It is funny how certain fundamental principles keep popping up over and over again. One of those principles is, “You don’t have to act the way you feel.” In fact, if you do, you are going to mess up your life, and the lives of those you love.

During these days of pandemics, woke culture, mask mandates, vaccine mandates, crazy inflation it is very easy to get emotional about current events in our life, and about our own experiences and circumstances.

Emotions are normal and expected, both the highs and the lows, the angry and the sad, and the positive and the negative. The problem comes when we make choices, act, and treat people according to how we feel. Children do that and we are not surprised when they do, they are children, but many adults are behaving like children in our unpredictable culture.

The key to acting right when we don’t feel like it is to follow principles and guidelines, here are half a dozen simple, but good ones.

1. Always obey Ephesians 4:29 – Let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth, but only words that edify, honor, and give grace to those who hear.

2. If we don’t forgive others, God won’t forgive us.

3. God is in charge, He knows what He is doing, trust Him.

4. Always obey Philippians 4:4, “rejoice always.”

5. Always obey Philippians 2:14, “grumble about nothing.”

6. Guard yourself against speaking slander and gossip, it is easy to do, and it feels so good, but God hates it and consequences will follow.

Isolation may keep COVID from spreading, but this is what a person gets to looking like when they do.

Why comb my hair or take a shower or change my clothes!

I plan on joining the world on Saturday and I plan on cleaning up good before I do😀

We grow in character much faster together with other people. We resist the devil and his temptations much better together. Our praying has so much more power together. Here is a description of hell in the Bible.

Psalms 88:4-8
I am reckoned among those who go down to the pit;
I have become like a man without strength,
Forsaken among the dead,
Like the slain who lie in the grave,
Whom You remember no more,
And they are cut off from Your hand.
You have put me in the lowest pit,
In dark places, in the depths.
Your wrath has rested upon me,
And You have afflicted me with all Your waves.
You have removed my acquaintances far from me;
You have made me an object of loathing to them;
I am shut up and cannot go out.

sounds like COVID isolation to me.

This next week is JBC’s “Five Days of Prayer.” I plan on praying 40 hours during the five days with many of you. I expect that I will grow a lot and that God will work powerfully in the world around me because of it.

2 Corinthians 5:2-3 For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened,

Paul uses the words house and tent to describe our physical body, and he said while we live in these physical bodies we groan. The older we get the more we understand what that means. More aches and pains, and so we groan, longing for our new, glorified body that won’t get old, get tired, get sick, or get ugly. Occasionally something comes along that ups the “groan factor,” like COVID and we all tend to wonder why.

Philippians 2:27 For indeed he was sick to the point of death,

Paul’s friend was sick to the point of death, many people die from sickness. Everybody is going to die from something.

Very few things in life do I dislike as much as being sick, and I groan. But this bout of sickness is close to being finished, just a little headache this morning, all the other consequences of COVID are over, and I anticipate being as good as new in a couple of days. But it is just a matter of time until the next bout of something comes around, and one of them is going to be the last one.

The cool thing for me as my life unfolds event after event is that I have no fear of death. I am looking forward to being done with this life and moving into the next phase of God’s plan for me. There is the nervousness of a new experience, not knowing exactly how it is all going to unfold, but I have no fear of dying. I am curious and wonder what form my death will take. My Dad died of cancer and almost every relative has as well so the probability of cancer is high. I might get hit by a car as I ride my bicycle across the USA this summer.

The main thing for me is that I finish this race called life at a sprint, living life with a purpose.

Well, I guess this COVID thing is going to hang on a little longer. Kind of like a bad cold. I tell people that I don’t get colds, but now I have the granddaddy of all colds. I sound like Sam Elliott, sneeze often, cough a lot, blow my nose every couple of minutes, have a headache, muscle aches, and enjoy a nap every couple of hours.

But my energy level is good and my attitude is positive. I plan on riding my stationary bike for an hour today, lifting weights for an hour, and working on the mustang for a couple of hours. I am also going to get a bunch of “Pastor work” done. I am going to write birthday and anniversary notes, grade leadership class papers, write my sermon for next Wednesday’s service, go through my prayer journal as I pray for people in our church, write the church family letter, and fill out and send out my “pastor accountability” report to the pastors that I am in a group with. If I get all those checked off of my “to do” list, I will feel pretty good

My old motto, “don’t act the way you feel,” works good when you are sick as well. So, even though I am sick with the COVID I can act like I am having the time of my life. The way we act, the level of positiveness, the attitude we choose to have, all has an impact on what happens in our life. I for sure don’t want to act and talk like a victim. I thank God all day long for all my blessings that I have received from Him.

I slept 10 hours last night, and got up this morning and rested in my chair while reading. At noon I went out to my shop and worked on the mustang for 5 hours straight. I am redoing all of the wiring in it and it is a slow, tedious job trying to figure out where everything goes to. Right now, sitting in my recliner At 8:00 pm writing this blog I am feeling much better. No cough, no sore throat, no muscle ache, no runny nose. I think that tomorrow I will declare myself healed! I probably won’t go out and about until Saturday in case I am still a bit contagious. Thank you very much to everybody who has been praying for me!

I am looking forward to teaching all of my classes this weekend at church. And this next week is our “Five Days of Prayer” for our Missions Ministry. We pray Monday through Friday, 5:00 to 10:00 am and 5:00 to 10:00 pm each day. These prayer times as we gather as the church are the most spiritually invigorating times in my life. Every area of my spiritual life is renewed by these prayer times, especially my practice of the presence of God.

