I woke up this morning at 3:00 am, and it was broad daylight. I didn’t know it was 3:00 am, but I was alarmed that I had slept in. But when I checked the time, I was happy that I got to sleep for another 4 hours. I am sleeping in a room with my two grandsons from Fairbanks, who are here. They are good boys, and I enjoy my time with them. I worked on my boat all day with my son-in-law and had a great time with him. I love Alaska and my time up here with my family, fishing, and building. I am limping around with my bum hip, but that will be fixed soon. I am diligent to make sure I get my Bible reading done, my Scripture memory done, and my prayer time in. God has blessed me with a great family, ministry, and remarkable experiences. God promises to bless us if we honor Him by reading His Word and giving Him time in Prayer. I don’t want to ever take His blessing for granted. Spend time with Him in prayer and His Word.

I am writing this blog from Soldotna, Alaska. I am working on my fishing boat at Funny River Fishing Lodge for a week.  My goal is to put a Honda 90-hp motor on it and do some work on it so it is a better and more comfortable boat to go halibut fishing out of in Cook Inlet. I have built five boats of various sizes and enjoy doing that work. They are wood boats encapsulated with fiberglass. It is easy to be creative with wood and make it strong with fiberglass. The scenery was gorgeous as we flew to Anchorage from Portland in a jet and to Kenai from Anchorage in a small eight-passenger Cessna.

I kept thinking about how creative God was in all of His Creation as I looked out the window. We have been created in God’s image, and we enjoy making things as well. Artists paint pictures, some people build houses, some sow clothing, some build boats, and some write songs. My most enjoyable creative activity is writing sermons. Trying to teach the Bible accurately in a way that is easy to understand, holds people’s attention, and changes their lives for eternity. Whatever we do, there is a better way, a faster way, a more productive way, or a more enjoyable way. People are constantly inventing new things and improving old stuff because we are creative by design. I was thinking the other day that I am 76 years old and tired most of the time, so why don’t I just put it in cruise, take it easy, and stop trying to catch more fish, build a bigger church, kill a monster buck, or build another boat. I am pretty sure that would be a dull life with little joy or excitement. We were created by God always to be dreaming, pushing, climbing, inventing, learning, and creating. It may be as simple as a paint-by-number picture, but we can all make something. If you are bored with life, take up photography, write a novel, paint a picture, learn how to weld, plant a garden, or write an encouraging letter to someone you see that needs encouragement.

Communication between two people is a tricky thing. The communication can be spoken or written. I am reading, “Moby Dick.” It was written almost 200 years ago in England, so the writing will have some gaps between what Herman Melville meant to say and what I understood when I read it. He is dead, so all of the effort to understand what he wrote is on me. I have to look up the meaning of words and reread passages that make no sense to me. When I talk with Patty, I try to speak so that she understands what I want her to know. If I don’t, she can stop me and ask me questions. Over the years of talking, we should get increasingly more in tune with each other and understand what we are trying to communicate. Over the years of doing marriage counseling, it was surprising to me how many married couples communicate very poorly; they don’t understand each other very well. The reason was that neither worked hard at communicating, speaking clearly, and listening attentively. Over the last 50-plus years of teaching and preaching the Bible, I have worked hard to become a clear communicator of truth. I preached this morning at Jefferson Evangelical Church, and all the while I was speaking, I was trying to determine if my audience was hearing me, that they understood the truth of the Bible, and if what I was saying made sense to them. I work at my teaching diligently. I have operated as a preacher over the years with some guidelines and some laws. A major one is that God must speak through me; he must grant me a special anointing of His Spirit for my words to be life-changing in those who hear. He has conditions established for who He will do that through. I need to meet those conditions. One is that I need to study and prepare well. Another is that I must pray diligently, asking God to work in the lives of the listeners and me as I speak. Another super important rule is that if I am careless when talking to people all week, God will not use me in a thirty-minute sermon. I blow this one so often. I forget and get caught up in the moment and say things in anger and irritation, thoughtless things that are mean and hurt, and allow my emotions to control my words.

