Patty’s birthday today. We will have been married 46 years this coming August. Hard to imagine that Patty was 21 when we got married. We hardly knew each other when we got married. Dated for only 3 months, but I was so smitten I knew she was the one. It was for sure the Sovereighnty of God that brought us together. She has been the perfect wife for me. Complimenting me in all my weaknesses and my strengths, The years of raising 8 kids and pastoring a church have been fun and a great adventure only because of the one who has done it with me. Looking backwards on my life at this stage it is easy to see that I am an incredibly blessed man, and the main reason is because of the great gift that God gave me in my wife.

I read the news each night on my IPad with a “News App”. It is amazing how much information I can take in, in 30 minutes about countries all around the globe, and about every topic and area of life. Some nights depending on the  content of the day’s news and my own weariness level at the end of the day this evening habit can be a rotten way to end a day. Tonight I was thinking what it was like 200 years ago when the amount of information that a person got about events outside their immediate family and town was very small. I bet it was so much easier to be relaxed and content with present reality. I have thought about going on an information fast. Not reading the news or watching it or looking up info on the Internet for an extended period of time. Maybe even not reading any books except the Bible. I wonder If I would have withdrawals? It is appealing. I think I will make a goal to have a personal retreat this year for a week and not take my iPad or computer. I will take my phone,but not call only answer if it is Patty. I will take my Bible and notepad and pen. Yep, I am going to do it and see what happens.

There are certain thinking habits that are very destructive to ourselves if we don’t get control of them. Immoral thoughts, bitter thoughts, covetous thoughts, angry thoughts are all very bad, but I believe that the worst is regular thoughts of self pity. Self pity thinking makes us weak, and if we don’t conquor that thinking we will become so weak in character that the smallest trial totally consumes us. I am not sure why but I had a bad day today in regards to my Parkinson’s and I started down this path of feeling sorry for myself, and then getting bitter toward God. Thankfully I caught myself quickly and repented before God and confessed my sin to Him and began thanking Him for all the blessings of my life that I have experienced as a gift from Him. It didn’t take long and the bad thinking had been replaced by positive thinking that worked hard at rejoicing always. Thank You Lord for being near me today and not letting me go down that wrong path very far.

We all feel disappointment regularly in life. I felt disappointed tonight when the Ducks lost, but I will have recovered in the morning. Most disappointments are like that, we recover our normal level of joy and positiveness about our life after a little time of forgetting and getting involved in other things. The level of disappointment you felt tonight is based on the level of passion or desire you had to see the Ducks National Champions. For some people the disappointment will be so strong it can be called pain. An interesting phenomenon that I have observed in many people is that because of the past experiences of pain caused from disappointment that they have stopped dreaming, wanting, hoping, really trying, and setting goals for themselves. They find it less disappointing to live life just accepting whatever happens and not pursuing goals and dreams with passion. I have to agree that such a lifestyle will have much less pain of disappointment, but it also will have much less accomplishment and excitement. It would be better to learn how to deal with and manage our disappointments in a positive way, and to dream really big dreams.

well, I am getting up at 5 am and going swimming in the morning. I am going to swim 3 or 4 times each week for the next 5 months and see if I can become a Michael Phelps. We will see, enjoy the challenge, quite whining! Monday’s are usually my rest day but tomorrow I will start it at 8 am with a nap after swimming. The rest of the day I will work in my shop until the National College Football Championship game. I am going to watch it with 2 son in laws and a son so we should have a good time.

didnt have to go anywhere or do anything this morning so slept in until 8 am. Worked all morning out in my shop cleaning it up, organizing, building shelves, and putting in some more lights. Ordered replacement parts for my fine Delta band saw that hasn’t worked in 5 years. Looks pretty good. Ordered some plans for a very attractive kennel for my Russel dog that looks like a nice piece of furniture. It can set beside my chair, I can put books on top of it and he can sleep in it. Went to my office at 2 pm and worked on my sermon and prayed a bunch for people in our church. Had a wonderful service tonight with guys in my leadership class sharing some of their goals for the year. They did super well. Seahawks won! Trail Blazers won! Didn’t run, or bike, or swim, or lift weights! Feeling pretty rested. I am praying that tomorrow is a really good day in our worship services and that my leadership class guys hit it out of the park like they did tonight. I think I will go to bed😄

I went swimming this morning, and I am now sitting in my chair thinking that I am just a whisker from death. I can’t believe how tired I am and I only swam for 40 minutes, but it was the first time I have been swimming for 2 years. I thought surely with all the biking and running I have been doing that swimming will be a piece of cake. Nope, I am feeling so old and so tired. It is at times like this when it is super hard to control my self talk, and not talk myself into just sitting in this chair the rest of my life. I have a full marathon on the calendar for the first weekend of May, a half Ironman Trithlon for the end of June, and a Leadman Triathlon which is longer than an Ironman scheduled for the end of September. Right now I am thinking that I am crazy, and that I should drop those and find a couple of 5K runs to do, and call that good. I am in the middle of this battle in my head as I write this, and I am not sure what the outcome will be. Sooner or later a guy has to face the fact that he can’t do this stuff anymore. I think I will go to bed.

As people we seem to have the ability to believe something to be true, but to live as if we don’t believe it to be true.  Various words come to mind to describe this phenomenon, hypocrite, double-minded, crazy. I personally believe with all my heart that Jesus Christ is God, that He is Almighty, omnipresent, all knowing, all powerful, that He loves me beyond comprehension, that He sees everything I do, that He hears everything I say, that He knows everything I think. So does that belief that I say I have influence the way I live my life? I want it to! But if I am honest I will have to admit that often the world around me has more influence on my behavior and choices than my belief in Jesus does. I want to be a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ, not weird, or obnoxious, but loving and forgiving and accepting. How do I do that? I think I will preach about that this weekend   at JBC. Maybe I will learn something. Why not join me, maybe you will learn something to, worth a shot anyway.

I got 110 fish because the guy I bought them from said about 10 would die in transport, but I have had them  for 5 days and only one has died and they are growing very fast. Here they are in my 300 gallon tank and they are all gathered around eating away on the food I just gave them.  You can see the hot water element at the top of the picture that keeps the water at 76 degrees. They like to hang around the warmer water near the element. I was afraid they might burn themselves on the hot element but they seem smart enough so far. About 4 more months I will start eating some Tilapia fillets. Funny how new hobbies give me a new spark that seems to influence all of my life. I wonder what my next one will be😄

Tuesday is when the Jefferson Baptist Prayer Letter comes out. There are a lot of prayer requests in it each week. There is a lot of pain, and hurt, and need expressed in all those requests. It gets emailed to my iPad.  I pray through it  on Tuesday evening and do a lot of “cutting and pasting” of prayer requests into my prayer journal where I have everybody who attends JBC and many who have visited. I try to get a picture of as many as I can get pasted in my journal as well so I can pray with more passion and remember names and faces in the process. Over the years of spending hours and hours praying through my prayer journal and recording requests, problems, and needs and then recording changes and answers I have grown very confident and strong in faith and believe with little doubt that many changes happen to the people I faithfully pray for each week as God works in their life and answers my prayers. My devotion to this time of praying through my prayer journal has grown and grown over the years, and I now consider that time the most important thing that I do each week. I won’t know until I get to heaven how much God has done in the lives of people as a result of my praying and the people I pray for have little awareness of the difference that God has accomplished because of my interceeding for them. They will find out in heaven as well.