbrance in your life? It’s not necessarily a bad thing, just something extra that keeps us from serving Jesus as well as we could. We need to identify it and then voluntarily lay it aside. 

A lot is going on in the world right now. Reading the news is an ongoing saga of conflict. Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Iran, the USA and China, ICE and immigrants, Democrats and Republicans, and on the list goes with many sub-conflicts. In all these areas, as we all read about what is going on and listen to the various news outlets and podcasts, there is a vast difference in opinion on who and what is right or just. I read and listen to many of these and to many of those who disagree with one another. One of the obvious facts is that a lot of misinformation and lies are being communicated as proof of a particular view. It seems odd that someone would use information they know to be false to try and substantiate their view that they believe to be true. The devil is the father of lies and is constantly getting those who are his servants to introduce lies into the world, and he is ramping up that strategy more and more in these last days. It becomes increasingly more challenging to know what is true and false.

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.

The “word of righteousness” is the Bible. Some people don’t read and study it much; they are an infant in thinking. They are easily deceived by what is false. The mature read the Bible a lot, their senses are trained, and they can discern the truth from error. The Bible is supernatural; it is the Word of God, the mind of Christ, and the Sword of the Spirit. When the devil attempted to tempt Jesus, Jesus resisted by simply quoting scripture to him. We find it challenging to maintain a regular Bible reading discipline or find it almost impossible to memorize and meditate on scripture “day and night.” It is because satan’s demons are constantly talking to us, working hard to persuade us to put it off one more day. Suppose we can break through that barrage of mind control from the enemy and have a season of successful and faithful reading, study, memorization, and meditation of God’s Word. In that case, the enemy’s voice will become less and less pronounced in our thinking.  

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.

When I was six years old, I got run over by a caterpillar at a construction site. The pile of dirt I was standing on caved in because of the heavy equipment vibration. The dirt covered me up, and the cat driver didn’t see me until one of my arms popped into view. I had climbed up on the pile on my way to school to see better what was happening with all the trucks, cats, and other construction equipment. My left leg was broken in six places as the cat track ran up my leg, breaking the bone at each track cleat. I was in the hospital for some time, but I recovered fully. If you are interested, I have written several blogs on this event in my life in much more detail. One slight problem in my recovery was that my left foot was crooked; it stuck out to the side at about a 45-degree angle instead of straight ahead. The only time anybody noticed was if they followed me in the snow. I had a distinct set of tracks, and my left foot looked like a duck track. I never saw any consequence to this difference in my left foot as I grew up playing sports and running a dozen marathons as an adult. But now, since my hip replacement surgery, my left foot is straight. I have no idea whether my “duck foot” was a factor in my hip going bad, but it sounds reasonable. I didn’t notice at first, but a couple of days ago, I was walking on the treadmill and looking down at my feet as I walked and thought, my foot is straight, cool. Several years ago, when I was running marathons, I went to a running shoe store that would do a video of you running on a treadmill and then replaying the video in slow motion to try and determine how much pronation there was in your ankles to help determine the style of shoe that would work best. When they looked at my video, the salesperson commented that my feet and pronation were way different and I should buy two pairs of shoes and wear a different shoe on each foot. My response was to buy one set of shoes halfway in the middle. How is this for a discussion question in a small group, “Is your physical body perfect, or do you have some defect, even a small one, in you physically?” Or maybe this question, “If God would fix or change anything in you physically, what would it be?” Most people would mention something less than perfect in them. The cool thing is that when I get my glorified body, it will be perfect in every way; it will be exactly like the body that Jesus now has. How about my character? What needs fixing with that? When I step into heaven, will that defect be fixed?

I assume that I will be as physically fit and mobile as I was 10 years ago in a couple of weeks. Ten years ago, I climbed Mt Adams, ran a marathon, and bicycled across the USA. I can’t wait!! But if I cannot do all that, I will still be excited about increased physical ability. I am working hard on my recovery, doing my assigned exercises, riding my stationary bike daily, walking on the treadmill, icing my hip, and attending physical therapy twice weekly. The orthopedic doctor said that my right hip looked very bad from the ex-rays, but it doesn’t hurt me at all. He had talked about replacing my right hip as soon as possible, but I think I will wait for a while as long as it doesn’t bother me. I expect Jesus is coming any day now, so I might as well wait for my really good hip. Today has been a good day. Between time on my bike and the treadmill, I talked to my son Seth on the phone for a while. He lives in Idaho now. Today is his 41st  birthday. I also spoke to a friend who had hip replacement surgery three weeks before I did, and we compared experiences. I am a little bit ahead of him in terms of recovery. I graduated from the walker to the cane in one week, and my goal is to walk without the cane this Monday, which will be two weeks, and then the following Monday to be done with Physical therapy and to be walking normally. People often say, “Don’t get your hopes up too far.” I know the reason that they say that is because of the pain of disappointment. They think it is better not to hope or anticipate big things or victories to avoid disappointment; wait and see what happens, and then you can be surprised. High levels of hope motivate and inspire me to work harder. Suppose things don’t turn out as well as I had hoped, I know how to adjust my thinking and continue hoping. It is like going fishing. I expect and hope to catch many big fish every time I go. But If it is a bad day of fishing and I don’t catch any fish,  I always go fishing again, and I fully expect and hope that I will catch a full limit of monster fish. Sometimes I do, and those trips keep my hope engine running full steam.