Make a goal to come and pray. I am thinking Jesus is coming soon, and it would be so cool to know him intimately when you first see Him.

I am watching the Kansas City Chiefs play the Cincinnati Bengals, taking my vitamins and meds at appropriate times, an occasional nap at boring times, and eating the famous superfood, popcorn with a cube of melted butter, cures just about anything. I am expecting to be as good as new in a couple of days.

After this game is the San Fransico 49’s playing the Los Angeles Rams. Probably going to need to pop another bowl full of popcorn.

After the games are over I am going out to my shop and work on the mustang for a couple of hours then come in and ride my stationary bike for an hour and read my Bible while I do. I will also get in some good Christian book reading, and some scripture memory. I will set in the hot tub and the sauna before I go to bed.

During the day I will regularly and often take a mental break and thank and praise the Lord for my life, His amazing blessings, and for Him to use me for His glory.

Sherri and Thomas, our daughter and son-in-law, both got covid and are over it, then my wife got it, and has been sick all week, and now she is mostly recovered. But I did’t get it, I figured I was to tough to get it, you know, being an ex-dairy farmer and all.

I, with help of two other guys in the church loaded up four cords of firewood this morning, and dumped it at our house. When I got done with that I was feeling pretty wimpy so I took a nap and woke up with a bad sore throat, a fever, and a terrible taste in my mouth, Wow, I never had that kind of result from doing firewood before. Must be old age. My sore throat got worse quickly so I took a home test and was positive for covid.

Speaking of positive, there are a couple of very positive results from this. I was going to miss both of the NFL playoff games tomorrow because of teaching responsibilities, but now I can watch them while my wife brings me snacks, and occasionally checks to see if I am comfortable bringing another pillow and blanket. She is a very good wife!

The other positive is I should have plenty to blog about for the next couple of days as I work at inventing new and novel ways to conquer COVID.

I have been getting lots of advice on what to do so as to get over it quickly, but I did my old faithful cure for everything, I ate a Haagendouse ice cream bar. I am feeling better already! I am trying to decide now what my dose should be, once a day, twice a day, heck maybe one an hour. I have heard there is no danger of overdosing!

I plan to get in extra Bible reading, scripture memory, and a couple of books read.

Man, I hope I don’t get over this thing to quickly, sounds like I am going to have a lot of fun!

The definition of humility is multi-faceted; that is, humility is a significant character trait and is described and understood in various ways. The goal is to become humble in our hearts, in our character. The way we become humble on the inside is to act humble, do what humble people do, and as we faithfully live in a humble manner using self-discipline, we will become humble in our character. The most complete description in Scripture about humility is In Philippians.

Philippians 2:3-8
Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Humility is all about how we treat people. A humble person puts others ahead of themselves. The biggest place we struggle is in how we talk to other people. The most effective guide for us as we work at being a humble person is to elevate others, build their self-worth, and honor them.

Humble people don’t think about themselves and what they want or need; they are thinking about those around them, what they need. Sometimes we believe that to be humble; we need to put ourselves down; no, we need to lift others up. We don’t do that by making things up that aren’t true or flattering others, but we are “good finders,” we train ourselves to see the positive, the good, and the accomplishments in others and we affirm them with our words.

When we work hard at exalting others, God will exalt us, but if we exalt ourselves He will humble us.

It is a fun project to rank yourself on each of these 26 character traits. Go down through the list thinking about each one, thinking about yourself and how you act, and then give yourself a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, 1 being bad and five being good. On the traits that you gave yourself a one on, write out a strategy of how you are going to change and bring them up to a 2.

Another way to do the personal evaluation is to rank the character traits in your life.Take the 26 character traits and put the one you think you are strongest in at the top and the one you are weakest in at the bottom and all the rest somewhere in between. Work on growing stronger in just the bottom one, write out your personal strategy of how to do better in that one and then you can move on to the next on the list and work on it.

1. Honesty/truthful/Transparent/real
2. Patience
3. Thoughtful/Gentle/Gracious
4. Deference
5. Humility
6. Diligence
7. Self-control
8. Determination/endurance
9. Honoring of others/free from a critical spirit
10. Orderliness
11. Joyfulness
12. Contentment
13. Decisiveness
14. Faithful/trustworthy/reliable
15. Morally pure
16. Teachable/seeker of wisdom/discernment
17. Forgiveness/ free from all bitterness
18. Thriftiness/ good stewardship of money and possessions
19. Flexible
20. Initiative
21. Gratefulness/positive
22. Loyalty
23. Resourcefulness/creative
24. Boldness/confidence/ strong sense of self-worth
25. Toughness/grit/strong/handles pain
26. Peace/calm/not easily flustered

Growing to be like Jesus in character is of utmost importance because what we are in character when we die is what we are for ever and ever. You don’t want to be a baby in character when you enter heaven. So discovering principles of optimum growth is super important. A significant principle is that I grow much faster with help than I do by myself, and the most effective help in my life is Patty. God invented marriage as the most powerful tool in his arsenal to cause growth to happen in people. But our pride has the power to completely undo or block all the positive influence that our spouse has in moving us to Christ-Like character. It is impossible to overstate all the negative influence that our pride has on our changing and growing into the image of Jesus Christ. It is easy to determine when our pride is intervening in our pursuit of Christ-like character, we have conflict. Whenever there is conflict there is pride in at least one partner but most often in both, just manifested differently. Those who are serious about growth will do a bunch of self-examination to figure out what happened and how to fix it. A man and a woman living together, raising kids together, managing a house together, managing money together, planning their future together, and working at doing all that in unity will grow very rapidly to be like Jesus in character, that is God’s plan.