The older I get the more I know that exercise is very important to my health and my overall mood. When I am faithful in my exercising I feel better, I sleep better, I don’t gain weight, and I like life better, I just have a much more positive outlook on just about everything.

I go through spurts on being faithful to it, just like my Bible reading, praying, scripture memory, and book reading disciplines. It is easy to get out of the routine and back slide into mediocrity and laziness.

One of the things that keeps my exercise discipline going well is if I have a goal that motivates me to do the daily grind stuff. I participate in a long distance bicycle ride most summers because if I don’t I get very sporadic in my stationary bike riding. Several of my older friends, not as old as me, but getting up there, said that they were going to train for a half marathon this coming Spring. One of the most motivating things for me is to do hard things with others. So I have decided that I am going to start training to run the same half marathon. I have run almost thirty half marathons in my lifetime, but they were all back in the day when I ran three or four half’s a year, but I have not run one now for 10 years, but I am going to run one this coming April. At least I am going to give it my best effort, and who knows I might even beat my friends, we will see.

I just started reading my new goals for this next year. My goal year runs from October 27th to October 27th, my birthday. I write my goals following a basic guideline which is, “pursue the desires of my heart.” I believe if I stay close to God those desires that I have in me will be His desires for me. The tricky part is staying close to God, because if I don’t the desires of my heart can quickly become worldly, carnal, even demonic, and then they are evil desires.

Staying close to God is kind of like having a good marriage; you pursue intimacy in the relationship by following some basic principles. If you don’t follow the principles your emotions and feelings will be what fuels your efforts to grow closer in your relationship, and your emotions easily become focused on self needs and wants, and your efforts at a growing intimacy will become lazy and inconsistent. 

The Biblical admonition is “seek the Lord, ” which doesn’t mean you are trying to find Him, He is right there with you all of the time, it means you are seeking to know Him more intimately. For much of my Christian life I thought that knowing God was to understand Him theologically, to know all about Him. To know God like I know Patty seemed illogical because I couldn’t see Him, touch Him, or hear Him. 

My journey towards genuine intimacy with God has been gradual, but steady, and has come as a result of being faithful to the basic disciplines of the Christian life. I read my Bible devotionally almost every day, that is different than studying for a sermon, it is reading with an inner ear alert for a thought that could be from God. I spend time in prayer talking to God every day, often while I am reading His Word. I confess all known sin to God every day spending time reflecting on the day, examining my life, asking Him to show me what needs working on. I work very hard at worshipping well when I am at worship services with our church family, and I try to thank Him all day long for every blessing that comes into my life.

Deuteronomy 4:29 But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul.

There are lots of different opinions on lots of different things. I think Fords are much better than any other brand of car or truck, but some of my good friends are stuck on Chevys! We are still good friends in spite of their mental ptoblems. When I was in High School one of my best friends thought holsteins were a much better breed of dairy cow than Guernseys, and we would argue and debate for hours on end almost every day as we rode home from school on the bus.

I will regularly read on Facebook a debate between a large group of people that will get started by someone’s entry about something. They can be between Trump haters and Trump lovers, or about the war in the Middle East, whether Israel is justified in invading the Gaza strip or not, or some aspect of the economy.

Tonight I was reading the responses to a Facebook entry advertising a new opening of a Home School Co-op. The discussion started out bad and got much worse from there. People were obviously very emotional about their opinions, and were incredibly rude and vicious in their arguments against those with differing opinions. There was name calling, very bad language used, insults, and as a whole very little intelligent diolog between intelligent people.

When I was in High School, College, and newly married discussions about differing points of view were part of the social life that we experienced. The discussions were often enlightening, enjoyable, and like a game of pinocle or checkers. Now when you are in a group of people you don’t dare bring up certain topics or it could easily turn into a big verbal fight with lots of anger, abusive speech, hurt feelings, and friends no longer friends.

Every morning I pray my daily commitments to the Lord, several of the commitments in the prayer are, “today I will love any person, You Lord bring into my life, no matter how hard they might be to love, today I will forgive any person of any offense they commit against me because You have forgiven me of every sin that I have committed against You, today I will not get angry at anybody, not even a little bit irritated, no matter what they do, today I will speak to people with grace, honoring them by the way I treat them. Dear Lord, please give me the strength to keep thse commitments snd forguve me when I blow it.”

