The more I talk the more apt I am to stick my foot on my mouth! Proverbs 10:19 says, “When there are many words, transgression is unavoidable, But he who restrains his lips is wise.” Whenever I enter a room with people or enter any social setting, I say to myself, “don’t talk to much”. I can easily get sucked into conversations where I will argue, complain, slander someone, gossip, say something that is unkind, say something to attract attention to myself, or exaggerate to impress or make a point. Later as I recall the time I groan over my stupidity and lack of self-control. I then confess my sin whichever one of the many possibilities it is, and tell God I won’t do that ever again, and please help me not to be such a blabber mouth. My mouth is my greatest asset and tool as a teacher of the Bible, but it is also the source of most of the sins I commit. How can this be!!??

We can see and hear pride in another person easily, and we don’t like it, but we don’t see or sense the pride that is in our own life very well. Proverbs 16:5. “Everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord; Assuredly, he will not be unpunished.” That is a pretty strong statement “is an abomination to the Lord”, it looks like the Lord doesn’t like proud people either. I regularly have thoughts and fairly long thought processes that are clearly prideful. The thoughts are not only very prideful, but also very critical, and pride and critical go together. I want to conquer that character flaw and make it go away. I don’t want God to consider me an abomination and to resist everything I do. This verse and others like it I have memorized and whenever I hear my thoughts moving in the direction of haughtiness I switch over to thinking and meditating on the verses. It is very easy to think prideful thoughts, but it is very hard to conquer and to overcome them. I think about the Consequences if I don’t, “assuredly he will not go unpunished”, and I am motivated to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

This week, Monday through Friday was JBC’s “Five Days of Prayer”, and I have been praying in the prayer room with about 20 other people, usually a different 20 each hour,  for 8 hours each day.  It has been a very rich time for me, not only the praying but the time with so many different people praying. There is something about praying together that is especially bonding.

But during this five days I still have my normal disciplines and responsibilities to get done so time gets very tight. I regularly say, “anybody can do just about anything for just five days”. So I sleep less, walk faster, work faster, cut short times of doing nothing but relaxing, reduce chit chat times, cut out “honey do’s” 🙂 and read my “to do list” often to stay on task.

Now I wouldn’t want to live like this all the time, but occasionally it is a good exercise of learning how to get more done in the same time, or in this case the same done in less time. I have often said when teaching on “Time Management” that we aren’t managing time, we are managing ourselves.

Self-leadership is a learned skill, and self-control is a character trait which work together. Periodic times in our life where there is an marked increase in pressure because of an added event, an unexpected emergency, or other people needing our attention, are good times to practice self-leadership and self-control. They don’t last forever, usually a week or so, and then back to normal so pretend that the high pressure week is a visit to the gym where you are sweating and doubling your heart rate so that you will be healthier.

As I get older and my body gets more aches and pains, as I deal with the issues of my Parkinson’s, and also every 8 hours managing my none functioning bladder I think more and more about my new body that I will receive from God because of my position “child of God” received and secured by my faith in the gospel. The Bible says that I will have a body like Jesus’s.

If I had a trip planned to Hawaii in 20 years I wouldn’t think about it much because it is to far away to get excited about. 69 years of age is not really old, but it is close, and the number of people who die at 69 is way more than 59 and in 10 short years I will be almost 80 years old, well past the age that my father died at.

So I think often now about what my new body is going to be able to do, like run, walk, fly?. How strong will I be? How smart will I be? How well will I be able to see, and hear? What will I know? Will I eat? Why will I eat if I do?

What will I be doing? I am eternal, that is a long time. Will I grow? Will I get smarter? How many people will I know? Will I make new friends? Will we play poker?

I think about my new body often now, and that thinking makes me happy, so I think about it even more because I like being happy.

I have been to Israel 3 times, and they were wonderful trips seeing and walking on the land that Jesus lived and walked on. In each of the 3 trips I was amazed at how small the country is, it isn’t much bigger than our Willamette valley. It seems like a big country simply on the basis of the volume of news, discussion, and conflict that swirl around this little country that can barely turn one of their jets around in it’s own airspace. The Bible calls Israel the center of the world, it is the birthplace of Jesus, the Savior of the world, and Jerusalem will be the capitol of the world when Jesus comes back to rule the world. One of the strongest proofs in the validity of the Bible is the existence of Israel in spite of the fact that the whole world hates her. Today President Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel, and is moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next couple of weeks, but one thing is for sure, God will supernaturally protect Israel even as the world attempts to destroy her. God is in charge and has told us about the future in the Bible. I am on God’s team and I trust Him

There are about a dozen commands in the Bible to seek the Lord and about as many promises to those who do.

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.

1 Chronicles 16:10-11. Glory in His holy name; Let the heart of those who seek the Lord be glad. Seek the Lord and His strength; Seek His face continually.

Psalms 27:8. When You said, “Seek My face,” my heart said to You, Your face, O Lord, I shall seek.”

Psalms 34:10. The young lions do lack and suffer hunger; But they who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing.

If you are going to choose to seek God actively, where would you look, how would you do it. I choose to go to an intense, purposeful corporate prayer time. That is a prayer time with a group of people with a strong faith in prayer who are praying for hours instead of minutes with an agenda or strong desire that they are asking God to meet. God promises that He will be in such a gathering.