I am reading the book Moby Dick right now. It was written in England in 1851, so the language and words are a bit of a struggle to understand. On just about every page, there is a word that I have to look up its meaning. I have read that one mark of a person’s intelligence is the size of his vocabulary. If I can remember all the words that I am looking up, my vocabulary will increase significantly by the time I finish the book. Maybe I will go from average intelligence to genius! As a person who is 76 years old, I am very aware of the number of older people who have started to have memory and thinking problems. I would like that not to happen to me. I know that there is a lot that we can’t control in our lives; it is pretty much up to God, but I also know that we have some things that we can do to maintain physical and mental health. Ever since I learned that I don’t have Parkinson’s but that I have food allergies that produce Parkinson’s symptoms, I have done a lot of reading about the role foods have in our health. I have read a lot of information that shows that what we eat not only affects our energy and general health but also our minds. But, I am sure that the most important thing I do for my mind and intelligence is not looking up definitions of words or eating right, but memorizing and meditating on God’s Word. I take 45 minutes every day to do my scripture memory discipline, but I am convinced it is the best use of my time in the entire day. Jesus said, “Man shall not live on bread alone but by every Word that comes from the mouth of God.”

I read a lot, and the older I get, the more I read. I enjoy reading, and I read a variety of kinds of books. I just finished a Louis La’Mour western. I read one of his books two or three times a year. I have read them all, but I don’t remember the first ones I read, so going through them a second time works. I just started reading Moby Dick because I read an article that said it was one of the top five books ever written. I read technical books on how to do certain things. I am reading several books on how to catch halibut in Alaska right now. I am also reading a book on boat building.

I read many Christian books on living the Christian life, Bible doctrine, and commentaries on the Bible. I read many books on leadership and success, both Christian and secular. I also read books on how to teach better, how to grow your church, and how to succeed in business. I do a lot of my reading while I ride my stationary bike. It is a recumbent with a small table attached so I can set my iPad on it and read while exercising. The cool thing about reading on my iPad is that I can make the font bigger and set it to scroll down at the rate I read, so I don’t have to touch it. Proverbs says to seek wisdom like gold and silver, and I can’t think of a better way to seek wisdom than to read good books. Of all the reading I do, my favorite book is the Bible, and I spend at least thirty minutes reading it every day. It is the ultimate source of wisdom and motivation. The Bible is the Word of God, the mind of Christ; it is living and supernatural. 

My hip surgery is on June 2nd, and I planed to leave on my bicycle trip on June 23rd. Our trip this year was only 600 miles, which we would do in ten days. But today was my pre-op meeting, and they talked me out of it. They said I wouldn’t damage anything but would probably be riding in a lot of pain. So now I am trying to figure out whether to cancel riding or try and move it to another time. Part of the problem is that I am riding with my brother and his wife, so their schedules are also part of the equation. Making decisions about what we will do in the future is a very important part of life. Some decisions, like bicycle trips, are not super important, but many others are. Decisions like who we will marry, what job we will work, where we will live, and what ministry we will be involved in. Knowing the will of God is not an easy thing to find out. A key part of the process is an attitude of submission. I declare to the Lord every morning that I will do His will for my life, whatever it is. I then ask Him to guide me and show me what His will is. I then live life thinking through decisions, getting counsel, planning, and all the while trusting that God is putting His will in my heart. I move ahead with confidence, making adjustments as I see things more clearly and doors open up and close. 

My summer is starting to pick up speed. Tonight is my last Wednesday service teaching, and tomorrow night is my last leadership class. They both begin again this coming Fall. Next week, I head to Alaska for a week to work on my boat and do some halibut fishing. When I get back from that, I will have my hip replacement surgery. On June 23rd, I head off on a 600-mile bicycle trip. Then, I head back to Alaska in July for a month of salmon and halibut fishing. I will be home all of August and September, preaching on Sundays at the Evangelical church, writing sermons for this next year, working for my wife, and fishing local spots as much as possible. Sometime in August, I will get my second hip replaced. In October, I am going deer hunting for a week, and then on October 23rd, four days before my birthday, I am heading out on a boat from San Diego for a ten-day tuna fishing trip. I expect to bring home a lot of fish. I hope my summer will go much better when I can walk without pain; that will be awesome. Of all the events on my calendar for this next year, I am really hoping that Jesus coming for us is one of them. From all that is happening in the news, it looks like it could be soon. Those who have their minds set on heaven live life with more joy, energy, and purpose. Every night, I pray, “Lord, please come tonight,” and every morning, I pray, “Lord, I am going to live today as if it is my last before You come. Please open doors for me and give me the wisdom and strength to serve You well.”