As a church, Jefferson Baptist Church, JBC, believes that in order for a person to enter into heaven with Jesus when they die, that they must be “born again” by personally receiving the “Gospel” as presented in the New Testament in the Bible. The average person has a natural resistance to the gospel trusting instead in their good works to get them into heaven when they die. As a church it is our mission to communicate the good news of the gospel as much as is possible. Each person in our church is taught how to live and share the gospel and encouraged to do that with friends and family as part of their everyday life. Also, JBC holds regular events designed to attract people to our church so that they can hear the gospel and be born again into the family of God.

The “Seniors Ministry” in our church held a “Baby Boomer Concert” this last Friday in our gym and invited the community to attend. The music was from the 60’s and 70’s, and it was very well done by those who are part of the ministry. I expected an “amateur hour” performance, but it was anything but that. Patty and I went with the goal of leaving after about 30 minutes, but we stayed for the entire two hours that it lasted, and enjoyed every minute of it. The gym was full of people, many whom I had never seen before and most stayed the entire time as well.

On Halloween night we are having a “Trunk or Treat” event in our church parking lot. A bunch of people from JBC will have decorated booths, old cars, new cars, boats, and motorcycles in our parking lot and each one will have a ton of candy to give away. We have been advertising this event and a bunch of kids and parents from the community will descend on our campus and will walk around and get candy at each of the stations. There will also be free hot dogs and hot chocolate. This is a much safer invironment than the streets.

In a couple of weeks we are going to hold a “Poker Tournament” with refreshments and prizes, with all the “buy in” money going towards a mission project or group, text me at 503-559-5282 if you want to come and play.

Every Monday night we have a bunch of guys get together, who bring refreshments and watch “Monday Night Football” on a huge screen on a wall. It is a ton of fun. We all are cotinually inviting friends to attend with us.

We will be having an amazing Concert during the Christmas season and Easter with unbelievably good music, we will invite, invite and invite some more. We will be having a “Sportsman’s Show” at the Linn County Fairgrounds in February, with over a hundred vendors showing off their guns, fishing stuff, guilds, trucks, tents and a bunch of other cool stuff.

All of these events are fun to be part of and provide a continual message of the joy and the truth of the gospel, and they are events that those who normally don’t come to weekend worship services at JBC can attend and have an enjoyable time.

This quote and picture is the single best one that I have seen that describes the content of my teaching and preaching ministry for the last 48 years. Simple but true, farmers’ wisdom.

I am 75 years old today! I am pretty sure that puts me in the “old man” category! I slept in today until 9:00 a.m. as a birthday present to myself. I took a sleeping pill last night so I would have a nice, sound sleep, and I did!! I have spent most of the morning reading and responding to “Happy Birthday” texts, emails, messages, and Facebook notes; I feel very loved!

Patty and I are going out to an early dinner and then to the “Seniors Baby Boomer Concert” at JBC’s gym tonight at 7:00 p.m. We have a super seniors ministry at JBC, and they are doing this as an outreach event for seniors. In the in-between time, I will work on my “Angels and Demons” class material for Sunday and my leadership class lesson.

I have several “birthday traditions,” one is that I officially start my new goals for the year. I finished writing them several weeks ago. Now, I start reading them every day and writing strategies, timelines, and sub-goals for the big ones, such as my bicycle trip this summer.

Another one is that I write out a relatively long prayer in my journal thanking the Lord for all his blessings to me this last year. I will sit down and write half a dozen different times during the day as I remember all of God’s blessings throughout the day. I have read the ones I wrote over the last few years to stimulate my thinking and memory. The combination of reading previous ones and writing a new one makes me feel incredibly blessed by the Lord. I am all ready for this next year of my life, whatever it may bring.

Right at the top of my blessings list is my family, close and extended; wow, that takes a lot of writing. Also, our church family and ministries that God has let me be involved in which is fantastic. I have so many good and old friends who have meant so much to me over the years. It is impossible to measure or even understand the value and worth of good friends, many of whom have been good friends for many years, my old friends! I have been reminded of many of them as I read my birthday notes. It is too bad that lack of time keeps me from having more contact with many of them over the years, but when we all get to heaven, we will have lots of time to get caught up.

October 27th is a good day for me; thank You, Lord, for creating me and loving me as a unique, one-of-a-kind, self-aware individual who will never stop thinking, remembering, feeling, loving, and being loved forever and ever.