We just finished day 2 of our “Five Day’s of Prayer” at JBC, and it was an amazing time for me of experiencing God. We pray from 5 to 10 am, and 5 to 10 pm, with people coming and going every hour. I stay for most of the time, not because I am super spiritual, but because I am experiencing so much joy. Psalms 16:11 says, “In Your presence is fullness of joy”.

Come on down!!

I cancelled all of my teaching responsibilities for today, Sunday, and Patty and I left at 5:30 am and drove to Naselle, Washington where my son-in-law was getting “Installed” as the senior pastor of the church he and Hannah have been serving at as Youth Pastor for the last 5 years. I got to pray for the church and Kyle and Hannah during the Installation service, and then Patty and I both were part of the Elders of the church and their wives as we gathered around them at the end of the service and laid hands on them and prayed God’s anointing on them. It was a very enjoyable day being part of their lives and the beginning of this new chapter in their lives. I felt very honored by Kyle when he asked me earlier this week to send Him my goals, and then today as we were getting ready to leave I was giving him a few quick pointers on becoming a good preacher, and I suggested that he listen to a couple of sermons every week by really good preachers, and he responded by saying that he listened to me almost every day, and I was the best! I don’t know for sure if he wasn’t just flattering his father-in-law, but it was very nice anyway. Patty and I both pray and intercede for our family asking God to use each of them for His glory, to open doors of opportunity for them, to anoint them in a special way with The Holy Spirit so that they bear much fruit, and that He would protect and guard them from the evil one. It was a wonderful day!

I believe that when I pray for people that God works in their life in response to my prayers, but I am not sure how or how much. I wish that it was huge, very quick, and very obvious. Then my faith in the power of prayer would grow very strong, but maybe that wouldn’t be faith. Hebrews 11 says that, “without faith it is impossible to please God”, and faith seems to be strongest when I can’t see it, feel it, hear it, or taste it. As Paul said, “we walk by faith not by sight”. This next week is a “Five Days of Prayer” event at Jefferson Baptist Church. We have 4 of them a year, and this particular one is for our drama event, “The Hobbit”. Each time we have a “Five Days of Prayer” event I am always disappointed in the turn out, I always wish more people had participated. I know that there are a lot of people who don’t participate because they really, down in the depth of their heart, don’t really believe that the time we spend praying is going to make all that much difference. I believe strongly that it makes a huge difference in people who don’t have a relationship with Jesus, so why do I believe and many others don’t? That is a puzzle, but I will keep praying that God works in their heart and gives them more faith in the words of the Bible. I do believe that I can influence people by praying for them. I also believe that it takes importunity in prayer for faith to be demonstrated so I will persevere.

One of my major guidelines in my goal setting each year is to set a goal to learn something new, and also to do something I have never done before. Those are part of the discipline of life of seeking Wisdom like gold, silver, and precious treasure which the book of Proverbs says will guarantee that I find it. As people we have the capacity to grow in wisdom. God created and designed all of creation by the wisdom that He has, and we are created in His image. Most people get to a level of adequacy in wisdom and then stop seeking more, they become a non-learner. They manage fine and the effort and discipline that it takes to learn more doesn’t appear to them to be worth the effort. When a person plateaus in wisdom growth they will stay there for awhile and then they will go backwards. There comes a point in the life of a person who has plateaued and then regressed when they are no longer capable of growing and becoming more and more wise, they are stuck. Proverbs 1:20-32 wisdom is speaking and says, “Wisdom shouts in the street, She lifts her voice in the square; At the head of the noisy streets she cries out; At the entrance of the gates in the city she utters her sayings: How long, O naive ones, will you love being simple-minded? And scoffers delight themselves in scoffing, And fools hate knowledge? you neglected all my counsel, I will also laugh at your calamity; When distress and anguish come upon you. Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; They will seek me diligently but they will not find me, Because they hated knowledge, And did not choose the fear of the Lord. They would not accept my counsel, So they shall eat of the fruit of their own way, And be satiated with their own devices. For the waywardness of the naive will kill them, And the complacency of fools will destroy them.

So your wife expects that you will not be home later than 5:15 pm. Your husband expects that the house will always be perfectly clean, your boss expects that you will always work overtime, your parents expect a 4.0 grade point every semester, and on the list goes. Not all expectations are bad or oppressive, so decide which ones you can live with patiently without fussing about them, and then do that, that is be patient and don’t fuss, verbally or in your thoughts.

Where and when possible choose to “go the second mile”, that is choose to do more than what is expected, when you only do what is expected you are a prisoner, when you choose to do more than what is expected you are acting in freedom.

In the Old Testament Daniel was expected by his captors to eat food that was in violation of Jewish dietary laws. They had this expectation because they believed it was the healthiest food, and would make Daniel strong. Daniel graciously suggested a test where he would eat foods that were approved by the standards of the Laws of God in the book of Leviticus for a time and then the “boss” could check and see if Daniel was healthier or not. Gracious communication can often clear up expectations and what they are doing to you.

Sometimes you simply do what you believe is best and right and you trust God and take whatever displeasure is directed your way patiently without getting upset or defensive.