I am having hip replacement surgery on June 2nd. The doctor doing it has nurses and other doctors as part of their team. They have this app that I downloaded and that they use to communicate with me regarding my preparation for surgery. One of the things I do on the app is fill out a daily questionnaire. One of the questions is how much pain I am feeling. I am supposed to answer with a one if there is no pain and a ten if it is the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. I always put a five, but I am inclined to put a two. It is a funny question to answer for me. Pain is not an easy thing to measure or evaluate. My Dad raised me to ignore pain and tolerate it but not to measure it or compare it with some other pain. Pain happens to everybody all the time. If you can do something about it, you do; if you can’t, tolerate it.

I take two pain pills in the morning for my hip, and they help a lot. I suppose if it hurt worse than it does, I would ignore the dosage on the container and take two in the evening as well. My hip has been hurting for a while, and I am sure there is a getting used to the pain as it gradually increases. The doctor commented that I must have been feeling a lot of pain when he looked at the X-rays of my hip, but when he said that, I thought, “It isn’t that bad, more of a constant annoyance.” Jesus felt a lot worse pain in the scourging and the crucifixion He experienced for me. I would guess that His pain went way past a ten. For me, a much worse pain is the pain of failure when I blow it big time. Or the pain I feel from another person who I care for and who hurts me. I believe that the pain Jesus felt when God the Father turned His back on Him because He had become our sin was much worse than the physical pain He felt. Or the pain from the shame and guilt He felt because He had become our sin. I have no idea how much pain Jesus felt when He died for me, but it seems whiny to call my pain a five if He was a ten. So I am going to call His a thousand and mine a two. 

My success at living the Christian life and growing depends on my disciplines and routines. The problem I have, and almost everyone I talk to, is that business, life pressures, and unexpected events cause us to forget or put off the disciplines. An occasional miss is not that big of a deal, but once there is one exception, the second is easier and pretty soon; it has been weeks since I have faithfully done them all. I have an even dozen disciplines, and I rarely miss most of them, but I skip a few often. The main one I miss is writing this blog because of the time it takes; sometimes, I just have a mental block and can’t think of anything to write about. Another one that I can talk myself into missing often is exercising. I usually do my Bible reading while riding my stationary bike, so I have to be careful so that I don’t skip that one, too. I have a goal of praying with Patty every day, but I am doing good if I make it three times a week. We both have busy schedules, and they are different, so it takes some planning to make it happen. I have a goal to read 20 pages in a good Christian book every day, but as long as I get my Bible reading done, I find it easy to skip that one or quit after 10 pages. The key to being faithful in my disciplines is not simply to depend on self-control but to attach my success in growing spiritually, my relationship with the Lord, my level of joy and peace in life, my success in ministry, the quality of my marriage, the unity I have with others around me to my faithfulness in keeping the disciplines. The more faithful I am in my “daily dozen,” the better everything else goes. I brush my teeth every day, not because I like to but because I want to keep them and not have bad breath or an ugly smile; I am motivated by the results. The key to my faithfulness in my disciplines is reminding myself of the rewards and consequences. 

Jesus declared that He didn’t pray for the world, just for those whom God, the Father, had given Him, His disciples. John 17:9: “I ask on their behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given Me;” There are people in the world over whom we have jurisdiction in our prayers. When we pray, we have more influence with God over their lives than others do. We need to be faithful and accept the authority God has given us with Him over their lives. Samuel was the leader of Israel and said in 1 Samuel 12:23, “Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you.” I believe that the greatest authority given by God in prayer is to Mothers and Fathers over their children. We make more of a difference in their lives through our faithful praying than we do for anyone else and that anyone else has in their lives. It would be sad for parents to neglect the power and authority God has given them to shape the lives and future of their kids because of business. My mother prayed for me a lot and regularly told me she was. Patty and I prayed for our kids faithfully over the years, and now we pray for our grandkids. God has given us authority over their lives through prayer, and we don’t want to neglect that responsibility for their sake.