Right now my health is pretty good for a guy about to have his 75th birthday. I feel really blessed and very fortunate. I had a physical this morning and it was pretty uneventful, I didn’t even faint when I got my blood taken, that doesn’t happen very often. I am riding my stationary bike every day, lifting weights, and I am going to start going to the pool with Patty each morning to swim. I am still preaching and teaching half a dozen times a week, working around my house most days, and planning a 2,600-mile, unsupported bicycle trip this summer. I am going to drive to Alaska this summer pulling my dory boat, fish up there for a month for salmon and halibut, and then maybe shoot an elk, a deer, a bear, and whatever else walks in front of me.

So many of my friends and people I know in the church have serious health issues that are such a burden for people to carry. As hard as you try to be cheerful and positive it is tough when you don’t feel good, have no energy, and struggle with just about every daily chore you have.

I pray every day for all those I know who are struggling with health issues that God will give them strength, joy, and a very strong sense of His presence and pleasure in them as His children.

I know that the number of years that I have left on this earth are getting less and less and one of these days I am going to hear the big C word or something similar.

I know of a few people who have just charged through life with very few health issues and just fell over dead one day, that would be nice, but not very probable, for most there is usually some kind of health issue and struggle that takes you down, little by little, usually with not much dignity intact at the end until you just quit breathing. It is just part of God’s plan for most of us. I know that when I get to that point in my life that it will be a time of growing in my character and in my relationship with the Lord just before I see Him face to face.

The Bible predicts that in the last days, there will be an increase in false teachers. False teachers and prophets are motivated and energized by the devil and his demons. The devil owns every non-believer and he wants to keep them in his domain of darkness, and the best way he can do that is by messing with the gospel so that it is no longer the gospel that transforms people from the domain of darkness to the kingdom of Christ.

He also has as his goal to capture Christians and hold them captive to the power of sin so that they dishonor God by the way they live and talk

In our day of the internet is easy for anybody to write anything and false teaching has exploded, it is everywhere on the internet and social media.

Matthew 24:4 And Jesus answered and said to them, “See to it that no one misleads you.

The key for us is to read the Bible so much that any little deviation from the truth would immediately be obvious to us.

Patty and I are at the Cannon Beach Christian Conference Center participating in JBC’s annual retreat here for three days. It has been a great time with Patty on the beach in a great facility, with amazing food, super good fellowship with 65 other people, and great Bible teaching.

Oftentimes we grow because of the difficulties and trials in life, and other times we grow because we just put our noses to the grindstone and just make it happen by discipline and self-control. It is nice when we can be in an environment like this and grow.

I suspect that if when hard times come and all we do is complain and grumble, don’t grow a bit, and even go backward because of our bad attitude, and we aren’t being faithful to the basic disciplines of Bible reading, scripture memory, prayer, gathering, and the other basic disciplines that a time like we are having now would result in little if any growth, it would simply be a nice time.

God has a way of rewarding and blessing those who obey His Word and faithfully press toward maturity.

Yikes, right after I published yesterday’s blog where I wrote that I hadn’t missed church because of sickness for twelve years, up pops two blogs from 2021 and 2022 that both said I missed church because I was sick, one because of a cold and the latest because of COVID. Oh well, I guess I can blame that misinformation on my bad memory.

It is interesting to note what people tend to remember from their past. I rarely remember the bad stuff that happened to me, but I remember like it was yesterday: most of the adventures, exciting events, and fun stuff. I think that is why I regularly pray, thanking the Lord for my amazingly blessed life because it seems like my life has been just a series of blessings, accomplishments, and adventures with people I love.

Several years ago, I was counseling a couple who were having marriage problems, and the husband, in a matter of ten minutes, rattled off a stream of failures that his wife had committed over the previous five years of their marriage. He recounted each one of them with great detail and emotion. I thought, wow, she doesn’t have a chance. I suggested to the husband that he forgive his wife, and he responded by saying, “I have forgiven her; I just haven’t forgotten what she has done.”

I counseled him that every time a bad memory of what his wife had done popped into his mind, pray, “Dear Lord, I choose to forgive my wife of this hurt because You have forgiven me of every sin I have ever committed, and You have forgotten them all as well.” They soon moved and never came back to see me, so I don’t know if he did what I suggested.

We can choose what we remember by choosing to review it in our minds over and over again. I memorize Bible verses by going over and over them until they stick. Some people do that with the offenses committed against them; that is a sad way to live. Instead, choose to forget the bad and remember the good, and you will be a much happier person and much more enjoyable to be around. Some will think when they read this that they can’t forget the bad, but you can, if you want to, choose to do it until you have trained your brain to do what is right and good.